- Give us some time to just introduce ourselves. Let me start with the other Harshbarger first. And Tim, would you love to introduce yourself to the team we have today, Tim, and tell a little bit about yourself of course? - [Tim] Sure. I am Tim Harshbarger, some call me Tim. I have been doing accessibility for a very long time. I've worked at Deque since 2018, but I actually have been doing accessibility since the mid '90s. And I've worked on all sorts of things like desktop, and mobile, and web, and things like that. More pertinent for today's discussion, beyond just my accessibility consulting work, I am also totally blind. So, I grew up with a visual impairment. I was considered, I was been considered legally blind for most of my life at sight and only one I, and then in 2013, I was involved in an accident and lost some sight. So, many people that you meet who are blind will possibly have some light perception. I actually have no perception at all. In fact, if we met, both my eyes are artificial. They're prosthetics, they're not real. They look real, but they're not real. So I use a screen reader all the time. So Mike, you can go ahead. - All right, so my name's Michael Harshbarger. I actually have worked at Deque for three years and eight months. I just updated that today, I was looking and seeing how long I had worked at Deque. I am the younger brother team of Tim and Michael. We both train here at Deque. I am a senior trainer here at Deque. Tim will tell you that he's the smarter, better looking one, but I just wanna point out which one of us has his camera on. So I win that one, but I think you're still around. If you wanna know why I started at Deque three years and eight months ago, I had worked for a Fortune 50 company for 22 years before coming to Deque. And the reason I decided to make accessibility my full big time gig is you're meeting one of the biggest reasons in my older brother, and the fact that I've had a brother with a visual impairment all my life. And I think Tim and I would agree on two things. One, accessibility is about people. So we might talk about ones and zeros, and websites, and digital assets, but when it comes down to it, it is truly about people. And two, it's about independence. Tim has a lot of personal stories when it comes to independence, but I love the fact that as accessibility has become more in the view of the general public, Tim is able to do things on his time by himself, versus having to call little brother and saying, "Hey, I need help with this." That to me is something that has been, I know Tim opened up complete new worlds for you. Even as simple as now grocery shopping. For Tim grocery shopping used to be, he called me and say, "Hey, Michael, I need to go grocery shopping." He would then have to fit it to my schedule. I'd take him to the grocery store. And of course, even though he had a list, it wasn't like I would go through the grocery shelves and explain every single item on that grocery shelf to him, right? So even if he said, "Hey, I'm looking for a thing or a mustard." I wouldn't sit there and give him detailed def explanations of all the mustards on the shelf. But with digital accessibility now, we live in a town about 120,000 people, just two and a half hours south of Chicago. Before COVID, there was one grocery store he could order from. Now, pretty much every grocery store in town has a website that's accessible to Tim. And the great thing about it is it really has allowed him to do it on his time, purchasing what he wants. And that's why we think accessibility and digital accessibility is so important to everybody in the world. Now, we talk about digital awareness, accessibility awareness today. There's many ways people experience the web as there are people in the world. And the purpose today is just to give you a experience, Tim's experience, on what it is like when he uses the web. And so part of today what we're going to do is have Tim actually use the web on a site that we have within Deque, a demo site, and you can experience that as well. But before we start there, what I want to do is I wanna share a quick video with you. This video is just going to cover digital accessibility at like a 20,000-foot look. And the reason I want to do that is 'cause I wanna get us all on the same page when Tim or I say digital accessibility, what we mean. So let me go ahead and share this video with you really quick. And it should give us a little baseline on what we mean when we say digital accessibility. - [Narrator] Imagine if 90% of the websites or mobile apps you use today locked you out. Everyone else continues to experience the convenience of mobile banking, the connectedness of social media, and the freedom of online shopping. But for you they're inaccessible. For the 57 million people with disabilities in the United States, this is their everyday experience. People with visual, auditory, motor, speech, and cognitive disabilities, rely on various assistive technologies and alternate methods of interaction to use digital documents, web, and mobile apps. People with visual disabilities may rely on screen readers, braille displays, zoom functions, or high contrast colors, to get value from what's displayed on screen. People with auditory disabilities often rely on captions or transcripts for video content. People with motor disabilities might require speech detect software or keyboard-only interactions. People with speech disabilities require a non-vocal means of interaction. And finally, people with cognitive disabilities often require thoughtful and organized layouts with clear direction. Digital accessibility is the practice of making digital documents, web, and mobile apps accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Accessible sites and apps are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Building accessible sites or apps can be tricky without the right guidance. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG, published by the W3C is the standard rule set that defines what makes a site accessible. Developers, testers, app owners, and accessibility experts from around the world rely on these standards for proper accessibility testing direction. In fact, many US federal government agency sites and apps are required by law under Section 508 to be accessible. This law includes the WCAG standard. In the US and European Union, WCAG is being adopted across private sector businesses as well. Whether you're following legal requirements or proactively working to make the web a better place, practicing digital accessibility makes a real difference for millions of people. To start making your site more accessible, try the free axe browser extension, or reach out to your local accessibility community for other recommendations on where to start. Deque, accessibility for good. - The great thing about that video is towards the end of have you noticed, and we'll give a little hint about it today is that there actually is something you can do. So, as Laura mentioned in the beginning about engaging companies, the axe DevTools is free to download. You can use it to scan a site and get automated tests. And that's also mentioned in that video and we'll mention that again later. This video was made some years back, that 57 million people have increased to 61 million people in the United States with the recent CDC data. So that means 26% of the US population is self-identified as a having a disability. Actually we look at the world worldwide, 'cause I know we have a worldwide audience, 1.3 billion people identify as having a disability, or 10 to 15% of the world population self identify as having a disability as well. So as we know, when we talk about GAAD, we're dealing with a very large audience. We're dealing with a large population that is underserved in a lot of cases, and being aware, aware of people with disabilities does help them in many ways. In fact, I have an example of a webpage here. It is a clothing website as we can tell by new arrivals, clothings, plus, dress shop, collections, and sales. And we can see it's for a split tie sleeve top, split tie sleeve top, and it's even on sale for $71. The color is print, and the sizes are medium, large, or extra large. Now, I always try to convince Tim to buy this split tie sleeve top. I haven't been able to convince him yet. And the question of course is would you buy this product? Well, I don't know anything about it, except it's $71 and it has print and I might be able to get it in extra large. But if my images on the site did not have alternative texts and therefore a screen reader could not use it, this is exactly what I would see. Now, when I show y'all the screen, I will tell you I don't think Tim has the shoulders for it. And so therefore he still doesn't buy the top. Also the fact that we can see print is flowers, blue flowers as well. And so think about how different this product is to you just by having those pictures, and imagine if you had to use a screen reader instead. Tim, a lot of people are saying, "Poor Tim," in the chat. So I guess I will not be buying you these split tie sleeve top for your Christmas present either. So they're saying... - [Tim] They believe me. There have been a few times when I've ordered clothing and got some surprises. - Oh, well, hold on, hold on. I've got someone, Renee, who thinks you would rock it, Tim, that you Tim could pull it off. Robert says you could pull it off too. - [Tim] Oh, okay. - So you've got some believers here. You've got some believers already, from that perspective. Now, I'm gonna show you an example, and Beth and Lizzie is actually helping us with this example. I'm gonna show you a joke. I love this joke, I think it's hilarious. Do not affect your sound because this joke is just the video itself. And I want us all to just enjoy this joke thoroughly. So I'm gonna play this video. Fantastic joke, try not to laugh too loud, but I want you to go ahead and see this joke. Let's go ahead and enjoy this joke together. I love that joke, it's a classic joke. I think it's a fantastic joke. Now lemme ask you a question. Let's say you don't know ASL, let's say you don't know American Sign Language, and I asked you what was this joke about? Imagine how that made you feel, right? If I was in a crowd of a bunch of people who knew ASL and that joke was told, and I didn't know ASL, how I would feel left out, how I would feel so excluded. I'd be like, "What's he talking about? Why is everybody laughing? Did did he talk about me? What's he talking about?" Now, for you don't know ASL, it's a grenade joke. This gentleman was teaching a couple other gentlemen how to throw a grenade, and you counted to 10 after you pulled the pin and you threw the grenade. And the first gentleman did it and if you watched, he said, "Perfect, great job." The second gentleman started counting to 10, and he got to five of his fingers, he then went, "Oh, I need to put it down so I can count to 10." And boom, all of a sudden. So as you can see, imagine if you, the shoe was on the other foot, right? Imagine if you could not understand the content because something wasn't provided for you. Now, we're gonna watch Tim use his screen reader. And I want us to experience this, and Tim narrate that for us. And the purpose of him using his screen reader is so we can better understand how someone might use data provided on the web. Now, I want you to feel comfortable. Laura mentioned this to us. We're gonna get a chance for questions. I want you to feel comfortable asking the questions about Tim's experience. Tim will narrate it for us, but I want you to feel comfortable with Tim, and his experience and asking questions. And in fact, Tim, I think I'm gonna steal this from you because you've said it when we've done this before. Any question you ask won't offend Tim. The only person who can offend Tim is me, and that's because I've had all these years of practice to offend him. - [Tim] Yeah. - So if you have a question about... - [Tim] He's a masterclass in it. - Yeah, I am. I'm gonna put a master class on it. If you have a question I don't want you to hesitate. I don't want you to hesitate asking a question because Tim has been a great resource for me to ask questions too, and to really learn more about his experience. So, I'm gonna turn it over to Tim. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen here, Tim, and let you start sharing yours. - [Tim] Lemme know when you've stopped. - Yep, one thing I am gonna say is when he turns onto the screen reader, it's gonna read really fast. Don't worry about that. He'll have a text box up on his screen that we can read, but we don't want Tim to slow down his screen reader because we really truly wanna experience the Tim experiences. So I've gone ahead and turned off my screen. Share Tim, if you wanna start sharing yours. - [Tim] Okay, just a second here. Okay, it should be sharing soon. - It is, I can see it and hear it. Perfect, great job. - [Tim] I'm gonna use this site. So some things I'm gonna mention here to begin with, is there'll be a captioning window at times at the bottom of the screen, and whatever the screen reader says is going to appear in that screen. So, lemme do something here. I'm gonna press the down arrow. So you heard it read a bunch of information there. The speed it's reading it is the speed that I actually listen to things normally. This is the speed I do now. I will tell you when I first started using a screen reader, I did not listen to things at the speed, I listened to them very, very slowly. It took a while for me to get adjusted and move up to much faster speeds. Other thing that I want you to notice is there will be a highlight moving across on the screen. And that's basically gonna give you an idea of what part of the screen the screen reader is reading. So I'm gonna have to down arrow key again. - [AI reader] English. - [Tim] Now, notice it read word, English. I'm not really sure what that has to do with anything other than maybe the site is in English. - [AI reader] USD. - [Tim] And it read USD, okay, some letters. - [AI reader] Link, discover. - [Tim] So and there you hear it say, "Link, discover." So notice here... So the one thing you notice here if you look at it you can see a link. For me as a screen reader user, someone who can't see the screen, I know it's a link because it tells me it's a link. And then it tells me the name of that link, so discover. So when I move around the screen, there's a lot of things where it's gonna report the role of what the item is, and then tell me the name of it. Occasionally it might report some other information, but I'll highlight that as we go through this. So that's kind of some of the things that the screen reader provides for me. So, let's go ahead, and I think we wanna book some tickets. We're going to, let's see. So what I would do first on this, so one thing I want you to know is you guys are seeing all the screen. The one thing to keep in mind that is I as a screen reader, I'm not seeing any of this. The only information I really know about a webpage is whatever the screen reader has relayed to me, or whatever I remember from what it has said to me already when I'm reading this page, or whatever I remember from the last time I visited this page. This is not a page I visit, but very infrequently. So I really don't know this page very well. And so I'm having to go by what it says. So one thing I'm gonna do is, so I'm gonna book a trip here. And I'm gonna first go over and jump by headings and see if I can find the section that lets me do that. So I'm gonna hit the H key. - [AI reader] buy travel packages for your favorite destinations today, heading number one. - [Tim] Can you hear it, Mike? Is the volume okay? - Yep, I can hear it. - [Tim] Okay, so there's... - A lot of people, a lot of people are surprised on how fast you read it. But like you said, this is based on experience. - [Tim] Yeah. - Tim's got a lot of experience with it. - [Tim] I'm used to how it pronounces things. So there it told me it was a heading level one. I'm not really sure if that's what I'm looking for. - [AI reader] Set out your new adventure, heading level one. - [Tim] Set out my new adventure, another heading level one. - [AI reader] Spectacular Mountain Vistas, heading level three. - [Tim] Spectacular Mountain Vistas. - [AI reader] Deserts will leave you thirsting for more, heading level three. - [Tim] Deserts will leave you thirsting for more. I see the pun. That's not really what I'm looking for. - [AI reader] Out in nature, with all the comforts of home, heading level three. - [Tim] Now, I dunno were heading. - [AI reader] Lose yourself beneath a lush jungle canopy, heading level three. - [Tim] There is lose yourself in the lush canopy. - [AI reader] Out in nature, with all the comforts home, heading level three. - [Tim] Okay, this is... I'm not really sure it's going backwards here. - [AI reader] Desert will leave you thirsting for more, heading level three. - [Tim] Okay. - [AI reader] Out in nature... Popular journeys, heading level three. - [Tim] Popular journeys. - [AI reader] No next heading. - [Tim] Okay, nothing there really is what sounds promising. So I'm gonna go back to the top of the page. - [AI reader] link home. - [Tim] And there it says link home. That's the first link on the page. - [AI reader] Navigation landmark link before I link register. - [Tim] So there is a navigation section, and there is a login and a register link, but I'm not gonna do that. - [AI reader] English. - [Tim] English. Okay, that must be the language of the pages. - [AI reader] USD. - [Tim] Those are just pieces of plain text. So, English and USD, I'm not really sure what they... Okay, well, figure it out hopefully. - [AI reader] Link, discover. - [Tim] Link, discover. - [AI reader] Link, help. - [Tim] Link, help. - [AI reader] That was landmark heading level one, buy travel packages. - [Tim] Buy travel packages. - [AI reader] Heading level one for favorite destinations today. - [Tim] For my favorite destinations today. - [AI reader] are unbelievably convenient. - [Tim] Oh, they're really convenient. - [AI reader] Choose your currency. - [Tim] It says choose my currency, okay. - [AI reader] We always treat you right. - [Tim] But the next thing that says is we always treat you right. So I'm not sure. - [AI reader] on Google Play. - [Tim] Okay, and it's saying that I can get in Google Play here. - [AI reader] Link download it on the App Store. - [Tim] I can link download it on the App Store. - [AI reader] Graphic trust logo. - [Tim] Okay, there's trust pilot. Okay. - [AI reader] Buy train and bus tickets. - [Tim] Okay, that might be it, buy bus and train tickets. - [AI reader] From station that require invalid entry from. - [Tim] Okay. - [AI reader] Buy train and bus from station that require invalid entry from. - [Tim] So let's do this. I'm gonna go here. - [AI reader] From station that require invalid entry from. From station that required invalid entry from blank. - [Tim] Okay, so I'm gonna... - So Tim, we just heard a beep, and I noticed your cursor. - [Tim] Yeah. - Changed color from red to blue. Can you tell us what happened there? - [Tim] So what I did is I went into forest mode. So I can now interact with the page and enter data. Before, anytime I hit a key, it would do something like, take me to another page element. So, I'm gonna do start here. It doesn't really sum me what I need to do, but I'm gonna type in where I am at. - So a lot of people were asking how he was navigating through that page. So, if you remember at first he used the H key to go by headers. And then the second time he used the arrow key, just to go down the elements on the page. - [Tim] Yeah. - To see if he could figure out where to go. - [Tim] So that's there. So I'm gonna hit tab 'cause that's the from, I wanna go from Bloomington, Illinois. - [AI reader] The station that require invalid entry from blank. - [Tim] The station, let's go to St. Louis. - [AI reader] ST. - [Tim] Okay. - [AI reader] Louis. - [Tim] All right, I think I got that right. - [AI reader] MO one way label. - [Tim] One way label, okay. I'm gonna have to go into browse mode again here. - [AI reader] The station that require St. Louis, MO, one way. - [Tim] So it says one way here, maybe that's tickets. - [AI reader] Return. - [Tim] And return is that, maybe that's a return date. I don't know, let's see. Let's go down further and see what else we can run into. - [AI reader] Departing. - [Tim] Departing. - [AI reader] Tuesday 30th June, 23:00. - [Tim] So it tells me I'm gonna... - [AI reader] Departing Tuesday 30th of June, 23:00. - [Tim] June 30th. I really wanna go much sooner than that. - [AI reader] Passengers. - [Tim] And it says passengers. - [AI reader] Adults, 26 to 59 years. - [Tim] Okay, adults. - [AI reader] Gonna remove a passenger. - [Tim] Gonna remove a passenger. - [AI reader] One. - [Tim] One, that may be the number of passengers. - [AI reader] Add a passenger. - [Tim] Add a passenger. - [AI reader] Show all passenger types. - [Tim] Show all passenger types. - I'll tell the participants that if you'll notice, when Tim started using his screen reader, I turned off my video. And the reason I did that is I don't bother about you. But as Tim is navigating through a page, I have a tendency to use body language. Meaning if I want him to click something, you would actually see me start moving my body around, and I might wanna move him left or right. Tim, I think it's important for you to know of, you're really having to guess on some of these things. - [Tim] Yeah. - Because they're not very well labeled you. So, here's one thing that Tim, I think it's to remember about this experience. And I think you've said it in other places that we've talked, you really don't go out and just surf a webpage, right? - [Tim] Yeah. - You've got a task you wanna complete. And this task right now is a little frustrating for you because you're having to guess on some of these things that you're doing, right? - [Tim] Yeah, well, like it's setting a date for June 30th, but I haven't seen anything that lets me change the date. There was a bunch of things about one way returning departure. And I have a feeling that right now if I order a ticket it's gonna be one way, and I'd like to be able to actually get back home. I think it's just one passenger, adult passenger. It looks like there may be other types. So... - [AI reader] Add passenger, then show all passenger types. - [Tim] But I really have, again, I have no idea. I'm assuming if I did the add a passenger, I add another adult passenger. But again, I don't wanna go on the June 30th. I wanna do something sooner than that. So, I think I got this the from and two correctly entered. So really there's a lot of things I'm guessing on here. The only ones I feel comfortable are from and to, and maybe passenger, and the other stuff, I'm not sure are what I need to do to be able to select what I want 'cause I want my own trip. - Yeah. - [Tim] And I want a much sooner date. - So let's say you had hit this page. This is a demo page we use at Deque to show accessibility, or sometimes the frustration of lack of accessibility. Let's say this dream destination was a really real business, at this point in time what would you do? Would you continue to try to book those bus tickets or would you probably look for alternatives at this point? - I would probably be looking for alternatives at this point because again, the ticket's probably not gonna be cheap no matter what I do. I don't wanna sink money into it finding that I've got one way tickets on a date I don't wanna choose. And if it's like you and I going, that I didn't get enough tickets or I got too many tickets, or I got one adult took it and one child, and so one of us is gonna have to be pretend like we're 10, which is not gonna work out very well for you or me. - I don't think so, no, no. - [Tim] Yeah, I don't think, yeah. - Yeah. - [Tim] So it's gonna be a disaster, and so I'm not willing to take a risk here. So I'd probably try to see if I could find an alternative that worked better. - So Tim, let's talk a little. Let's talk about another story that I think really underscores the fact that you might go look something else for another piece. - [Tim] Yeah. |- So if you don't mind sharing or that you don't have to necessarily share with us the names of the companies, but could you talk to the participants today about your banking experience, and some of the choices you had to make as you were choosing a bank to bank with? - [Tim] So before online banking, I really had to have someone sit down with me and go through bills and information and the information I got because everything was paper, right? And paper stuff doesn't work well for me. Paper might as well all be blank. I will have no clue what's going on with the paper unless I scan it. And honestly I will tell you as good as scanning can be, I'm always a little reluctant to depend on scanning of numbers because if there's any mistakes in there that can be a pretty costly mistake. And so, eventually when banking started moving more online, I became interested in doing stuff online so that I could pay bills and things like that. I actually got to participate in a study one time with a bank where the accessibility issues for that bank... They asked me afterwards and I was like, well, I was able to pay the bill, but I'm not sure my concern with it is I'm not sure who I paid what. Either I sent my mortgage to the company who owns my mortgage, or I sent my mortgage to my utility company and my utility payment to my mortgage company. And I have a feeling that while my utility company might be okay with receiving my mortgage money, I don't think my mortgage company's gonna be very happy with the utility money. So eventually I found a bank that was basically starting to work on the accessibility of their site. They'd already done some stuff for checking, and they were still working on other stuff. They weren't perfect by any means, but they were good enough. They were doing accessibility and planning on putting more emphasis. And so I chose that bank. The interesting, the thing I think Mike's wanting me to point out is that bank actually does not have branches in our town. There is no local branch for this bank. I picked the bank because it was accessible even though the nearest branch of this bank is many miles away from here, even still now, because I needed to do online banking, and wanted the accessible banking, and that was the choice I had. And again, accessibility for me is not a nice-to-have, I really need to have it to be able to use the features of it. So, ultimately I chose this bank where I had no local branch I could go to, and where everything I had to do was online. - Go on. - [Tim] Of course, the nice thing is as time has gone on, more and more things have moved that way, which has made it even easier but... - Yeah, well, and it's one of those things of when you're making buying decisions. - [Tim] Yeah. - And I've seen you run into this multiple times. Whereas for me, accessibility is a nice-to-have, for you, it's a requirement, right? - [Tim] Yeah. - And so sometimes your choices are limited because they're not accessible. And that also can be frustrating as well. 'Cause while I might go to a site and price might be my first important thing that I look for. If it's not even accessible on the ground floor for you, you can't consider it, right? Because... - [Tim] It makes it much more. It makes it harder to justify spending the money for something that I'm not gonna be able to get the full functionality of or get the wrong thing and have to get it re-work, work through refunds and stuff like that, so... - Right. - [Tim] Again, it's not a nice-to-have. It's something that I have to, I really have to look at into and get some level of accessibility before I can really choose to follow that path. - Well, and we've had situations where Tim has had to make decisions without accessibility in it. And again, as I told the story earlier about grocery shopping, when you deal with financial information, the only way if it's not accessible is for him to share his financial information. Now, I will tell you, and I've often said this to people. I love my older brother. In fact, my older brother was my best man at my wedding. That's how good of a friends Tim and I am, but I don't feel comfortable sharing my financial information with Tim. But sometimes Tim didn't have a choice, right? Tim didn't have a choice. And so it's that independence and choice, I think, as we walk through even examples like buying travel packages, is so important, and so important to Tim. - [Tim] Yeah, and just like Mike's example. Again, I have ordered things online, and the thing that shows up at the house is not anything what I imagined, just from what I could access on . So, to the point where depending on when I'm ordering, I may ask, "Hey Mike, can you look at this before?" - Yeah, yeah. Well, and there's times.... - [Tim] What I think I'm gonna get is what's gonna show up at the house. - There's sometimes I've gotten early birthday presents too. - [Tim] Yes, it's right. - Because I remember one time you ordered a shaver, and when it came you said, "Hey, I ordered a shaver." And I said, "No, Tim, you actually ordered three shavers." And he's like, "Well, do you want one?" They're pretty good shaver. - [Tim] Yes. - That's sometimes some things that happen to him in times where, you know, the little brother is over at his house and I'm like, "Did you mean to order six of these?" "No, did I get six of these?" - [Tim] Yes. Yeah. - So, very frustrating, very frustrating case on that. - [Tim] Yep. - How about, you know, we've gone through this page a little bit. Is there other things you'd like to highlight for us with the screen reader itself on this page? - Well, the one thing to notice here. Let's see. - [AI reader] Button search. Button more options. - [Tim] So you hear it says that some things here button, so I know if I click on these, something should happen. - You can hear it, right? I have departing... - [AI reader] Tuesday 30th June, 23:00. - [Tim] As soon as that's the day I'm departing, is June 30th. But I assume there's gotta be some way to select a date, 'cause all I'm hearing here is the date. And notice it says, so whenever it tells me it doesn't say a role, I assume that's just static text, I can't interact with it. - [AI reader] Passengers. - [Tim] And I don't really have a way to interact with it. - [AI reader] Departing, return. - [Tim] And then like return, is there a return date or what's that? - [AI reader] One way. - [Tim] One way? Okay, is that selected? Does that mean I'm gonna be purchasing? So there's a bunch of things here that are just static text. Again, I have a suspicion. - [Tim] It says, choose your currency here. I assume I'm getting the idea that maybe this... - [AI reader] navigation USD. - [Tim] This USD up here may be related to that somehow, but they're really far apart as far as the screen reader. So, again, there's a lot of stuff here. and it's just reading just text. I don't have a role. I have no information if it's interactive. And so I really am having difficulty figuring out exactly how to do some stuff on this page and how to select some things. And so, again, a lot of times, again, I can't see the interface. So I can't. You look at the interface and there's all sorts of information you're absorbing, because of the way things are, font sizes and colors, and borders, and shapes, and images, and there's also got white space. There's all these things that are part of the visual UI language that conveys information about what things you can interact with, and what things provide information and stuff like that. But for me, I've gotta hear those words. And if I don't hear, that it's a button, I'm not gonna know it's a button. If I cannot hear it's a radio button, I won't know it's a radio button. If I don't hear that the checkbox is checked, I won't know if it's checked or not. So all this information, again, needs to be provided in this to me in some way. The other thing is just realize it's all linear. So it may take me a little bit longer to do some things because I have to process it linear. Honestly, that's not a big deal, I just want it to be an efficient thing. So, sometimes when Mike and I do this, we'll do a thing where I order a cup of coffee. And frequently I'm still ordering the cup of coffee about 10 minutes in. And the fact is I don't wanna spend any more time doing these type of things, so like ordering these tickets. When you go out to order tickets for travel, let's say Mike and I were gonna do a trip down to St. Louis for a long weekend, I don't wanna spend an hour trying to order, just order a pair of tickets. I wanna get it done and move on to whatever's next, right? Maybe whatever planning we need to do next for that. So that's something to keep in mind. Why the accessibility, the details about how I access stuff is different, the tasks I wanna do, the things I wanna accomplish. The fact that I don't wanna spend three hours on a particular task. That's all pretty similar between me and other people, or people with disabilities and people with without disabilities. - All right, Tim. So what we're gonna do is I'll take back... Well, actually, if you stop screen sharing, I'll take screen sharing back. - [Tim] Sure. - [AI reader] Okay... - But really what we wanna do is spend the next, the next time here. Laura, if you don't mind helping us out, I know there was a lot of questions that we were getting. Why don't we go ahead and pick some of the questions out and see what we can do to help the participants? - [Laura] Yes, great job. So I've picked out some of the top questions. And one question that really stood out to me, I think, which is a very good question for people who are new to accessibility, is who's responsible for making a webpage accessible? Who is kind of creating the structure of the page so that Tim can navigate it and get the information he needs with his screen reader? - Tim, I'll let you start off on that one about roles and what kind of roles are responsible for making that accessible. And then I can... - [Tim] The one thing that we often talk about, because we do this in training is talk about how actually everybody involved in the creation of a webpage or a UI has a part to play in accessibility. So, there's some things a developer should do, there's some things a designer can do, there's some things a BA can do. So, a BA might write the requirements. A designer for some of these things might that might say, "Well, this image we add it to the page, it needs to have this whole text. This is a button. This thing over here is supposed to be a link. We have a certain heading structure, right?" And then the developer may encode some of this information when they're writing the code. So really the thing with accessibility is it doesn't all fall on one person's shoulders. It actually is a combination of effort by a bunch of people, all each doing their part of the possible. And it's not just limited to the people I've discussed. It involves people in QA. It can involve your project managers, your product owners, things like that, that everybody can have a part to play in accessibility. And part of that is each person learning what their role is and how they can contribute to that overall goal. - And I think the really thing that Tim that you underscore is everybody has a role to play. Certain roles are responsible for certain things, but it's a team thing, and everyone needs to talk through when it comes to your organization, of who is the best person to address that particular gap in accessibility. So it really depends on your organization, but all team members we find is all-hands-on-deck because there's different aspects of a page that needs to come up together to make it accessible. - [Tim] There's many other things. The one thing about accessibility is while the details of accessibility are unique to accessibility, there's a lot of things in general it shares with other issues you deal with. - Yes. - [Tim] When you're creating digital content. - Yeah. - [Tim] Where everybody has a role to play. Everybody needs to know their piece of the puzzle for everything to work. It's not all one person's responsibility, and they're the only one that, you know, every person can have some impact on how accessible a product is. - I agree. - [Laura] Great, we have another question here asking, what are the top reasons that companies maybe push back when it comes to making things accessible? What are things that we hear out in the field and what are some things that you could say back to any argument that we shouldn't be practicing accessibility? - Yeah, so Laura... - [Laura] The obvious one that it's the right thing to do. - Yeah, so Laura, we've seen a lot of concerns, different ways from different companies. One of them is sometimes we'll hear about, and this is why we started this session this way is, sometimes we'll hear back to, well, there's not really that many people with disabilities in the world, right? So it's a lot of expense for not a lot of return on investment. And I think we just need to help organizations realize that it's 10 to 15% of the world population or 26% of the US population. That's including just people who self identify as having a disability. I like to use myself as a personal example here, as you all see from my video I have glasses on. And I have a secret for you. If I take them off like this, all my screens just got really blurry, all of a sudden, because they're reading glasses. Now, on my mobile device, of course have pinch-to-zoom. And if I don't have my reading glasses with me, oh, do I pinch to zoom? So there's an accessibility feature that helps me, even though I am not a person who would identify as having a disability. And that's something else we need to consider when we're doing that. The other piece is, and I know some people have mentioned this in the chat. I just don't know where to start. It is a skill thing. You do have to learn accessibility. It's not something that just happens organically. You'll have to spend some time learning it. And so really the point is there are places to start. There are places to start. That's also why I also show that video at the beginning because it does mention axe, and using a free tool to start learning accessibility like axe DevTools does. I will tell you before I even came to the Deque three years and eight months ago, that's how I learned about accessibility, was to start there, and start understanding what I could do to make a difference. And that was a huge beginning journey in my part. So sometimes it's just a skill gap of... Well, yeah, I know I should make things accessible. It's the right thing to do. Now what? Now what? And that's another piece. And I don't know, Laura, if we've got this question, I'm sure we've got it somewhere. But I wanna talk a little bit if you don't mind about... Yeah, but now there are things like Accessibly, things that I can just add to my website, and it's accessible like that. I wanna talk about just the fact is there is difference experiences with this. I know Tim has hit some of those sites with those overlays that have caused his assistive technology to stop working. And so, the company means well in the fact that they're trying to make something accessible, but I would be very careful on quick fixes, because they can have adverse effects on your digital assets. And like I said, I have seen it where the overlay or the tool says, "No, no, no, to be accessible, you'll have to use me." You can't use what you're used to, and it causes the customer frustration. It causes the person to slow down and not be able to do what they're able to do. And why I think of that personally, as I mentioned, Tim, is a big, big aspect of my life. So I'm also a father of four, and my two middle kids Grace and Seth, have ADHD and dyslexia. And I will tell you learning about accessibility through them is one of the things that was eye opening to me is Grace uses a screen reader too. It's not that she's visually impaired. She uses it so it helps her read faster. And when she gets to a website and it says, "Nope, you can't use your screen reader," because of something that's underneath the covers. It becomes very frustrating for her because just like Tim, she's wanting to get through it as fast as she can. And now something that should take her a couple minutes, ends up taking her a half hour or so, because she's gotta read through that text. So I don't know Tim if you have any other comments on experiences that you've had with that as well. - [Tim] Well, the one thing I wanna mention about, so sometimes companies will, when companies push back, there'll be concerns about cost, right? And it is a new thing. There's a new thing you're doing. Whenever you look and learn a new task and do a new thing like security performance, if it's new to you, yeah, it takes some time to get adjusted. But those costs go down as you do it more frequently. The other thing is sometimes people worry about aesthetics or they're concerned that they're gonna have to make these trade offs . To make it accessible, we make it less usable for other people. The one thing I'll mention about that particular discussion is people will say that I've done accessibility for a very long time. I will tell you that it's exceedingly rare, that I've ever been in a situation where I've told somebody, "You can't do that 'cause it's not accessible." Often what happens is, it's not that accessibility makes you say, "Well, you can't do that, that's not accessible." It's often, "That's a good idea, but let's do something in addition." So for one thing, we'll talk about color. One of the rules for specification with WCAG, colors don't use color alone for information. Now, that guidance is never use color, because honestly, using color in an interface can be extremely useful and helpful for many people. There actually can have some accessibility benefits for some people. The thing is with color, we just have to realize that not everybody perceives color at all or perceives color the same. And so we'll say, okay, let's use color for this interface, and we can use color to convey information. Let's just make sure it's not the only way there's information. So if we have user, so when we have users who have difficulty perceiving that color or don't perceive color at all, they still get that same information. So that's one thing that people often will be afraid of, that accessibility is gonna be a trade off and it's gonna be, we either make it accessible for people with disability or usable for people without disabilities. And that is almost never actually a thing. It's not usually how that works. Usually it's, we can do this and that, not, we can do this or that. So it's just something to keep in mind. - Well, and Tim, I think you and I have had the conversation of, if I go to a group of developers and say to them, "People get information in different ways. Some people use mobile, some people use tablets, some people use laptops, some people use computers." They'll look at me and say, okay, that's not rocket science. When we're talking about accessibility, what we're asking is for people to consider people get information in different ways. Some people use screen readers, some people use keyboards, some people use captions, some people use texts, right, as we saw in that initial video. And so really what accessibility is about is, somebody might be getting to my information in a different way. Have I included them in that information as well, by thinking about this particular item? And that's really what we're looking for. Is just to be able to ask the questions, to include everybody in our media that we're producing. Laura, any other questions that we have too? - [Laura] Yes, I really like this question because I think we've talked a lot about in that demo, what does an inaccessible website look like? But I think sometimes it's helpful for people when they're learning to look at examples of an inaccessible website. So I didn't know Tim, if you had any websites or products that are good examples of accessibility that people could go to as a resource. - [Tim] I will be honest, I'm always a little reluctant to suggest any site, because note, when it comes to accessibility, we're not looking for perfection. And none of the sites that I use are gonna be perfect in all ways. We typically talk about what WCAG as a standard, a specification, and they design it. And so just because something's accessible to me, it doesn't mean that it's not, it doesn't have accessibility issues to somebody else. So something that works well for me or works for me as a screen reader user that may even fit all those requirements that most impact me, may not work in good ways for somebody else. So, again, I'll use things like Instacart, and things along those lines. Are they perfect? No, no, no, they've got some issues here and definitely have some accessibility. But that's one of the thing that people often ask for, show us some example that will show us exactly what to do. And every site, there's a bunch of good sites out there, and they do some things really well and they may not do everything perfectly. So I'm always a little concerned about suggesting sites, because if you draw the, if you point at the wrong thing and say, well, what about I did it this way? Then it's like, yeah, well that part probably wasn't what you wanted to use an example. So usually it's best to focus on specific examples of specific design patterns or specific interactions along those lines. - Well, and I included in the chat a link to an article. If you go to Deque's site and type in myth, a friend of ours, colleague of ours, Carie Fisher wrote an article. It's back in 2018, but in her article and in myth four 'cause it's... Excuse me, it's titled the "5 Digital Accessibility Myths Busted". In myth four, she talks about mostly accessible websites. And so it's not a guarantee that all these websites are 100% accessible, but if you wanna look at a website that's worked very hard on being accessible, this is a decent list as well. And I really do appreciate. - [Tim] No. - Carie says the same thing Tim says, you gotta be careful because it might be accessible one day and not accessible the next. But these I've checked on with some frequencies, and find on a pretty regular basis, they've got some good accessibility in them. - [Tim] Well, I could tell you some things that make for good. So for as a screen reader site, I appreciate sites that have a, across their site have a good consistent use of landmarks and headings. As you noticed, I jumped around by headings and focused on that. I also use landmarks too to tell me what part of the page. I don't usually jump around by landmarks, but it can be useful to know that, oh, this part of the page is the header, this is the footer, this is the main content. Oh, I'm in the navigational section. So using the headings and landmarks, definitely as a screen reader user can help me get... Again, 'cause you'll realize there may be a lot of memorization with the screen reader, and while I don't memorize every last detail of the site, right? Those headings and landmarks often give me a good overview of the parts of the site. So if I'm looking for something specific, like how to order some tickets, I might be able to find that much faster using that without having to read through the whole entire page. - One thing I will offer to everyone I think, and Laura, stop me if I'm incorrect, we do have another event tomorrow about a fundamentals bootcamp. You can go out on Deque's webpage, and click on the Global Accessibility Awareness Day with the Deque. I believe you can still sign up for that, register for that bootcamp. There's some other resources out there for GAAD too. Tim and I would love to personally invite you to that as well, 'cause we'll be working on that session as well. And then also Laura mentioned at the beginning of the session about reaching out to those companies, right? Reaching out to those companies and talking about accessibility with maybe a company that's very important to you. Because as consumers, that's the one thing we can help with at all times, is just if nothing else asks the simple question about, how are you doing with accessibility? Because sometimes a company just doesn't think about it until the question is asked. But there's a lot of companies out there that I will also admit do have good answers, do have good answers. So, we're gonna encourage that. So, Laura, I think we could echo, we hope to see you tomorrow. I loved the questions, I loved the interaction in the chat and questions. - [Tim] Yes. - Tim and I could probably spend the rest of the day just answering questions, right, Tim? - [Tim] Yeah. - If we got to all the questions, but I wanna thank everybody for their curiosity. I wanna thank everybody for their time and attention. And just thanks for being part of GAAD. That's so important to every single one of us. Thank you, and we hope to see you tomorrow. - [Tim] Yep, have a wonderful day, and thank you very much for spending time with us today.