You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs where we give you insights into jobs and careers. I'm Tim Chen, and today we're talking about the importance of digital accessibility. So what is digital accessibility? For websites, it means that all the content you see and the way that was built is done in a way that makes it usable and accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities.

Now most websites fall short of this, because it goes far deeper than just color contrast and text legibility. Now what if I told you your company could be held liable for this negligence, and you could find yourself in the crosshairs of a major lawsuit? The goal of this video is to help you be more aware of how to deliver a better user experience to those with disabilities, and to avoid potential legal action.

Today, we're going to have a conversation with Zach Polwike. He's the Director of Client Success at Ability. In this video, he's going to talk to us about what is digital accessibility, how you are evaluated against WCAG compliance guidelines, and how to protect yourself from lawsuits. All right, let's get started.

Hey guys, today we're talking about web accessibility, and joining us is Zach Polwike, Director of Client Success at Ability, a digital accessibility company, how are you doing, Zach? >> I'm really good, Sam, thank you. >> Now, Zach, I'm just looking forward to this conversation, because I believe that the topic of accessibility broadly is so important, because it's probably one of the few topics where people truly don't know what they don't know.

And the challenge or problem is that their company can actually be held liable for that negligence. And that can be anyone, could be in marketing, product support, or even human resources. And being someone who's managed web, the danger is that most of us think that we're doing it, right?

And by it, I mean being mindful of text legibility over colored backgrounds, let's say. But the spectrum of the handicapped and disabled is so broad. And that's just simply not enough to deliver a good web experience to them. And again, a smart or savvy lawyer can take advantage of this and essentially extort your company.

So Zach, can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing today? How long you've been doing it? And maybe lead us into a conversation about what is accessibility compliance and why is it important to a user and a company? >> Definitely, I can sure can do that.

So I'm the director of client success at Ability, as you mentioned, we're headquartered in the Pacific Northwest of the US in Eugene, Oregon. And in a sentence, what our company does is we work with governments and businesses around the world to help them achieve their digital accessibility compliance goals.

And depending on your industry and the regulations that govern the business that you're in, there are slightly different goals. I was hired number one at this firm actually 14 years ago to the month. This is my 14th anniversary. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. Thank you. My business partner who's our CEO and I have completely bootstrapped and built this agency from scratch, which I'm very proud of.

Because who we are today is very organic and the growth, growing as a bootstrap company is kind of wild. That's a story for another day. I'm not sure if I would do that again. But we're very happy to have landed where we are. And digital accessibility is very similar to physical accessibility, at least in the spirit of what we're talking about.

So we know physical accessibility from the Americans with Disabilities Act from, I think, 1990, which really stipulated common sense things. If your place of business has stairs, for example, to the main door, we need to provide an equivalent alternative means for, say, a wheelchair. So a ramp or a lift, or if you're at your favorite restaurant and the restroom signs have braille on them.

These are all manifestations of the ADA Act. And so digital accessibility takes that principle and really applies it to things that are ubiquitous on our lives now. Our smartphones, websites, the software you use, the software you bank with or that you do your taxes with. These things are going to be difficult to use to an end user, if an end user has any kind of impairment or disability.

And very briefly to describe what those different types of impairments or disabilities are, is there are spectrums of vision loss. There are spectrums of hearing loss. There are all different kinds of cognitive impairment from being prone to seizures or needing longer to process information and everything in between. And then there's a spectrum of motor impairment.

So think of paralysis or the inability to use your hands or fingers or limbs to their full ability. And then the one that's often forgotten about is temporary injury, like an injury recovery. Getting out of a radical surgery is going to be months until you're whole again. Using websites or apps or software will be challenging unless those digital assets conform or adhere to a very specific set of guidelines.

And we're going to talk about this today quite a bit. There's an acronym WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And this is actually one of the few things that is a universal. Every human on Earth agrees, which is really crazy when you think about how divided we are nowadays. Every human on Earth, every government on Earth, every regulatory body on Earth understands and agrees that if we want our assets to be accessible to those with impairment or disability, we need to make sure our assets conform to these WCAG guidelines.

So companies like mine often play the role of third party arbiter where we'll be hired to audit those assets, identify those weaknesses and those we call them violations against the WCAG and then work with the developers of record or the agency of record to go through rigorous auditing and then remediation to confirm the issues have been fixed.

And so just to put a bow on that thought, once you confirm that your asset adheres to these guidelines and there's no secrecy to them, they're publicly available, they're very well written. They're written by people in tech. So they're not written by attorneys or like congressmen or congresswomen who usually are attorneys with lofty language.

It's like Shakespearean takes 3000 pages to say the sun is rising. These are very common sense, easy to understand and obtain guidelines that we help people make heads or tails of. Yeah, that's a really, really good overview. And you're totally right. And I appreciate your statement about how it is totally globally acceptable, right?

Because it's a universal guideline to adhere to and in a world where we're trying to make websites scalable for all languages and regions like one fixed year can fix it all, which is really good to know. Can you maybe break it down a little deeper? So we talked about the WCAG guidelines.

I think 2.0 is out now, right? Can you help us understand maybe the key founding, the pillars or principles of which a website could be not necessarily audited, but evaluated based upon? Absolutely, yeah, you nailed on a really important principle there in that this set of guidelines is a living document.

It gets updated throughout time as technology evolves. So we're in a world right now where you're either looking at draft version 2.0 or 2.1, they're very similar differences, but that's really what everybody's aiming for right now. There's a new draft 2.2 that has been delayed because of COVID, but will be published sometime in this calendar year, 2023.

So the principles, the principles are to ensure that content and the structure of assets. So let's use a simple website as an example. You know, content are things that change regularly, pictures, text, video, documents available for download, right? And then structure is how the website is built, you know, how the blueprints are laid out, how it is coded, you know, how the menus are built and so forth.

These parts, these mechanics of, say, websites need to be retrofitted in a manner so that as an end user, I can understand the content. I can understand the context that is being presented to me. Okay. And then I can take action in a meaningful way. Now you can imagine as a thought experiment, if I'm completely blind, it will be very difficult for me to understand the context of something, unless it is made obvious to me through something that we call alt text, not to get into too much how Sausage is made, but it's about making sure that those things are consumable, understandable, and actionable, and adhering to the WCAG guidelines gets you to that finish line.

- Do you mind kind of showing some examples of maybe the most common violations per each of those principles you called out, right? Just so using like a tangible, you know, like learning from you? - Yeah, that's a really good question. And we could spend hours here. So I'll keep you all you listeners to just the hits for today.

The most common low-hanging fruit is alt text. So, you know, websites and software have tons of image files, you know, as part of the design. So lots of images, beautiful images, right? Well, if I'm blind, I have no idea what the contents of that image are. And so as a blind person relies on an alt text description, which is just baked into the HTML, it's hidden to the eyeball.

But it provides basically a little description to a screen-reading software. Let's say if I have an image of, you know, an NBA game taking place, the alt text description may say, you know, "The Portland Trailblazers are playing the Oklahoma City Thunder and this image is of tip-off." And so my screen reader will read that aloud to me and I'll say, "Aha, I can imagine in my mind what that would be." So that's alt text.

Then the most important principle, and this gets a little bit more technical because it requires code remediation, but the most important principle of everything, like this takes care of probably three-quarters of the guidelines, is everything that is a thing needs to be labeled as such within the superficial markup language of the site, the HTML, so that a screen reader will know what to do with it.

So anything that is a thing, which is kind of a funny thing, but buttons, menus, modals, iframes, YouTube embeds, lists, headers, you know, anything that is a thing needs to be labeled as such so that when a screen reading or assistive software device finds itself landing on that content, it goes, "Aha, this is a header.

This is very important. I must read this aloud to the blind or impaired person," or, "Aha, this is a button and the button says Buy Now," and clicking the Buy Now button takes me to the checkout page. You know, these are things that we take advantage of if we have full vision because we are, you know, our brain is processing this at, like, trillions of iterations a second.

But if you don't have the use of your eyes, say, or even your limbs, you know, that becomes very difficult. So that's why accessibility is important. - Can you give us some examples of maybe tools that the...whether it's a visually impaired or aurally impaired, whatever that spectrum is, like, the common tools or ways that they navigate a website?

So you mentioned screen reader earlier. Like, is there a specific software people use or is there physical devices? - That's also a great question. We can tell Tim's done his research for this conversation. - I do my best. - The short answer is yes, there's a very specific set of tools that one would use if they have any kind of impairment.

So first, most obvious is a screen reader. So there are really two primary screen readers. There are others, but for all intents and purposes, the primary two screen readers that are used by the public is a software called JAWS, which is a paid license to use, and then a software called NVDA, which is a free software license to use.

And these are classic screen reader software. So if I'm blind or even have physical impairment like a paralysis, I'm going to rely on this software that I have installed on my computer to act as my eyes or to act as my fingers on the mouse. And the purpose of the software is they will move me through a website, take me through where I want to go and, you know, get me to my end destination.

Beyond that, we have to remember that we're in an increasingly mobile world. You know, many people are never going to visit a website on a laptop or desktop. They're only going to be using, say, their iPhone or Android. And so those two operating systems have their own built-in screen reading software.

So I wouldn't necessarily license the software and install it on my phone. They have built-in software. So VoiceOver is the software for Apple devices, and Voice Assistant is for Android devices. And those are just in there ready to go when you turn on your phone. Yeah, and then finally, beyond that, you know, we get to like edge use cases.

If I have a certain type of paralysis where maybe I have partial movement in my hands but my fingers aren't working correctly, I'm not going to use a trackpad or mouse. Perhaps I'm using like a joystick, almost like an old, you know, a gaming system joystick that's, you know, specific for that kind of impairment.

But that really covers probably 90-plus percent of the people, what I just described. Yeah, thank you for that. Can you give us some examples, like publicly available information around maybe companies that maybe weren't compliant and maybe whether it's in the process of litigation or they're caught in a major remediation act to retrofit because again, it hits everyone, small and large companies, and maybe just kind of talk about that and maybe even share from your personal experience, like maybe individuals that you've known who are impaired and now they've engaged with the website and maybe that experiencing the other end of it where it's now totally user-friendly for them.

Can you maybe talk a little bit about both? Yeah, yeah, let's start with your first question. So, I think it's important to just spend a minute on the legality of this topic specific to the U.S., so this is very interesting. It goes back to your high school civics classes and this is where the rubber actually hits the road is we do not live in a democracy.

Democracy is mob rule, it's 50 plus one. We live in a republic and this is where the difference actually matters is we have these three branches of government that have separation of powers, you know, blah, blah, blah, all the things that we heard about in high school civics classes, but what that means in real terms and real application is the judicial branch of our government has to move in real time.

People are getting sued, people are adjudicating things in real time today. Then we have the legislative branch, which, you know, just by definition is always behind the times. They have to write laws and then amend laws and then all the political BS that everybody hates has, you got to go through all that and that takes time and so the laws that get written typically get written too late or late, right, and so the judicial branch has to move in real time and so what we're seeing in the U.S.

is the precedent has been set. This is the policy. While Congress has not written and passed a law that says you must adhere to WCHE if you have a business in America, full stop. In other countries that is the case, like in Canadian provinces they have much stronger laws on the books, but we have the judicial branch, which has been tried thousands of times with thousands of cases and what the judicial branch of government at every level has decided is, you know, the Americans with Disabilities Act was written really not for a digital world, but we can apply the spirit of that to the digital world and the WCAG guidelines are the universal standard, therefore, and here's the punchline, is if you're operating a business in the United States and someone calls you out for non-compliance and if it's true and it's typically true, then you lose, even though there's not a law in Congress, right, because it's precedent has been set and then, you know, the next time someone gets sued they reference precedent behind that, so that's very important.

That is the playing field is if you are not doing something about compliance and someone catches you in a pickle, it's very hard to win that case. Now, to your other question about, you know, maybe a personal anecdote, a great childhood friend of mine from preschool, who I'm still very close friends with today, was in a really tragic accident in high school.

He was an all-state athlete, pre-sport, three-season all-state athlete, he was absolutely going to a Division I college to do track and field and he was in a snow skiing accident and broke his neck in senior year of high school. And that's a cool success story for another day, but the Cliff Notes version is, you know, he refused to be a victim and he went to college and he got married and has family and has a wonderful career, but we joke all the time how inconvenient it is to be in a wheelchair and to have partial paralysis and he talks all the time about how websites suck.

I mean, that's just his opinion from his perspective, you know, it's very difficult to live and navigate through websites, imagine just trying to do online banking every day. If your online banking software is not accessible compliant, I mean, that will ruin your day, you know. So, that's where, just personally, when I realized that this is very important, like very important.

Yeah. So, anyways, I've been preaching for a long time, so. Yeah, I know, I love that, I think it's important to remember, and to your point, there's humans behind these screens, right, and if you're a company and most companies believe and strive to be customer centric, it's not just about the content you put out there, it's how you put it, and this is why it's so important, and again, your point about the litigation aspect of it, because it's referential almost, like, that means as the guidelines get updated, you maybe, you might have been compliant like three years ago, that may not be the case now, right.

So, again, because living or breathing is an organic document, like, your web posture has to reflect that, right, and that's why this is so, so important. You're never truly safe if someone's got their eye on you, right. So, I'm kind of bringing it back to something a little more practical than Zach, so, there are a lot of free web tools out there, and we can, I'll put a link to a few of them, maybe even call some of that on this call, since you're more familiar with that.

My experience with those is, even if you register for them, the audit is pretty good in terms of giving you a list of things to work on, but it's certainly not comprehensive, and that's why working with someone like you is so important, right. Can you kind of maybe help us walk you through the types of free tools people can use today just to do evaluation, because this is highly actionable, but then help us understand what a true audit looks like to you using tools and human, and what that remediation looks like?

Yeah, that's a great question. This is probably the most important question of today's interview. In my industry, there are two ways to identify accessibility problems within a website. One is through automated tools, like scanning software, and one is through a more intimate, human-led review, human auditing, use case testing, so forth and so on.

Most people start with automated tools, because they're easy. You know, you load in your website's URL, you click a button, and it gives you a report. Like most things in life, there are trade-offs, and so we'll talk about those trade-offs in a second. But if you're just getting into accessibility compliance and you're like, wow, this is something I should care about, getting started with a scanning tool is a perfectly fine starting point.

There are a number of softwares, both free and paid, okay. My personal opinion is better quality when you pay, but there are some free tools that you could start with. Google provides an accessibility tool, I believe it's called Lighthouse. It's part of a greater package, but it'll run a scan on your website and start to give you some insights on what needs to be done.

Color contrast is something that can be found through an algorithmic mathematical means. So color contrast scanning tools are very accurate. There's one we love by WebAIM. It's called a color contrast analyzer. It is very simple to use. You plug in the hex code of two colors, and it gives you a mathematical output of here is the ratio, and then it even gives you more information of whether or not it passes WCAG 2.0 or 2.1, so forth.

There are a couple of tools that I'm actually gonna recommend that we avoid that are free, but I know one is free, one may be paid, but there's a tool called WAV that's a free scanning tool. There's another one called Power Mapper, and I'm only gonna speak from personal experience.

Part of our job is to work with attorneys as they're going through accessibility audits with their clients, and we always talk about scanning software. And from what we have seen, and we've been doing this a long time, is we really need to be careful about the WAV and Power Mapper scanning tools.

They often error on the side of false positives. So you run a scan with one of those reports, and you're like, "Oh my goodness, I have 15,000 issues on my website. How is that possible?" And it's quite likely that most all of those are false positives. And this is to say nothing bad about software, it's just that there's limitations to what software can find.

So for those of you using WAV, it's probably the most popular tool. So continue to use WAV if that's what you wanna do, but just keep a grain of salt with this, knowing that it may be more inaccurate than you think. And why this is not an indictment on any scanning software is the trade-off that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago.

The only way to identify all compliance issues that exist on a site is through human testing. Maybe in a decade when AI continues to evolve, it's a different conversation, but right now, only human intervention can determine many of these WCAG guidelines. And that's because they're just so nuanced and so complex.

So what my company primarily does is, we kind of call it doing it the right way the first time, human-led review, auditing, and testing. And it's a multi-discipline approach where we're doing screen reader testing using the software that I mentioned earlier, we're doing mobile reflow or mobile responsive testing.

We're doing keyboard navigation testing, so that's kind of like, turn off your screen reader, unplug your mouse, and you're only testing using keystrokes on your keyboard. That's a very challenging one to pass, is you have to have everything dialed in. We do technical auditing, which is kind of a multi-dozen point inspection of all unique page templates.

And then we do random sampling. And for good measure, then at the end, we run a website through our own proprietary scanning software, acknowledging that there are limitations to scanning software. But that's really the only way to do this the right way. And so, for those of you out here who may be considering this as a need within your company, this is what I tell people all the time, if you want to reduce your risk as close to zero as possible.

If you want to fully comply with those guidelines, if you want to make sure you don't get sued or get sued again, you really need to include human intervention testing and auditing to make sure everything is found. So how does a company who's gone through, let's say they've remediated their website, how can they supply something like a document or certification or verification that they've taken the efforts to be compliant in a way where it maybe removes the burden of litigation or a fault, right?

There are two very specific answers to that question. The first is that you could have a VPAT document authored for your asset in question, your app, your software, your website. So a VPAT is Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, VPAT. And a VPAT is a universal templated document. Every VPAT that has ever authored looks exactly the same.

And a VPAT is a public declaration of the accessibility compliance or lack thereof within your asset. It's usually about 10 pages long. And the real meat of the document is a table. And every row in the table represents one of the WCAG requirements. And then in the columns, you declare publicly whether or not that specific guideline is applicable to your website or app, whether or not it conforms, and if not, explaining why.

So that's the first document that people will expect to see to verify proof of conformance. The second document is something that a company like ours would provide, and we're certainly not the only company that does this in the US, and it's called verification or certification. So that's where we, as a third party, are independently verifying on the day of our final review, this asset either meets or exceeds the standards of the WCAG.

And if there are limitations, maybe you couldn't bring it to full compliance for X, Y, or Z reason. We publicly declare, here are the limitations, here's why the limitation exists, and here's our plan on how to address that moving forward. And then beyond that, I think the next most important thing is that you really need to consider an ongoing effort, whether that's automated scans at a cadence, or whether it's having a company like ours audit in a human led way multiple times a year, because your assets change.

It's like, that's how websites work is they evolve over time. So you need to make sure you have a commitment to maintaining compliance over time. If you do these things, like these are kind of best practices that I'm giving right now. If you do these things, we're reducing your risk of being sued or getting a demand letter by orders of magnitude.

And it is always the case that however much time or money that you pay to go into this compliance journey will be a fraction of the cost of doing nothing and potentially getting sued or getting a demand letter. Yeah, it's totally true. And I think you think a lawyer who is trying to be almost like a predatory major, trying to target companies of which to extort money using this type of lawsuit, even having that certification in itself is like, it's kind of not worth the time.

Just even having that proof is almost enough to probably deter most of the cases. Because again, they're trying to hit by mass. I think you hear a lot of situations where they're sending out 20, 50 of these notifications at once to companies and then see which ones bite, right?

So again, you're trying to minimize your risk and exposure to doing this. How often do you think a company should do an audit? Is it like a six months, a year or two years? What's your thoughts on that? Good question. So the answer will be variable based on something that's out of my control, which is how fluid is this website?

If it's a marketing brochure style website that's not going to change much for four or five years, I'll have a much different answer than if you have an ecommerce website or even just a more complex brand site that's changing and evolving and new features and micro engagements and calls to action and sales funnels and all that kind of stuff.

So if you have a fairly static website that doesn't change over time, my personal recommendation is you should go all in on this one time, dial everything in and then, you know, moving forward, do very small types of maintenance because the only things that may change are like a blog post.

And so, you know, there's a very short checklist of what you could do to maintain a clean blog for websites that are more fluid and complex and nuanced. At a minimum, we need to be doing something substantial once a year. That's really my sound advice is once a year you need to be doing something.

We offer a service that's actually a twice a year service where twice a year we come to the table, go through a re-auditing effort and a re-verification of compliance. And I would say twice a year is a good sweet spot for the typical business where this website is changing a lot.

We've had rare cases where clients ask for quarterly deliverables of conformance. That gets quite busy for all parties. Like you're basically never ending. You're always doing remediation and that can be difficult unless you have like a big compliance team. So once a year as a minimum, twice a year is even better.

Awesome. So I'm going to shift gears here a little bit and just kind of talk about just working in this industry and field altogether, right? Because I think I'm going to use myself as an example. Let's say I find myself unemployed and I want to maybe consider transitioning job into this field because you've totally sold me on why it's so important, right?

I might just off the bat say, you know what? I do not have a background in WCJ compliance, nor do I know all the details that go into that. I feel like not knowing that puts me at a disadvantage and that might prevent me from applying altogether. But I'm hoping the truth is that that's definitely important, but there's other things that you look for in an individual, whether it's skills or aptitude or even personality or drive or whatever, whatever that aspect is, that's important.

And I'm also assuming that the entry points, whether it's an entry position or whatever, it could be maybe it's diverse, right? So can you help us understand maybe the skills or knowledge that you believe is required to enter into this field and maybe even share a little bit about your journey?

Like how did you get started? Was it linear or did you kind of go like this in your career and land here? Yeah. Awesome questions. So let's first talk about the industry in general. The good news is, if you're considering this career path, digital accessibility compliance, first of all, this industry is growing exponentially year over year, and it's been doing that for about five years.

It's a very exciting industry to be in in the US because we are just hitting public awareness of digital accessibility as a need. So there's so much opportunity and so few vendors right now. We really have a supply and demand problem, a lot more demand for the work than there is supply of vendors, that's the first of all.

Firstly, the WCAG is not rocket science. Anyone can learn these principles and become an expert in the field. There are two, I'll just give a quick plug. I'm not paid for these endorsements, but I'll plug them in. We have two primary trade organizations, the IAAP and the W3C. So the IAAP is the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, the W3C are the folks who actually author and maintain the WCAG guidelines.

Both of them have memberships where you can join as an individual, very low cost, and then take really awesome continuing education courses. They provide independent certifications like career certificates. So for a very small amount of money resources, plus some of your time, you can really become an expert quickly in this field, so I recommend that.

Then for the industry in general, in a company like ours, I think there's like four primary job roles, and these are universal. So one of them of course is sales. This type of business, or excuse me, this type of industry is B2B sales. This is like high competency sales.

We're not just selling somebody, convince them and move on. We're talking about complex compliance, B2B, a lot of legal liability in terms of the services that are being provided. So if you are a good relationship builder, if you can build bridges and trust and rapport and then make the ask, that's the sales part, this is a really exciting career.

Secondly is project management. So the PM career path fits in our industry because we have all kinds of clients and accounts that need to be managed and PMs, whether junior, primary, senior, executive, PM, you have a place in this industry. Thirdly and most importantly are the workhorses, the auditors.

So to be an auditor, you need to be incredibly detailed. You need to be a detail oriented, analytically thinking person because your job is to be looking at websites and code all day long. And for some people that is like a dream, in others it's a nightmare. So that's very important.

You do not need to be a web developer by trade to be a good auditor, although I will say if you have a background in code, it does give you a headstart and this will come more naturally to you. But we have staff auditors who are web developers and also staff auditors who were not web developers, they're all equally competent, but that's something to consider.

And then the fourth and final category is like technical support, customer support. This is also very classic, it applies to any industry, but companies like ours are always looking for technical or customer support people, providing empathetic, highly communicative support. It's pretty standard recipe. So those are career paths. Then our journey is very interesting.

The very abbreviated version of our journey is that we were not an accessibility consultant on day one. We were a web dev firm in the Pacific Northwest. We designed and built websites. I mean, we were a dime a dozen, nothing special about what we did. In 2010, we won a government contract to build a website here for a local municipality.

One of the requirements, it was like the last afterthought bullet point on the RFP was like must comply with accessibility. We thought, how hard could that be? And we won the bid and it turns out we won the job because we underbid dramatically because we had no idea what accessibility was.

And now we're contractually obligated to deliver something we know nothing about. So we tried to hire a consultant. We looked across the whole US, this is 13 years ago, there were only like two accessibility vendors at that point. And you know, neither of them would even talk to us for like anything less than like a $20,000 container, you know, and that was like just for the coffee.

And we realized, oh, this, like this work is not rocket science, it's not $600 an hour hard. But that's what the industry was charging, supply and demand. I mean, God bless him, there's only two companies you charge whatever you want, and enough people will be willing to pay the freight.

So that's what they did. And to my business partners credit to our CEOs credit, you know, he said, you know, there's nothing special about what we do with web design and web development. I mean, there's 50 companies that do that just in our city alone that we're operating in.

But nobody's doing accessibility compliance. And he made a bet that this would be the third evolution of web dev after SSL encryption and mobile response with this, he said accessibility compliance has got to be the next wave that hits the beaches. And to his credit, he was right. And so we got in at the right time.

In 2014-15, we really transitioned out of agency life completely and into accessibility consulting. And we were just very blessed that it was like the right time with the right offering, you know, from our agency world, we knew how to bring in business, we knew how to close business, we knew how to retain business with great customer service, we were just changing our discipline to a new thing.

But we're really glad we made that leap because we're one of maybe just 10 vendors today that do this. So it's still a very small industry. >> Yeah. Zach, I just wanted to thank you for today. The information you gave was so helpful because, again, I truly, truly, to the core of me believe that accessibility is one of those things where people just do not know what they don't know.

And it's hard to say I'm coming out of this meeting having been the same as before, right? Like now I know. And so I thank you for this really actionable insight. I really like your breakdown into the four types of careers, one you can expect if they were to step into accessibility.

Thank you so much. How can people find you or your website? >> Oh, great question. So we are at onlineada.com. Online A like Adam, B like David, A like Adam.com. You can find us there. And then if I could give one more thought, because I know some of the people maybe listening may be thinking about finding a career in our industry.

And so something we hate doing is going through the interview process, reviewing 500 resumes. That is not fun for anyone on our team. And I just want to put this out there as advice I wish I had when I was like in my early 20s and coming up in my career is if you want something, go out and get it.

So many people just go through the motions like I'll do my cover letter, I'll send in my resume, I'll see what happens. If you want to work with us, reach out to us. Find my CEO's email address, phone number. Find where he gets coffee. Go grab him, talk to him, say, this is my name, this is the value I bring and I want to work with you.

Like that really makes a difference because we want people who want to be with us. So I promise it is worth it. And I know that it's kind of going out of comfort zone sometimes it's like being vulnerable and putting yourself out there. But it's a first world problem.

The worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to say, sorry, no, not for us. Who cares? Just put yourself out there and it will pay off in all aspects of life, especially in trying to find a job. >> Totally agree, man. As a matter of fact, embracing your vulnerability in a way that allows you to bring your true self out applies to everything.

And I think for those of us who can comfortably get there or work with someone to help bring that out, I think that's a key to success. So it's a good call to that. >> Thank you, Tim. >> Cool. Thanks a lot. >> All right. Talk soon. >> Talk to you soon.

>> Bye.