Hey everyone, welcome back to Top5 brought to ou by DefineTalent a Def nedLogic service. We are a res lts driven service working wit clients to connect them wit quality talent as well as wor ing to make an impact within the recruiting industry. We talk str ight about today's pro essional world with real wor d professionals, experts in rec uitment, job seekers and bus ness owners alike. Have a que tion for us send it in and you might spur our next con ersation. I'm Tara Thurber, Dir
ctor of Talent Innovation. And joining me today to to dis uss their top five tips tow rds embracing accessibility is rian Londregan, Acc ssibility Services Manager, and Diana Alonso, Accessibility Coo dinator from our very own Def nedLogic team. Hey, guys, how re you today?
Hey, Tara doing well, how about you?
Doing good doing good on this sunny morning.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah
Absolutely. I'm very excited to just kind of dive in here. And let's embrace accessibility. Um, let me talk to me a little bit from from the get go you guys. What is accessibility?
Accessibility is about enabling access for people with disabilities or special needs. When we talk about web accessibility, we mean that websites, web apps, tools, tech, they're all designed and developed, so that people with disabilities can use them.
Awesome. And then, you know, Brian, how did you become interested in accessibility?
So by chance, to be honest, years ago, working at a different tech company, we had a client write in asking us if our software supported screen readers, and my boss asked me to take a look.
Hmm
I knew nothing about screen readers at the time, it was really my first exposure to help people who are blind use the web. So I close my eyes and tried to interact with the page using a screen reader. And I was blown away at how difficult it was. But then I was equally blown away when I realized that people put in so much time and effort to become pros at using the software. And they do become pros. And despite the disability, they can use the web again.
Right.
But all of that goes out the window when they hit a poorly coded website. So for me, focusing on accessibility meant that I can do my part to help out with that. And it's also just good engineering work, it can be a real challenge to find the best solution that works for the most people with without drastically changing the look and feel or functionality requirements. So it's problem solving at its finest.
I love that. Why is it important to you?
It's you're helping out, you're helping someone who doesn't have you know, that that same access as you do.
I think that's extremely important, especially in today's world, overall, it's important to make sure from the from the get go to be digitally accessible for everybody, all inclusive, and really make sure that all digital documents that you know, in this world of being virtual, right, it's it's so important for everybody to have that access and to be able to be a part. So that's, I love that
this is important. And I love that this is something that is really spearheading new growth and new ways for companies to really create inclusivity as well. Why don't you go ahead, Diana,
I was just gonna say like, I think a really interesting way of looking at it is that people aren't just disabled by their actual disability, but rather by the lack of accessibility and the physical and like virtual world around them. So it's just, it's just an interesting way of just looking at the world then making a change for the better.
I love that. Why do you think website accessibility is becoming even more prevalent over time?
So to two part answer for this one.
Yeah.
There's the more optimistic take and then there's the more pessimistic take. I'll I'll start with the best pessimistic take. So we could end on a high note.
Great.
So it has to do with the rapid increase in lawsuits.
Yeah.
Year after year, we're seeing more and more Ada lawsuits being filed. If it if it leads to better web accessibility, then you know, ultimately, it's a good thing. But it's unfortunate, that's what it takes for change, because it's changed for the wrong reasons. I think these lawsuits are being perceived as frivolous or ambulance chasing. So it gives businesses the impression that accessibility is this burden. But it's not it's a responsibility. It's a call to action. It's an opportunity to
do the right thing. And it's something companies should have been focusing on years ago. The glass half full take is that I think a lot of companies are becoming more cognizant about inclusivity.
Yeah.
In our culture, lately, there's been a real push towards being inclusive. companies don't want to leave anyone out of the conversation, which is awesome.
You're right, and I think not leaving anybody out. And making sure that it does, expand is is definitely a high note there. The legalities of it, you know, it is sad that it's, you know, companies aren't becoming accessible until legalities get involved. Whereas, you know, starting from right out of the gate, it's gonna be really important for businesses to launch while being
digitally accessible. And then for companies to utilize this as an opportunity to make a change to make, you know, make enhancements in their websites make enhancements in their documents, and looking at it from a positive aspect and where there's opportunity and where there's change and embracing that.
Yeah, definitely, you know, you'd like to see, you know, companies are getting ahead of it. And they're, they're doing it because it's the right thing to do, you know, not that they're being forced to.
Right.
But sometimes it's just, you know, you don't really, you don't really know about it, you didn't think about it. So.
Yeah, and I think also the fact that, you know, the world has really transitioned from being in an office space, where if there were some sort of a disability, you know, it could be more manageable. But now that everyone's working from home companies have had to, like really open their eyes to the fact that even at home, people might be facing some challenges that they didn't even consider while they were in the office.
So, you know, I think this new COVID area has really shifted the way that we look at our digital assets overall.
Yeah. And what, what happens when a website isn't accessible? How do you how do you as as whether you're the developer or the creator, what happens when it's not accessible?
Well, essentially, Tara, you're just excluding your customer base. There's a lot that you're shutting out when your website isn't accessible. And it's really hard to get those customers back in and win
their trust. You know, you when you're looking at a website, from the perspective of it's shiny, it's pretty, it's doing all the right things, and then you fail to comply with the fact that you know, that video might be giving someone a seizure, or that color contrast is just not something that most people can see. You're really just excluding so much of your population and really narrowing down your customer base, and essentially, you're losing money. So
Where as a business and this is kind of a segue out, but as a business owner or somebody that's creating anything digital, are there checkpoints, or a checklist or key things that they should really think about? Before they start or if they're looking at their digital assets, now something that they can go to, to figure out if they're accessible or not?
Yeah, there are guidelines out there there's yes practices that they can, you know, refer to the go to is WCAG, which is held by the W3C. Okay, now, there's a lot to consider. I mean, wic ag has 78 total success criteria to test for. So it's a lot but I mean, you know, there's some easy things to check for, you know, Diana mentioned color contrast, if you're using a light gray on on white, you know, color scheme that might not be working for
everyone. UI controls, they should be operated using the keyboard, and as you move around the page, the focus should be visible. Another common one is assistive tech like screen readers. They can't interpret non text content like images, so you should be using all text. videos and podcasts should have captions or transcripts. You're
using a form on your site. You know, make sure that you've provided instructions and error suggestions, even something like consistency throughout all your web pages, that's going to help the visually impaired, and it's going to help people with learning disorders.
Completely understandable. And when companies are not accessible, are there are the consequences, both legal as you had mentioned, and with customer base?
Absolutely, um, you know, something, that we kind of came across while researching is that the spike of ADA lawsuits are at an all time high, I think, between 2019 and 2020, there was a 23% increase in lawsuits. And it's, it's really eye opening, when you consider accessibility as a whole, I believe the numbers right now is over 1 billion people in this world right now have some sort of an
accessibility issue. So you know, when, companies strive and focus on not only doing the right thing, but making sure that their customers are being heard, you know, everyone essentially wins.
Right? but it seems it also seems that it can be daunting for companies to that are maybe not accessible and then having to become accessible. And like we had said before, there's really a positive that's coming out of it, and we can look at it as an opportunity. You know, and looking at that, I feel is it should be as important as business development, because as much as you're going out, you want to make sure that I mean, where essentially you could be losing.
Yeah. The clients at this point, if you're not fully accessible.
Yeah. And I think another important thing to consider is the fact that accessibility isn't just like a one and done thing that you have to work towards, and you have to maintain, you know, there's a bunch of accessibility scanning tools out there, that's going to give you some sort of a report card number and say, Hey, your website passed. But in reality, you need someone like Brian to go back in and check everything
on your website. And you know, just do some manual testing to know that, in fact, you are accessible, don't just go by the number and just build it into you know, your business strategy, because it's something that is going to be a continuous effort throughout everything that you do from the moment you started, you know, till the day you close your doors,
Right? When we're talking and thinking about accessibility as a whole, what are the disabilities in order to have this need of being accessible?
So I think when most people think about disabilities, they think about being blind.
Yeah.
That's a big one. There's a lot of other people to think about, and a lot of other disabilities that we should be designing, developing and testing for. You have people with physical disabilities, including quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, people who might not have the hand eye coordination, use a mouse, you have people with visual impairments, that includes those who are blind, but also those with low low
vision or color blindness. You have people with cognitive and learning disabilities, like down syndrome, or traumatic brain injury, add dyslexia. And then you have people with hearing disabilities and speech disabilities.
Which covers a large range. I mean, you know, and in trying to make sure that it is inclusive, I mean, like we've, we've talked about in the past to about diversity and equity. This is just as important as everything else, and making sure that it is open to everybody. For businesses, small startup large, how do they know that they if they are accessible, right out of the gate? And on a second question to that, how is DefinedLogic helping their clients right now it's become accessible?
It's a great question. So the best way is through user testing.
Right.
Or evaluating web content based on a set of guidelines like WCAG. So there are scanning tools that you can use, but it's not nearly enough. You know, you really need that manual test effort to see where you stand. And that's where DL comes in. You know, we'll, we'll create a plan that works best for your needs.
Yeah.
We will conduct a full manual audit. And then we have the UX, the design and development experts necessary to help fix those issues. So, you know, our goal isn't just dumping a list of bugs into your inbox, we want to get you accessible as efficiently as possible.
Yeah.
And we've and we want to keep you there.
And then are you also working with clients and giving them like moving forward? After DefineLogics able to help their clients and be a part of the embracing accessibility? Are there pointers or anything that you give to companies as they move forward? Or is it something that they should really have somebody constantly, whether they're on the team, or whether they're outsourcing somebody to be making sure these accessibility measures are kept up to date?
Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. That's, that's a goal, you know, when we're talking about their needs, and we're working on the plan, you know, might be, we might want to work out some monitoring framework, where we touch base, you know, a couple times a year, maybe you have a new release, new software release, or some new content that you're planning on releasing, you know, let's get ahead of that, we'll take a quick look at it, see where it
is. And, you know, we want to keep the conversation going. Like I said, we don't want to just, you know, dump a list of bugs into your in bars, you know, we want to we want to end up with a site that is accessible. And we'll, we'll explain it.
Yeah.
We'll explain what that means. And we'll keep the conversation going.
That's awesome. And I think too, like I had mentioned before it, it probably can seem daunting to some people right out of the gate. Are you guys are you able to do or help companies become accessible? In in like, short, Sprint's? Or is it really something that's an overall map that you give to a client? Where does it Where does it begin? And I guess there really isn't an ending because we need to continue to stay up to date and, and be accessible? Right?
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's gonna depend on the client, Right? But, you know, in planning is important, because if you have a 50 page, or 100 page website, you know, it might be, it's gonna be really tough to get
through all that. So we want to prioritize, you know, what we're looking at, identify areas of the page that are, you know, the most trafficked, or maybe, you know, we run a quick assessment, and we can, you know, determine where the majority of the issues are, we can identify some problems, some really problematic pages, and we can
tackle those first. So that all comes out in the planning phase, you know, we want to we want to build something that works, we want to, you know, figure out what we should be attacking first, and move on from there.
Just keep going forward. This is really great. I mean, again, so much education for me on accessibility. I know, just with dealing with DefineTalent, and our website and our digital footprint print right now we're trying to become accessible and it is daunting. It's, it's a lot, but it's also it's part of the plan. So it's, it's extremely important, and it's a very strong value, especially that DefinedTalent has to be all inclusive, to make sure that we are accessible for
everybody and everyone. So let me ask you this, what are your top five tips Brian, for businesses, companies, individuals to embrace accessibility
Alrighty. Number one, consider accessibility early on in the software development process. companies usually underestimate how much work is involved in making a page accessible. Even worse, sometimes the task is thrown on them towards the very end of the project when there isn't much time left.
Right.
Once you begin to see accessibility issues as bugs, you'll quickly notice how they can become costly. There's a lot of research that has shown that bugs caught earlier on end up costing less. So depending on the pages markup, some issues can always be resolved by just applying like a quick fix or a bandaid on your code. Sometimes it requires like a slight redesign of your page. And if that's not noticed, until after that design was coded you know that's that's rework that can
become pretty expensive. So consider accessibility early on in the process.
I like that.
Number two, use scanning tools. But don't stop there. We mentioned this earlier, you know, these, these automation tools, they're great, they're helpful. But they don't come close to catching all the issues. So you really need a human to manually test or audit the page. Number three, find a way to bring in people with first hand experience with disabilities. Think that asking someone with a disability to test your product or your content that provides the most valuable feedback.
Number four, get into the right mindset and help your colleagues get into that mindset. So we mentioned this before, you know, because of the lawsuits, and how accessibility can be thrown in at the end of the project, causing the project to go over schedule. Accessibility is sometimes seen as a burden. But that's not the case. And there's so much information on the web that shows or explains how
barriers can affect people. So once you start reading up and learning, I think you'll begin to realize that this is an opportunity to become a better developer, a better designer, a better product manager, and really help somebody out. You know, I think could be come easy to sometimes think of web accessibility as an impediment to the design process. But again, that's that's not the right mindset, you can still create cutting edge, visually appealing layouts, without excluding a whole segment of
your audience. So get into that right mindset, and you know, help your help your colleagues get there to. The fifth and last tip. I think this one's probably more for any web developers who are listening, go back and revisit HTML. So there's a lot of undergrad CSS students that learn HTML first, maybe in like a web design one on one class, and then quickly move on to more complicated programming languages. And they don't really touch HTML again, I know that
was the case with me. You know, some people start their education with a developer boot camp, they learn a specific framework, and they skip over HTML entirely. So good HTML is vital for good web accessibility. Assistive technologies like screen readers, they digest your pages markup, the HTML markup in order to figure out what should be read aloud to the user. Now, HTML elements have specific semantics are meaning assigned
to them. And sometimes you'll see developers use these HTML elements for the wrong reason. So if you go back and revisit HTML, you're going to avoid plenty of mistakes.
I like all of those tips so much, Brian, I think that there's a lot that our listeners can take away with that. And even on the the developer side, going back to HTML, I mean, so many clients that I'm working with that are looking for people that have the accessibility experience. You're right. It's the HTML, the JavaScript, the CSS, that's the the main aspect of it. So it's great that at least we know
where to start. And do you have any suggestions for individuals that if they want to go back and learn or if they want to take some accessibility courses? Where would somebody go for that?
There are a lot of free courses on the W3C site. Okay, great. That's a great starting point. And, you know, as I mentioned, it's, for developers, it's about getting back to the basics, okay. Usually an accessibility issue. It's, it's not about designing or something. It's usually about, you know, just using the right HTML elements out of the gate, not thrown up any barriers. So it's back to the basics. So I know there's a lot of, you know, great classes on
HTML, just to just to go in. An just so you know, W3C has a lot of really good classes fo everyone in the organization, w ether you're a product owner o manager, all the way down to a developer. So.
That's, that's good to know, too. I mean, again, there's so much opportunity for As a designer or management or developers to go back and learn something to expand their toolkit too, so it' just something that adds add value to them. I know for mysel in recruiting, we're heavil anybody with accessibilit experience it's always an added value for a lot of our clients ight now when we're recruiti g for whether it's tech creative even sales, understa ding it on that aspect of it. S
That's awesome. I am glad to hear that.
Yeah.
That's sought after.
Yeah, it's a good thing. Definitely. Definitely. Well, you guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Very exciting to kind of dig into the nitty gritty of accessibility. I really appreciate you guys taking some time out of your day to join us a Top5.
Thanks so much for having us.
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