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This is John Robinson with the Hour Ability Podcast and Disability in the Public Square.
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And today we're talking with Pete Brun.
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He's a digital accessibility leader with over a decade of experience helping organizations and businesses build and include digital accessibility.
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He's director of Director of Digital Accessibility Solutions at Onward Accessibility and co-founder of Accessibility Web.
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He specializes in accessibility strategy compliance and scalability.
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We've been working at Our Ability with Onward Accessibility for the better part of the past year.
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We have their jobs on our jobs board.
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So if you're out there looking for some accessibility work uh and you uh you've got some experience in this way, their jobs are on our ability.jobs.
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We also have been doing some work in digital accessibility as well, but onwards a little bit bigger than we are.
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So happy to share this conversation with Pete, and I hope you enjoy it.
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Welcome, Pete, to Disability in the Public Square.
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Thanks, John.
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Appreciate having me.
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It's great to have you.
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Tell us a little bit about yourself, onward accessibility, and and your journey into accessibility.
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Yeah, sure.
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So uh that's a long story, but I'll I'll keep it quick for uh for the podcast purposes here.
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So so onward, uh Onward is Onward Accessibility is part of a uh organization called Onward Group Holdings.
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And we have brands like Onward Search, Onward Accessibility, Onward EDU, uh, there's one called Tolera, um, and we have primarily a staffing, like recruiting business, right?
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So we provide uh talent for our customers uh when they need kind of creative marketing, technical related uh staff work.
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So onward accessibility, though, uh is one of our divisions that has actually a service side of the business as well.
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So we kind of do end-to-end uh digital accessibility work from the staffing side of things, right?
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For building teams looking to expand and grow uh to kind of fill in gaps or even just get going, you know, with the service side of the business.
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Um, you know, we do audits and strategy and you know, ACRs and all the things that are typically uh understood under an accessibility service business.
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Okay.
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Um, you know, my personal story is that how I got into the accessibility space, um, I was a product manager at a company called dealer.com and they do car, you know, websites for car dealerships.
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And uh I got called into the legal office one uh one day with with engineering leadership, and I was like, you know, what's going on here?
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I was a little concerned, I'd be honest.
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Um, and if we found out that one of the dealers, you know, had gotten a legal demand letter and that they were assigning ADA compliance to me.
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And I was like, kind of like, whoa, you know, what does that even mean?
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And unfortunately, I mean, this is about this is like 10 years ago, and unfortunately at that time, I didn't really know much about or really anything about digital accessibility.
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Um, and very quickly kind of learned a ton and uh was I had I hit my 10-year anniversary there at at dealer.com and I was kind of you know talking with some some friends and thinking about what's the next thing.
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And uh then I ended up kind of going to help co-found a company called Accessible Web, um, you know, small web uh website focused kind of accessibility company.
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And we did a lot of audits and kind of got into the service side of business there, uh, started building a platform to kind of support a lot of the work that we were doing.
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Um, and then I was there for about 10, I'm sorry, five years, um, and decided it was kind of I things have run my run this course for me there.
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And it was looking for my next thing and uh connected with the folks here at Onward, and they were like, listen, like we know we're a staffing business, but we really want to build a service business, and we think you'd be the right fit.
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So they brought me on, and uh this is about two and a half years ago, and we've been you know really building the service out of the business and uh really loving it.
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It's been awesome.
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What uh tell us some about those services.
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What what services is onward onward accessibility providing?
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Yeah, so we do all of the things, so like again, from like audits to to ACRs and VPATs to you know user testing with with folks with disabilities, um, and you know, you know, remediation work.
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And so we're really filling the gaps for folks.
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Um, but one thing I really like love to talk about is just like this strategy and the kind of the framework building that we love to do.
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Because a lot of organizations, right, they come to this work and they're like, oh, we've heard about accessibility, but they have like really no idea where to go.
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And it is, you know, it's a journey, right?
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There's a lot to it.
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And one of the things that we find really helpful is if we can kind of just like, hey, let's let's come in and start interviewing your people, right?
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Let's understand who knows about accessibility, like where does it exist in your organization today, if anywhere.
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Um, and then that allows us to really understand how that organization works and how we can help them implement accessibility into their like existing workflows, right?
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Because there's like an idea of like, oh, hey, in a perfect world, like you could do accessibility in this way, right?
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And at the end of the day, like not every organization were operates the same way, right?
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Even like organizations that like to say use the agile development methodology, they do it differently, right?
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And so we need to understand how an organization actually works and how they operate from like an SDLC perspective so that we can help them integrate accessibility into their process.
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So we're not causing too much of a disruption, right?
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We know this is kind of like added work, it is or shifted work a little bit, uh, but we don't want to like disrupt the whole SDLC.
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We want to say, hey, well, this is how you all operate, and here are the points where you can be you know integrating accessibility checks in that process.
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Um, and that's been really it's a really you know great way to get going and to like truly understand where the organization is and like what needs to happen to build that long-term accessibility program.
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Um and then so part of that too, I'd love to mention is about procurement, right?
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So, like one of the things that uh especially enterprises struggle with is they might be doing everything they can internally and doing it well from an accessibility standpoint, but they have all of these third-party tools and plugins and and content and things.
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And if they're not set up properly to have you know contract language and then enforcement of contract language with those partners, you might be, you know, having really inaccessible experiences on your digital property because of third-party content.
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Um, so getting involved with like you know, strategy around procurement is a really uh important thing and and stuff that we've been really enjoying working with our customers on.
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Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense.
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You you threw a lot of acronyms out there.
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Let's let's go through some of them quickly.
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Uh ACR about that.
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All good.
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ACR.
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ACR, yeah, accessibility conformance report.
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Okay.
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Um and and we'll tie that to VPAT, which is voluntary product accessibility template.
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So essentially a VPAT is a template.
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It's just a it's a registered trademark thing.
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It's a template that you follow.
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Um after you do an audit, you'll fill out the information that says, you know, for each success criteria, did we conform to that one or not?
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And then some notes and details around you know how you're performing for that success criteria.
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And so a completed VPAT, like once it's been fully filled out, is now considered an ACR or an accessibility conformance report.
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Okay.
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So a lot of people kind of mix those terms, but technically they are separate things.
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And you again, I an ACR is a is a bigger thing.
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There's various ways to uh have an ACR, and a VPAT or a completed VPAT is kind of the most common way to do so.
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And you guys are doing that work in conjunction with the businesses that that hire you.
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Yes, exactly.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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Uh SDLC.
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SDLC, yes, software development lifecycle.
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Okay, excellent.
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So we're getting into all the acronyms.
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Now let's get into the big one because there's a lot going on with standards right now.
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We've got April 2027 coming, which we certainly know all about, but our listeners may not.
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So tell us a little bit about WCAG 2.1, 2.2.2, what's happening here in April coming up, and why is it so important?
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Yeah, yeah, great, great topic.
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Um so uh everybody's talking about this April deadline, right?
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So April 26, 2027, uh, which originally was the was April in 2020 of 26.
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And so the DOJ kind of gave uh gave an extra year before the ADA Title II.
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So the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II is a section of ADA that ties uh organizations that receive government funding and cities and um uh various different populations uh tied to the accessibility rules, right?
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And say the laws rather.
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And those laws reference WACAG or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, uh level 2.2, double A standards.
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So get in the weeds here a little bit, right?
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There's single A, double A, and triple A levels, and double A is kind of what the laws require.
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Uh triple A is more of kind of aspirational levels.
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And um so a lot of folks uh unfortunately saw this deadline shift and say, ooh, great, we've got more time.
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Because then we're talking about making all of your digital properties accessible.
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So if you think about a university, for example, uh or a city, right?
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A municipality that serves over 50,000 people.
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Um there's a lot of digital content, right?
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A lot of digital assets, a lot of digital content.
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Um, you know, in addition to just websites, right?
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There's oh the, you know, your city might have an app, there might be various apps that they use.
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There might be, or there most likely is going to be thousands, if not millions, of PDFs pages, depending on the organization, uh, you know, the organization.
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And so everybody took a you know a breath of relief when the DOJ kind of made that deadline push.
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And unfortunately, nobody really acted as if the deadline was still coming.
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And so now we're seeing here as we we get to the end of the year here, uh, we are seeing some organizations in the same panic mode that they were last year because they essentially spent six months not doing much uh towards their accessibility goals, and now they're like, oh my gosh, the deadline's coming up again and we haven't done anything.
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Um, so there's a lot of there's a lot of um, I guess I've experienced there's a lot of, you know, somewhat kind of panic going on with some of these organizations because again, they they didn't take advantage of the extra time that they were given.
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And now they're in that time crunch again and realizing, oh my gosh, how are we going to do all this work uh in these next six months?
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Are you seeing an uptick in the the phone calls and the emails?
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I know we are on on the the little bit of it that we do.
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Are are you seeing that as well?
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Yeah, definitely.
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Um folks are again, like they're just they're you know, there's people these these folks knew about this right last year.
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And then again, I like a lot of people just, you know, like like, oh my gosh, we have so much other things going on.
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We gotta take, you know, take a breather on this, and then we'll get back into it.
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And then again, like I said, here we are.
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And uh a lot of folks just haven't done anything, and so we're in a spot again where where the panic is setting and and the rush is starting to to be you know planned for, essentially.
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Give us give us a sense of the kinds of businesses that need this coming up by April 2027.
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You mentioned universities, that's that's uh that we definitely are hearing from schools needing help.
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Um, but what kinds of businesses should be thinking about this prior to April 2027 and 2028?
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Yeah, well, I mean, I'd say broadly, all businesses really should be thinking about accessibility, right?
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Whether you're tied to Title II or Title III or not, um, because there's a lot of value to doing this work.
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And uh so anyway, I I don't want to focus just on like the legal side, but like the reality is that's kind of what's driving a lot of the business.
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Um, it's unfortunately not for empathy or for like the good of society.
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Um you know, it's it's a lot of people are, you know, these organizations are worried about the regulatory uh repercussions of not complying with those laws, um and and the impact that that has, right, from a financial perspective, a PR perspective, and all of that.
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Um so, but to back up to your actual question, right, like what type of organizations are really tied to these these laws?
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And right, essentially it's it's for Title II, it's anything that's publicly funded.
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And uh when it comes to municipalities, it's it's organ it's municipalities that support over 50,000 residents.
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So there's a lot of cities and towns, right, that are are tied to this.
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There's a lot of universities, there's a lot of organizations like nonprofits and stuff that might be getting a lot of government funding.
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Uh so essentially if you if you're receiving government funding for your organization in any way, um you're most likely tied to Title II.
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And so there's a lot of there's a lot that that's a big group of folks, right?
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That's a big group of business that uh that is all right in the moment, right, trying to figure out how we're gonna comply with this law.
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Um, so there's a lot of service businesses, like you know, you we all I think we're all feeling that from perspective is there's a lot of calls, there's a lot of you know uh conversations happening right now around thinking of how do we get a strategy in place.
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Like, is it even possible to get all of our PDFs remediated, for example?
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Do they even have the budget, right?
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Like that's another thing is there's you know, if we assumed, you know, unlimited budget, sure, we could get this this all done.
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But you know, the reality of the matter is not organizations don't have the budget to begin with, let alone an expedited budget to get it all done within a shorter amount of time.
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Yeah.
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So and we we found the same thing.
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I mean, we we're working with some some friends and family that we've been working with for years and helping them with their PDFs and their website, and and again, it comes down to budget.
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You know, we you know they need to do it, certainly they need to do it because of what's coming, but then there's the ramifications of how you know how they're gonna pay for it and who's gonna pay for it and what's gonna happen.
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So building it accessible at the beginning always helps, but we know full well we can't we can't do that with everything in the past, so we do have to go back and and fix and remediate.
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Tell me a little bit about um what should a business be thinking when they're starting this process.
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So, yes, they should have been thinking about it prior to to October 12th.
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I get that, you get that, we all get that, but hey, they hear they're hearing this and they need to do something, you know.
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What are some of the first or second steps they could take?
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Yeah, so this is always a tough question to answer because there's a lot of ways to approach this, right?
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And and I like to understand this, you know, the size of the business, for example, first, like because that can play into it.
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And but if we assume a large, like a university campus kind of thing, or um, you know, an organization that has uh various departments that are creating digital content in different ways, you really need to start with like understanding where is your content being created, right?
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Like who is creating, how is it being created, and like where should we like that's really just like an inventory kind of internally that you need to know.
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Um, most organizations, like they're just starting off with accessibility, they're kind of the go-to is to like say, oh, hey, we need an audit, which you know makes sense to say, like, hey, we have this website or we have this application or whatever, we need to know is it accessible today or not, right?
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And so that's a great starting point, but we always talk about, hey, you need to plan for the audit before you get it.
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Right.
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We've seen all too far too many times where um somebody in the organization orders the audit because they know about accessibility or they need to know, they know that they need to know where they stand, but no one else in the organization really knows that this audit is coming.
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And then all of a sudden we say, hey, we found this a bunch of whole accessibility defects.
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And then it's like they're not prepared to take on the remediation of those defects.
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And so then all these bugs sit in a backlog somewhere and like hope we hope that they get prioritized, but a lot of times they don't because again, it wasn't planned for.
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Um, and so anyway, so we always like to talk about planning for it, right?
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Like dedicating a certain amount of your sprint, you know, capacity towards fixing issues.
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Or if you have like a marketing team that has a bunch of blog posts that they think they need to work on, like it can't just be producing new content, new content.
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You have to go back and fix some of the things that are that are uh failures.
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So it's you know, planning, right?
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That's a big part of part of this.
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Is like there's a bunch of work when it comes to accessibility, and you need to know that it's gonna be a bunch of work, but like work with us, the consultants, to understand what kind of level of effort that work is so that you can plan for it.
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Um that's a big, big part of this.
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And you know, one of the things that can be challenging with with audits in particular is most of the time they're done in production.
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So like they're done on a live thing.
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And usually they're done after, like after launch, you know.
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So so the the a whole team or multiple teams at an organization have been like building a thing or reskinning a thing or doing something.
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They finally are pumped, they release it, and they're like, oh, we forgot to check for accessibility.
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We should get an audit done.
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And then we do an audit, and then we find all these issues, and then now all of a sudden we're kind of seen as like the accessibility police, and we're like raining on their parade, so to speak, because they're over all excited, they launched this new thing, they spent all this time and effort and money doing this thing, and now we're like, yeah, sorry, like you have to fix all of these things, it's broken.
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Um, and that kind of deflates the attitudes a little bit and can cause like a tricky relationship between vendor and client.
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Um, because again, you don't want to be seen as the accessibility police where it's like just at the end and saying, hey, issue, issue, issue, right?
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We want to work with them and actually like help prevent those issues making it to production.
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And so that's that's where you know we talk about this, the concept of shifting left, right?
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Or like bringing accessibility practices earlier in the process of the software development lifecycle, right?
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And so I'm kind of deviating from the answer to my question a little bit here, but I think it's important to talk about um all right, like if you think about accessibility in design, for example, like you can cut 60, 70, 80 percent of accessibility bugs in production because you've thought about it, you know, from the visual look and design of the things, right?
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So like making sure there's no contrast issues or you know, headings are actual headings and and the right levels and that kind of stuff, um, to actually having annotations on that design that that says, hey, developer, when you start building this thing that looks like a widget, or that's you know, let's call it a tabs widget or carousel or something, here are the various different things that need to happen in order for this to be considered accessible.
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Then that that's like part of the requirement for them to build the thing.
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And now we have an accessible component when they build it from the get-go versus having to refactor it later.
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:26.400
Um, but anyway, so to loop back to to again, like where do you start, right?
00:19:26.559 --> 00:19:37.759
I think number one is is you you need to have uh you need to have someone in the organization that's willing to say, we need to do this, right?
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:46.880
Like that's number one is you have to have buy-in, particularly, I mean, I you really should have some sort of executive level buy-in that's kind of driving this forward.
00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:54.559
Um, but if you're like in terms of the actual kind of uh practical work, you know, an audit can be the right thing.
00:19:54.720 --> 00:20:00.000
Um, I talked a little bit earlier about kind of like a discovery and building a framework.
00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:07.119
Like that can also, like, if if you know this is something we're going to do and we want to do it correctly, that's really the right place to start.
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:11.279
Is like, let's figure out where we are today and what is the goal, right?
00:20:11.359 --> 00:20:14.319
Like, how do we get to like where we are today?
00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:16.960
Like, here's the kind of ideal place for us to get to.
00:20:17.119 --> 00:20:18.480
What's the roadmap to get there?
00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:20.000
Right, that might be a few years, right?
00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:22.880
This is not going to be something that just gets turned over overnight, right?
00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:23.119
Right.
00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:30.880
Uh, there's a lot of changes that have to happen, you know, and incremental changes too that can drive a lot of this accessibility work.
00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:49.200
There's tooling, there's knowledge, there's, you know, there's a lot of pieces to this, but um starting with you know, a consultant that can help you understand like the scope of all of this work can be really helpful for you to plan for you know the work itself, but also the budget that you're gonna need to uh to support the work moving forward.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:49.839
Yeah.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.640
Uh we're talking with Pete Bruin from Onward Accessibility.
00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:55.440
I just want to put a human face on it here at the end.
00:20:55.599 --> 00:21:11.839
You mentioned at the beginning, certainly we're we're we're all doing this for for legal reasons coming up in April 2027, but there's a human side of this too, and that's the end user, the end user who who may use a screen reader, maybe blind, whatever, that that needs to needs to uh have an accessible world.
00:21:12.079 --> 00:21:17.200
Talk a little bit about that side of it, why why this matters to to the human that is the user.
00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:18.400
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:22.559
So I love uh talking about this part of the conversation, right?
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:29.599
Because at the end of the day, accessibility is the interaction between human and computer, right?
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:32.000
It's that is the core of it, right?
00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:40.480
And it's there's a lot of talk about you know tools and AI and stuff in these days, but like we're talking about human interactions, right?
00:21:40.559 --> 00:21:48.880
And we're talking about the variety of of kind of ways people interact with technology.
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:55.599
And so people with the same, you know someone using like let's say Jaws screen reader, right?
00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:59.759
You could have two, three, you know, ten people, like if you're testing the exact same thing.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:05.200
They're all going to have different opinions and they're all going to use that technology slightly differently, right?
00:22:05.599 --> 00:22:12.400
And so I'm my point being there is that users need to be part of this process, right?
00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:16.960
And we can't just say, oh, hey, I looked at this code and I can tell you this isn't accessible or not.
00:22:17.039 --> 00:22:19.440
And you know, for a lot of things, you can do that.
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:24.400
But at the end of the day, it's like, how does the user experience this thing?
00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:24.640
Right.
00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:34.799
And that's why we love to also bring in like real user testing by people with disabilities to kind of validate the work or to test the work that's been, you know, that's been going on.
00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:37.599
Um, because that's the real valuable feedback.
00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:42.960
It's like, how are the people that we're doing this work for actually receiving this work, right?
00:22:43.039 --> 00:22:44.720
And receiving this information.
00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:57.200
Um, one of the coolest moments for us is you know, you work with a customer, they've done a you know, a lot of investment into this accessibility work and and integrating it into their processes.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:00.079
And then we say we start doing kind of regular user testing.
00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:10.079
Hey, we're gonna bring in a variety of users with different assistive technology needs, and they're gonna come in and and you know, we'll say, Hey, like do steps X, Y, Z, right?
00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:14.400
We want to test this particular part of the user flow, a user journey.
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:22.799
And when you get user testers that are, you know, people with disabilities that are relying on these technologies in their day-to-day lives, right?
00:23:23.119 --> 00:23:28.319
Typically they're running into issues all the time on on websites and applications and things.
00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:31.119
Like very rarely does something just work, you know?
00:23:31.359 --> 00:23:42.319
And so when we do this, this this work, and then we you know have that kind of validation testing going through with these users, these real users, and and they're just like, hey, like, yeah, I was able to do that, no problem.
00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:49.039
Like that's such a great feeling, but it's also like a weird feeling because you're like, that just should be the the case all the time, right?
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:55.839
Like, but um, but it is it's a really validating feeling, and right, and it's like to be able to say, like, hey, yes, this just worked.
00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:03.039
Um, and the great thing about user testing too is that you can identify things like, you know, again, two users, right?
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:13.440
Same technology, same browser, but hey, one has been blind since birth and has been using JAWS for 20 something years, and the other's, you know, recently blind and still learning JAWS.
00:24:13.839 --> 00:24:18.240
They're the way they operate those technologies is gonna be so different.
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:23.759
And when they encounter barriers on a website or application, what they do is gonna be very different.
00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:36.720
Because again, that power user that's been using it for 20, whatever years knows the workarounds, knows how to you know potentially get past what would appear to be a barrier to a you know and more novice user.
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:45.759
Um, but that feedback is so helpful, like as a business that is you know building software, because again, hey, it might be technically accessible, right?
00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:56.160
Like the power user was able to do the thing, but if the more novice user said, Listen, I only was able to do this because you paid me to do a user test, right?
00:24:56.480 --> 00:24:58.240
This took me like 15, 20 minutes.
00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:09.200
Like in my if if I had encountered this in my kind of normal, my normal process, I would have spent maybe three, four minutes and I would have abandoned this because I couldn't, I you know, I couldn't get past it.
00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:13.759
Um, and again, so knowing that is is really great feedback.
00:25:13.839 --> 00:25:18.160
And and to to, you know, honestly, we like we like to go beyond WCAG.
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:22.480
Like we always consider WCAG as like the standard, you have to meet the standard, but really it's the floor.
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:27.279
Like it's the minimum you should be doing in order to make things accessible, right?
00:25:27.359 --> 00:25:37.920
There's a lot of you can technically have a WCAG conforming website that still provides a poor user experience to people with certain assistive technologies.
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:45.359
Yeah, and so you can always go above and beyond and have better experiences, and a lot of times you identify those experiences through real user testing.
00:25:45.599 --> 00:25:46.000
Agreed.
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:53.599
We, you know, we built our job board and our job recommendation engine with people who are blind for that for that purpose, so that we know that end of it.
00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:57.519
And you should always have people with disabilities as part of the equation.
00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:02.720
That way it it uh it it gives you some positive and and negative feedback, right?
00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:06.880
As a business, oftentimes we only hear the negative when something's wrong.
00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:13.759
But if you have user experience there at the front end, then you get some positive too, and you understand exactly what it is you're trying to trying to achieve.
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:14.480
So it makes perfect.
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:15.359
Absolutely.
00:26:15.519 --> 00:26:15.839
Yeah.
00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:16.319
Yeah.
00:26:16.400 --> 00:26:20.240
The success stories are just as important as the like the failure stories, right?
00:26:20.319 --> 00:26:25.759
It's like, because again, those reinforce that, hey, this work that we've done is is actually working.
00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:33.440
It's you know, it's it's doing the intended outcome, and it's it's you know, in many cases, relieving, you know, removing a barrier, right?
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:42.160
So it's like whether you could couldn't find this information or couldn't buy the thing or couldn't access directions to wherever, like now we can, right?
00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:43.920
Like that's the that's the great success.
00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:48.400
And the developers, you know, and the and the folks responsible for these experiences need to know that.
00:26:48.480 --> 00:27:07.599
Uh, because once they have that, that ex you know, that framing of of, oh, I mean to be honest, like a lot of folks are in tech, like have never even understood, don't you know, don't know, have never seen a screen reader, have never seen a braille device, have never seen, you know, how how various folks uh with disabilities interact with their their computers.
00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:16.559
And once you once you get that insight to them, it's like it's kind of that enlightenment moment, like, oh, how did I miss this?
00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:20.319
How could I have been missing this for my my career for 20 years, right?
00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:23.759
It's like it becomes a really empowering moment for some folks.
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:40.799
And uh we see it all the time with our customers, and it's great because then that person then becomes you know the champion within an organization and can help you know elevate the accessibility efforts because now they have this like this true understanding and uh and the you know the compassion and empathy for others.
00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:42.880
It's a so it's it can be a really cool moment.
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:43.680
It can be.
00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:46.079
Pete, tell us how people can find you.
00:27:46.640 --> 00:27:52.559
Yeah, so uh if you want to hop on to our website, onwardaccessibility.com, you can browse a site.
00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:55.599
We have a lot of information about our services and the things that we do.
00:27:55.759 --> 00:28:01.200
Um, we have a lot of resources too, around things like uh, you know, building a business case for accessibility.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:06.880
If that's something that you're, you know, you're responsible for accessibility, but you're not really getting the budget, right?
00:28:07.039 --> 00:28:10.160
You need to uh kind of sell it to the executives, right?
00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:13.279
We have some resources that can help with that type of thing.
00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:18.960
Um, you can reach out to me directly at my email, pbruon at onwardaccessibility.com.
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:22.799
We also have sales at onward onwardaccessibility.com.
00:28:23.039 --> 00:28:28.640
Um, and yeah, catch us at at various conferences and other places in person as well.
00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:32.559
Uh we just we're just at m enabling and had a really great experience there.
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:40.559
And and you know, meeting people in in person is always a uh a welcome thing, and at least for me, uh in this in this industry.
00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:41.440
It's like it's cool.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:51.440
There's a lot of really well-known people that are providing, you know, like really giving out great information, like through blog posts, LinkedIn, webinars, all that kind of stuff.
00:28:51.519 --> 00:29:03.200
And when you can actually like meet them in person, and and it just the connections in this industry are just so cool, and everybody's got a really great vibe, and and some, you know, we're all looking at this from the same perspective.
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:08.480
So it's uh it's a cool way to uh make make networking and connections and all that.
00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:09.440
Completely agree.
00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:14.000
Pete Bruin, thanks for joining Disability in the Public Square, and uh we'll see you around.
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:15.440
Thank you for having me.
00:29:15.519 --> 00:29:16.240
Really appreciate it.
00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:04.480
This is John Robinson with the Hour Ability Podcast and Disability in the Public Square.
00:00:04.559 --> 00:00:06.400
And today we're talking with Pete Brun.
00:00:06.879 --> 00:00:15.439
He's a digital accessibility leader with over a decade of experience helping organizations and businesses build and include digital accessibility.
00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:23.039
He's director of Director of Digital Accessibility Solutions at Onward Accessibility and co-founder of Accessibility Web.
00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:27.359
He specializes in accessibility strategy compliance and scalability.
00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:32.880
We've been working at Our Ability with Onward Accessibility for the better part of the past year.
00:00:33.119 --> 00:00:34.960
We have their jobs on our jobs board.
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So if you're out there looking for some accessibility work uh and you uh you've got some experience in this way, their jobs are on our ability.jobs.
00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:50.079
We also have been doing some work in digital accessibility as well, but onwards a little bit bigger than we are.
00:00:50.159 --> 00:00:54.640
So happy to share this conversation with Pete, and I hope you enjoy it.
00:00:55.439 --> 00:00:57.840
Welcome, Pete, to Disability in the Public Square.
00:00:58.880 --> 00:00:59.359
Thanks, John.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:00.719
Appreciate having me.
00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:02.240
It's great to have you.
00:01:02.399 --> 00:01:08.319
Tell us a little bit about yourself, onward accessibility, and and your journey into accessibility.
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Yeah, sure.
00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:15.760
So uh that's a long story, but I'll I'll keep it quick for uh for the podcast purposes here.
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So so onward, uh Onward is Onward Accessibility is part of a uh organization called Onward Group Holdings.
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And we have brands like Onward Search, Onward Accessibility, Onward EDU, uh, there's one called Tolera, um, and we have primarily a staffing, like recruiting business, right?
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So we provide uh talent for our customers uh when they need kind of creative marketing, technical related uh staff work.
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So onward accessibility, though, uh is one of our divisions that has actually a service side of the business as well.
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So we kind of do end-to-end uh digital accessibility work from the staffing side of things, right?
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For building teams looking to expand and grow uh to kind of fill in gaps or even just get going, you know, with the service side of the business.
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Um, you know, we do audits and strategy and you know, ACRs and all the things that are typically uh understood under an accessibility service business.
00:02:09.759 --> 00:02:10.080
Okay.
00:02:10.319 --> 00:02:22.560
Um, you know, my personal story is that how I got into the accessibility space, um, I was a product manager at a company called dealer.com and they do car, you know, websites for car dealerships.
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And uh I got called into the legal office one uh one day with with engineering leadership, and I was like, you know, what's going on here?
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I was a little concerned, I'd be honest.
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Um, and if we found out that one of the dealers, you know, had gotten a legal demand letter and that they were assigning ADA compliance to me.
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And I was like, kind of like, whoa, you know, what does that even mean?
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And unfortunately, I mean, this is about this is like 10 years ago, and unfortunately at that time, I didn't really know much about or really anything about digital accessibility.
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Um, and very quickly kind of learned a ton and uh was I had I hit my 10-year anniversary there at at dealer.com and I was kind of you know talking with some some friends and thinking about what's the next thing.
00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:18.319
And uh then I ended up kind of going to help co-found a company called Accessible Web, um, you know, small web uh website focused kind of accessibility company.
00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:27.120
And we did a lot of audits and kind of got into the service side of business there, uh, started building a platform to kind of support a lot of the work that we were doing.
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Um, and then I was there for about 10, I'm sorry, five years, um, and decided it was kind of I things have run my run this course for me there.
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And it was looking for my next thing and uh connected with the folks here at Onward, and they were like, listen, like we know we're a staffing business, but we really want to build a service business, and we think you'd be the right fit.
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So they brought me on, and uh this is about two and a half years ago, and we've been you know really building the service out of the business and uh really loving it.
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It's been awesome.
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What uh tell us some about those services.
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What what services is onward onward accessibility providing?
00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:15.840
Yeah, so we do all of the things, so like again, from like audits to to ACRs and VPATs to you know user testing with with folks with disabilities, um, and you know, you know, remediation work.
00:04:15.919 --> 00:04:18.399
And so we're really filling the gaps for folks.
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Um, but one thing I really like love to talk about is just like this strategy and the kind of the framework building that we love to do.
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Because a lot of organizations, right, they come to this work and they're like, oh, we've heard about accessibility, but they have like really no idea where to go.
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And it is, you know, it's a journey, right?
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There's a lot to it.
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And one of the things that we find really helpful is if we can kind of just like, hey, let's let's come in and start interviewing your people, right?
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Let's understand who knows about accessibility, like where does it exist in your organization today, if anywhere.
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Um, and then that allows us to really understand how that organization works and how we can help them implement accessibility into their like existing workflows, right?
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Because there's like an idea of like, oh, hey, in a perfect world, like you could do accessibility in this way, right?
00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:10.800
And at the end of the day, like not every organization were operates the same way, right?
00:05:10.959 --> 00:05:16.160
Even like organizations that like to say use the agile development methodology, they do it differently, right?
00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:28.079
And so we need to understand how an organization actually works and how they operate from like an SDLC perspective so that we can help them integrate accessibility into their process.
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So we're not causing too much of a disruption, right?
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We know this is kind of like added work, it is or shifted work a little bit, uh, but we don't want to like disrupt the whole SDLC.
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We want to say, hey, well, this is how you all operate, and here are the points where you can be you know integrating accessibility checks in that process.
00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:56.079
Um, and that's been really it's a really you know great way to get going and to like truly understand where the organization is and like what needs to happen to build that long-term accessibility program.
00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.279
Um and then so part of that too, I'd love to mention is about procurement, right?
00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:16.879
So, like one of the things that uh especially enterprises struggle with is they might be doing everything they can internally and doing it well from an accessibility standpoint, but they have all of these third-party tools and plugins and and content and things.
00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:32.560
And if they're not set up properly to have you know contract language and then enforcement of contract language with those partners, you might be, you know, having really inaccessible experiences on your digital property because of third-party content.
00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:41.920
Um, so getting involved with like you know, strategy around procurement is a really uh important thing and and stuff that we've been really enjoying working with our customers on.
00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:44.000
Yeah, makes makes a lot of sense.
00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:46.000
You you threw a lot of acronyms out there.
00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:47.439
Let's let's go through some of them quickly.
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Uh ACR about that.
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All good.
00:06:50.399 --> 00:06:51.120
ACR.
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ACR, yeah, accessibility conformance report.
00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:55.279
Okay.
00:06:55.439 --> 00:07:01.199
Um and and we'll tie that to VPAT, which is voluntary product accessibility template.
00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:03.920
So essentially a VPAT is a template.
00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.160
It's just a it's a registered trademark thing.
00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:07.839
It's a template that you follow.
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Um after you do an audit, you'll fill out the information that says, you know, for each success criteria, did we conform to that one or not?
00:07:16.319 --> 00:07:21.600
And then some notes and details around you know how you're performing for that success criteria.
00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:29.360
And so a completed VPAT, like once it's been fully filled out, is now considered an ACR or an accessibility conformance report.
00:07:29.519 --> 00:07:29.680
Okay.
00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:34.720
So a lot of people kind of mix those terms, but technically they are separate things.
00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:37.360
And you again, I an ACR is a is a bigger thing.
00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:44.399
There's various ways to uh have an ACR, and a VPAT or a completed VPAT is kind of the most common way to do so.
00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:48.800
And you guys are doing that work in conjunction with the businesses that that hire you.
00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:50.000
Yes, exactly.
00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:51.199
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:07:51.279 --> 00:07:52.560
Uh SDLC.
00:07:52.879 --> 00:07:55.920
SDLC, yes, software development lifecycle.
00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:57.199
Okay, excellent.
00:07:57.360 --> 00:07:58.720
So we're getting into all the acronyms.
00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:02.879
Now let's get into the big one because there's a lot going on with standards right now.
00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:08.560
We've got April 2027 coming, which we certainly know all about, but our listeners may not.
00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:17.600
So tell us a little bit about WCAG 2.1, 2.2.2, what's happening here in April coming up, and why is it so important?
00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:20.560
Yeah, yeah, great, great topic.
00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:26.160
Um so uh everybody's talking about this April deadline, right?
00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:32.799
So April 26, 2027, uh, which originally was the was April in 2020 of 26.
00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:40.960
And so the DOJ kind of gave uh gave an extra year before the ADA Title II.
00:08:41.039 --> 00:08:57.600
So the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II is a section of ADA that ties uh organizations that receive government funding and cities and um uh various different populations uh tied to the accessibility rules, right?
00:08:57.679 --> 00:08:59.200
And say the laws rather.
00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:07.759
And those laws reference WACAG or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, uh level 2.2, double A standards.
00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000
So get in the weeds here a little bit, right?
00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:14.960
There's single A, double A, and triple A levels, and double A is kind of what the laws require.
00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:18.240
Uh triple A is more of kind of aspirational levels.
00:09:18.559 --> 00:09:27.519
And um so a lot of folks uh unfortunately saw this deadline shift and say, ooh, great, we've got more time.
00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:30.639
Because then we're talking about making all of your digital properties accessible.
00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:34.240
So if you think about a university, for example, uh or a city, right?
00:09:34.399 --> 00:09:37.200
A municipality that serves over 50,000 people.
00:09:37.519 --> 00:09:40.799
Um there's a lot of digital content, right?
00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:43.519
A lot of digital assets, a lot of digital content.
00:09:43.759 --> 00:09:46.799
Um, you know, in addition to just websites, right?
00:09:46.879 --> 00:09:51.759
There's oh the, you know, your city might have an app, there might be various apps that they use.
00:09:51.919 --> 00:10:00.879
There might be, or there most likely is going to be thousands, if not millions, of PDFs pages, depending on the organization, uh, you know, the organization.
00:10:01.039 --> 00:10:08.720
And so everybody took a you know a breath of relief when the DOJ kind of made that deadline push.
00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:14.399
And unfortunately, nobody really acted as if the deadline was still coming.
00:10:14.559 --> 00:10:32.000
And so now we're seeing here as we we get to the end of the year here, uh, we are seeing some organizations in the same panic mode that they were last year because they essentially spent six months not doing much uh towards their accessibility goals, and now they're like, oh my gosh, the deadline's coming up again and we haven't done anything.
00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:45.600
Um, so there's a lot of there's a lot of um, I guess I've experienced there's a lot of, you know, somewhat kind of panic going on with some of these organizations because again, they they didn't take advantage of the extra time that they were given.
00:10:45.679 --> 00:10:51.919
And now they're in that time crunch again and realizing, oh my gosh, how are we going to do all this work uh in these next six months?
00:10:52.559 --> 00:10:55.519
Are you seeing an uptick in the the phone calls and the emails?
00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:58.559
I know we are on on the the little bit of it that we do.
00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:00.240
Are are you seeing that as well?
00:11:00.559 --> 00:11:01.679
Yeah, definitely.
00:11:01.840 --> 00:11:09.200
Um folks are again, like they're just they're you know, there's people these these folks knew about this right last year.
00:11:09.279 --> 00:11:14.480
And then again, I like a lot of people just, you know, like like, oh my gosh, we have so much other things going on.
00:11:14.559 --> 00:11:17.840
We gotta take, you know, take a breather on this, and then we'll get back into it.
00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.799
And then again, like I said, here we are.
00:11:20.879 --> 00:11:31.120
And uh a lot of folks just haven't done anything, and so we're in a spot again where where the panic is setting and and the rush is starting to to be you know planned for, essentially.
00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:37.759
Give us give us a sense of the kinds of businesses that need this coming up by April 2027.
00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:43.600
You mentioned universities, that's that's uh that we definitely are hearing from schools needing help.
00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:49.840
Um, but what kinds of businesses should be thinking about this prior to April 2027 and 2028?
00:11:50.159 --> 00:11:56.159
Yeah, well, I mean, I'd say broadly, all businesses really should be thinking about accessibility, right?
00:11:56.240 --> 00:12:02.960
Whether you're tied to Title II or Title III or not, um, because there's a lot of value to doing this work.
00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:12.240
And uh so anyway, I I don't want to focus just on like the legal side, but like the reality is that's kind of what's driving a lot of the business.
00:12:12.399 --> 00:12:18.559
Um, it's unfortunately not for empathy or for like the good of society.
00:12:18.720 --> 00:12:35.919
Um you know, it's it's a lot of people are, you know, these organizations are worried about the regulatory uh repercussions of not complying with those laws, um and and the impact that that has, right, from a financial perspective, a PR perspective, and all of that.
00:12:36.159 --> 00:12:42.559
Um so, but to back up to your actual question, right, like what type of organizations are really tied to these these laws?
00:12:42.639 --> 00:12:47.200
And right, essentially it's it's for Title II, it's anything that's publicly funded.
00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:55.120
And uh when it comes to municipalities, it's it's organ it's municipalities that support over 50,000 residents.
00:12:55.360 --> 00:12:59.679
So there's a lot of cities and towns, right, that are are tied to this.
00:12:59.759 --> 00:13:05.679
There's a lot of universities, there's a lot of organizations like nonprofits and stuff that might be getting a lot of government funding.
00:13:05.759 --> 00:13:14.559
Uh so essentially if you if you're receiving government funding for your organization in any way, um you're most likely tied to Title II.
00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:18.399
And so there's a lot of there's a lot that that's a big group of folks, right?
00:13:18.639 --> 00:13:25.279
That's a big group of business that uh that is all right in the moment, right, trying to figure out how we're gonna comply with this law.
00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:39.200
Um, so there's a lot of service businesses, like you know, you we all I think we're all feeling that from perspective is there's a lot of calls, there's a lot of you know uh conversations happening right now around thinking of how do we get a strategy in place.
00:13:39.360 --> 00:13:43.360
Like, is it even possible to get all of our PDFs remediated, for example?
00:13:43.519 --> 00:13:45.039
Do they even have the budget, right?
00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:52.159
Like that's another thing is there's you know, if we assumed, you know, unlimited budget, sure, we could get this this all done.
00:13:52.399 --> 00:14:02.320
But you know, the reality of the matter is not organizations don't have the budget to begin with, let alone an expedited budget to get it all done within a shorter amount of time.
00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:02.799
Yeah.
00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:04.720
So and we we found the same thing.
00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:13.039
I mean, we we're working with some some friends and family that we've been working with for years and helping them with their PDFs and their website, and and again, it comes down to budget.
00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:24.639
You know, we you know they need to do it, certainly they need to do it because of what's coming, but then there's the ramifications of how you know how they're gonna pay for it and who's gonna pay for it and what's gonna happen.
00:14:24.799 --> 00:14:35.600
So building it accessible at the beginning always helps, but we know full well we can't we can't do that with everything in the past, so we do have to go back and and fix and remediate.
00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:42.320
Tell me a little bit about um what should a business be thinking when they're starting this process.
00:14:42.399 --> 00:14:46.240
So, yes, they should have been thinking about it prior to to October 12th.
00:14:46.399 --> 00:14:52.559
I get that, you get that, we all get that, but hey, they hear they're hearing this and they need to do something, you know.
00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:55.200
What are some of the first or second steps they could take?
00:14:56.480 --> 00:15:03.120
Yeah, so this is always a tough question to answer because there's a lot of ways to approach this, right?
00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:08.480
And and I like to understand this, you know, the size of the business, for example, first, like because that can play into it.
00:15:08.559 --> 00:15:26.320
And but if we assume a large, like a university campus kind of thing, or um, you know, an organization that has uh various departments that are creating digital content in different ways, you really need to start with like understanding where is your content being created, right?
00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:34.000
Like who is creating, how is it being created, and like where should we like that's really just like an inventory kind of internally that you need to know.
00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:49.600
Um, most organizations, like they're just starting off with accessibility, they're kind of the go-to is to like say, oh, hey, we need an audit, which you know makes sense to say, like, hey, we have this website or we have this application or whatever, we need to know is it accessible today or not, right?
00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:57.840
And so that's a great starting point, but we always talk about, hey, you need to plan for the audit before you get it.
00:15:58.000 --> 00:15:58.159
Right.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:13.120
We've seen all too far too many times where um somebody in the organization orders the audit because they know about accessibility or they need to know, they know that they need to know where they stand, but no one else in the organization really knows that this audit is coming.
00:16:13.200 --> 00:16:17.440
And then all of a sudden we say, hey, we found this a bunch of whole accessibility defects.
00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:23.200
And then it's like they're not prepared to take on the remediation of those defects.
00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:32.960
And so then all these bugs sit in a backlog somewhere and like hope we hope that they get prioritized, but a lot of times they don't because again, it wasn't planned for.
00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:36.159
Um, and so anyway, so we always like to talk about planning for it, right?
00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:41.759
Like dedicating a certain amount of your sprint, you know, capacity towards fixing issues.
00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:49.840
Or if you have like a marketing team that has a bunch of blog posts that they think they need to work on, like it can't just be producing new content, new content.
00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:53.759
You have to go back and fix some of the things that are that are uh failures.
00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:55.519
So it's you know, planning, right?
00:16:55.600 --> 00:16:56.879
That's a big part of part of this.
00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:09.839
Is like there's a bunch of work when it comes to accessibility, and you need to know that it's gonna be a bunch of work, but like work with us, the consultants, to understand what kind of level of effort that work is so that you can plan for it.
00:17:09.920 --> 00:17:12.240
Um that's a big, big part of this.
00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:21.359
And you know, one of the things that can be challenging with with audits in particular is most of the time they're done in production.
00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:23.759
So like they're done on a live thing.
00:17:24.079 --> 00:17:29.920
And usually they're done after, like after launch, you know.
00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:37.599
So so the the a whole team or multiple teams at an organization have been like building a thing or reskinning a thing or doing something.
00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:42.000
They finally are pumped, they release it, and they're like, oh, we forgot to check for accessibility.
00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:43.039
We should get an audit done.
00:17:43.119 --> 00:18:00.400
And then we do an audit, and then we find all these issues, and then now all of a sudden we're kind of seen as like the accessibility police, and we're like raining on their parade, so to speak, because they're over all excited, they launched this new thing, they spent all this time and effort and money doing this thing, and now we're like, yeah, sorry, like you have to fix all of these things, it's broken.
00:18:00.559 --> 00:18:07.839
Um, and that kind of deflates the attitudes a little bit and can cause like a tricky relationship between vendor and client.
00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:14.799
Um, because again, you don't want to be seen as the accessibility police where it's like just at the end and saying, hey, issue, issue, issue, right?
00:18:14.880 --> 00:18:19.200
We want to work with them and actually like help prevent those issues making it to production.
00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:24.559
And so that's that's where you know we talk about this, the concept of shifting left, right?
00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:30.799
Or like bringing accessibility practices earlier in the process of the software development lifecycle, right?
00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:50.160
And so I'm kind of deviating from the answer to my question a little bit here, but I think it's important to talk about um all right, like if you think about accessibility in design, for example, like you can cut 60, 70, 80 percent of accessibility bugs in production because you've thought about it, you know, from the visual look and design of the things, right?
00:18:50.240 --> 00:19:12.640
So like making sure there's no contrast issues or you know, headings are actual headings and and the right levels and that kind of stuff, um, to actually having annotations on that design that that says, hey, developer, when you start building this thing that looks like a widget, or that's you know, let's call it a tabs widget or carousel or something, here are the various different things that need to happen in order for this to be considered accessible.
00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:15.920
Then that that's like part of the requirement for them to build the thing.
00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:21.839
And now we have an accessible component when they build it from the get-go versus having to refactor it later.
00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:26.400
Um, but anyway, so to loop back to to again, like where do you start, right?
00:19:26.559 --> 00:19:37.759
I think number one is is you you need to have uh you need to have someone in the organization that's willing to say, we need to do this, right?
00:19:37.920 --> 00:19:46.880
Like that's number one is you have to have buy-in, particularly, I mean, I you really should have some sort of executive level buy-in that's kind of driving this forward.
00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:54.559
Um, but if you're like in terms of the actual kind of uh practical work, you know, an audit can be the right thing.
00:19:54.720 --> 00:20:00.000
Um, I talked a little bit earlier about kind of like a discovery and building a framework.
00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:07.119
Like that can also, like, if if you know this is something we're going to do and we want to do it correctly, that's really the right place to start.
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:11.279
Is like, let's figure out where we are today and what is the goal, right?
00:20:11.359 --> 00:20:14.319
Like, how do we get to like where we are today?
00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:16.960
Like, here's the kind of ideal place for us to get to.
00:20:17.119 --> 00:20:18.480
What's the roadmap to get there?
00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:20.000
Right, that might be a few years, right?
00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:22.880
This is not going to be something that just gets turned over overnight, right?
00:20:22.960 --> 00:20:23.119
Right.
00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:30.880
Uh, there's a lot of changes that have to happen, you know, and incremental changes too that can drive a lot of this accessibility work.
00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:49.200
There's tooling, there's knowledge, there's, you know, there's a lot of pieces to this, but um starting with you know, a consultant that can help you understand like the scope of all of this work can be really helpful for you to plan for you know the work itself, but also the budget that you're gonna need to uh to support the work moving forward.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:49.839
Yeah.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.640
Uh we're talking with Pete Bruin from Onward Accessibility.
00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:55.440
I just want to put a human face on it here at the end.
00:20:55.599 --> 00:21:11.839
You mentioned at the beginning, certainly we're we're we're all doing this for for legal reasons coming up in April 2027, but there's a human side of this too, and that's the end user, the end user who who may use a screen reader, maybe blind, whatever, that that needs to needs to uh have an accessible world.
00:21:12.079 --> 00:21:17.200
Talk a little bit about that side of it, why why this matters to to the human that is the user.
00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:18.400
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:18.720 --> 00:21:22.559
So I love uh talking about this part of the conversation, right?
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:29.599
Because at the end of the day, accessibility is the interaction between human and computer, right?
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:32.000
It's that is the core of it, right?
00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:40.480
And it's there's a lot of talk about you know tools and AI and stuff in these days, but like we're talking about human interactions, right?
00:21:40.559 --> 00:21:48.880
And we're talking about the variety of of kind of ways people interact with technology.
00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:55.599
And so people with the same, you know someone using like let's say Jaws screen reader, right?
00:21:55.839 --> 00:21:59.759
You could have two, three, you know, ten people, like if you're testing the exact same thing.
00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:05.200
They're all going to have different opinions and they're all going to use that technology slightly differently, right?
00:22:05.599 --> 00:22:12.400
And so I'm my point being there is that users need to be part of this process, right?
00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:16.960
And we can't just say, oh, hey, I looked at this code and I can tell you this isn't accessible or not.
00:22:17.039 --> 00:22:19.440
And you know, for a lot of things, you can do that.
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:24.400
But at the end of the day, it's like, how does the user experience this thing?
00:22:24.480 --> 00:22:24.640
Right.
00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:34.799
And that's why we love to also bring in like real user testing by people with disabilities to kind of validate the work or to test the work that's been, you know, that's been going on.
00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:37.599
Um, because that's the real valuable feedback.
00:22:37.680 --> 00:22:42.960
It's like, how are the people that we're doing this work for actually receiving this work, right?
00:22:43.039 --> 00:22:44.720
And receiving this information.
00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:57.200
Um, one of the coolest moments for us is you know, you work with a customer, they've done a you know, a lot of investment into this accessibility work and and integrating it into their processes.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:00.079
And then we say we start doing kind of regular user testing.
00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:10.079
Hey, we're gonna bring in a variety of users with different assistive technology needs, and they're gonna come in and and you know, we'll say, Hey, like do steps X, Y, Z, right?
00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:14.400
We want to test this particular part of the user flow, a user journey.
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:22.799
And when you get user testers that are, you know, people with disabilities that are relying on these technologies in their day-to-day lives, right?
00:23:23.119 --> 00:23:28.319
Typically they're running into issues all the time on on websites and applications and things.
00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:31.119
Like very rarely does something just work, you know?
00:23:31.359 --> 00:23:42.319
And so when we do this, this this work, and then we you know have that kind of validation testing going through with these users, these real users, and and they're just like, hey, like, yeah, I was able to do that, no problem.
00:23:42.559 --> 00:23:49.039
Like that's such a great feeling, but it's also like a weird feeling because you're like, that just should be the the case all the time, right?
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:55.839
Like, but um, but it is it's a really validating feeling, and right, and it's like to be able to say, like, hey, yes, this just worked.
00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:03.039
Um, and the great thing about user testing too is that you can identify things like, you know, again, two users, right?
00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:13.440
Same technology, same browser, but hey, one has been blind since birth and has been using JAWS for 20 something years, and the other's, you know, recently blind and still learning JAWS.
00:24:13.839 --> 00:24:18.240
They're the way they operate those technologies is gonna be so different.
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:23.759
And when they encounter barriers on a website or application, what they do is gonna be very different.
00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:36.720
Because again, that power user that's been using it for 20, whatever years knows the workarounds, knows how to you know potentially get past what would appear to be a barrier to a you know and more novice user.
00:24:36.880 --> 00:24:45.759
Um, but that feedback is so helpful, like as a business that is you know building software, because again, hey, it might be technically accessible, right?
00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:56.160
Like the power user was able to do the thing, but if the more novice user said, Listen, I only was able to do this because you paid me to do a user test, right?
00:24:56.480 --> 00:24:58.240
This took me like 15, 20 minutes.
00:24:58.319 --> 00:25:09.200
Like in my if if I had encountered this in my kind of normal, my normal process, I would have spent maybe three, four minutes and I would have abandoned this because I couldn't, I you know, I couldn't get past it.
00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:13.759
Um, and again, so knowing that is is really great feedback.
00:25:13.839 --> 00:25:18.160
And and to to, you know, honestly, we like we like to go beyond WCAG.
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:22.480
Like we always consider WCAG as like the standard, you have to meet the standard, but really it's the floor.
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:27.279
Like it's the minimum you should be doing in order to make things accessible, right?
00:25:27.359 --> 00:25:37.920
There's a lot of you can technically have a WCAG conforming website that still provides a poor user experience to people with certain assistive technologies.
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:45.359
Yeah, and so you can always go above and beyond and have better experiences, and a lot of times you identify those experiences through real user testing.
00:25:45.599 --> 00:25:46.000
Agreed.
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:53.599
We, you know, we built our job board and our job recommendation engine with people who are blind for that for that purpose, so that we know that end of it.
00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:57.519
And you should always have people with disabilities as part of the equation.
00:25:57.680 --> 00:26:02.720
That way it it uh it it gives you some positive and and negative feedback, right?
00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:06.880
As a business, oftentimes we only hear the negative when something's wrong.
00:26:07.119 --> 00:26:13.759
But if you have user experience there at the front end, then you get some positive too, and you understand exactly what it is you're trying to trying to achieve.
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:14.480
So it makes perfect.
00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:15.359
Absolutely.
00:26:15.519 --> 00:26:15.839
Yeah.
00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:16.319
Yeah.
00:26:16.400 --> 00:26:20.240
The success stories are just as important as the like the failure stories, right?
00:26:20.319 --> 00:26:25.759
It's like, because again, those reinforce that, hey, this work that we've done is is actually working.
00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:33.440
It's you know, it's it's doing the intended outcome, and it's it's you know, in many cases, relieving, you know, removing a barrier, right?
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:42.160
So it's like whether you could couldn't find this information or couldn't buy the thing or couldn't access directions to wherever, like now we can, right?
00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:43.920
Like that's the that's the great success.
00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:48.400
And the developers, you know, and the and the folks responsible for these experiences need to know that.
00:26:48.480 --> 00:27:07.599
Uh, because once they have that, that ex you know, that framing of of, oh, I mean to be honest, like a lot of folks are in tech, like have never even understood, don't you know, don't know, have never seen a screen reader, have never seen a braille device, have never seen, you know, how how various folks uh with disabilities interact with their their computers.
00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:16.559
And once you once you get that insight to them, it's like it's kind of that enlightenment moment, like, oh, how did I miss this?
00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:20.319
How could I have been missing this for my my career for 20 years, right?
00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:23.759
It's like it becomes a really empowering moment for some folks.
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:40.799
And uh we see it all the time with our customers, and it's great because then that person then becomes you know the champion within an organization and can help you know elevate the accessibility efforts because now they have this like this true understanding and uh and the you know the compassion and empathy for others.
00:27:40.960 --> 00:27:42.880
It's a so it's it can be a really cool moment.
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:43.680
It can be.
00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:46.079
Pete, tell us how people can find you.
00:27:46.640 --> 00:27:52.559
Yeah, so uh if you want to hop on to our website, onwardaccessibility.com, you can browse a site.
00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:55.599
We have a lot of information about our services and the things that we do.
00:27:55.759 --> 00:28:01.200
Um, we have a lot of resources too, around things like uh, you know, building a business case for accessibility.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:06.880
If that's something that you're, you know, you're responsible for accessibility, but you're not really getting the budget, right?
00:28:07.039 --> 00:28:10.160
You need to uh kind of sell it to the executives, right?
00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:13.279
We have some resources that can help with that type of thing.
00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:18.960
Um, you can reach out to me directly at my email, pbruon at onwardaccessibility.com.
00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:22.799
We also have sales at onward onwardaccessibility.com.
00:28:23.039 --> 00:28:28.640
Um, and yeah, catch us at at various conferences and other places in person as well.
00:28:28.799 --> 00:28:32.559
Uh we just we're just at m enabling and had a really great experience there.
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:40.559
And and you know, meeting people in in person is always a uh a welcome thing, and at least for me, uh in this in this industry.
00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:41.440
It's like it's cool.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:51.440
There's a lot of really well-known people that are providing, you know, like really giving out great information, like through blog posts, LinkedIn, webinars, all that kind of stuff.
00:28:51.519 --> 00:29:03.200
And when you can actually like meet them in person, and and it just the connections in this industry are just so cool, and everybody's got a really great vibe, and and some, you know, we're all looking at this from the same perspective.
00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:08.480
So it's uh it's a cool way to uh make make networking and connections and all that.
00:29:08.799 --> 00:29:09.440
Completely agree.
00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:14.000
Pete Bruin, thanks for joining Disability in the Public Square, and uh we'll see you around.
00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:15.440
Thank you for having me.
00:29:15.519 --> 00:29:16.240
Really appreciate it.
