The Importance Of Digital Accessibility: How To Avoid Costly Lawsuits!

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:07.800 | You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs where we give you insights into jobs and careers.

00:00:13.160 | I'm Tim Chen, and today we're talking about the importance of digital accessibility.

00:00:17.800 | So what is digital accessibility?

00:00:20.800 | For websites, it means that all the content you see and

00:00:23.840 | the way that was built is done in a way that makes it usable and

00:00:27.360 | accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities.

00:00:32.080 | Now most websites fall short of this,

00:00:34.960 | because it goes far deeper than just color contrast and text legibility.

00:00:38.520 | Now what if I told you your company could be held liable for this negligence, and

00:00:44.440 | you could find yourself in the crosshairs of a major lawsuit?

00:00:47.120 | The goal of this video is to help you be more aware of how to deliver a better user

00:00:51.720 | experience to those with disabilities, and to avoid potential legal action.

00:00:57.160 | Today, we're going to have a conversation with Zach Polwike.

00:01:00.720 | He's the Director of Client Success at Ability.

00:01:03.440 | In this video, he's going to talk to us about what is digital accessibility,

00:01:08.000 | how you are evaluated against WCAG compliance guidelines, and

00:01:12.200 | how to protect yourself from lawsuits.

00:01:15.440 | All right, let's get started.

00:01:17.240 | Hey guys, today we're talking about web accessibility, and

00:01:21.080 | joining us is Zach Polwike, Director of Client Success at Ability,

00:01:25.200 | a digital accessibility company, how are you doing, Zach?

00:01:28.360 | >> I'm really good, Sam, thank you.

00:01:30.280 | >> Now, Zach, I'm just looking forward to this conversation, because I believe that

00:01:33.560 | the topic of accessibility broadly is so important, because it's probably one of

00:01:38.600 | the few topics where people truly don't know what they don't know.

00:01:42.320 | And the challenge or problem is that their company can actually be held liable for

00:01:46.720 | that negligence.

00:01:47.840 | And that can be anyone, could be in marketing, product support, or

00:01:50.960 | even human resources.

00:01:52.520 | And being someone who's managed web, the danger is that most of us think that

00:01:56.280 | we're doing it, right?

00:01:57.680 | And by it, I mean being mindful of text legibility over colored backgrounds,

00:02:01.320 | let's say.

00:02:01.840 | But the spectrum of the handicapped and disabled is so broad.

00:02:06.160 | And that's just simply not enough to deliver a good web experience to them.

00:02:09.640 | And again, a smart or savvy lawyer can take advantage of this and

00:02:13.360 | essentially extort your company.

00:02:15.160 | So Zach, can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing today?

00:02:18.400 | How long you've been doing it?

00:02:20.080 | And maybe lead us into a conversation about what is accessibility compliance and

00:02:24.040 | why is it important to a user and a company?

00:02:25.600 | >> Definitely, I can sure can do that.

00:02:29.640 | So I'm the director of client success at Ability, as you mentioned,

00:02:32.600 | we're headquartered in the Pacific Northwest of the US in Eugene, Oregon.

00:02:36.680 | And in a sentence, what our company does is we work with governments and

00:02:41.280 | businesses around the world to help them achieve their

00:02:44.000 | digital accessibility compliance goals.

00:02:45.800 | And depending on your industry and the regulations that govern the business

00:02:50.040 | that you're in, there are slightly different goals.

00:02:52.560 | I was hired number one at this firm actually 14 years ago to the month.

00:02:57.480 | This is my 14th anniversary.

00:02:59.480 | >> Congratulations.

00:03:01.040 | >> Thank you. Thank you.

00:03:01.760 | My business partner who's our CEO and I have completely bootstrapped and

00:03:05.840 | built this agency from scratch, which I'm very proud of.

00:03:09.520 | Because who we are today is very organic and the growth,

00:03:14.560 | growing as a bootstrap company is kind of wild.

00:03:16.520 | That's a story for another day.

00:03:17.760 | I'm not sure if I would do that again.

00:03:19.760 | But we're very happy to have landed where we are.

00:03:22.440 | And digital accessibility is very similar to physical accessibility,

00:03:27.320 | at least in the spirit of what we're talking about.

00:03:29.920 | So we know physical accessibility from the Americans with Disabilities Act from,

00:03:34.800 | I think, 1990, which really stipulated common sense things.

00:03:38.720 | If your place of business has stairs, for example, to the main door,

00:03:43.120 | we need to provide an equivalent alternative means for, say, a wheelchair.

00:03:47.080 | So a ramp or a lift, or if you're at your favorite restaurant and

00:03:50.720 | the restroom signs have braille on them.

00:03:52.720 | These are all manifestations of the ADA Act.

00:03:55.360 | And so digital accessibility takes that principle and

00:03:59.640 | really applies it to things that are ubiquitous on our lives now.

00:04:03.480 | Our smartphones, websites, the software you use,

00:04:07.560 | the software you bank with or that you do your taxes with.

00:04:12.120 | These things are going to be difficult to use to an end user,

00:04:17.840 | if an end user has any kind of impairment or disability.

00:04:22.720 | And very briefly to describe what those different types of impairments or

00:04:26.880 | disabilities are, is there are spectrums of vision loss.

00:04:30.600 | There are spectrums of hearing loss.

00:04:33.400 | There are all different kinds of cognitive impairment from being prone to

00:04:37.640 | seizures or needing longer to process information and everything in between.

00:04:42.080 | And then there's a spectrum of motor impairment.

00:04:44.840 | So think of paralysis or the inability to use your hands or fingers or

00:04:48.240 | limbs to their full ability.

00:04:50.560 | And then the one that's often forgotten about is temporary injury,

00:04:53.920 | like an injury recovery.

00:04:55.360 | Getting out of a radical surgery is going to be months until you're whole again.

00:04:59.600 | Using websites or apps or software will be challenging unless those digital assets

00:05:08.160 | conform or adhere to a very specific set of guidelines.

00:05:14.880 | And we're going to talk about this today quite a bit.

00:05:17.040 | There's an acronym WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

00:05:22.760 | And this is actually one of the few things that is a universal.

00:05:25.960 | Every human on Earth agrees,

00:05:27.400 | which is really crazy when you think about how divided we are nowadays.

00:05:31.040 | Every human on Earth, every government on Earth, every regulatory body on Earth

00:05:34.680 | understands and agrees that if we want our assets to be accessible to those with

00:05:39.800 | impairment or disability, we need to make sure our assets conform to these WCAG guidelines.

00:05:45.600 | So companies like mine often play the role of third party arbiter where we'll be

00:05:50.360 | hired to audit those assets, identify those weaknesses and those we call them

00:05:55.200 | violations against the WCAG and then work with the developers of record or

00:06:01.120 | the agency of record to go through rigorous auditing and then remediation

00:06:05.400 | to confirm the issues have been fixed.

00:06:08.320 | And so just to put a bow on that thought,

00:06:11.400 | once you confirm that your asset adheres to these guidelines and there's no

00:06:15.440 | secrecy to them, they're publicly available, they're very well written.

00:06:19.040 | They're written by people in tech.

00:06:20.920 | So they're not written by attorneys or like congressmen or congresswomen

00:06:25.120 | who usually are attorneys with lofty language.

00:06:27.640 | It's like Shakespearean takes 3000 pages to say the sun is rising.

00:06:31.640 | These are very common sense, easy to understand and obtain guidelines that we

00:06:36.080 | help people make heads or tails of.

00:06:38.240 | Yeah, that's a really, really good overview.

00:06:40.080 | And you're totally right.

00:06:41.400 | And I appreciate your statement about how it is totally globally acceptable, right?

00:06:44.560 | Because it's a universal guideline to adhere to and in a world where we're trying

00:06:48.120 | to make websites scalable for all languages and regions like one fixed

00:06:53.200 | year can fix it all, which is really good to know.

00:06:55.280 | Can you maybe break it down a little deeper?

00:06:57.400 | So we talked about the WCAG guidelines.

00:06:59.240 | I think 2.0 is out now, right?

00:07:01.680 | Can you help us understand maybe the key founding, the pillars or

00:07:05.520 | principles of which a website could be not necessarily audited,

00:07:09.800 | but evaluated based upon?

00:07:12.200 | Absolutely, yeah, you nailed on a really important principle there in that this

00:07:17.440 | set of guidelines is a living document.

00:07:19.440 | It gets updated throughout time as technology evolves.

00:07:22.880 | So we're in a world right now where you're either looking at draft version

00:07:27.280 | 2.0 or 2.1, they're very similar differences, but that's really what

00:07:31.120 | everybody's aiming for right now.

00:07:32.640 | There's a new draft 2.2 that has been delayed because of COVID,

00:07:36.400 | but will be published sometime in this calendar year, 2023.

00:07:41.600 | So the principles, the principles are to ensure that content and

00:07:48.640 | the structure of assets.

00:07:50.560 | So let's use a simple website as an example.

00:07:53.280 | You know, content are things that change regularly, pictures, text, video,

00:07:58.800 | documents available for download, right?

00:08:01.080 | And then structure is how the website is built, you know, how the blueprints

00:08:07.040 | are laid out, how it is coded, you know, how the menus are built and so forth.

00:08:12.000 | These parts, these mechanics of, say, websites need to be retrofitted in a

00:08:18.680 | manner so that as an end user, I can understand the content.

00:08:24.080 | I can understand the context that is being presented to me.

00:08:28.520 | Okay.

00:08:29.120 | And then I can take action in a meaningful way.

00:08:33.160 | Now you can imagine as a thought experiment, if I'm completely blind,

00:08:37.160 | it will be very difficult for me to understand the context of something,

00:08:41.320 | unless it is made obvious to me through something that we call alt text,

00:08:45.280 | not to get into too much how Sausage is made, but it's about making sure that

00:08:49.120 | those things are consumable, understandable, and actionable, and adhering to the WCAG

00:08:56.320 | guidelines gets you to that finish line.

00:08:59.360 | - Do you mind kind of showing some examples of maybe the most common

00:09:03.120 | violations per each of those principles you called out, right?

00:09:06.520 | Just so using like a tangible, you know, like learning from you?

00:09:12.000 | - Yeah, that's a really good question.

00:09:13.280 | And we could spend hours here.

00:09:14.320 | So I'll keep you all you listeners to just the hits for today.

00:09:19.400 | The most common low-hanging fruit is alt text.

00:09:22.560 | So, you know, websites and software have tons of image files, you know,

00:09:26.440 | as part of the design.

00:09:27.600 | So lots of images, beautiful images, right?

00:09:30.480 | Well, if I'm blind, I have no idea what the contents of that image are.

00:09:34.320 | And so as a blind person relies on an alt text description,

00:09:37.720 | which is just baked into the HTML, it's hidden to the eyeball.

00:09:42.280 | But it provides basically a little description to a screen-reading software.

00:09:46.360 | Let's say if I have an image of, you know, an NBA game taking place,

00:09:50.920 | the alt text description may say, you know, "The Portland Trailblazers are

00:09:54.080 | playing the Oklahoma City Thunder and this image is of tip-off."

00:09:57.920 | And so my screen reader will read that aloud to me and I'll say, "Aha,

00:10:01.160 | I can imagine in my mind what that would be."

00:10:03.120 | So that's alt text.

00:10:06.480 | Then the most important principle, and this gets a little bit more technical

00:10:10.560 | because it requires code remediation, but the most important principle

00:10:15.160 | of everything, like this takes care of probably three-quarters of the

00:10:17.960 | guidelines, is everything that is a thing needs to be labeled as such within the

00:10:26.040 | superficial markup language of the site, the HTML, so that a screen reader will

00:10:30.640 | know what to do with it.

00:10:31.880 | So anything that is a thing, which is kind of a funny thing, but buttons,

00:10:35.480 | menus, modals, iframes, YouTube embeds, lists, headers, you know,

00:10:42.720 | anything that is a thing needs to be labeled as such so that when a screen

00:10:47.160 | reading or assistive software device finds itself landing on that content,

00:10:51.480 | it goes, "Aha, this is a header.

00:10:53.080 | This is very important.

00:10:53.960 | I must read this aloud to the blind or impaired person," or, "Aha,

00:10:57.680 | this is a button and the button says Buy Now," and clicking the Buy Now button

00:11:02.360 | takes me to the checkout page.

00:11:04.800 | You know, these are things that we take advantage of if we have full vision

00:11:07.840 | because we are, you know, our brain is processing this at, like,

00:11:10.240 | trillions of iterations a second.

00:11:12.520 | But if you don't have the use of your eyes, say, or even your limbs,

00:11:15.640 | you know, that becomes very difficult.

00:11:16.960 | So that's why accessibility is important.

00:11:18.720 | - Can you give us some examples of maybe tools that the...whether it's

00:11:23.960 | a visually impaired or aurally impaired, whatever that spectrum is,

00:11:27.680 | like, the common tools or ways that they navigate a website?

00:11:31.200 | So you mentioned screen reader earlier.

00:11:33.120 | Like, is there a specific software people use or is there physical devices?

00:11:36.560 | - That's also a great question.

00:11:39.200 | We can tell Tim's done his research for this conversation.

00:11:41.600 | - I do my best.

00:11:42.760 | - The short answer is yes, there's a very specific set of tools that one would use

00:11:49.800 | if they have any kind of impairment.

00:11:51.200 | So first, most obvious is a screen reader.

00:11:54.240 | So there are really two primary screen readers.

00:11:56.400 | There are others, but for all intents and purposes, the primary two screen readers

00:11:59.920 | that are used by the public is a software called JAWS, which is a paid license to use,

00:12:05.200 | and then a software called NVDA, which is a free software license to use.

00:12:12.000 | And these are classic screen reader software.

00:12:14.280 | So if I'm blind or even have physical impairment like a paralysis,

00:12:19.880 | I'm going to rely on this software that I have installed on my computer to act

00:12:25.160 | as my eyes or to act as my fingers on the mouse.

00:12:28.360 | And the purpose of the software is they will move me through a website,

00:12:31.840 | take me through where I want to go and, you know, get me to my end destination.

00:12:36.760 | Beyond that, we have to remember that we're in an increasingly mobile world.

00:12:41.040 | You know, many people are never going to visit a website on a laptop or desktop.

00:12:45.560 | They're only going to be using, say, their iPhone or Android.

00:12:48.840 | And so those two operating systems have their own built-in screen reading software.

00:12:54.960 | So I wouldn't necessarily license the software and install it on my phone.

00:12:59.520 | They have built-in software.

00:13:01.120 | So VoiceOver is the software for Apple devices, and Voice Assistant is for Android devices.

00:13:08.600 | And those are just in there ready to go when you turn on your phone.

00:13:12.280 | Yeah, and then finally, beyond that, you know, we get to like edge use cases.

00:13:16.960 | If I have a certain type of paralysis where maybe I have partial movement in my hands

00:13:21.600 | but my fingers aren't working correctly,

00:13:23.800 | I'm not going to use a trackpad or mouse.

00:13:26.200 | Perhaps I'm using like a joystick, almost like an old, you know, a gaming system joystick

00:13:30.880 | that's, you know, specific for that kind of impairment.

00:13:33.520 | But that really covers probably 90-plus percent of the people, what I just described.

00:13:37.200 | Yeah, thank you for that.

00:13:38.200 | Can you give us some examples, like publicly available information around maybe companies

00:13:43.800 | that maybe weren't compliant and maybe whether it's in the process of litigation

00:13:50.920 | or they're caught in a major remediation act to retrofit because again, it hits everyone,

00:13:56.520 | small and large companies, and maybe just kind of talk about that and maybe even share

00:14:00.200 | from your personal experience, like maybe individuals that you've known who are impaired

00:14:04.240 | and now they've engaged with the website and maybe that experiencing the other end of it

00:14:08.720 | where it's now totally user-friendly for them.

00:14:11.200 | Can you maybe talk a little bit about both?

00:14:14.640 | Yeah, yeah, let's start with your first question.

00:14:18.080 | So, I think it's important to just spend a minute on the legality of this topic specific

00:14:23.760 | to the U.S., so this is very interesting.

00:14:27.560 | It goes back to your high school civics classes and this is where the rubber actually hits

00:14:30.680 | the road is we do not live in a democracy.

00:14:35.280 | Democracy is mob rule, it's 50 plus one.

00:14:38.180 | We live in a republic and this is where the difference actually matters is we have these

00:14:41.960 | three branches of government that have separation of powers, you know, blah, blah, blah, all

00:14:45.160 | the things that we heard about in high school civics classes, but what that means in real

00:14:49.680 | terms and real application is the judicial branch of our government has to move in real

00:14:54.620 | time.

00:14:55.700 | People are getting sued, people are adjudicating things in real time today.

00:15:00.640 | Then we have the legislative branch, which, you know, just by definition is always behind

00:15:04.880 | the times.

00:15:05.880 | They have to write laws and then amend laws and then all the political BS that everybody

00:15:11.040 | hates has, you got to go through all that and that takes time and so the laws that get

00:15:15.520 | written typically get written too late or late, right, and so the judicial branch has

00:15:21.240 | to move in real time and so what we're seeing in the U.S. is the precedent has been set.

00:15:25.680 | This is the policy.

00:15:27.880 | While Congress has not written and passed a law that says you must adhere to WCHE if

00:15:33.700 | you have a business in America, full stop.

00:15:36.760 | In other countries that is the case, like in Canadian provinces they have much stronger

00:15:40.080 | laws on the books, but we have the judicial branch, which has been tried thousands of

00:15:45.400 | times with thousands of cases and what the judicial branch of government at every level

00:15:50.120 | has decided is, you know, the Americans with Disabilities Act was written really not for

00:15:54.600 | a digital world, but we can apply the spirit of that to the digital world and the WCAG

00:16:01.800 | guidelines are the universal standard, therefore, and here's the punchline, is if you're operating

00:16:07.540 | a business in the United States and someone calls you out for non-compliance and if it's

00:16:14.360 | true and it's typically true, then you lose, even though there's not a law in Congress,

00:16:21.280 | right, because it's precedent has been set and then, you know, the next time someone

00:16:24.800 | gets sued they reference precedent behind that, so that's very important.

00:16:29.400 | That is the playing field is if you are not doing something about compliance and someone

00:16:33.600 | catches you in a pickle, it's very hard to win that case.

00:16:38.780 | Now, to your other question about, you know, maybe a personal anecdote, a great childhood

00:16:45.740 | friend of mine from preschool, who I'm still very close friends with today, was in a really

00:16:50.660 | tragic accident in high school.

00:16:52.280 | He was an all-state athlete, pre-sport, three-season all-state athlete, he was absolutely going

00:16:57.300 | to a Division I college to do track and field and he was in a snow skiing accident and broke

00:17:02.720 | his neck in senior year of high school.

00:17:06.080 | And that's a cool success story for another day, but the Cliff Notes version is, you know,

00:17:11.700 | he refused to be a victim and he went to college and he got married and has family and has

00:17:15.540 | a wonderful career, but we joke all the time how inconvenient it is to be in a wheelchair

00:17:20.540 | and to have partial paralysis and he talks all the time about how websites suck.

00:17:25.300 | I mean, that's just his opinion from his perspective, you know, it's very difficult to live and

00:17:31.220 | navigate through websites, imagine just trying to do online banking every day.

00:17:35.560 | If your online banking software is not accessible compliant, I mean, that will ruin your day,

00:17:40.040 | you know.

00:17:41.040 | So, that's where, just personally, when I realized that this is very important, like

00:17:45.920 | very important.

00:17:46.920 | Yeah.

00:17:47.920 | So, anyways, I've been preaching for a long time, so.

00:17:50.520 | Yeah, I know, I love that, I think it's important to remember, and to your point, there's humans

00:17:55.080 | behind these screens, right, and if you're a company and most companies believe and strive

00:17:59.920 | to be customer centric, it's not just about the content you put out there, it's how you

00:18:03.560 | put it, and this is why it's so important, and again, your point about the litigation

00:18:09.300 | aspect of it, because it's referential almost, like, that means as the guidelines get updated,

00:18:17.380 | you maybe, you might have been compliant like three years ago, that may not be the case

00:18:20.440 | now, right.

00:18:21.440 | So, again, because living or breathing is an organic document, like, your web posture

00:18:25.880 | has to reflect that, right, and that's why this is so, so important.

00:18:30.240 | You're never truly safe if someone's got their eye on you, right.

00:18:33.960 | So, I'm kind of bringing it back to something a little more practical than Zach, so, there

00:18:38.640 | are a lot of free web tools out there, and we can, I'll put a link to a few of them,

00:18:43.120 | maybe even call some of that on this call, since you're more familiar with that.

00:18:46.800 | My experience with those is, even if you register for them, the audit is pretty good in terms

00:18:51.680 | of giving you a list of things to work on, but it's certainly not comprehensive, and

00:18:55.080 | that's why working with someone like you is so important, right.

00:18:58.880 | Can you kind of maybe help us walk you through the types of free tools people can use today

00:19:02.640 | just to do evaluation, because this is highly actionable, but then help us understand what

00:19:07.440 | a true audit looks like to you using tools and human, and what that remediation looks

00:19:13.280 | like?

00:19:14.280 | Yeah, that's a great question.

00:19:15.600 | This is probably the most important question of today's interview.

00:19:21.440 | In my industry, there are two ways to identify accessibility problems within a website.

00:19:26.760 | One is through automated tools, like scanning software, and one is through a more intimate,

00:19:31.360 | human-led review, human auditing, use case testing, so forth and so on.

00:19:34.880 | Most people start with automated tools, because they're easy.

00:19:38.960 | You know, you load in your website's URL, you click a button, and it gives you a report.

00:19:43.240 | Like most things in life, there are trade-offs, and so we'll talk about those trade-offs in

00:19:46.840 | a second.

00:19:48.280 | But if you're just getting into accessibility compliance and you're like, wow, this is something

00:19:51.920 | I should care about, getting started with a scanning tool is a perfectly fine starting

00:19:56.720 | point.

00:19:58.260 | There are a number of softwares, both free and paid, okay.

00:20:03.340 | My personal opinion is better quality when you pay, but there are some free tools that

00:20:07.880 | you could start with.

00:20:10.600 | Google provides an accessibility tool, I believe it's called Lighthouse.

00:20:14.320 | It's part of a greater package, but it'll run a scan on your website and start to give

00:20:18.160 | you some insights on what needs to be done.

00:20:21.520 | Color contrast is something that can be found through an algorithmic mathematical means.

00:20:26.600 | So color contrast scanning tools are very accurate.

00:20:30.820 | There's one we love by WebAIM.

00:20:33.540 | It's called a color contrast analyzer.

00:20:35.160 | It is very simple to use.

00:20:36.680 | You plug in the hex code of two colors, and it gives you a mathematical output of here

00:20:41.480 | is the ratio, and then it even gives you more information of whether or not it passes WCAG

00:20:45.960 | 2.0 or 2.1, so forth.

00:20:49.520 | There are a couple of tools that I'm actually gonna recommend that we avoid that are free,

00:20:54.480 | but I know one is free, one may be paid, but there's a tool called WAV that's a free scanning

00:21:00.080 | tool.

00:21:01.080 | There's another one called Power Mapper, and I'm only gonna speak from personal experience.

00:21:07.400 | Part of our job is to work with attorneys as they're going through accessibility audits

00:21:13.320 | with their clients, and we always talk about scanning software.

00:21:17.760 | And from what we have seen, and we've been doing this a long time, is we really need

00:21:21.320 | to be careful about the WAV and Power Mapper scanning tools.

00:21:24.680 | They often error on the side of false positives.

00:21:27.700 | So you run a scan with one of those reports, and you're like, "Oh my goodness, I have 15,000

00:21:31.800 | issues on my website.

00:21:32.800 | How is that possible?"

00:21:35.320 | And it's quite likely that most all of those are false positives.

00:21:39.140 | And this is to say nothing bad about software, it's just that there's limitations to what

00:21:44.140 | software can find.

00:21:46.320 | So for those of you using WAV, it's probably the most popular tool.

00:21:50.880 | So continue to use WAV if that's what you wanna do, but just keep a grain of salt with

00:21:56.460 | this, knowing that it may be more inaccurate than you think.

00:22:02.160 | And why this is not an indictment on any scanning software is the trade-off that I mentioned

00:22:05.960 | a couple of minutes ago.

00:22:07.720 | The only way to identify all compliance issues that exist on a site is through human testing.

00:22:14.500 | Maybe in a decade when AI continues to evolve, it's a different conversation, but right now,

00:22:19.580 | only human intervention can determine many of these WCAG guidelines.

00:22:25.280 | And that's because they're just so nuanced and so complex.

00:22:28.940 | So what my company primarily does is, we kind of call it doing it the right way the first

00:22:34.460 | time, human-led review, auditing, and testing.

00:22:38.040 | And it's a multi-discipline approach where we're doing screen reader testing using the

00:22:43.160 | software that I mentioned earlier, we're doing mobile reflow or mobile responsive testing.

00:22:48.920 | We're doing keyboard navigation testing, so that's kind of like, turn off your screen

00:22:53.160 | reader, unplug your mouse, and you're only testing using keystrokes on your keyboard.

00:22:57.960 | That's a very challenging one to pass, is you have to have everything dialed in.

00:23:03.320 | We do technical auditing, which is kind of a multi-dozen point inspection of all unique

00:23:07.480 | page templates.

00:23:08.480 | And then we do random sampling.

00:23:11.300 | And for good measure, then at the end, we run a website through our own proprietary

00:23:15.960 | scanning software, acknowledging that there are limitations to scanning software.

00:23:21.220 | But that's really the only way to do this the right way.

00:23:23.860 | And so, for those of you out here who may be considering this as a need within your

00:23:28.160 | company, this is what I tell people all the time, if you want to reduce your risk as close

00:23:33.160 | to zero as possible.

00:23:34.920 | If you want to fully comply with those guidelines, if you want to make sure you don't get sued

00:23:38.600 | or get sued again, you really need to include human intervention testing and auditing to

00:23:44.680 | make sure everything is found.

00:23:46.180 | So how does a company who's gone through, let's say they've remediated their website,

00:23:51.700 | how can they supply something like a document or certification or verification that they've

00:23:57.120 | taken the efforts to be compliant in a way where it maybe removes the burden of litigation

00:24:03.280 | or a fault, right?

00:24:08.640 | There are two very specific answers to that question.

00:24:13.000 | The first is that you could have a VPAT document authored for your asset in question, your

00:24:20.640 | app, your software, your website.

00:24:22.840 | So a VPAT is Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, VPAT.

00:24:30.000 | And a VPAT is a universal templated document.

00:24:32.940 | Every VPAT that has ever authored looks exactly the same.

00:24:36.060 | And a VPAT is a public declaration of the accessibility compliance or lack thereof within

00:24:40.680 | your asset.

00:24:41.680 | It's usually about 10 pages long.

00:24:43.600 | And the real meat of the document is a table.

00:24:46.260 | And every row in the table represents one of the WCAG requirements.

00:24:50.680 | And then in the columns, you declare publicly whether or not that specific guideline is

00:24:55.640 | applicable to your website or app, whether or not it conforms, and if not, explaining

00:25:02.360 | why.

00:25:03.360 | So that's the first document that people will expect to see to verify proof of conformance.

00:25:08.800 | The second document is something that a company like ours would provide, and we're certainly

00:25:13.560 | not the only company that does this in the US, and it's called verification or certification.

00:25:19.360 | So that's where we, as a third party, are independently verifying on the day of our

00:25:24.440 | final review, this asset either meets or exceeds the standards of the WCAG.

00:25:29.880 | And if there are limitations, maybe you couldn't bring it to full compliance for X, Y, or Z

00:25:35.240 | reason.

00:25:36.240 | We publicly declare, here are the limitations, here's why the limitation exists, and here's

00:25:40.400 | our plan on how to address that moving forward.

00:25:43.480 | And then beyond that, I think the next most important thing is that you really need to

00:25:49.420 | consider an ongoing effort, whether that's automated scans at a cadence, or whether it's

00:25:55.740 | having a company like ours audit in a human led way multiple times a year, because your

00:26:01.080 | assets change.

00:26:02.080 | It's like, that's how websites work is they evolve over time.

00:26:06.320 | So you need to make sure you have a commitment to maintaining compliance over time.

00:26:10.800 | If you do these things, like these are kind of best practices that I'm giving right now.

00:26:14.800 | If you do these things, we're reducing your risk of being sued or getting a demand letter

00:26:18.760 | by orders of magnitude.

00:26:21.080 | And it is always the case that however much time or money that you pay to go into this

00:26:26.720 | compliance journey will be a fraction of the cost of doing nothing and potentially getting

00:26:31.400 | sued or getting a demand letter.

00:26:33.360 | Yeah, it's totally true.

00:26:35.400 | And I think you think a lawyer who is trying to be almost like a predatory major, trying

00:26:42.480 | to target companies of which to extort money using this type of lawsuit, even having that

00:26:50.000 | certification in itself is like, it's kind of not worth the time.

00:26:54.080 | Just even having that proof is almost enough to probably deter most of the cases.

00:26:57.840 | Because again, they're trying to hit by mass.

00:27:00.360 | I think you hear a lot of situations where they're sending out 20, 50 of these notifications

00:27:06.960 | at once to companies and then see which ones bite, right?

00:27:10.160 | So again, you're trying to minimize your risk and exposure to doing this.

00:27:14.360 | How often do you think a company should do an audit?

00:27:19.840 | Is it like a six months, a year or two years?

00:27:22.120 | What's your thoughts on that?

00:27:23.920 | Good question.

00:27:24.960 | So the answer will be variable based on something that's out of my control, which is how

00:27:30.280 | fluid is this website?

00:27:32.300 | If it's a marketing brochure style website that's not going to change much for four or

00:27:36.840 | five years, I'll have a much different answer than if you have an ecommerce website or even

00:27:41.200 | just a more complex brand site that's changing and evolving and new features and micro engagements

00:27:48.600 | and calls to action and sales funnels and all that kind of stuff.

00:27:51.460 | So if you have a fairly static website that doesn't change over time, my personal recommendation

00:27:55.440 | is you should go all in on this one time, dial everything in and then, you know, moving

00:28:01.520 | forward, do very small types of maintenance because the only things that may change are

00:28:05.160 | like a blog post.

00:28:06.160 | And so, you know, there's a very short checklist of what you could do to maintain a clean blog

00:28:11.840 | for websites that are more fluid and complex and nuanced.

00:28:16.200 | At a minimum, we need to be doing something substantial once a year.

00:28:20.860 | That's really my sound advice is once a year you need to be doing something.

00:28:25.100 | We offer a service that's actually a twice a year service where twice a year we come

00:28:29.000 | to the table, go through a re-auditing effort and a re-verification of compliance.

00:28:34.320 | And I would say twice a year is a good sweet spot for the typical business where this website

00:28:40.240 | is changing a lot.

00:28:42.760 | We've had rare cases where clients ask for quarterly deliverables of conformance.

00:28:49.120 | That gets quite busy for all parties.

00:28:50.740 | Like you're basically never ending.

00:28:52.840 | You're always doing remediation and that can be difficult unless you have like a big compliance

00:28:56.420 | team.

00:28:57.420 | So once a year as a minimum, twice a year is even better.

00:29:00.400 | Awesome.

00:29:01.400 | So I'm going to shift gears here a little bit and just kind of talk about just working

00:29:06.000 | in this industry and field altogether, right?

00:29:07.840 | Because I think I'm going to use myself as an example.

00:29:10.100 | Let's say I find myself unemployed and I want to maybe consider transitioning job into this

00:29:16.400 | field because you've totally sold me on why it's so important, right?

00:29:20.600 | I might just off the bat say, you know what?

00:29:23.320 | I do not have a background in WCJ compliance, nor do I know all the details that go into

00:29:29.100 | that.

00:29:30.100 | I feel like not knowing that puts me at a disadvantage and that might prevent me from

00:29:33.300 | applying altogether.

00:29:35.280 | But I'm hoping the truth is that that's definitely important, but there's other things that you

00:29:40.720 | look for in an individual, whether it's skills or aptitude or even personality or drive or

00:29:45.760 | whatever, whatever that aspect is, that's important.

00:29:48.260 | And I'm also assuming that the entry points, whether it's an entry position or whatever,

00:29:52.500 | it could be maybe it's diverse, right?

00:29:54.440 | So can you help us understand maybe the skills or knowledge that you believe is required

00:29:59.900 | to enter into this field and maybe even share a little bit about your journey?

00:30:03.540 | Like how did you get started?

00:30:05.480 | Was it linear or did you kind of go like this in your career and land here?

00:30:10.040 | Yeah.

00:30:11.040 | Awesome questions.

00:30:12.640 | So let's first talk about the industry in general.

00:30:15.840 | The good news is, if you're considering this career path, digital accessibility compliance,

00:30:21.620 | first of all, this industry is growing exponentially year over year, and it's been doing that for

00:30:26.220 | about five years.

00:30:27.220 | It's a very exciting industry to be in in the US because we are just hitting public

00:30:31.740 | awareness of digital accessibility as a need.

00:30:34.020 | So there's so much opportunity and so few vendors right now.

00:30:37.060 | We really have a supply and demand problem, a lot more demand for the work than there

00:30:40.620 | is supply of vendors, that's the first of all.

00:30:43.500 | Firstly, the WCAG is not rocket science.

00:30:47.720 | Anyone can learn these principles and become an expert in the field.

00:30:51.500 | There are two, I'll just give a quick plug.

00:30:53.280 | I'm not paid for these endorsements, but I'll plug them in.

00:30:56.400 | We have two primary trade organizations, the IAAP and the W3C.

00:31:02.360 | So the IAAP is the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, the W3C are

00:31:06.760 | the folks who actually author and maintain the WCAG guidelines.

00:31:10.220 | Both of them have memberships where you can join as an individual, very low cost, and

00:31:14.440 | then take really awesome continuing education courses.

00:31:17.580 | They provide independent certifications like career certificates.

00:31:21.300 | So for a very small amount of money resources, plus some of your time, you can really become

00:31:25.660 | an expert quickly in this field, so I recommend that.

00:31:29.700 | Then for the industry in general, in a company like ours, I think there's like four primary

00:31:35.980 | job roles, and these are universal.

00:31:39.120 | So one of them of course is sales.

00:31:43.000 | This type of business, or excuse me, this type of industry is B2B sales.

00:31:46.640 | This is like high competency sales.

00:31:51.480 | We're not just selling somebody, convince them and move on.

00:31:54.760 | We're talking about complex compliance, B2B, a lot of legal liability in terms of the services

00:32:00.920 | that are being provided.

00:32:02.220 | So if you are a good relationship builder, if you can build bridges and trust and rapport

00:32:06.920 | and then make the ask, that's the sales part, this is a really exciting career.

00:32:12.700 | Secondly is project management.

00:32:14.840 | So the PM career path fits in our industry because we have all kinds of clients and accounts

00:32:21.980 | that need to be managed and PMs, whether junior, primary, senior, executive, PM, you have a

00:32:27.580 | place in this industry.

00:32:29.980 | Thirdly and most importantly are the workhorses, the auditors.

00:32:34.260 | So to be an auditor, you need to be incredibly detailed.

00:32:40.520 | You need to be a detail oriented, analytically thinking person because your job is to be

00:32:45.100 | looking at websites and code all day long.

00:32:48.000 | And for some people that is like a dream, in others it's a nightmare.

00:32:51.440 | So that's very important.

00:32:53.680 | You do not need to be a web developer by trade to be a good auditor, although I will say

00:32:58.560 | if you have a background in code, it does give you a headstart and this will come more

00:33:03.580 | naturally to you.

00:33:04.680 | But we have staff auditors who are web developers and also staff auditors who were not web developers,

00:33:10.920 | they're all equally competent, but that's something to consider.

00:33:13.340 | And then the fourth and final category is like technical support, customer support.

00:33:17.400 | This is also very classic, it applies to any industry, but companies like ours are always

00:33:22.380 | looking for technical or customer support people, providing empathetic, highly communicative

00:33:27.480 | support.

00:33:28.600 | It's pretty standard recipe.

00:33:29.920 | So those are career paths.

00:33:33.160 | Then our journey is very interesting.

00:33:36.340 | The very abbreviated version of our journey is that we were not an accessibility consultant

00:33:41.040 | on day one.

00:33:42.540 | We were a web dev firm in the Pacific Northwest.

00:33:45.620 | We designed and built websites.

00:33:47.420 | I mean, we were a dime a dozen, nothing special about what we did.

00:33:51.120 | In 2010, we won a government contract to build a website here for a local municipality.

00:33:56.960 | One of the requirements, it was like the last afterthought bullet point on the RFP was like

00:34:01.540 | must comply with accessibility.

00:34:03.780 | We thought, how hard could that be?

00:34:05.900 | And we won the bid and it turns out we won the job because we underbid dramatically because

00:34:10.360 | we had no idea what accessibility was.

00:34:12.620 | And now we're contractually obligated to deliver something we know nothing about.

00:34:17.420 | So we tried to hire a consultant.

00:34:19.880 | We looked across the whole US, this is 13 years ago, there were only like two accessibility

00:34:25.420 | vendors at that point.

00:34:27.220 | And you know, neither of them would even talk to us for like anything less than like a $20,000

00:34:31.080 | container, you know, and that was like just for the coffee.

00:34:34.240 | And we realized, oh, this, like this work is not rocket science, it's not $600 an hour

00:34:38.460 | hard.

00:34:39.460 | But that's what the industry was charging, supply and demand.

00:34:42.340 | I mean, God bless him, there's only two companies you charge whatever you want, and enough people

00:34:46.400 | will be willing to pay the freight.

00:34:48.180 | So that's what they did.

00:34:49.180 | And to my business partners credit to our CEOs credit, you know, he said, you know,

00:34:54.720 | there's nothing special about what we do with web design and web development.

00:34:57.580 | I mean, there's 50 companies that do that just in our city alone that we're operating

00:35:01.840 | in.

00:35:03.000 | But nobody's doing accessibility compliance.

00:35:05.600 | And he made a bet that this would be the third evolution of web dev after SSL encryption

00:35:11.900 | and mobile response with this, he said accessibility compliance has got to be the next wave that

00:35:16.400 | hits the beaches.

00:35:17.400 | And to his credit, he was right.

00:35:19.580 | And so we got in at the right time.

00:35:21.780 | In 2014-15, we really transitioned out of agency life completely and into accessibility

00:35:29.700 | consulting.

00:35:31.000 | And we were just very blessed that it was like the right time with the right offering,

00:35:35.380 | you know, from our agency world, we knew how to bring in business, we knew how to close

00:35:40.500 | business, we knew how to retain business with great customer service, we were just changing

00:35:43.760 | our discipline to a new thing.

00:35:46.600 | But we're really glad we made that leap because we're one of maybe just 10 vendors today that

00:35:51.380 | do this.

00:35:52.380 | So it's still a very small industry.

00:35:53.380 | >> Yeah.

00:35:54.380 | Zach, I just wanted to thank you for today.

00:35:56.900 | The information you gave was so helpful because, again, I truly, truly, to the core of me believe

00:36:02.060 | that accessibility is one of those things where people just do not know what they don't

00:36:07.480 | know.

00:36:08.480 | And it's hard to say I'm coming out of this meeting having been the same as before, right?

00:36:12.740 | Like now I know.

00:36:13.740 | And so I thank you for this really actionable insight.

00:36:16.280 | I really like your breakdown into the four types of careers, one you can expect if they

00:36:20.100 | were to step into accessibility.

00:36:21.820 | Thank you so much.

00:36:23.940 | How can people find you or your website?

00:36:26.220 | >> Oh, great question.

00:36:28.220 | So we are at onlineada.com.

00:36:32.300 | Online A like Adam, B like David, A like Adam.com.

00:36:35.560 | You can find us there.

00:36:37.140 | And then if I could give one more thought, because I know some of the people maybe listening

00:36:40.520 | may be thinking about finding a career in our industry.

00:36:45.700 | And so something we hate doing is going through the interview process, reviewing 500 resumes.

00:36:50.940 | That is not fun for anyone on our team.

00:36:53.220 | And I just want to put this out there as advice I wish I had when I was like in my early 20s

00:36:57.820 | and coming up in my career is if you want something, go out and get it.

00:37:02.240 | So many people just go through the motions like I'll do my cover letter, I'll send in

00:37:05.340 | my resume, I'll see what happens.

00:37:07.300 | If you want to work with us, reach out to us.

00:37:10.180 | Find my CEO's email address, phone number.

00:37:13.360 | Find where he gets coffee.

00:37:14.580 | Go grab him, talk to him, say, this is my name, this is the value I bring and I want

00:37:18.300 | to work with you.

00:37:19.300 | Like that really makes a difference because we want people who want to be with us.

00:37:24.660 | So I promise it is worth it.

00:37:26.140 | And I know that it's kind of going out of comfort zone sometimes it's like being vulnerable

00:37:29.460 | and putting yourself out there.

00:37:30.460 | But it's a first world problem.

00:37:31.840 | The worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to say, sorry, no, not for us.

00:37:35.300 | Who cares?

00:37:36.300 | Just put yourself out there and it will pay off in all aspects of life, especially in

00:37:39.980 | trying to find a job.

00:37:41.740 | >> Totally agree, man.

00:37:42.740 | As a matter of fact, embracing your vulnerability in a way that allows you to bring your true

00:37:46.000 | self out applies to everything.

00:37:47.860 | And I think for those of us who can comfortably get there or work with someone to help bring

00:37:53.340 | that out, I think that's a key to success.

00:37:55.340 | So it's a good call to that.

00:37:56.580 | >> Thank you, Tim.

00:37:57.580 | >> Cool.

00:37:58.580 | Thanks a lot.

00:37:59.580 | >> All right.

00:38:00.580 | Talk soon.

00:38:01.580 | >> Talk to you soon.

00:38:02.580 | >> Bye.

00:38:02.580 | [END]

00:38:04.580 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Importance Of Digital Accessibility: How To Avoid Costly Lawsuits!

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