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00:01:12.254Welcome to the Accessibility Guy podcast. My name is Shawn Jordison, and in today's episode, I sit down with my business partner and colleague Jon Fukuda. Jon and I have a great discussion about the general state of accessibility and what people new to the field can do to get started today. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to The Accessibility Guy. See, I already know what I'm... I don't even know what I'm gonna say. I have Jon Fukuda here today, who is my one of my business partners and co-founder of Liminally, a new venture that we're launching together with all things accessibility. Our plan here is to take over the world and, you know, get people educated in what it takes to become an accessibility champion, to integrate accessibility into your organization in a meaningful way, and to get everybody trained up on what is required, particularly around the new ADA Title II that's coming down the line. And Jon and I are here to just have a casual conversation about accessibility. So here we are.
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00:01:14.670Thanks for that, Shawn.
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00:01:24.909Jon, while we're here, because I want to keep this document type accessible like feeling good. Why don't you tell our audience just a little bit about yourself?
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00:01:30.159Sure. Yeah. Thanks.
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00:02:55.330And so Shawn and I first met when my company at the time, Limina, which is a user experience oriented organization. Like we do a lot of research, strategy, and design to help software, software and digital service producers make sure they're addressing human-centered design in the right way. We got a contract that was heavily steeped in accessibility, had a lot of components to it-not just document accessibility, but web accessibility and multimedia accessibility, social media accessibility, like all the things, right? And it wasn't just addressing like audits and things like that, but also like how to implement good remediation practice. And so we brought Shawn on as a subject matter expert, one to just hit on our document remediation needs, but then learned how well aligned we were on addressing accessibility as fundamental user experience practice. And if you're doing this document type accessible stuff right from the beginning, actually, there's no need to remediate, right? And made such great synergy that we we've actually formed an organization around this document type accessible. We'll share a little bit more with you about that probably as we get into conversation here. But yeah, we thought we'd get on the get on the horn today and just like have some really candid conversations about accessibility.
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00:04:50.079I love that. I love that. And so one of the, one of the first things we're doing is we're offering like a whole bunch of instructor-led training, and we have quite the calendar between now and the deadline, and I'm assuming beyond. We're gonna have a link below wherever you're listening or watching this document type accessible to find out more information about the specific training days and times. But we're gonna be covering stuff like Accessibility, No Matter the Platform. We're gonna be covering Microsoft Word Accessibility, PDF, PowerPoint, Closed Captioning, Canvas, math, just kind of everything under the sun. And I think the one of the first ones we're gonna be offering is Accessibility, No Matter the Platform. And so, what that means to me, and John, I'll ask for your opinion in a moment. Accessibility, No Matter the Platform. The reason we wrote this document type accessible this document type accessible course out is because there are a lot of concepts and things to understand before you can kind of jump into applying alternate text into Adobe Acrobat for a complicated chart and graph, right? Like while we want to get the user there, we first need to understand the principles of alternate text, and it doesn't matter whether you're writing for the web, you're writing in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, these 500 software applications, but the goal is to share the same message, right? But it goes a little further than that. So I think in our session we're going to be talking about not only accessibility best practices, but we're also going to talk about like keeping the end person in mind. Like the whole point of what we do is to provide access to people with disabilities, and what we've learned along the way is like the more accessible you can make your content today, the more usable it is for for everyone.
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00:04:54.384Jon, what is, what is your opinion on that, or what do you have to add there, my friend?
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00:07:12.615Yeah. So like, I mean, what's the first course we're sort of offering to the public being Accessibility, No Matter the Platform, and kind of why that's a good lead is that first off, like, the reason why these compliance laws and conformance rules and best practices were generated in the first place was there is a popular part of the population that just has a more challenged way of accessing digital content, right? So, and to them, if you ask them what accessibility is, they're like, "Well, can I perceive this document type accessible thing to begin with? Do I understand it? Can I navigate it and accomplish what I came here to do in the first place?" There's a lot of barriers there if you just like have been in digital product content and service production work, and you haven't thought about accessibility or making sure that like any assistive technologies have been accounted for, screen readers or like you know text to braille, like whatever it might be, text to speech, and accommodating those people, right? So it's not common practice, and so you need to back up from the laws that are in place, and like everybody focused on conformance to why was this document type accessible a problem in the first place. And why am I being now like given some regulatory construction around it. Because if you just had that empathy to begin with, like can we make this document type accessible accessible and be inclusive to everyone, you would have done it right in the first place, and these fundamentals would have been in place. So, like starting at No Matter the Platform just gives you that good sort of volumetric perspective on what is, what are the challenges that are out there, and then how can we start making things from the very beginning. Like, you know, meeting the need of imagery being sort of articulated with some good alternative text, or yeah, whatever the thing, like making sure that this document type accessible stuff is functional from a machine readability, from being able to keyboard tab through to like give giving all the hooks and things that make somebody who's, you know, ability-challenged, to get through the same content and processes that we enjoy the luxury of, right?
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00:09:17.955Totally. And I also like to think that the goal of that session from my perspective is it's very newbie friendly, right? Like as opposed to starting with say PDF forms, how to make PDF forms accessible, which we're going to be offering as well. This course or this document type accessible training really focuses on the bird's-eye view. So I would say it's the most introductory thing that we're going to be offering. It's beginner-friendly, and it's for like, full organizations. So if you're like an individual, you know, you could sign up for it as well and get all this document type accessible information. But if you have 1000 staff members, this document type accessible is a great way to introduce accessibility softly, because that deadline is coming up. What we've noticed is organizations that come in, we want PDF forms versus we want to change the way our organization thinks about accessibility. The ones that want to change the way that they think, they have a much higher probability of success. As opposed to, while PDF forms are very important and we can talk about that all day, I won't lie, some staff members are afraid of that, and because it's it's very complex. It's it's starting with calculus. We skipped algebra and the other subjects that I don't know, and jumped right in. Like you might, you might be setting up your users or your employees for failure by starting at that expert level. Now some of them may need that right? But I think from a from a bird's eye view, offering the biggest impact in an organization, a training like Accessibility, No Matter the Platform, is really going to have the biggest splash, if you will. And what we've noticed, Jon, and or what I've noticed is it gets the most questions. You know, we, I like to think I approach it with um, uh, like a friend, right? Like, "Hey, friend, come check out this document type accessible accessibility stuff", and we get a ton of questions that, you know, are great for kicking off the next part of that.
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00:09:44.153Yeah, and it also I think is a good sort of lead-in because we don't know necessarily we can't dictate like what software you're you're working in. Like people are writing content in your standards like Word, PowerPoint, PDF. They may be on the Google Suite using Google Docs or whatever, Google Sheets and Slides, or they're using Canva, like more and more these days.
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00:10:03.899We're seeing PDF production working right? And like nobody's happy about it. But but we can't, we can't dictate. So if you start at the fundamentals, then people's thought pattern will lead naturally from like "Okay, if I'm making this document type accessible. I don't, it doesn't actually matter the system that I'm in.
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00:10:36.542Like, I need to account for this document type accessible." And that's the right sort of behavioral pattern. We want to sort of give some some neuroplasticity to people who are content creators to change their behavior on "how am I constructing content now with this document type accessible consideration", because it, it does take a level of change management internally, as like a content creator. It takes change management from like a, if you're an organization from a content production standpoint, what's your operating model for approving content to go public.
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00:10:44.852And so making sure like you have the internal checklist running, even if it's not systematic.
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00:10:48.908From like this document type accessible is the tool I'm using, and these are the five steps I need to do that thing.
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00:10:59.279Just saying mentally, have I thought about that, and does that give me good agency to create in whatever tool I'm using something that's really accessible?
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00:11:02.149I love that, and that's that's a great point.
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00:11:14.179Like, it's one thing to kind of understand. Oh, our tables need headers. It is a completely different conversation to understand what tools allow you to apply headers or even export.
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00:11:38.554right? Like on the freeway to accessibility, this document type accessible is now an analogy I like to use in our trainings. On the freeway to accessibility, we have multiple lanes of compliance. One of which is just the general knowledge on accessibility principles, right? The other lane is your tool based, like, can I do this document type accessible in Canva, right?
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00:12:44.120Can I do this document type accessible in Adobe Illustrator? By the way, the answer is no. Illustrator, you cannot export any type of accessibility, and that's like a big blow to some people. Like, I worked with some designers. I mean, that is their holy grail of software application, and I come in just being the messenger, you know. And I'm like, Jon, unfortunately, you have to change everything you know about your job because that product is not capable of creating what we need. In which I would say is that third lane on the freeway to accessibility is the implementation of these things. So we've got, like, knowledge, capabilities, and implementation. And there could be this document type accessible is 100 lane freeway, by the way, to the freeway to accessibility. But the fact is, there's so much introductory knowledge you have to have as a basic content creator. And I always find it very fascinating when we go to an organization to give training for 100 staff. You get people from all over the spectrum, and very rarely do we have more champions than newbies, and I love my newbies.
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00:13:17.105Right, that's, that's what I'm here for is to help people learn and grow and implement accessibility. It's just fascinating, like the spectrum, right? Because then you have someone like, oh, I understand we need table headers. Hey, Shawn, we're designing in this document type accessible tool, and when I go to print to PDF, it's like we have to give that knowledge on, well, printing to PDF, you actually just stripped all of your hard work out, and now you have to do this document type accessible. You have to get into calculus. I'm mixing analogies, and it's getting crazy over here, but it's it's very fascinating.
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00:13:29.210Yeah, I mean there are like everyone's looking for the highway, right? What's the shortcut? What's the on-ramp, off-ramp for me to be compliant?
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00:13:58.144And unfortunately, like there aren't a lot of, you can't just shortcut your way through this document type accessible stuff. Even with the accessibility checkers embedded, moment you export this document type accessible thing to PDF, there's a whole host of other things that need to happen. So, like if you're not aware of these things and you don't have an operating model, especially if you're on a compliance deadline, and you have like such volume of like things that are completely uncompliant, you're in trouble.
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00:14:12.620And so, like yes, get the fundamentals down, get the technical know-how, but also think systematically, like Shawn was saying. Like yes, you have people creating content, but you also have remediators who are sort of gatekeepers on what's actually going to go public.
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00:14:49.205Their - think of their job, right? So how do you, how do you make sure that you're not overloading and burning out the people who are the the greatest champions for accessibility in your organization? You don't want them quitting on you. Like, you don't want to give them stuff you haven't even considered this document type accessible as a as a possible like task that they're going to have to undertake, right? So that's why training up at the, at the ground floor and getting your, your, your source material at least to a point where you're, you're accessibly, accessible ready and, and even if like you're learning the first stage one of like, this document type accessible is what it takes to make this document type accessible document type accessible
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00:15:26.375you do your checker, you export it to like PDF, do the check there, like look at the tags as this document type accessible thing. Actually architected in a way that's going to continue to be accessible because there is, there is a translation loss. And so you got to pay attention at every stage gate, and then like that's when you give it to your remediator. And hopefully, if you've done it right, they're not burning out because you've done a good service in just like. And this document type accessible is why, like, it all adds up, and it all becomes somebody pays the fee, right?
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00:15:43.250So, do your part and make sure that it's not asymmetric. That everybody's sharing the load, and that it feels like this document type accessible is just natural practice. If you actually have templates and you're doing this document type accessible stuff right, it should just be - you should be on fire.
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00:15:54.239I've always said that it it comes down to time or money, but usually both. And to your point, like you hit on so many great things there, Jon.
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00:16:35.748One thing that comes to mind for me is like this document type accessible stuff does take time. So imagine you don't have templates, you don't have a process, Jon. And let's say we're working together on a project, and I'm like, hey, I need this document type accessible 45-page report made accessible. I need to consider something. I need to consider that you have a job, right, in the org already. Maybe it's 40 hours a week, and I'm giving you something that is going to take a minimum of if it, if it came through just as a flattened image, say a scanned document off my boss's desk, you're looking at a minimum of 10 to 15 hours to make that bad boy accessible. We have to consider that for our internal staff.
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00:16:47.671Like while accessibility sometimes doesn't seem like much because the document is visually not going to change, that underlying structure is really what is changing. And we have to consider that it will take time.
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00:16:55.557Even for someone like myself, that you know that is where I came up is document remediation.
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00:17:13.409That's what I learned how to do first in this document type accessible business. Even knowing what to do, it takes time. Now, if you don't have time, Jon, the other thing is it's going to cost money. You know, you want to pay a reputable company like Liminally. We do document remediation for those listening.
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00:18:06.400There are other companies out there and software applications that can help streamline that process, but it's either time or money, usually both, and you can reduce that time and money by initiating this document type accessible change in your organization. Who does it go to first? Who does it go to second, right? And what can we do to plug the holes in the ship before it gets to that final publication? And the more that we all can do that, right? Jon's working on it. Shawn's working on it. Our other co-founder Maria is working on it. By the time it gets to publication, it's gonna be great. We've already initiated it. But if we're all working and I just slap it on John's desk, that 45 page report, and I'm like, "Hey, I need this document type accessible in the next couple of hours", he's gonna be like, "That's not possible". And let's be honest, these organizations we work with, do they have 45 pages, Jon?
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00:18:13.859We have, I mean, I think we've done like 1,000s documents. Some of them range from one page to like, you know...
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00:18:17.130Yeah, 100 pages in some cases. Yeah, yeah. So
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00:18:17.460So, knowing how to pipeline, prioritize and like, it's like...
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00:18:38.210look at the stack and say these are the types of accessibility issues that are are in this document type accessible document. Like, is it image heavy? Is it graph and table heavy? Are these tables even like, are they complex? Are they simple? Are there forms? Like, each one of those things is a prioritization consideration.
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00:19:14.299And like that against your business deadlines, and making sure that you've got a pipeline and an operating model that's going to help you execute the right way. These are all things like eventually, if you're at the mature end of this document type accessible like accessibility maturity arc, you've got, you you can get there. But starting, if you start with the fundamentals and like this document type accessible is what it ,it's going to help your whole organization sort of raise raise the ceiling, raise the floor to raise the ceiling. I don't know how it works. But but if you can do that, you're you're actually making sure that everybody's got really good accountability from the beginning.
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00:19:31.039I would love to actually talk about that a little bit further, if that's okay with you. So, like initiating this document type accessible process to move your organization in that accessibility maturity model.
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00:19:34.430Now, we're not offering an accessibility maturity model necessary, like specifically.
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00:19:42.605However, we have our own system and workflow for helping organizations, both small and large move through this document type accessible process.
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00:20:05.779And I just want to like cover some of those steps that we help organizations do today. And the first is, well, the first is knowing that you got to do something. Okay, but that that's actually step zero. The first thing, in my opinion, is doing an audit of every digital resource. Like, we need to know, like, how many files do we have?
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00:20:19.400How many websites do we have? Do we have mobile applications? Do we have sign-up forms? Do we have third-party sister websites? And what about video content? PowerPoint, Excel, PDF.
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00:20:37.295We need a log, and in my opinion, this document type accessible is where organizations can start first, get a spreadsheet open. Don't overthink it. Try to get a site map of all of your resources, whether that's a single website or - we've worked with some orgs that have 18 to 20 different websites with 1000s of assets.
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00:20:50.000Get them logged in a spreadsheet. Okay, that's your first step. Once you're there, you can determine what needs to be archived, what you can get rid of, you can delete, and you can start to allocate resources.
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00:21:00.740So let's say we have 1000 assets. Next, we can look at: Are we going to do this document type accessible internally? Like, am I going to put this document type accessible on Jon's shoulders?
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00:21:17.704Well, Jon, you better be trained up, and whoever else we're going to have there. So Jon is going to now need to go take training in. All right, Jon, you're in charge of all the Excel files and closed captioning, and and Jon's going to be like, what? So we need to get Jon trained up.
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00:21:32.615Or using our log, we have 400 videos that need closed captions. Jon's not going to be able to do that because he's too busy getting everything else that Jon does. Right, so we need to consider outsourcing that project to a third-party vendor.
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00:21:39.289Maybe that's web accessibility, document remediation, or closed captioning, audio description.
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00:21:47.180All those components need to be considered. Now, once you have your log, you figure out who's in charge of what, whether that's training or outsourcing.
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00:21:51.170Then you can begin to make that plan of actually remediating.
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00:22:30.859This allows us to determine when all of our assets will be finished. Once you have a log, and this document type accessible is something that I love, Jon, in working with orgs, we notice the same problems. So if we, if we have a list of 100 PDF forms, that's a good indicator that your organization needs forms training, right? And so then we could start to plug the holes in the ship. And I don't want to give away all our secret sauce, but that's sort of where I would start. If you're an organization listening to this document type accessible, start with getting an inventory of your assets and and consider these components of training, outsourcing, and what you're going to do next. Yeah, yeah.
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00:22:42.750I mean that's an important point because like when we're being asked to come in, people don't really have the sense of the scope of the problem. They're just like we know we need to be compliant.
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00:22:55.154They don't actually know. And then there is a level of discovery work we're doing, and we're sort of asking them with intake, like, well, what are your things that you know need to be made accessible? Well, we have a lot of video content.
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00:23:03.015Well, let's talk about captioning transcripts and audio descriptions. But yeah, largely the way it's been going down is kind of how you talked about it.
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00:24:11.640Like organizations are sort of recruiting people into well, this document type accessible is now a new job of yours on top of what you were already doing, right? And not everybody is like skilled up or learned up enough about like what makes whatever document type that's in their arena like accessible to begin with. So yeah, like the training program is good. From like, if you get the fundamentals, then you do some applied work within the specific arena, whether it is multimedia or document creation, PDFs, forms. All you kind of, you kind of need to laser in on where your biggest pain points are with your organization and what's most important for your consumers or your customers or your, your audience. Then you can start prioritizing not just the remediation of those things, but also like the training, the know how where to bring a champion in and somebody who's going to sort of be keeping the the internal watchdog on on these things. As well as coming up with your internal protocols for maintaining a pipeline of accessible content coming out.
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00:24:30.105And then you know who to train, how how robust your training program needs to be. Because it's not just like giving them the fundamentals, teaching them the applied, but also giving them practice opportunities or giving them the actual materials to make sure that they can demonstrate that skill set.
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00:25:10.890Because you want to bake in the behavioral change. And that's actually how you move towards organizational change, is like with the individual content creators and managers. And so getting them through that operating mindset of like this document type accessible is how it's going to start and this document type accessible is how it's going to end with something that everybody can use. It's like it's not just a training program; it's like an entire operating model that has training components in it. It has content production components. It may even have, like you said, outsourcing components to it. But either way, this document type accessible is stuff that you need to be thinking of systemically.
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00:25:15.164Yes, there are projects in there, but you also just need to think behaviorally. What's the system behind this document type accessible?
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00:25:23.519I love that. I love that, and I can't help but feel like I want to mention this document type accessible other thing we're working on. So we've kind of been alluding to instructor-led training, right?
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00:26:05.400And you get yours truly, The Accessibility Guy, and all of my energy, right? And like, let's make it accessible! But some people need more time. I talk fast, right? I need to pause the video. I want to practice further. So I think this document type accessible is a good time to mention we are in process of developing a fully comprehensive learning management system. So we are creating a ton of courses, all accessibility, along with certification. Participants can take their time. We have all the security requirements, right?
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00:26:08.700SOC to the HEVCAT, hevcat, I believe it's an acronym for, in our learning management system.
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00:26:59.640So we can come to an organization with 10 users or 10,000 users to get your staff trained up on these important accessibility elements. Now, before I turn it over to you, Jon, we were talking about this document type accessible kind of getting slapped on your desk. Now I know that you had some experience in accessibility prior to, you know, us meeting each other and stuff. But I had a question for you, just personally. In all this document type accessible development we've been doing behind the scenes that nobody gets to see, I'm so curious to you, what's been like the greatest learning event? What surprised you the most from the accessibility lens? Whether it's like how challenging Excel is or color contrast, like I'm curious. What's what's something that's really stood out for you when you've, because you've kind of been forced to learn this document type accessible stuff. rue.
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00:27:51.829It's true. I was just thinking. I mean, my background is in design, and like, as a designer, and I think a lot of designers out there, like, they want to think of esthetics first. And sometimes design can be subtle. Like, as a designer, you're told to make some elements subtle, and you make sure the content is sort of the key focus or the next best action. And like you actually design in things that might end up in low contrast, and things that like are problematic for accessibility. So thinking through those things and like why they actually matter in the first place. Getting out of that like thought pattern. And then designers also like to put in things that are are there for esthetic purposes, but not necessarily enhancing the understanding of the content.
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00:29:26.809And so you have to like, be a lot more thoughtful on like, is this document type accessible visual component even a necessary one? And if it is, is it well described enough so that they can understand, you know, what what it's there for and why why it's significant? Those are things that, like, I think our native default biases work against accessibility, and that's the thing that surprises me the most. It actually doesn't matter like which system I'm creating in because we use a lot of different tools to make things. But like, where my natural proclivities are like actual prevent, preventing the accessible elements to end up on the page. And then sort of reverse engineering my thinking on like even when I'm constructing a slide, is the reading order and the tab order of these things appropriate and ready for keyboard access, right? Those are the things you don't just naturally gravitate towards. And it is a thing like if you're finished with a thing, you're really happy with it. If you're not doing the checklist, it's somebody else's job. So that like behavioral shift and paying attention, I think is giving, giving me more. Yeah, it feels like it's more sort of regulations or rails, guardrails on like what design can and should do. But that, that level of discipline is actually, I think, it's appropriate and makes you think a little more critically as a designer. Like, why did I put that thing on the screen?
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00:29:37.970I love that. It kind of like it, and it will systematically, you will accidentally start creating with that accessibility in mind. So, my my favorite line in our
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00:29:48.289accessibility equals usability. That's a good example of that from the design perspective, and thank you for sharing. I, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but I think that's a good relevant...
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00:31:54.224It's such a good point. Like actually, if you if you're doing things with an accessibility mindset, you're actually building more usable products. Like they're actually, because it shows in the end product, that you've been considering this document type accessible thing from the beginning-is it-is everything on the, on this document type accessible part of your workflow or this document type accessible process or this document type accessible presentation you're giving? Is every one of those components necessary? And if so, what what is it telling us? And if you're a designer and you haven't really given that level of rigor on your thought, then you're kind of doing a disservice. So, not just to people who are relying on accessible products, but to everyone who's like eventually going to have their hands on this document type accessible. And one actual, recently, a conversation came through my feed on LinkedIn, which I really appreciated, from a Japanese accessibility specialist who said, "Eventually, we're all going to need accessibility considerations". You don't think of yourself that way. If you've been living your life and you have got digital access to everything, that's fine. You will get older. Your cognition will slow down. Things are going to be challenging you, either from a vision perspective, your hearing may may be hampered a little bit, and in the end, things are going to challenge you. And you're you're going to need assistive technologies or just better designed products to to work with that are going to give you equal access, right? So accessibility will matter to everyone eventually. And if you can think about it that way, I think that might reinforce your empathy. Like, why should I care about this document type accessible stuff? Well, actually, you're designing for your future self, and think about it. And if you're not designing for your future self, you have a mom or a dad. You have somebody who's struggling with age and technology, and you've had to help them remember their password or whatever it is. Like, at whatever level, this document type accessible, this document type accessible digital thing has challenged them, and you're like sitting there helping them, and this document type accessible is your time. That is actually the designer's job.
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00:32:13.619Like, it wasn't your job to to work them through how to, how to learn how to use specific technologies to just get through a day. Like email, it was the designer's job. And they didn't do a good enough job to consider the, the vision or hearing or whatever it is that challenged the the user.
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00:32:50.815So, that's like, I think back when iPads came out. The, the designers of the iPad made it so that anyone can use it, right? No matter their, their capabilities. And if we look at that from, from an accessibility lens, I think that we find that problem, right? If you look at Adobe Acrobat Pro DC as an example, there's not one button. There are 50. And the methodology, the, the process you have to take from going from one step to another step, is often not like so clear, right?
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00:32:54.775And in our training, we often will provide a workflow. One of
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00:34:15.925you start with design, make sure everything is passing color contrast. Your charts and graphs have data labels, etc. fonts, line spacing. And then we get tags into the file. And then we walk the tag tree. And then we confirm and edit the tags. We set our metadata right? And we test with, we test with Assistive Technology and accessibility checkers. That's a sneak peek for those of you who want to sign up for our PDF journey, our PDF fundamentals and applied training, which could be found in the link below this document type accessible video, wherever you're listening to. Anyhooser, the point is, it's not often so clear. Like I often wish we had an iPad with a button that was like make this document type accessible PDF accessible, or even in Word, right? Like Word is one of those. It's like a sandbox. So if you go, and there was a time right in college, writing an essay, right? You start in the top left corner. It's very clear. You do paragraphs. That's great for accessibility. If you're designing a tri-fold brochure for your organization on, I don't know, the trash pickup days for your city, in Word landscape, you've got images dropped in. There are so many considerations, and you really have to come in with that strong foundational knowledge to be able to apply those things correctly in whatever application you're in.
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00:36:21.675Yeah, so I think it is about knowing what makes something accessible. Also, just being clear on the fact that, like hitting the automated tagging thing, is not going to do it for you. You still need to walk the tags after everything's gets auto-tagged, because there's no guarantees that the structure was implemented properly, just because it's tagged. So you have to sort of make sure the hierarchy is in line, the reading order is in line, everything sort of makes sense. And that same goes true for like alt text. Just because alt text is present, doesn't mean that it was the appropriate description. Sometimes very appropriate descriptions can happen. And somebody who's relying on those things would be like, well, why did I need to know that thing? And so having those, those sort of knowing where the limitations are on the tools that you're using, understanding what the, what the original WCAG criteria was there to address, like what's the empathy statement? Why is this document type accessible important? Because a screen reader is going to blah blah blah, or because a user with Assistive Technology X Y Z is going to blah blah blah. Like having those challenges in mind as you're creating the thing will get you to structure a table a little more, you know, with a little more empathy. So you won't have like, merged cells going, you know, and columns and rows, like all very complicated tables. I mean, think of very simply what's the header row, what's the column row, column header, and then how do you, how do you get data in there that's like going to read with a really nice, clean, accessible output? Those types of things. I think going into the source file, validating them there, makes the workload so much easier downstream. When you are working in the PDF and you're walking the tags, you didn't have this document type accessible complicated set of things to get through. Like it just went very clean. Go ahead.
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00:36:33.599So, great point about like doing the upstream work so that downstream there's less. I was just talking with Maria about audio description.
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00:37:44.925And audio description is a good example of accessibility where it often is done at the end. It still, people aren't considering it, and so I just wanted to talk a little bit. Like if you think about your video, right before you do a video, maybe you have a script. You think about the process that you're going to take, and you describe everything, right? I'm going to - here's an example of good audio description without needing to do anything extra, and I'm going to explain how to create a PDF from Microsoft Word. Here's how, here's how it would go. "To create a PDF using Microsoft Word, you're going to select the File button, then choose Save As. In the drop-down window, you're going to change your selection from Word to Adobe PDF, then select the Save button." End scene. When you communicate that way, right, you can almost visualize it. as opposed to Jon, where I'm like, "All right, now we're going to make the PDF, and I'm going to go over here and click that, and we're going to select save, and now you have the PDF." That's bad audio description. And so if you consider, you know, in your script, you can almost get a closed caption file from a script, just with design, right?
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00:37:57.855And I hate scripts, so this document type accessible one is hard for me. But I've learned over the years talking to rooms full of people that have people who are blind that you don't say over there and over here, right?
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00:37:59.474You got to be real specific.
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00:38:28.565Yeah, and this document type accessible is like I think a really good like callback to like yes we're gonna have the self led training in our LMS. But the reason why you have instructor led training, I think, is to help you think through what is the behavioral pattern as a, as a content creator, to know what good alternative text is. Or, you know, just as Shawn just demonstrated, like what's good audio description in your video?
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00:40:16.744So that, like, the people viewing it can obviously see it, but the people who might be vision impaired will want to hear it in the step-by-step sequence. And, and that's the same thing for design of information, like what's the information hierarchy? Do you actually have a good, well-constructed heading structure? Because yeah, you need to visually be able to identify what your H1s and H2s are as a content consumer, but so does the screen reader. And so, so they're not reading things out of sequence. So all these things actually end up in really good design practice just from like fundamentals. And so having an instructor-led session where you're sort of walking through the specific Word doc or PowerPoint or you know getting through the practice material, will give you that opportunity to see "okay this document type accessible is what it feels like to have a well-constructed hierarchy and in headings, and this document type accessible is what a good table construction will look like when a screen reader kind of meets with it. This is good sort of reading order for my keyboard access", and all those things. Like at the end of the day, it seems so... I think in the minutiae and stuff you wouldn't want to think about as you're creating content, but so important at the end of the day when it comes to your internal processing of these things as accessible artifacts. That's where the money comes in, and the stuff can get really expensive. So if you are just like a good practitioner to begin with, and using and harnessing this document type accessible sort of wealth of knowledge that subject matter experts tend to have, that we're trying to give to you, then you, you actually can, like I said before, if you raise the floor, you're actually raising the ceiling. You're actually going to reduce the cost impact of this document type accessible thing in terms of compliance.
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00:40:19.275Right, could not agree more. All right, Jon.
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00:40:32.231Before we wrap this document type accessible up, I guess I just want to mention one more time to find out more information about our instructor-led and self-paced opportunities, we have everything under the sun for accessibility. Please reach out.
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00:40:42.920Don't be afraid, and we're definitely going to be able to help you and your organization get into compliance. And I don't really care about the deadline.
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00:41:00.000I've been doing this document type accessible work for almost 20 years. The deadline, in my opinion, passed a long time ago, when ADA came on the map. So I'm personally not afraid of this document type accessible deadline. But if you are, don't be. You know we're, we're in this document type accessible together, and we have your back. And Jon, anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?
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00:41:24.420That is an interesting thing. Like, the laws are coming out in a way that make it easy for you to become compliant. So the stage one is knowing what your deficits are, so that you can let the public know, "Hey, we're aware that not everything we have is compliant. If you have a an accessibility issue, here's how you contact us", and like that's stage one for compliance.
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00:42:34.019And then you start remediating and getting to your thing. If you have internal capability issues, that's when you look for firms that are offering training or can come in, as a third party, and do some of the audits and remediation for you. There are pathways to all of this document type accessible stuff. You just need to understand one: what is the deadline asking of you to get a game plan in place, how you're going to address this document type accessible, and if you're a person who's been asked internally to do this document type accessible stuff. And you feel like you're struggling, there are so many resources out there. I mean, Limian11y is definitely is going to try to meet you at, where your at. And try to get you compliant and trying to get your head around an operating model and a system that you can share with your organization. But ultimately it's looking for people like Shawn and finding them on YouTube. And like you know making sure that you're boning up and getting access to to their knowledge. And at the end of the day, you can't just keep turning to somebody to look over your shoulder and be like, "Did I do this document type accessible right?" You actually need to take that, that agency and ownership for yourself. So yeah, I mean, I'm so glad we're talking about this document type accessible, Shawn. And I feel like it's a conversation that everybody could have at least once a week in their ear.
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00:42:40.980Just hey, a little reminder, because eventually this document type accessible is coming as a compliance thing.
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00:42:46.619But this document type accessible is just something that's coming to all of us. So we're all going to need to run into technology that's hard to use at some point.
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00:43:23.994I love that. I love that. All right, Jon. Until next time, my friend. Thank you for getting on here and chatting with me. Let's definitely do it again soon. And I guess for those of you watching, I'll see you over in the next video. That concludes today's podcast episode. If you'd like to find out more information about how I can help you get accessible, book a meeting with me right now. There's a link below this document type accessible video or audio if you're listening somewhere else, or simply visit our website www.theaccessibilityguy. com and fill out our Contact Us page.
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00:43:32.005Thank you so much for joining us today, and I'll see you over the next video.
