WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.846 --> 00:00:03.229
This is Marketing Uncomplicated.
2
00:00:03.249 --> 00:00:06.213
All right, everybody.
3
00:00:06.313 --> 00:00:07.595
Today, I'm joined by Mark Bates.
4
00:00:08.748 --> 00:00:13.511
I said your first and your last name, Mark, as Mike Barton, but we'll start again.
5
00:00:13.971 --> 00:00:15.592
Hi everybody and welcome back to the show.
6
00:00:15.652 --> 00:00:22.695
Today I am joined by Mike Barton, a marketing and communications leader dedicated to making the internet more accessible for all.
7
00:00:23.156 --> 00:00:32.941
Mike is the Vice President of Corporate Communication and Content Marketing at AudioEye, where he leads strategy across blogs, social media, PR, video and digital storytelling.
8
00:00:33.341 --> 00:00:40.863
Before that, he worked at Adobe shaping content and executive messaging across Experience Cloud, Creative Cloud, Enterprise, and Document Cloud.
9
00:00:41.283 --> 00:00:47.364
What I love about this conversation is that Mike sits at the intersection of marketing, storytelling, accessibility, and business growth.
10
00:00:47.764 --> 00:00:59.147
Today, we're going to uncomplicate what digital accessibility actually means, why it matters for marketers, how inclusive digital experiences help businesses grow, and why accessibility should not be treated
11
00:00:59.607 --> 00:01:01.809
as an afterthought, which I completely agree with.
12
00:01:01.909 --> 00:01:02.849
Mike, welcome to the show.
13
00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:03.770
It's so good to have you.
14
00:01:03.790 --> 00:01:05.051
Good to be here.
15
00:01:05.091 --> 00:01:05.772
Thanks for having me.
16
00:01:06.612 --> 00:01:06.972
Yeah.
17
00:01:07.032 --> 00:01:09.134
So let's just dive right in.
18
00:01:10.055 --> 00:01:14.017
So let's talk about what digital accessibility really means.
19
00:01:14.037 --> 00:01:15.138
So let's start simple.
20
00:01:15.378 --> 00:01:19.221
What is digital accessibility and why should every business understand it?
21
00:01:19.301 --> 00:01:21.863
As well as marketers help and support their business.
22
00:01:22.772 --> 00:01:37.037
Yeah, so it's a great question at its base, essentially digital accessibility means that anybody can use the digital world, a website, an app, et cetera, and a lot of people, you know, while they're familiar with physical world.
23
00:01:37.517 --> 00:01:42.799
Accessibility, you know, parking spots, automatic doors, bars and bathrooms and things like that.
24
00:01:43.660 --> 00:01:45.961
Digital accessibility is that digital equivalent.
25
00:01:45.981 --> 00:02:03.409
It means that if I'm a blind person who uses a screen reader, which literally reads the code of the page and tells them the headers and the text and the image descriptions, that means that that person can go shopping just as I would as a sighted person and be able to accomplish their goals.
26
00:02:04.009 --> 00:02:06.030
And it's something that unfortunately,
27
00:02:06.550 --> 00:02:15.323
As I've come into the accessibility space, just a lot of businesses and marketers haven't heard about it, haven't thought about it in their marketing.
28
00:02:15.343 --> 00:02:20.110
And so I think it's a really important message to get out there and talk about with other marketers.
29
00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:35.366
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that in terms of, you know, how a lot of people haven't heard about it, because I think for a really long time, it was set up that if you were a government or a government entity, this was something that was like, you had to have it on.
30
00:02:36.346 --> 00:02:37.707
You know, no questions asked.
31
00:02:38.426 --> 00:02:42.091
But then there was gray areas in terms of who needed it, who didn't need it.
32
00:02:42.131 --> 00:02:53.666
And obviously as a user who would need the accessibility, you would think, why would I be removed from being able to order pizza online, being able to order clothing online or whatever it is, right?
33
00:02:54.626 --> 00:03:08.837
Talk to me a little bit about this gray area from a legal standpoint and everything that is on the internet and on the government pages and why we really should be focusing on ensuring that everything that we put out there digitally should be inclusive.
34
00:03:09.611 --> 00:03:25.041
Yeah, the reason that there's a little bit of gray area, and I think that gray area is quickly shrinking and becoming more black and white, is that when the Americans with Disabilities Act was written and signed into law in 1990, the internet wasn't a thing, right?
35
00:03:25.061 --> 00:03:34.668
So it focused exclusively on physical spaces and what businesses need to do to make their establishments accessible, physically accessible by all.
36
00:03:35.408 --> 00:03:37.329
So fast forward 10, 15, 20 years...
37
00:03:38.605 --> 00:03:41.206
we've gone completely digital.
38
00:03:41.286 --> 00:03:47.169
And in that time, the Americans with Disabilities Act has not been updated.
39
00:03:47.489 --> 00:04:06.059
So the courts have increasingly been the ones who, with that gray area, right, where it's actually not, again, written into it, have defined, okay, actually, if you, just as if you have a physical space, if you have a digital space where people can complete a checkout or can bank with you or, you know, insert,
40
00:04:06.879 --> 00:04:10.001
activity here, then that needs to be accessible.
41
00:04:10.201 --> 00:04:17.505
And we see that at the federal level with fines for companies who are not accessible.
42
00:04:18.225 --> 00:04:28.330
And we see it increasingly at the state level where states are really saying, hey, if you're going to sell goods and services to customers in our state, it needs to be accessible.
43
00:04:28.390 --> 00:04:31.392
And so a little bit of what you talked about where for government, it's been
44
00:04:32.532 --> 00:04:34.333
kind of a mandatory thing for years and years.
45
00:04:34.974 --> 00:04:42.057
A lot of these state governments are starting to say, hey, this makes sense for everybody, not just government interactions.
46
00:04:42.137 --> 00:04:58.026
And so we've seen lawsuits double over the last number of years as more and more consumers are recognizing, hey, in order to get some action here and be able to use a site, like unfortunately I have to put a lawsuit forward to get somebody to pay attention.
47
00:04:58.680 --> 00:04:59.221
Yeah, yeah.
48
00:04:59.622 --> 00:05:08.439
So I want to take that from a twofold standpoint, because I'm on this, I'm on the side that I think we, everyone needs to be making their website accessible, right?
49
00:05:08.839 --> 00:05:09.401
And then I'm on the
50
00:05:12.852 --> 00:05:22.300
There are lawyers and there are law firms out there that make this their job to find websites that don't have accessibility because they can gain traction and they can really make a good buck.
51
00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:22.921
Right.
52
00:05:23.681 --> 00:05:27.244
Uh, and unfortunately it's, it can be a little bit of a scheme, right.
53
00:05:27.364 --> 00:05:31.448
Which I've had, I've had one client that was hit really badly because number one.
54
00:05:31.972 --> 00:05:37.760
He refused to do that, and then he also refused to put cybersecurity, so he actually got hit double in the same year.
55
00:05:38.941 --> 00:05:49.555
So I want to talk a little bit about that and not maybe spend the majority of our conversation on this, but I think it's very important because a lot of business owners will basically say,
56
00:05:50.158 --> 00:06:15.158
know i'm not going to put the money towards this there's the concept of it cost me a lot of money to build out my website to be accessible and then on the flip side you have all of these other platforms outside of your company's platform that it's just like oh add our widget really simplistically but people still get slapped with lawsuits you know because it doesn't cover i mean look nobody's website is going to be 99 percent accessible um
57
00:06:16.359 --> 00:06:20.081
you know, even for people who don't need accessibility, something's going to happen, right?
58
00:06:20.541 --> 00:06:22.082
But I am twofold.
59
00:06:22.122 --> 00:06:26.864
I want to talk about the legal, the legalities and the lawsuits that are happening.
60
00:06:26.964 --> 00:06:42.071
And then these other platforms in comparison to your company and and how you guys have really sort of separated out what they didn't cover and what you guys are fully giving a business owner versus versus them, if that makes sense.
61
00:06:42.311 --> 00:06:43.532
Yeah, I know that was long winded.
62
00:06:44.562 --> 00:06:45.825
Yeah, a lot to unpack there.
63
00:06:45.845 --> 00:06:49.552
So I'll start with some of the legal stuff and then feel free to interrupt me if you want to
64
00:06:50.130 --> 00:06:51.511
go down the Pacific roads.
65
00:06:52.071 --> 00:07:00.214
But yeah, unfortunately the serial plaintiffs, as we call them, are a bit of a stain in the industry where they'll go out there.
66
00:07:00.634 --> 00:07:17.080
We did a litigation analysis last year and I think it was like 60 to 70% of suits that were brought were to small and medium businesses, mostly small, because again, these serial plaintiffs know that these businesses
67
00:07:17.500 --> 00:07:24.546
don't want to get into expensive litigation, they're probably more likely to settle for five or $10,000 and just be done with it.
68
00:07:25.187 --> 00:07:29.251
And unfortunately, because that is the reality, we see that more and more.
69
00:07:29.371 --> 00:07:35.276
So we do work with a lot of businesses to say like, hey, let's get your accessibility in place.
70
00:07:35.316 --> 00:07:40.220
It's going to be much less than the potential cost of fines.
71
00:07:40.741 --> 00:07:43.884
And so that's the kind of serial plaintiff angle.
72
00:07:44.745 --> 00:07:51.971
as we work with members of our disability community and talk to them, a lot of them will say like, I don't wanna sue as a first resort.
73
00:07:51.991 --> 00:07:54.614
Like my point is trying to engage with this company.
74
00:07:55.154 --> 00:07:58.277
And so they'll go to contact us, they'll go to the help desk, right?
75
00:07:58.317 --> 00:08:01.500
They'll make an effort to say like, hey, such and such is broken.
76
00:08:02.139 --> 00:08:03.140
can you help me fix it?
77
00:08:04.021 --> 00:08:07.464
Or can you help me buy this shirt that I really want to get right?
78
00:08:08.304 --> 00:08:17.052
And it's when they don't get responses, when they get kind of stonewalled, that then it's like, all right, do I need to have a lawsuit to force this?
79
00:08:17.092 --> 00:08:28.622
So I think that's maybe a best practice that is helpful for businesses is like, if people are reaching out to you, especially with disabilities who are having issues, like be reactive, be responsive and listen to them.
80
00:08:29.683 --> 00:08:36.088
Again, 99.9% of people with disabilities, again, just want to make the world accessible.
81
00:08:36.148 --> 00:08:43.934
And for future them or others who come in the future, they're just trying to make it so that they don't experience the same hassle.
82
00:08:43.974 --> 00:08:48.278
So I think when companies have the right intention, they're doing something about it.
83
00:08:48.798 --> 00:08:52.480
That alone minimizes your legal risk.
84
00:08:52.520 --> 00:08:55.923
And then, you know, you talked a little bit about some of the different approaches.
85
00:08:56.243 --> 00:09:03.107
There's definitely approaches that will still leave you with high risk and others that really do protect you.
86
00:09:03.487 --> 00:09:11.953
So that again, to your point, you might not be a hundred percent compliant, but you're 80, 90% and that just reduces the chance of you getting sued dramatically.
87
00:09:13.208 --> 00:09:13.869
Yeah.
88
00:09:13.889 --> 00:09:18.151
So let's talk about the other platforms that are out there in comparison to yours.
89
00:09:19.232 --> 00:09:31.320
What makes your platform a lot more stringent in terms of protection and not receiving a lawsuit versus everyone else's?
90
00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:38.344
And what should a business owner or a marketer be looking for when they are looking at these different types of platforms?
91
00:09:38.744 --> 00:09:38.924
Yeah.
92
00:09:39.505 --> 00:09:41.586
So historically, there's
93
00:09:42.427 --> 00:09:45.510
Now, somewhat generalizing it, but it's a very accurate generalization.
94
00:09:45.550 --> 00:09:48.112
There was two ways of solving accessibility.
95
00:09:48.832 --> 00:09:58.701
One was, as you mentioned before, slap a widget, slap some code on your site, and let this widget make your site accessible as users come.
96
00:09:59.582 --> 00:10:03.725
The challenge with that, the benefit is it hits all your pages, right?
97
00:10:03.905 --> 00:10:05.787
You can immediately scale to your site.
98
00:10:06.443 --> 00:10:09.307
But the challenge is there's only so much automation can do.
99
00:10:09.507 --> 00:10:19.139
There's these criteria called the web content accessibility guidelines that need to be verified and in place for your site to be accessible.
100
00:10:19.859 --> 00:10:21.461
And automated tools can really only
101
00:10:22.122 --> 00:10:30.005
get to 50 60% of those because there's so much context when it comes to a lot of the content online and some of these rules.
102
00:10:30.665 --> 00:10:36.307
So despite claims from some companies as well in the past, like, hey, install this and you'll be compliant within minutes.
103
00:10:36.907 --> 00:10:37.748
That's just not the case.
104
00:10:37.808 --> 00:10:39.568
So that's kind of been one route.
105
00:10:39.608 --> 00:10:40.369
And those.
106
00:10:42.030 --> 00:10:47.491
You know, people who have installed those widgets and felt like they were safe because they were told.
107
00:10:48.151 --> 00:10:56.493
We actually found last year that about 50% of suits were to companies with a widget in place who were kind of surprised to find out, wait, I've got something.
108
00:10:56.533 --> 00:11:01.515
Why am I still getting sued in the route as automation only goes so far?
109
00:11:02.055 --> 00:11:02.875
So that was one approach.
110
00:11:03.475 --> 00:11:08.016
The other approach was consultants who would come in, they would audit your homepage.
111
00:11:12.277 --> 00:11:22.466
who use a screen reader, who use a keyboard only, and they'll go through your site, write down all the things that they found, and then they'd provide you a list of things to fix at source.
112
00:11:22.986 --> 00:11:29.392
That's super helpful because, you know, you've got the person going through, they can get through most of those criteria, if not all of them.
113
00:11:30.033 --> 00:11:32.675
But then the challenge there is it goes back to your dev team.
114
00:11:32.715 --> 00:11:34.797
So if your dev team is already slammed,
115
00:11:35.557 --> 00:11:40.278
They've got to work all these accessibility fixes into the schedule and their sprints.
116
00:11:40.918 --> 00:11:43.978
And by the time those fixes get there, maybe the site has changed.
117
00:11:44.219 --> 00:11:54.660
So that's the kind of challenge with the fix that source or the consulting approach is the web has dramatically sped up and there's so many more changes and so many more A-B tests and personalization.
118
00:11:54.700 --> 00:11:59.761
So the static kind of web pages of 10 years ago don't really exist anymore.
119
00:11:59.781 --> 00:12:04.282
So that becomes a speed and a cost problem because you're paying developers to maintain it.
120
00:12:05.282 --> 00:12:07.225
long-winded a bit to get those two approaches.
121
00:12:07.605 --> 00:12:12.531
What we believe is the right approach isn't this like, is it this or it's that, but it's bringing them together.
122
00:12:12.792 --> 00:12:23.205
And so we believe that for the scale of the internet, and again, the speed, especially with AI coding now, being an even greater accelerant in how websites are built and changed,
123
00:12:24.191 --> 00:12:26.913
you've got to have some sort of technology to scale.
124
00:12:27.153 --> 00:12:41.524
And so we do use automation as well as like a foundation, and we run it for those 50 to 60%, again, of issues that automation can accurately and reliably detect and then fix.
125
00:12:41.744 --> 00:12:44.586
And so that runs in the background, that does fix things.
126
00:12:44.946 --> 00:13:01.100
But then we supplement it and complement it with audits where we do have people with disabilities who will look at the homepage, the checkout flow, the key templates that somebody might have, and then write fixes for them that we can then deploy in that same automation.
127
00:13:01.140 --> 00:13:02.642
So it doesn't have to go to a developer.
128
00:13:02.662 --> 00:13:04.263
It doesn't have to work its way into a sprint.
129
00:13:04.826 --> 00:13:10.248
So then about 90% truly of your accessibility can be fixed.
130
00:13:10.748 --> 00:13:16.070
Again, it's coming through that automation layer, but it's supplemented with the people who are doing audits.
131
00:13:16.110 --> 00:13:27.735
So to us, that's really the solution of the future is this more comprehensive bringing both worlds together, taking the pros of each and kind of getting rid of the cons as well.
132
00:13:28.422 --> 00:13:29.323
Oh, no, absolutely.
133
00:13:29.643 --> 00:13:30.923
Uh, that, that was a great answer.
134
00:13:30.983 --> 00:13:31.844
So thank you so much.
135
00:13:32.384 --> 00:13:39.968
You've talked about accessibility as an up on the, as an untapped growth strategy, what does that actually mean?
136
00:13:41.049 --> 00:13:41.289
Yeah.
137
00:13:41.349 --> 00:13:51.654
So there's a few, uh, areas where, uh, as we, so a lot of times we'll come, uh, uh, work with businesses and it comes to the legal or the compliance team, right?
138
00:13:51.674 --> 00:13:57.137
Cause they've got a suit, uh, or a friend of a friend got sued and like, we need to, uh, look into this.
139
00:13:57.695 --> 00:14:05.499
But more and more, we're actually hearing from marketers and digital marketers, especially who are seeing that there's a number of business benefits.
140
00:14:05.519 --> 00:14:10.681
So the first one is SEO and also increasingly AEO and GEO.
141
00:14:10.701 --> 00:14:24.548
So answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, where if a site is built accessibly, that means that you've got, you know, your headers and your tags all descriptive and
142
00:14:25.028 --> 00:14:29.289
and accurate for images and links as opposed to generic descriptions.
143
00:14:29.309 --> 00:14:30.990
You've got very specific.
144
00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:32.631
So again, that screen reader can read it.
145
00:14:33.271 --> 00:14:40.573
These are all things that make the site so much more usable by a person with a disability, but also for those crawlers that are coming in.
146
00:14:40.653 --> 00:14:46.535
It also makes it easier for them to scan the page to understand what the page content and context is about.
147
00:14:47.015 --> 00:14:48.916
And so there are impacts to SEO.
148
00:14:49.796 --> 00:14:54.338
We're also starting to see again with the answer engine optimization and how
149
00:14:55.398 --> 00:15:20.727
agents are crawling web pages that they'll often use that same kind of accessible code to understand the page and if an engine has a choice between an inaccessible page that's going to use more tokens and take more time and one that's very clear and it can get those answers quickly generally I think it's going to default to that easy one and provide those answers so we're seeing a
150
00:15:21.207 --> 00:15:24.971
impact from that organic area as well.
151
00:15:25.551 --> 00:15:39.225
And then from just a customer loyalty perspective, people with disabilities and their friends and family globally control 18 trillion in disposable income, which sounds like such a cool, that's such a huge number.
152
00:15:39.245 --> 00:15:42.528
But again, when you think about it, one in five people globally,
153
00:15:43.089 --> 00:15:47.594
have a disability of some sort, when you add in cognitive disabilities and things like that.
154
00:15:48.315 --> 00:15:59.628
And so, again, one thing that we hear from our community as we're talking to them is when they do find a company that's accessible and they do find a company that's prioritizing it,
155
00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:04.650
they want to go back because they've made that experience for them so much easier.
156
00:16:05.350 --> 00:16:07.130
We talk about customer experience in marketing.
157
00:16:07.190 --> 00:16:09.231
It's no different for people with disabilities.
158
00:16:09.251 --> 00:16:14.591
In fact, it's probably more important because it's so hard to find a good customer experience.
159
00:16:15.052 --> 00:16:22.133
And so not only did they become very loyal, but they're going to shout it to their very tight-knit friends and family.
160
00:16:22.573 --> 00:16:27.754
And family members want to support businesses that support their loved ones and their friends.
161
00:16:27.794 --> 00:16:28.994
And so we see loyalty.
162
00:16:29.554 --> 00:16:32.195
and customer retention being a big one as well.
163
00:16:32.255 --> 00:16:44.340
And third one I'll just share that it's kind of a little bit on the outskirts, but especially as you're thinking about people with cognitive disabilities and how do I write web content that is clear and understandable?
164
00:16:46.401 --> 00:16:50.723
So that's another one that I think is a lot of times underlooked that
165
00:16:51.543 --> 00:16:53.785
With accessibility, you want to avoid jargon.
166
00:16:54.286 --> 00:17:04.475
You want to write as simply and as focused as possible so that, again, when a person comes to a page, they know what you do, what you provide, what values, how you're different.
167
00:17:04.535 --> 00:17:06.617
It's really, unfortunately,
168
00:17:07.570 --> 00:17:11.773
Very common for businesses to just get stuck in like putting way too much on their page.
169
00:17:11.813 --> 00:17:14.895
So also an exercise if you're doing it right.
170
00:17:15.375 --> 00:17:21.419
And in addition to making it clear for somebody who has a cognitive disability, you're making that page stand out for everybody else.
171
00:17:21.479 --> 00:17:31.325
And that page, you know, share your message in a way that, again, anybody who's coming to your page can understand and know kind of what action they should take.
172
00:17:32.085 --> 00:17:33.046
Yeah, no, I love that.
173
00:17:33.106 --> 00:17:33.606
I love that.
174
00:17:34.027 --> 00:17:34.287
So yeah.
175
00:17:35.532 --> 00:17:41.454
Do you, well, we know that businesses underestimate how many people are impacted by poor digital accessibility.
176
00:17:41.854 --> 00:17:44.214
What is that percentage actually in the U.S.?
177
00:17:44.854 --> 00:17:46.255
In the U.S., it's one in four.
178
00:17:46.575 --> 00:17:56.538
So that takes into effect, again, cognitive disabilities, but blindness, hearing impairment, again, mobility.
179
00:17:56.618 --> 00:18:01.339
So somebody might not be able to use a mouse to navigate, so they just have to tab on a
180
00:18:02.443 --> 00:18:03.564
Uh, but yeah, it's one in four.
181
00:18:03.604 --> 00:18:14.650
In fact, when I came to, uh, audio, I, uh, as you mentioned in the intro, I've been at Adobe for over a decade, creating almost, almost every type of content possible.
182
00:18:15.311 --> 00:18:18.232
And I never once thought like, is this accessible?
183
00:18:18.292 --> 00:18:20.914
Is this PDF, uh, accessible to somebody?
184
00:18:20.954 --> 00:18:23.756
Is this interact super cool visual interactive experience?
185
00:18:24.136 --> 00:18:24.456
Yeah.
186
00:18:24.816 --> 00:18:27.778
Who's blind actually consume that and understand what's happening.
187
00:18:28.506 --> 00:18:35.068
And again, that was me and my team not saying that Adobe itself wasn't thinking about accessibility.
188
00:18:36.349 --> 00:18:37.769
But it was definitely a wake up call.
189
00:18:37.829 --> 00:18:48.893
And even when I came here, I would talk to small business owners, talk to one who owned like a supplement company and was just explaining digital accessibility.
190
00:18:48.933 --> 00:18:50.193
And he's like, oh, that's interesting.
191
00:18:50.233 --> 00:18:52.354
Doesn't really apply to me, but that's really interesting.
192
00:18:52.951 --> 00:18:55.132
I was like, well, hold on, let's talk about it for a second.
193
00:18:55.152 --> 00:18:59.875
Like, actually, why doesn't, why is that assumption real, right?
194
00:18:59.915 --> 00:19:04.878
Is that accurate that a person who's blind doesn't work out or doesn't need protein?
195
00:19:04.938 --> 00:19:07.419
And it's like, in fact, it might not even be a workout.
196
00:19:07.539 --> 00:19:10.541
You could have a new segment of people who just, you know, need,
197
00:19:11.300 --> 00:19:14.801
to improve their health and movement and things like that.
198
00:19:14.821 --> 00:19:20.923
And so he's like, oh, that's a really good point that like, it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
199
00:19:20.943 --> 00:19:26.065
That I say they're not an audience and thus I don't make it built for them.
200
00:19:26.085 --> 00:19:27.225
And so they don't become one.
201
00:19:27.245 --> 00:19:40.109
So more and more, I think people are starting to realize that, oh, not only are people with disabilities are there kind of more than I thought there were, this is not a minority, actually,
202
00:19:41.273 --> 00:19:45.878
there's audiences and segments that are available to me that I wasn't considering.
203
00:19:46.697 --> 00:19:47.277
Absolutely.
204
00:19:47.697 --> 00:20:04.665
And so we've touched a little bit on that and I want to take it further because a lot of people need to be thinking about, you know, not necessarily need to, but can be thinking about this as yet another arena for them to expand their ideal customer profile.
205
00:20:04.705 --> 00:20:11.408
Because most people think about their ideal customer profile, but there is no inclusivity as it relates to accessibility, right?
206
00:20:11.888 --> 00:20:19.050
Or maybe they do from adding captions to their videos and audio and so on and so forth.
207
00:20:19.090 --> 00:20:22.451
But are we really thinking beyond, right?
208
00:20:22.632 --> 00:20:32.955
As we're talking about, how would somebody for a workout app be able to access that app similarly to be able to have movement or whatever it is?
209
00:20:33.275 --> 00:20:35.296
And what kind of programs can we develop for them?
210
00:20:35.316 --> 00:20:36.836
Because it will open up a whole new world.
211
00:20:36.876 --> 00:20:38.717
I mean, if it's one in four, that's a lot of people.
212
00:20:40.358 --> 00:20:52.136
Um, so based on that, I also want to talk about, you know, what should leaders be thinking about in terms of accessibility as part of their like customer experience and not just the technical side and the checklist of it.
213
00:20:52.728 --> 00:20:53.788
Yeah.
214
00:20:54.408 --> 00:21:09.771
One thing that I like to talk about, which I think also is not talked about a lot, is again, thinking about accessibility as part of the marketing tech stack, not as just a part of maybe a compliance organization.
215
00:21:10.392 --> 00:21:18.693
And the reason I say that is, let's say that accessibility ends up being 2% to 5% of your overall marketing budget.
216
00:21:19.753 --> 00:21:22.074
Investing in digital accessibility there,
217
00:21:22.794 --> 00:21:28.840
I think then accelerate and compounds the results you then get from your other investments.
218
00:21:28.860 --> 00:21:37.368
So like year over year, that's what every marketer is thinking about is how do I, without investing more, how do I improve my conversion rates?
219
00:21:37.528 --> 00:21:42.412
How do I get more out of the audience and the people who are already coming to my site?
220
00:21:42.432 --> 00:21:48.298
And so that's not only optimizing your paid efforts, but also your website and doing tests there.
221
00:21:48.798 --> 00:21:55.703
And so as you make that site accessible, again, it improves your SEO and your AEO and GEO.
222
00:21:55.723 --> 00:21:57.764
It improves the user experience.
223
00:21:57.844 --> 00:22:03.428
It improves hopefully the flow and the conversion paths that you have.
224
00:22:03.969 --> 00:22:17.438
And so I like to kind of think about that small investment as part of the tech stack that makes the rest of your investment even more efficient and not having to invest more to increase your revenue or whatever goals that you might have.
225
00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:23.101
Yes, just making it easy because, I mean, marketing teams have a lot to think about, right?
226
00:22:23.141 --> 00:22:27.843
I mean, as we talked about SEO, paid media, email, social, and the list goes on, right?
227
00:22:28.263 --> 00:22:33.625
What are simple things that marketers can do right away to make their content more accessible?
228
00:22:33.665 --> 00:22:39.928
Because, you know, as I introduced you, I know that you do a lot of the marketing as well, you know, in email marketing, you know, social.
229
00:22:39.968 --> 00:22:44.430
And how does and how should accessibility show up within these channels?
230
00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:45.130
Yeah.
231
00:22:45.790 --> 00:22:49.452
So we do a yearly digital accessibility index.
232
00:22:49.492 --> 00:22:56.314
We just released the 2026 version where we scan, this year we scanned 166,000 web pages.
233
00:22:57.314 --> 00:22:58.334
And is that at random?
234
00:22:59.115 --> 00:22:59.335
Yes.
235
00:22:59.535 --> 00:23:08.718
And well, it's across mostly enterprise, but a little bit market and SMB did also in the EU this year to kind of get a global perspective.
236
00:23:09.378 --> 00:23:12.219
Are there laws in EU similar to ours?
237
00:23:12.883 --> 00:23:17.286
Yes, in fact, they just passed a law last year called the European Accessibility Act.
238
00:23:18.007 --> 00:23:27.714
We just hit the one-year mark of that actually in June, which is a very expansive digital accessibility act, essentially like the ADA, but digital.
239
00:23:28.255 --> 00:23:33.119
And so it's actually a pretty landmark bill.
240
00:23:34.620 --> 00:23:36.001
They've just kind of started...
241
00:23:37.104 --> 00:23:46.456
The challenge with it is it's a country by country in terms of how they approach it and how they get companies to follow it.
242
00:23:47.037 --> 00:23:51.022
And it took a lot of the countries like a year to figure out, all right, what is our way?
243
00:23:51.162 --> 00:23:51.943
Are we going to find?
244
00:23:52.023 --> 00:23:53.445
Are we going to actually sue?
245
00:23:53.485 --> 00:23:53.965
Things like that.
246
00:23:54.526 --> 00:23:58.689
But we're seeing France, Italy, Germany really starting to ramp up enforcement of this.
247
00:23:58.729 --> 00:24:03.013
So the thing that's important there is that's not just a European business.
248
00:24:03.053 --> 00:24:09.678
If you're a U.S. business with customers in the EU, that applies to your business as well.
249
00:24:09.718 --> 00:24:11.900
So, yeah, very important call out.
250
00:24:12.260 --> 00:24:20.947
So in terms of like what kind of business do to get ahead to, you know, it's helpful to have the technology like I talked about earlier.
251
00:24:21.127 --> 00:24:25.448
that fixes things that slip through, but how do you actually have fewer things slip through?
252
00:24:25.488 --> 00:24:30.769
So in that report that we publish, it's been the same three top three issues every year.
253
00:24:31.329 --> 00:24:34.170
First is image descriptions, the alt text there.
254
00:24:34.590 --> 00:24:41.551
Just with the speed, again, of the internet and trying to get things live, a lot of times they're either blank or they're not descriptive enough.
255
00:24:42.012 --> 00:24:47.713
And so, again, a person using a screen reader who's trying to shop for a new shirt, if it says...
256
00:24:48.833 --> 00:24:54.116
soft cotton v-neck with three inch sleeves, bright yellow.
257
00:24:54.456 --> 00:24:57.657
That's a good description as opposed to t-shirt, picture one.
258
00:24:58.518 --> 00:25:00.799
The second is link description.
259
00:25:00.899 --> 00:25:13.265
So similarly, as I'm trying to navigate through a site as a blind person, if that link says read more or click here or continue on, not helpful.
260
00:25:13.285 --> 00:25:14.345
I don't know where I'm going.
261
00:25:14.405 --> 00:25:15.566
I don't know if I click that.
262
00:25:16.192 --> 00:25:22.497
That's the type of stuff that causes people with disabilities so much extra time because they're clicking through a site, trying to figure out where they should go.
263
00:25:23.458 --> 00:25:31.365
Those are the big two, which again, in your planning and your building are very easy to ensure that you're doing that right.
264
00:25:31.885 --> 00:25:36.850
The third one is big because it's often a conversion bucket, which is form fields.
265
00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:39.552
And again, it's the same thing, underlying code.
266
00:25:40.473 --> 00:25:55.120
in your shipping form, in your contact desk form, in your help desk form even, and you're signing up for a newsletter, if those fields aren't clear in the backend to a screen reader, I don't know where I put my first name, I don't know what box there is.
267
00:25:55.640 --> 00:25:57.641
Sometimes those will be filled out, but then,
268
00:25:58.562 --> 00:26:00.804
I'll do something wrong and an error box will pop up.
269
00:26:00.824 --> 00:26:05.027
Well, the error box might not actually have the right context behind it.
270
00:26:05.047 --> 00:26:07.208
So I then don't know where to go from there.
271
00:26:07.268 --> 00:26:16.395
So form fields are a big one because that hits, I think it was like 50% of pages had a form with some sort of issue on it.
272
00:26:16.895 --> 00:26:18.616
And so that's a conversion path.
273
00:26:18.656 --> 00:26:27.523
Like that is a real one that dings you is if you've got forms there, but if companies can start with like those three things and make sure that that's part of their, um,
274
00:26:28.563 --> 00:26:31.705
process, then that's going to take care of so many things.
275
00:26:32.005 --> 00:26:40.008
Those are also like the top 60% of things included in those lawsuits by like serial plaintiffs, because they're not, those are the common things.
276
00:26:40.468 --> 00:26:46.871
And so if you have those taken care of, again, you're less likely to be hit by a serial plaintiff because they run a scan on your site.
277
00:26:47.431 --> 00:26:49.051
They see that you're pretty good.
278
00:26:49.071 --> 00:26:52.733
And there I go, we'll go find somebody who's in the worst shape.
279
00:26:53.413 --> 00:26:55.534
Yeah, who is basically not doing anything.
280
00:26:55.794 --> 00:26:56.234
Exactly.
281
00:26:56.334 --> 00:26:58.754
And that becomes an empty settlement for them.
282
00:26:59.455 --> 00:27:00.075
Yeah, yeah.
283
00:27:00.455 --> 00:27:11.157
So I want to talk about design and better storytelling in twofold, but let's dig into the design aspect of things.
284
00:27:11.237 --> 00:27:17.599
One of your suggested topics is inclusive design, but I want to really unpack that and what that actually means.
285
00:27:19.159 --> 00:27:21.440
Yeah, so inclusive design is really,
286
00:27:22.360 --> 00:27:29.029
from the start, thinking about people with disabilities and- Is it just wider space?
287
00:27:29.149 --> 00:27:29.470
Is it-
288
00:27:30.173 --> 00:27:46.381
Yeah, a lot of it is like color contrast, it's divided, which is actually, as we look at the top five issues, that's another one of them is just not having the right color contrast, not only for people with disabilities, but like we have a increasingly aging population as well.
289
00:27:46.501 --> 00:27:53.584
And as people get older, that color contrast actually matters quite a bit in how they read and are able to consume content.
290
00:27:54.445 --> 00:27:58.427
So that's part of it, but it's also just part of the,
291
00:27:59.608 --> 00:28:17.735
the designing of again, your conversion flows and your page flows is, is this content consumable in all technologies, not just somebody looking through a browser, but again, if they're tabbing through, can they get through the content?
292
00:28:17.776 --> 00:28:25.679
So a lot of times design is very much like, let me wow you with interactivity and like things moving around.
293
00:28:25.699 --> 00:28:28.100
At the end of the day, does that,
294
00:28:28.860 --> 00:28:29.862
tell the right story?
295
00:28:29.983 --> 00:28:35.815
Does that make it more clear again, what value you provide and
296
00:28:36.154 --> 00:28:41.517
how that does fit into various segments and ICPs who are coming to your site.
297
00:28:41.897 --> 00:28:52.423
So thinking about and wrapping accessibility into the planning stage isn't just a color or text exercise, although that is part of it.
298
00:28:52.963 --> 00:28:57.766
It really is thinking about the experience from multiple points of view.
299
00:28:57.866 --> 00:29:03.749
So as another example, a team who's thinking about inclusive design, in addition to saying, all right,
300
00:29:04.085 --> 00:29:12.628
we have this new site we're rolling out, let's do some qualitative interviews with the top three industries that we have and the top two personas.
301
00:29:13.068 --> 00:29:18.889
They also might now say, okay, let's bring in a person with a disability and have them go through this experience as well.
302
00:29:19.009 --> 00:29:20.130
And what's their feedback?
303
00:29:20.170 --> 00:29:27.072
So training people with disabilities as well as like a segment that you need to ask and check with the people.
304
00:29:27.652 --> 00:29:48.217
how it's working as you're building it, that makes it much easier to develop those best practices, to build it in a way, again, that works for everybody, as opposed to bolting it on after the fact where there's some things you can do, but you can't create that ideal experience as if you're building it from the get-go.
305
00:29:48.797 --> 00:29:50.018
The get-go and the ground up.
306
00:29:50.139 --> 00:29:50.919
Very interesting.
307
00:29:51.880 --> 00:29:56.025
You also have a strong background in storytelling as I introduced you.
308
00:29:56.445 --> 00:30:01.151
How does accessibility change that way we think about digital storytelling?
309
00:30:01.171 --> 00:30:02.913
Yeah.
310
00:30:04.348 --> 00:30:05.349
There's probably two things.
311
00:30:06.229 --> 00:30:18.738
And I talked with about one of them, which is just the idea of simplicity and making the story that you're telling resonate clearly with the audience.
312
00:30:18.878 --> 00:30:22.720
I think that so many companies try to be overly clever.
313
00:30:24.365 --> 00:30:31.592
they throw in jargon that makes it sound like they're experts in the industry, but at the end of the day, it doesn't actually differentiate them.
314
00:30:32.152 --> 00:30:44.323
So to me, working in accessibility has helped me really narrow in as I'm building our own website, are we just saying the most clear,
315
00:30:46.225 --> 00:30:51.990
differentiated message that we can, so that anybody can understand it.
316
00:30:52.570 --> 00:30:57.234
And the more that we've done that, it's like taking us some time to kind of get through that.
317
00:30:57.294 --> 00:31:01.297
And it shows you that maybe we don't know our values or we don't know some of those,
318
00:31:01.777 --> 00:31:03.758
pain points as well as we should.
319
00:31:04.778 --> 00:31:12.180
But once you get to them simply, it's just like a light bulb switches and I think the site becomes instantly more usable.
320
00:31:13.140 --> 00:31:30.225
That doesn't mean you can't be clever, you can't be pithy, but I think when you focus on the clarity and the simple message first, your story is able to come out and be more memorable with all the noise, like you said at the top, that we're dealing with now as marketers, but also just as people.
321
00:31:31.565 --> 00:31:42.411
The other thing that it's really taught me, there was an interesting campaign that I came across after I joined Audio, I called Assume That I Can, which is of this person with Down syndrome.
322
00:31:42.931 --> 00:31:52.216
And it's this really compelling video of her in various situations in her life where people were like, oh, you can't do that.
323
00:31:52.536 --> 00:31:55.138
So it was like going out and drinking with friends.
324
00:31:55.318 --> 00:31:57.219
It was dancing at the prom.
325
00:31:57.959 --> 00:31:58.599
things like that.
326
00:31:59.119 --> 00:32:05.521
And she said, don't let your reality or your perception of reality become my reality.
327
00:32:05.561 --> 00:32:06.441
Let me dictate.
328
00:32:07.181 --> 00:32:16.183
And that was such a great campaign, not only because it had a great message and made people think differently, but it brought people into the story.
329
00:32:16.963 --> 00:32:23.445
And to me, that was also kind of an aha because on the one side of accessibility,
330
00:32:24.245 --> 00:32:27.107
I'd say almost everybody I talk to is like, yeah, that makes sense.
331
00:32:27.607 --> 00:32:29.949
Like we should be inclusive.
332
00:32:29.969 --> 00:32:32.431
We should build a site that everybody can use.
333
00:32:33.151 --> 00:32:43.738
But then they go to their next meeting and the budget talks happen and the priorities hit and that we should do this quickly slides down.
334
00:32:43.758 --> 00:32:50.223
So I think in storytelling, in addition to that, like do good message, it's also bringing people together.
335
00:32:50.823 --> 00:33:00.554
into the story that you're telling and not just having them experience a marketing message or experience a story, but like put them in it, make them feel a part of it.
336
00:33:01.335 --> 00:33:04.338
And in our case, that means helping them feel how,
337
00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:14.508
the space of digital accessibility helps our business, helps those same priorities that might be deprioritizing accessibility.
338
00:33:15.589 --> 00:33:21.354
But it really is an illumination that there are so many misconceptions out there.
339
00:33:22.134 --> 00:33:24.276
And so I think the more marketers are,
340
00:33:25.217 --> 00:33:30.780
in whatever industry they're in, can tackle those misconceptions, top three misconceptions.
341
00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:38.283
I think that's where people start to change the way they think and change the way they act towards a product, a service, or a company.
342
00:33:40.262 --> 00:33:42.103
Very interesting also on that front.
343
00:33:42.503 --> 00:33:55.129
That, moving away from that a little bit and talking more about leadership buy-in and marketing accessibility practical, who inside the company should own the digital accessibility?
344
00:33:55.189 --> 00:33:56.729
Is it the marketing department?
345
00:33:56.769 --> 00:33:57.430
Is it product?
346
00:33:57.490 --> 00:34:00.091
Is it web, which just folds up into marketing?
347
00:34:00.151 --> 00:34:00.831
Is it legal?
348
00:34:02.632 --> 00:34:03.792
Where does this usually sit?
349
00:34:04.012 --> 00:34:09.695
And if it doesn't sit in a company, let's talk about the best place that it should be sitting.
350
00:34:10.657 --> 00:34:26.584
This sounds a little bit like a kind of easy answer, but it's wherever in that company it's going to have the most momentum and the most sustained prioritization, that's where it should sit.
351
00:34:27.384 --> 00:34:29.725
Because you need a champion, you need somebody who is going to push it.
352
00:34:30.926 --> 00:34:34.067
You're going to need somebody who can make it a collaborative effort because
353
00:34:34.727 --> 00:34:40.710
even if it's owned in marketing, there is going to be the developer impact.
354
00:34:40.730 --> 00:34:46.312
There is going to be the compliance and legal impact as maybe a suit comes forward.
355
00:34:46.472 --> 00:34:49.373
They want to know that they're protected as much as possible.
356
00:34:49.393 --> 00:34:53.555
I think one is just identifying where does accessibility have the most chance.
357
00:34:54.315 --> 00:35:01.358
Like I mentioned in the past, it was very largely a legal or a compliance team who was coming in saying, we need to do this.
358
00:35:01.938 --> 00:35:25.058
think that does still make sense but like i said we are seeing more and more where the marketers are the ones driving that discussion because they own the website or some product teams that might own the website they're owning it as well because they recognize that as they try to shift accessibility left from being that bolt-on to how do we work this into our sprints how do we work into our design and development processes
359
00:35:26.118 --> 00:35:28.600
it makes sense to be owned on those teams.
360
00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:46.333
So again, it's a bit of a wherever it makes sense, but so many businesses struggle with accessibility and, or they treat it as a one-time thing, like let's do it and then we're good, which is one of the worst approaches you can hire, another misconception.
361
00:35:47.493 --> 00:35:49.313
So it really is like, where's the champion?
362
00:35:50.174 --> 00:35:52.414
Where's the momentum going to come from?
363
00:35:52.454 --> 00:35:56.115
And then let's find that leader, get that leader excited.
364
00:35:56.175 --> 00:36:01.676
And we often are providing them with some of the enablement so they can sell it within their organization.
365
00:36:02.376 --> 00:36:03.436
Yeah.
366
00:36:04.156 --> 00:36:13.598
How can marketers make the business case for accessibility to leadership if they don't have it and they really will need to drive it home, you know?
367
00:36:14.212 --> 00:36:22.825
Yeah, I think we've seen on our end, it really does come down to the business impact because brands want to do the right thing.
368
00:36:23.526 --> 00:36:27.032
They, you know, want to, again, change.
369
00:36:27.712 --> 00:36:28.912
be inclusive where they can.
370
00:36:28.932 --> 00:36:35.395
But at the end of the day, if they can't put an ROI around that, it becomes easily de-prioritized.
371
00:36:35.895 --> 00:36:56.223
And so, uh, as we help businesses see the various impacts to conversion rate, uh, optimization to, um, loyalty and potential customer retention, the SEO benefits and, uh, AEO and GEO, that helps take a story that is just a, we should do this at some point to, uh,
372
00:36:56.748 --> 00:36:59.543
All right, the faster we can do this actually will impact
373
00:37:00.051 --> 00:37:05.315
our other marketing goals and we help them build those stories and put more ROI.
374
00:37:05.836 --> 00:37:15.304
And it's tough, like you can't have a direct ROI with I installed or started working with accessibility and saw X, Y, and Z directly happen.
375
00:37:16.225 --> 00:37:28.415
But we definitely see businesses that have seen increased retention, increased sales, better traffic from SEO, and we build that into the story that we're telling.
376
00:37:30.872 --> 00:37:38.257
I'm really curious because I'm a data analytics person, you know, just as a marketer, and I focus a lot on data and my trust moves are based on data.
377
00:37:38.317 --> 00:37:40.839
So I don't do anything unless the data is telling me.
378
00:37:41.279 --> 00:37:57.551
So what metrics and signals should companies pay attention to when improving accessibility or to be able to tell leadership, this is how our website is performing based on the hits that we're getting for the one and four that are hitting our site?
379
00:37:57.889 --> 00:37:58.089
Yeah.
380
00:37:58.690 --> 00:38:07.524
So that one's also a little bit tough because it's, you don't necessarily track who's visiting your site with a disability for obvious reasons, right?
381
00:38:09.330 --> 00:38:21.934
But the first area I would say is actually the compliance angle that we talked about before, which is you should have a dashboard that is showing what level of risk do you have at the moment.
382
00:38:21.974 --> 00:38:32.038
You kind of hinted earlier accurately that your site's never going to be 100% compliant, but you can get as close as possible to that if you're doing things right.
383
00:38:32.058 --> 00:38:33.278
And so I think that's step one is
384
00:38:33.850 --> 00:38:37.374
have some sort of dashboard that is showing you across your site.
385
00:38:37.734 --> 00:38:38.695
How many issues do you have?
386
00:38:38.796 --> 00:38:40.397
What gaps do you have?
387
00:38:40.718 --> 00:38:41.318
What are they?
388
00:38:41.338 --> 00:38:43.381
And how do you fix them in the near future?
389
00:38:44.362 --> 00:38:47.686
Some companies have like an arbitrary accessibility score.
390
00:38:47.746 --> 00:38:50.589
That's like, hey, your accessibility is 88 out of 100.
391
00:38:50.609 --> 00:38:50.749
Yeah.
392
00:38:51.950 --> 00:38:55.533
But that's just like an internal diagnostic that they've built.
393
00:38:55.553 --> 00:38:57.194
So what does it tell you?
394
00:38:57.214 --> 00:38:57.794
Not a lot.
395
00:38:58.154 --> 00:39:08.261
So I think if you can, whether it's through your tool or through your own internal reporting, build accessibility conformance and accessibility compliance into some of that reporting.
396
00:39:08.642 --> 00:39:12.604
That helps keep you safe from a compliance perspective.
397
00:39:12.744 --> 00:39:16.167
Or, again, at least know what your risk is and understand that, hey, right.
398
00:39:16.767 --> 00:39:23.093
20% of my pages have issues we need to fix or I'm okay with that level of risk at the moment.
399
00:39:24.194 --> 00:39:24.734
I love that.
400
00:39:24.895 --> 00:39:25.315
Yeah.
401
00:39:25.795 --> 00:39:27.237
So that's the conformance angle.
402
00:39:28.197 --> 00:39:38.707
Does your, and not to interrupt you, does your app track when somebody like switches it on and all that when they arrive on the site or is it something that's always on?
403
00:39:39.307 --> 00:39:39.988
It's always on.
404
00:39:40.048 --> 00:39:40.268
So,
405
00:39:41.795 --> 00:39:45.879
we strongly believe accessibly, it shouldn't be something that somebody turns on.
406
00:39:45.899 --> 00:39:49.884
It should be, they should be able to access an accessible site from the beginning.
407
00:39:49.964 --> 00:40:00.195
So the way it works is our automation, which again is about 50% of the issues, the human auditors do the other half, that automation,
408
00:40:01.220 --> 00:40:09.190
when the page loads, we'll review the issues, find the issues that are still in the source code, make those fixes.
409
00:40:09.250 --> 00:40:20.083
And so the code that is being displayed to that end user, whether I'm visually seeing it or someone's using an assistive technology, is the newly updated accessible code.
410
00:40:20.964 --> 00:40:24.727
So that's always on, that runs 24 seven, that runs on every page.
411
00:40:25.187 --> 00:40:31.231
And so that it ensures that somebody who's visiting does get that accessible experience.
412
00:40:32.552 --> 00:40:39.576
There are some companies that do have it as an opt-in and yeah, we just think that's a, a not discrimination.
413
00:40:40.136 --> 00:40:40.337
Yeah.
414
00:40:40.357 --> 00:40:43.278
And to a degree it also means you have to self-identify.
415
00:40:44.359 --> 00:40:44.719
Sure.
416
00:40:44.739 --> 00:40:46.441
So it's discrimination at the end of the day.
417
00:40:46.761 --> 00:40:47.221
Yeah, exactly.
418
00:40:48.242 --> 00:40:48.422
Um,
419
00:40:49.551 --> 00:40:51.032
without having to bend around it.
420
00:40:53.173 --> 00:41:01.418
So for practical takeaways for a small business owner listening, what is one accessibility improvement they can make this week other than signing up to your platform?
421
00:41:02.697 --> 00:41:11.941
So I think one is, which is not maybe necessarily executing something, but I would get a free site scanner.
422
00:41:12.141 --> 00:41:12.881
Audio has one.
423
00:41:13.061 --> 00:41:14.162
There's other tools out there.
424
00:41:15.262 --> 00:41:18.484
You can just search free website accessibility scanner.
425
00:41:19.764 --> 00:41:21.085
That's really helpful because...
426
00:41:21.745 --> 00:41:22.946
That gives you information.
427
00:41:23.426 --> 00:41:27.289
I think a lot of people are surprised to see how many accessibility issues exist.
428
00:41:28.190 --> 00:41:35.575
I don't think I mentioned it, but what we found in our Accessibility Index this year is the average webpage had 62 accessibility issues.
429
00:41:35.595 --> 00:41:36.575
So not website.
430
00:41:37.036 --> 00:41:38.557
Every webpage had 62 issues.
431
00:41:39.037 --> 00:41:41.720
So generally when I tell people that they'll, okay, sure.
432
00:41:41.841 --> 00:41:44.744
And they'll go run it and then they'll email me like, holy cow.
433
00:41:44.764 --> 00:41:46.767
Like I had so many more than I expected.
434
00:41:46.787 --> 00:41:51.893
So I think that is the helpful first step is just like, where are you currently?
435
00:41:52.373 --> 00:41:55.497
And again, that scanner is only measuring what a tool is.
436
00:41:55.863 --> 00:41:59.226
can measure, so there's still 50% more than an auditor.
437
00:41:59.266 --> 00:42:04.310
So that number actually kind of under inflates what your real number is.
438
00:42:04.610 --> 00:42:05.111
So start there.
439
00:42:05.571 --> 00:42:08.874
Secondly, I think recognizing that
440
00:42:09.667 --> 00:42:11.708
There's a lot to understand, all right?
441
00:42:11.768 --> 00:42:14.109
There's like all the WCAG criteria.
442
00:42:14.829 --> 00:42:16.830
Just don't get overwhelmed, just start somewhere.
443
00:42:16.870 --> 00:42:25.593
So if it's the images, the text and the forms that as you're building are the first three places you can focus, that is gonna get you
444
00:42:26.553 --> 00:42:30.156
so far better than anybody else who's doing nothing.
445
00:42:30.176 --> 00:42:46.490
Um, so I would say that, uh, those alt texts, the link descriptions and make sure your form fields are built appropriately is really going to set you up to have a strong foundation to then decide, all right, where do I want to prioritize next in the future?
446
00:42:47.171 --> 00:42:47.371
Yeah.
447
00:42:48.052 --> 00:42:54.317
Out of everything that we've discussed, what is the biggest opportunity businesses have if they actually take accessibility seriously?
448
00:42:55.413 --> 00:43:00.755
Honestly, I think it's, it is a differentiator with other businesses.
449
00:43:00.835 --> 00:43:17.222
So I think more and more again with lawsuits, with international and state led regulations becoming more and more frequent, we're going to get to a point where everybody has to do it for one reason or another.
450
00:43:17.242 --> 00:43:19.103
And so the sooner you can do that,
451
00:43:20.597 --> 00:43:23.359
that again opens up new audiences for you.
452
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:30.265
It opens up new audiences who are more loyal and better advocates of your brand.
453
00:43:30.285 --> 00:43:38.933
So it really becomes a way to get ahead of your competition in a way that they're not even thinking about or practicing.
454
00:43:39.873 --> 00:43:47.360
And so I do think it is something that for companies who get ahead of it, they really are differentiating themselves in a different way.
455
00:43:47.957 --> 00:44:02.858
If that ties into your brand, like that's a great thing to add to your brand messaging and your reputation marketing as well as the idea of being an inclusive brand that, you know, builds its sites and its digital content for everybody.
456
00:44:03.695 --> 00:44:04.135
I love it.
457
00:44:04.295 --> 00:44:04.696
I love it.
458
00:44:05.496 --> 00:44:09.778
This has been super, super, super helpful, Mike, in terms of digging into all the details.
459
00:44:09.798 --> 00:44:11.319
So I really appreciate it.
460
00:44:11.379 --> 00:44:15.921
We have a tradition before we let you go where we where we close out with rapid fire.
461
00:44:16.822 --> 00:44:19.483
So we ask one myth, one habit and one word.
462
00:44:19.883 --> 00:44:22.244
So whatever comes to mind, just fire off.
463
00:44:23.505 --> 00:44:27.127
One myth about digital accessibility that businesses need to stop believing.
464
00:44:29.935 --> 00:44:34.256
People with disabilities don't use my product or service.
465
00:44:35.516 --> 00:44:35.776
I know.
466
00:44:35.896 --> 00:44:48.839
And I, and I love that we talked about this early on in the beginning, because the person that you were talking to had this aha moment of like, oh my gosh, I could open up a completely different stream of, you know, an audience if I just actually thought about it.
467
00:44:48.979 --> 00:44:59.141
And it is kind of interesting how we have unconsciously, I want to say, siloed, uh, these folks out and, and that needs to change going forward.
468
00:45:00.444 --> 00:45:06.886
One habit every marketer should build to make their work more inclusive.
469
00:45:07.586 --> 00:45:25.170
Finding stories outside of marketing or the world that you work in and finding ways to bring those stories into your work to differentiate the way that you talk about your business.
470
00:45:27.358 --> 00:45:30.341
What's one word that defines the future of accessible marketing?
471
00:45:32.403 --> 00:45:32.903
AI.
472
00:45:35.325 --> 00:45:35.746
Very good.
473
00:45:37.327 --> 00:45:38.749
Mike, I love this conversation.
474
00:45:38.769 --> 00:45:40.050
I think it's been great.
475
00:45:40.190 --> 00:45:46.836
You know, accessibility is one of those areas in marketing that often gets pushed, as we have continuously talked about this.
476
00:45:47.557 --> 00:45:48.838
And it needs to...
477
00:45:49.389 --> 00:45:54.813
really start to move into the forefront because people assume it's too technical, it's too expensive.
478
00:45:55.174 --> 00:46:03.300
As I mentioned earlier, they think that I'm only gonna be 100% accessible if I build this from the ground up versus actually using companies like AudioEye, like yours.
479
00:46:03.820 --> 00:46:17.431
So this has been extremely eye-opening to really talk through it, especially from the legal standpoint, knowing that you're never gonna be at 100% compliant, but how can we at least make you X% compliant
480
00:46:18.832 --> 00:46:28.596
to ensure that you don't get caught in the web of any legal issues and that you are supporting those that could potentially be, you know, a customer of yours.
481
00:46:28.696 --> 00:46:31.377
So thank you so much for joining me on this conversation.
482
00:46:31.437 --> 00:46:32.317
I truly enjoyed it.
483
00:46:32.737 --> 00:46:33.197
Yeah, me too.
484
00:46:33.217 --> 00:46:33.758
I appreciate it.
485
00:46:34.898 --> 00:46:38.920
And we'll list all of Mike's information below, all the details for the website.
486
00:46:39.040 --> 00:46:42.021
So please feel free to check it out for any questions that you have.
487
00:46:42.061 --> 00:46:42.781
So thank you again.
488
00:46:53.906 --> 00:46:53.926
.
1
00:00:00.846 --> 00:00:03.229
This is Marketing Uncomplicated.
2
00:00:03.249 --> 00:00:06.213
All right, everybody.
3
00:00:06.313 --> 00:00:07.595
Today, I'm joined by Mark Bates.
4
00:00:08.748 --> 00:00:13.511
I said your first and your last name, Mark, as Mike Barton, but we'll start again.
5
00:00:13.971 --> 00:00:15.592
Hi everybody and welcome back to the show.
6
00:00:15.652 --> 00:00:22.695
Today I am joined by Mike Barton, a marketing and communications leader dedicated to making the internet more accessible for all.
7
00:00:23.156 --> 00:00:32.941
Mike is the Vice President of Corporate Communication and Content Marketing at AudioEye, where he leads strategy across blogs, social media, PR, video and digital storytelling.
8
00:00:33.341 --> 00:00:40.863
Before that, he worked at Adobe shaping content and executive messaging across Experience Cloud, Creative Cloud, Enterprise, and Document Cloud.
9
00:00:41.283 --> 00:00:47.364
What I love about this conversation is that Mike sits at the intersection of marketing, storytelling, accessibility, and business growth.
10
00:00:47.764 --> 00:00:59.147
Today, we're going to uncomplicate what digital accessibility actually means, why it matters for marketers, how inclusive digital experiences help businesses grow, and why accessibility should not be treated
11
00:00:59.607 --> 00:01:01.809
as an afterthought, which I completely agree with.
12
00:01:01.909 --> 00:01:02.849
Mike, welcome to the show.
13
00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:03.770
It's so good to have you.
14
00:01:03.790 --> 00:01:05.051
Good to be here.
15
00:01:05.091 --> 00:01:05.772
Thanks for having me.
16
00:01:06.612 --> 00:01:06.972
Yeah.
17
00:01:07.032 --> 00:01:09.134
So let's just dive right in.
18
00:01:10.055 --> 00:01:14.017
So let's talk about what digital accessibility really means.
19
00:01:14.037 --> 00:01:15.138
So let's start simple.
20
00:01:15.378 --> 00:01:19.221
What is digital accessibility and why should every business understand it?
21
00:01:19.301 --> 00:01:21.863
As well as marketers help and support their business.
22
00:01:22.772 --> 00:01:37.037
Yeah, so it's a great question at its base, essentially digital accessibility means that anybody can use the digital world, a website, an app, et cetera, and a lot of people, you know, while they're familiar with physical world.
23
00:01:37.517 --> 00:01:42.799
Accessibility, you know, parking spots, automatic doors, bars and bathrooms and things like that.
24
00:01:43.660 --> 00:01:45.961
Digital accessibility is that digital equivalent.
25
00:01:45.981 --> 00:02:03.409
It means that if I'm a blind person who uses a screen reader, which literally reads the code of the page and tells them the headers and the text and the image descriptions, that means that that person can go shopping just as I would as a sighted person and be able to accomplish their goals.
26
00:02:04.009 --> 00:02:06.030
And it's something that unfortunately,
27
00:02:06.550 --> 00:02:15.323
As I've come into the accessibility space, just a lot of businesses and marketers haven't heard about it, haven't thought about it in their marketing.
28
00:02:15.343 --> 00:02:20.110
And so I think it's a really important message to get out there and talk about with other marketers.
29
00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:35.366
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that in terms of, you know, how a lot of people haven't heard about it, because I think for a really long time, it was set up that if you were a government or a government entity, this was something that was like, you had to have it on.
30
00:02:36.346 --> 00:02:37.707
You know, no questions asked.
31
00:02:38.426 --> 00:02:42.091
But then there was gray areas in terms of who needed it, who didn't need it.
32
00:02:42.131 --> 00:02:53.666
And obviously as a user who would need the accessibility, you would think, why would I be removed from being able to order pizza online, being able to order clothing online or whatever it is, right?
33
00:02:54.626 --> 00:03:08.837
Talk to me a little bit about this gray area from a legal standpoint and everything that is on the internet and on the government pages and why we really should be focusing on ensuring that everything that we put out there digitally should be inclusive.
34
00:03:09.611 --> 00:03:25.041
Yeah, the reason that there's a little bit of gray area, and I think that gray area is quickly shrinking and becoming more black and white, is that when the Americans with Disabilities Act was written and signed into law in 1990, the internet wasn't a thing, right?
35
00:03:25.061 --> 00:03:34.668
So it focused exclusively on physical spaces and what businesses need to do to make their establishments accessible, physically accessible by all.
36
00:03:35.408 --> 00:03:37.329
So fast forward 10, 15, 20 years...
37
00:03:38.605 --> 00:03:41.206
we've gone completely digital.
38
00:03:41.286 --> 00:03:47.169
And in that time, the Americans with Disabilities Act has not been updated.
39
00:03:47.489 --> 00:04:06.059
So the courts have increasingly been the ones who, with that gray area, right, where it's actually not, again, written into it, have defined, okay, actually, if you, just as if you have a physical space, if you have a digital space where people can complete a checkout or can bank with you or, you know, insert,
40
00:04:06.879 --> 00:04:10.001
activity here, then that needs to be accessible.
41
00:04:10.201 --> 00:04:17.505
And we see that at the federal level with fines for companies who are not accessible.
42
00:04:18.225 --> 00:04:28.330
And we see it increasingly at the state level where states are really saying, hey, if you're going to sell goods and services to customers in our state, it needs to be accessible.
43
00:04:28.390 --> 00:04:31.392
And so a little bit of what you talked about where for government, it's been
44
00:04:32.532 --> 00:04:34.333
kind of a mandatory thing for years and years.
45
00:04:34.974 --> 00:04:42.057
A lot of these state governments are starting to say, hey, this makes sense for everybody, not just government interactions.
46
00:04:42.137 --> 00:04:58.026
And so we've seen lawsuits double over the last number of years as more and more consumers are recognizing, hey, in order to get some action here and be able to use a site, like unfortunately I have to put a lawsuit forward to get somebody to pay attention.
47
00:04:58.680 --> 00:04:59.221
Yeah, yeah.
48
00:04:59.622 --> 00:05:08.439
So I want to take that from a twofold standpoint, because I'm on this, I'm on the side that I think we, everyone needs to be making their website accessible, right?
49
00:05:08.839 --> 00:05:09.401
And then I'm on the
50
00:05:12.852 --> 00:05:22.300
There are lawyers and there are law firms out there that make this their job to find websites that don't have accessibility because they can gain traction and they can really make a good buck.
51
00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:22.921
Right.
52
00:05:23.681 --> 00:05:27.244
Uh, and unfortunately it's, it can be a little bit of a scheme, right.
53
00:05:27.364 --> 00:05:31.448
Which I've had, I've had one client that was hit really badly because number one.
54
00:05:31.972 --> 00:05:37.760
He refused to do that, and then he also refused to put cybersecurity, so he actually got hit double in the same year.
55
00:05:38.941 --> 00:05:49.555
So I want to talk a little bit about that and not maybe spend the majority of our conversation on this, but I think it's very important because a lot of business owners will basically say,
56
00:05:50.158 --> 00:06:15.158
know i'm not going to put the money towards this there's the concept of it cost me a lot of money to build out my website to be accessible and then on the flip side you have all of these other platforms outside of your company's platform that it's just like oh add our widget really simplistically but people still get slapped with lawsuits you know because it doesn't cover i mean look nobody's website is going to be 99 percent accessible um
57
00:06:16.359 --> 00:06:20.081
you know, even for people who don't need accessibility, something's going to happen, right?
58
00:06:20.541 --> 00:06:22.082
But I am twofold.
59
00:06:22.122 --> 00:06:26.864
I want to talk about the legal, the legalities and the lawsuits that are happening.
60
00:06:26.964 --> 00:06:42.071
And then these other platforms in comparison to your company and and how you guys have really sort of separated out what they didn't cover and what you guys are fully giving a business owner versus versus them, if that makes sense.
61
00:06:42.311 --> 00:06:43.532
Yeah, I know that was long winded.
62
00:06:44.562 --> 00:06:45.825
Yeah, a lot to unpack there.
63
00:06:45.845 --> 00:06:49.552
So I'll start with some of the legal stuff and then feel free to interrupt me if you want to
64
00:06:50.130 --> 00:06:51.511
go down the Pacific roads.
65
00:06:52.071 --> 00:07:00.214
But yeah, unfortunately the serial plaintiffs, as we call them, are a bit of a stain in the industry where they'll go out there.
66
00:07:00.634 --> 00:07:17.080
We did a litigation analysis last year and I think it was like 60 to 70% of suits that were brought were to small and medium businesses, mostly small, because again, these serial plaintiffs know that these businesses
67
00:07:17.500 --> 00:07:24.546
don't want to get into expensive litigation, they're probably more likely to settle for five or $10,000 and just be done with it.
68
00:07:25.187 --> 00:07:29.251
And unfortunately, because that is the reality, we see that more and more.
69
00:07:29.371 --> 00:07:35.276
So we do work with a lot of businesses to say like, hey, let's get your accessibility in place.
70
00:07:35.316 --> 00:07:40.220
It's going to be much less than the potential cost of fines.
71
00:07:40.741 --> 00:07:43.884
And so that's the kind of serial plaintiff angle.
72
00:07:44.745 --> 00:07:51.971
as we work with members of our disability community and talk to them, a lot of them will say like, I don't wanna sue as a first resort.
73
00:07:51.991 --> 00:07:54.614
Like my point is trying to engage with this company.
74
00:07:55.154 --> 00:07:58.277
And so they'll go to contact us, they'll go to the help desk, right?
75
00:07:58.317 --> 00:08:01.500
They'll make an effort to say like, hey, such and such is broken.
76
00:08:02.139 --> 00:08:03.140
can you help me fix it?
77
00:08:04.021 --> 00:08:07.464
Or can you help me buy this shirt that I really want to get right?
78
00:08:08.304 --> 00:08:17.052
And it's when they don't get responses, when they get kind of stonewalled, that then it's like, all right, do I need to have a lawsuit to force this?
79
00:08:17.092 --> 00:08:28.622
So I think that's maybe a best practice that is helpful for businesses is like, if people are reaching out to you, especially with disabilities who are having issues, like be reactive, be responsive and listen to them.
80
00:08:29.683 --> 00:08:36.088
Again, 99.9% of people with disabilities, again, just want to make the world accessible.
81
00:08:36.148 --> 00:08:43.934
And for future them or others who come in the future, they're just trying to make it so that they don't experience the same hassle.
82
00:08:43.974 --> 00:08:48.278
So I think when companies have the right intention, they're doing something about it.
83
00:08:48.798 --> 00:08:52.480
That alone minimizes your legal risk.
84
00:08:52.520 --> 00:08:55.923
And then, you know, you talked a little bit about some of the different approaches.
85
00:08:56.243 --> 00:09:03.107
There's definitely approaches that will still leave you with high risk and others that really do protect you.
86
00:09:03.487 --> 00:09:11.953
So that again, to your point, you might not be a hundred percent compliant, but you're 80, 90% and that just reduces the chance of you getting sued dramatically.
87
00:09:13.208 --> 00:09:13.869
Yeah.
88
00:09:13.889 --> 00:09:18.151
So let's talk about the other platforms that are out there in comparison to yours.
89
00:09:19.232 --> 00:09:31.320
What makes your platform a lot more stringent in terms of protection and not receiving a lawsuit versus everyone else's?
90
00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:38.344
And what should a business owner or a marketer be looking for when they are looking at these different types of platforms?
91
00:09:38.744 --> 00:09:38.924
Yeah.
92
00:09:39.505 --> 00:09:41.586
So historically, there's
93
00:09:42.427 --> 00:09:45.510
Now, somewhat generalizing it, but it's a very accurate generalization.
94
00:09:45.550 --> 00:09:48.112
There was two ways of solving accessibility.
95
00:09:48.832 --> 00:09:58.701
One was, as you mentioned before, slap a widget, slap some code on your site, and let this widget make your site accessible as users come.
96
00:09:59.582 --> 00:10:03.725
The challenge with that, the benefit is it hits all your pages, right?
97
00:10:03.905 --> 00:10:05.787
You can immediately scale to your site.
98
00:10:06.443 --> 00:10:09.307
But the challenge is there's only so much automation can do.
99
00:10:09.507 --> 00:10:19.139
There's these criteria called the web content accessibility guidelines that need to be verified and in place for your site to be accessible.
100
00:10:19.859 --> 00:10:21.461
And automated tools can really only
101
00:10:22.122 --> 00:10:30.005
get to 50 60% of those because there's so much context when it comes to a lot of the content online and some of these rules.
102
00:10:30.665 --> 00:10:36.307
So despite claims from some companies as well in the past, like, hey, install this and you'll be compliant within minutes.
103
00:10:36.907 --> 00:10:37.748
That's just not the case.
104
00:10:37.808 --> 00:10:39.568
So that's kind of been one route.
105
00:10:39.608 --> 00:10:40.369
And those.
106
00:10:42.030 --> 00:10:47.491
You know, people who have installed those widgets and felt like they were safe because they were told.
107
00:10:48.151 --> 00:10:56.493
We actually found last year that about 50% of suits were to companies with a widget in place who were kind of surprised to find out, wait, I've got something.
108
00:10:56.533 --> 00:11:01.515
Why am I still getting sued in the route as automation only goes so far?
109
00:11:02.055 --> 00:11:02.875
So that was one approach.
110
00:11:03.475 --> 00:11:08.016
The other approach was consultants who would come in, they would audit your homepage.
111
00:11:12.277 --> 00:11:22.466
who use a screen reader, who use a keyboard only, and they'll go through your site, write down all the things that they found, and then they'd provide you a list of things to fix at source.
112
00:11:22.986 --> 00:11:29.392
That's super helpful because, you know, you've got the person going through, they can get through most of those criteria, if not all of them.
113
00:11:30.033 --> 00:11:32.675
But then the challenge there is it goes back to your dev team.
114
00:11:32.715 --> 00:11:34.797
So if your dev team is already slammed,
115
00:11:35.557 --> 00:11:40.278
They've got to work all these accessibility fixes into the schedule and their sprints.
116
00:11:40.918 --> 00:11:43.978
And by the time those fixes get there, maybe the site has changed.
117
00:11:44.219 --> 00:11:54.660
So that's the kind of challenge with the fix that source or the consulting approach is the web has dramatically sped up and there's so many more changes and so many more A-B tests and personalization.
118
00:11:54.700 --> 00:11:59.761
So the static kind of web pages of 10 years ago don't really exist anymore.
119
00:11:59.781 --> 00:12:04.282
So that becomes a speed and a cost problem because you're paying developers to maintain it.
120
00:12:05.282 --> 00:12:07.225
long-winded a bit to get those two approaches.
121
00:12:07.605 --> 00:12:12.531
What we believe is the right approach isn't this like, is it this or it's that, but it's bringing them together.
122
00:12:12.792 --> 00:12:23.205
And so we believe that for the scale of the internet, and again, the speed, especially with AI coding now, being an even greater accelerant in how websites are built and changed,
123
00:12:24.191 --> 00:12:26.913
you've got to have some sort of technology to scale.
124
00:12:27.153 --> 00:12:41.524
And so we do use automation as well as like a foundation, and we run it for those 50 to 60%, again, of issues that automation can accurately and reliably detect and then fix.
125
00:12:41.744 --> 00:12:44.586
And so that runs in the background, that does fix things.
126
00:12:44.946 --> 00:13:01.100
But then we supplement it and complement it with audits where we do have people with disabilities who will look at the homepage, the checkout flow, the key templates that somebody might have, and then write fixes for them that we can then deploy in that same automation.
127
00:13:01.140 --> 00:13:02.642
So it doesn't have to go to a developer.
128
00:13:02.662 --> 00:13:04.263
It doesn't have to work its way into a sprint.
129
00:13:04.826 --> 00:13:10.248
So then about 90% truly of your accessibility can be fixed.
130
00:13:10.748 --> 00:13:16.070
Again, it's coming through that automation layer, but it's supplemented with the people who are doing audits.
131
00:13:16.110 --> 00:13:27.735
So to us, that's really the solution of the future is this more comprehensive bringing both worlds together, taking the pros of each and kind of getting rid of the cons as well.
132
00:13:28.422 --> 00:13:29.323
Oh, no, absolutely.
133
00:13:29.643 --> 00:13:30.923
Uh, that, that was a great answer.
134
00:13:30.983 --> 00:13:31.844
So thank you so much.
135
00:13:32.384 --> 00:13:39.968
You've talked about accessibility as an up on the, as an untapped growth strategy, what does that actually mean?
136
00:13:41.049 --> 00:13:41.289
Yeah.
137
00:13:41.349 --> 00:13:51.654
So there's a few, uh, areas where, uh, as we, so a lot of times we'll come, uh, uh, work with businesses and it comes to the legal or the compliance team, right?
138
00:13:51.674 --> 00:13:57.137
Cause they've got a suit, uh, or a friend of a friend got sued and like, we need to, uh, look into this.
139
00:13:57.695 --> 00:14:05.499
But more and more, we're actually hearing from marketers and digital marketers, especially who are seeing that there's a number of business benefits.
140
00:14:05.519 --> 00:14:10.681
So the first one is SEO and also increasingly AEO and GEO.
141
00:14:10.701 --> 00:14:24.548
So answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization, where if a site is built accessibly, that means that you've got, you know, your headers and your tags all descriptive and
142
00:14:25.028 --> 00:14:29.289
and accurate for images and links as opposed to generic descriptions.
143
00:14:29.309 --> 00:14:30.990
You've got very specific.
144
00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:32.631
So again, that screen reader can read it.
145
00:14:33.271 --> 00:14:40.573
These are all things that make the site so much more usable by a person with a disability, but also for those crawlers that are coming in.
146
00:14:40.653 --> 00:14:46.535
It also makes it easier for them to scan the page to understand what the page content and context is about.
147
00:14:47.015 --> 00:14:48.916
And so there are impacts to SEO.
148
00:14:49.796 --> 00:14:54.338
We're also starting to see again with the answer engine optimization and how
149
00:14:55.398 --> 00:15:20.727
agents are crawling web pages that they'll often use that same kind of accessible code to understand the page and if an engine has a choice between an inaccessible page that's going to use more tokens and take more time and one that's very clear and it can get those answers quickly generally I think it's going to default to that easy one and provide those answers so we're seeing a
150
00:15:21.207 --> 00:15:24.971
impact from that organic area as well.
151
00:15:25.551 --> 00:15:39.225
And then from just a customer loyalty perspective, people with disabilities and their friends and family globally control 18 trillion in disposable income, which sounds like such a cool, that's such a huge number.
152
00:15:39.245 --> 00:15:42.528
But again, when you think about it, one in five people globally,
153
00:15:43.089 --> 00:15:47.594
have a disability of some sort, when you add in cognitive disabilities and things like that.
154
00:15:48.315 --> 00:15:59.628
And so, again, one thing that we hear from our community as we're talking to them is when they do find a company that's accessible and they do find a company that's prioritizing it,
155
00:16:00.529 --> 00:16:04.650
they want to go back because they've made that experience for them so much easier.
156
00:16:05.350 --> 00:16:07.130
We talk about customer experience in marketing.
157
00:16:07.190 --> 00:16:09.231
It's no different for people with disabilities.
158
00:16:09.251 --> 00:16:14.591
In fact, it's probably more important because it's so hard to find a good customer experience.
159
00:16:15.052 --> 00:16:22.133
And so not only did they become very loyal, but they're going to shout it to their very tight-knit friends and family.
160
00:16:22.573 --> 00:16:27.754
And family members want to support businesses that support their loved ones and their friends.
161
00:16:27.794 --> 00:16:28.994
And so we see loyalty.
162
00:16:29.554 --> 00:16:32.195
and customer retention being a big one as well.
163
00:16:32.255 --> 00:16:44.340
And third one I'll just share that it's kind of a little bit on the outskirts, but especially as you're thinking about people with cognitive disabilities and how do I write web content that is clear and understandable?
164
00:16:46.401 --> 00:16:50.723
So that's another one that I think is a lot of times underlooked that
165
00:16:51.543 --> 00:16:53.785
With accessibility, you want to avoid jargon.
166
00:16:54.286 --> 00:17:04.475
You want to write as simply and as focused as possible so that, again, when a person comes to a page, they know what you do, what you provide, what values, how you're different.
167
00:17:04.535 --> 00:17:06.617
It's really, unfortunately,
168
00:17:07.570 --> 00:17:11.773
Very common for businesses to just get stuck in like putting way too much on their page.
169
00:17:11.813 --> 00:17:14.895
So also an exercise if you're doing it right.
170
00:17:15.375 --> 00:17:21.419
And in addition to making it clear for somebody who has a cognitive disability, you're making that page stand out for everybody else.
171
00:17:21.479 --> 00:17:31.325
And that page, you know, share your message in a way that, again, anybody who's coming to your page can understand and know kind of what action they should take.
172
00:17:32.085 --> 00:17:33.046
Yeah, no, I love that.
173
00:17:33.106 --> 00:17:33.606
I love that.
174
00:17:34.027 --> 00:17:34.287
So yeah.
175
00:17:35.532 --> 00:17:41.454
Do you, well, we know that businesses underestimate how many people are impacted by poor digital accessibility.
176
00:17:41.854 --> 00:17:44.214
What is that percentage actually in the U.S.?
177
00:17:44.854 --> 00:17:46.255
In the U.S., it's one in four.
178
00:17:46.575 --> 00:17:56.538
So that takes into effect, again, cognitive disabilities, but blindness, hearing impairment, again, mobility.
179
00:17:56.618 --> 00:18:01.339
So somebody might not be able to use a mouse to navigate, so they just have to tab on a
180
00:18:02.443 --> 00:18:03.564
Uh, but yeah, it's one in four.
181
00:18:03.604 --> 00:18:14.650
In fact, when I came to, uh, audio, I, uh, as you mentioned in the intro, I've been at Adobe for over a decade, creating almost, almost every type of content possible.
182
00:18:15.311 --> 00:18:18.232
And I never once thought like, is this accessible?
183
00:18:18.292 --> 00:18:20.914
Is this PDF, uh, accessible to somebody?
184
00:18:20.954 --> 00:18:23.756
Is this interact super cool visual interactive experience?
185
00:18:24.136 --> 00:18:24.456
Yeah.
186
00:18:24.816 --> 00:18:27.778
Who's blind actually consume that and understand what's happening.
187
00:18:28.506 --> 00:18:35.068
And again, that was me and my team not saying that Adobe itself wasn't thinking about accessibility.
188
00:18:36.349 --> 00:18:37.769
But it was definitely a wake up call.
189
00:18:37.829 --> 00:18:48.893
And even when I came here, I would talk to small business owners, talk to one who owned like a supplement company and was just explaining digital accessibility.
190
00:18:48.933 --> 00:18:50.193
And he's like, oh, that's interesting.
191
00:18:50.233 --> 00:18:52.354
Doesn't really apply to me, but that's really interesting.
192
00:18:52.951 --> 00:18:55.132
I was like, well, hold on, let's talk about it for a second.
193
00:18:55.152 --> 00:18:59.875
Like, actually, why doesn't, why is that assumption real, right?
194
00:18:59.915 --> 00:19:04.878
Is that accurate that a person who's blind doesn't work out or doesn't need protein?
195
00:19:04.938 --> 00:19:07.419
And it's like, in fact, it might not even be a workout.
196
00:19:07.539 --> 00:19:10.541
You could have a new segment of people who just, you know, need,
197
00:19:11.300 --> 00:19:14.801
to improve their health and movement and things like that.
198
00:19:14.821 --> 00:19:20.923
And so he's like, oh, that's a really good point that like, it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
199
00:19:20.943 --> 00:19:26.065
That I say they're not an audience and thus I don't make it built for them.
200
00:19:26.085 --> 00:19:27.225
And so they don't become one.
201
00:19:27.245 --> 00:19:40.109
So more and more, I think people are starting to realize that, oh, not only are people with disabilities are there kind of more than I thought there were, this is not a minority, actually,
202
00:19:41.273 --> 00:19:45.878
there's audiences and segments that are available to me that I wasn't considering.
203
00:19:46.697 --> 00:19:47.277
Absolutely.
204
00:19:47.697 --> 00:20:04.665
And so we've touched a little bit on that and I want to take it further because a lot of people need to be thinking about, you know, not necessarily need to, but can be thinking about this as yet another arena for them to expand their ideal customer profile.
205
00:20:04.705 --> 00:20:11.408
Because most people think about their ideal customer profile, but there is no inclusivity as it relates to accessibility, right?
206
00:20:11.888 --> 00:20:19.050
Or maybe they do from adding captions to their videos and audio and so on and so forth.
207
00:20:19.090 --> 00:20:22.451
But are we really thinking beyond, right?
208
00:20:22.632 --> 00:20:32.955
As we're talking about, how would somebody for a workout app be able to access that app similarly to be able to have movement or whatever it is?
209
00:20:33.275 --> 00:20:35.296
And what kind of programs can we develop for them?
210
00:20:35.316 --> 00:20:36.836
Because it will open up a whole new world.
211
00:20:36.876 --> 00:20:38.717
I mean, if it's one in four, that's a lot of people.
212
00:20:40.358 --> 00:20:52.136
Um, so based on that, I also want to talk about, you know, what should leaders be thinking about in terms of accessibility as part of their like customer experience and not just the technical side and the checklist of it.
213
00:20:52.728 --> 00:20:53.788
Yeah.
214
00:20:54.408 --> 00:21:09.771
One thing that I like to talk about, which I think also is not talked about a lot, is again, thinking about accessibility as part of the marketing tech stack, not as just a part of maybe a compliance organization.
215
00:21:10.392 --> 00:21:18.693
And the reason I say that is, let's say that accessibility ends up being 2% to 5% of your overall marketing budget.
216
00:21:19.753 --> 00:21:22.074
Investing in digital accessibility there,
217
00:21:22.794 --> 00:21:28.840
I think then accelerate and compounds the results you then get from your other investments.
218
00:21:28.860 --> 00:21:37.368
So like year over year, that's what every marketer is thinking about is how do I, without investing more, how do I improve my conversion rates?
219
00:21:37.528 --> 00:21:42.412
How do I get more out of the audience and the people who are already coming to my site?
220
00:21:42.432 --> 00:21:48.298
And so that's not only optimizing your paid efforts, but also your website and doing tests there.
221
00:21:48.798 --> 00:21:55.703
And so as you make that site accessible, again, it improves your SEO and your AEO and GEO.
222
00:21:55.723 --> 00:21:57.764
It improves the user experience.
223
00:21:57.844 --> 00:22:03.428
It improves hopefully the flow and the conversion paths that you have.
224
00:22:03.969 --> 00:22:17.438
And so I like to kind of think about that small investment as part of the tech stack that makes the rest of your investment even more efficient and not having to invest more to increase your revenue or whatever goals that you might have.
225
00:22:18.079 --> 00:22:23.101
Yes, just making it easy because, I mean, marketing teams have a lot to think about, right?
226
00:22:23.141 --> 00:22:27.843
I mean, as we talked about SEO, paid media, email, social, and the list goes on, right?
227
00:22:28.263 --> 00:22:33.625
What are simple things that marketers can do right away to make their content more accessible?
228
00:22:33.665 --> 00:22:39.928
Because, you know, as I introduced you, I know that you do a lot of the marketing as well, you know, in email marketing, you know, social.
229
00:22:39.968 --> 00:22:44.430
And how does and how should accessibility show up within these channels?
230
00:22:44.930 --> 00:22:45.130
Yeah.
231
00:22:45.790 --> 00:22:49.452
So we do a yearly digital accessibility index.
232
00:22:49.492 --> 00:22:56.314
We just released the 2026 version where we scan, this year we scanned 166,000 web pages.
233
00:22:57.314 --> 00:22:58.334
And is that at random?
234
00:22:59.115 --> 00:22:59.335
Yes.
235
00:22:59.535 --> 00:23:08.718
And well, it's across mostly enterprise, but a little bit market and SMB did also in the EU this year to kind of get a global perspective.
236
00:23:09.378 --> 00:23:12.219
Are there laws in EU similar to ours?
237
00:23:12.883 --> 00:23:17.286
Yes, in fact, they just passed a law last year called the European Accessibility Act.
238
00:23:18.007 --> 00:23:27.714
We just hit the one-year mark of that actually in June, which is a very expansive digital accessibility act, essentially like the ADA, but digital.
239
00:23:28.255 --> 00:23:33.119
And so it's actually a pretty landmark bill.
240
00:23:34.620 --> 00:23:36.001
They've just kind of started...
241
00:23:37.104 --> 00:23:46.456
The challenge with it is it's a country by country in terms of how they approach it and how they get companies to follow it.
242
00:23:47.037 --> 00:23:51.022
And it took a lot of the countries like a year to figure out, all right, what is our way?
243
00:23:51.162 --> 00:23:51.943
Are we going to find?
244
00:23:52.023 --> 00:23:53.445
Are we going to actually sue?
245
00:23:53.485 --> 00:23:53.965
Things like that.
246
00:23:54.526 --> 00:23:58.689
But we're seeing France, Italy, Germany really starting to ramp up enforcement of this.
247
00:23:58.729 --> 00:24:03.013
So the thing that's important there is that's not just a European business.
248
00:24:03.053 --> 00:24:09.678
If you're a U.S. business with customers in the EU, that applies to your business as well.
249
00:24:09.718 --> 00:24:11.900
So, yeah, very important call out.
250
00:24:12.260 --> 00:24:20.947
So in terms of like what kind of business do to get ahead to, you know, it's helpful to have the technology like I talked about earlier.
251
00:24:21.127 --> 00:24:25.448
that fixes things that slip through, but how do you actually have fewer things slip through?
252
00:24:25.488 --> 00:24:30.769
So in that report that we publish, it's been the same three top three issues every year.
253
00:24:31.329 --> 00:24:34.170
First is image descriptions, the alt text there.
254
00:24:34.590 --> 00:24:41.551
Just with the speed, again, of the internet and trying to get things live, a lot of times they're either blank or they're not descriptive enough.
255
00:24:42.012 --> 00:24:47.713
And so, again, a person using a screen reader who's trying to shop for a new shirt, if it says...
256
00:24:48.833 --> 00:24:54.116
soft cotton v-neck with three inch sleeves, bright yellow.
257
00:24:54.456 --> 00:24:57.657
That's a good description as opposed to t-shirt, picture one.
258
00:24:58.518 --> 00:25:00.799
The second is link description.
259
00:25:00.899 --> 00:25:13.265
So similarly, as I'm trying to navigate through a site as a blind person, if that link says read more or click here or continue on, not helpful.
260
00:25:13.285 --> 00:25:14.345
I don't know where I'm going.
261
00:25:14.405 --> 00:25:15.566
I don't know if I click that.
262
00:25:16.192 --> 00:25:22.497
That's the type of stuff that causes people with disabilities so much extra time because they're clicking through a site, trying to figure out where they should go.
263
00:25:23.458 --> 00:25:31.365
Those are the big two, which again, in your planning and your building are very easy to ensure that you're doing that right.
264
00:25:31.885 --> 00:25:36.850
The third one is big because it's often a conversion bucket, which is form fields.
265
00:25:37.430 --> 00:25:39.552
And again, it's the same thing, underlying code.
266
00:25:40.473 --> 00:25:55.120
in your shipping form, in your contact desk form, in your help desk form even, and you're signing up for a newsletter, if those fields aren't clear in the backend to a screen reader, I don't know where I put my first name, I don't know what box there is.
267
00:25:55.640 --> 00:25:57.641
Sometimes those will be filled out, but then,
268
00:25:58.562 --> 00:26:00.804
I'll do something wrong and an error box will pop up.
269
00:26:00.824 --> 00:26:05.027
Well, the error box might not actually have the right context behind it.
270
00:26:05.047 --> 00:26:07.208
So I then don't know where to go from there.
271
00:26:07.268 --> 00:26:16.395
So form fields are a big one because that hits, I think it was like 50% of pages had a form with some sort of issue on it.
272
00:26:16.895 --> 00:26:18.616
And so that's a conversion path.
273
00:26:18.656 --> 00:26:27.523
Like that is a real one that dings you is if you've got forms there, but if companies can start with like those three things and make sure that that's part of their, um,
274
00:26:28.563 --> 00:26:31.705
process, then that's going to take care of so many things.
275
00:26:32.005 --> 00:26:40.008
Those are also like the top 60% of things included in those lawsuits by like serial plaintiffs, because they're not, those are the common things.
276
00:26:40.468 --> 00:26:46.871
And so if you have those taken care of, again, you're less likely to be hit by a serial plaintiff because they run a scan on your site.
277
00:26:47.431 --> 00:26:49.051
They see that you're pretty good.
278
00:26:49.071 --> 00:26:52.733
And there I go, we'll go find somebody who's in the worst shape.
279
00:26:53.413 --> 00:26:55.534
Yeah, who is basically not doing anything.
280
00:26:55.794 --> 00:26:56.234
Exactly.
281
00:26:56.334 --> 00:26:58.754
And that becomes an empty settlement for them.
282
00:26:59.455 --> 00:27:00.075
Yeah, yeah.
283
00:27:00.455 --> 00:27:11.157
So I want to talk about design and better storytelling in twofold, but let's dig into the design aspect of things.
284
00:27:11.237 --> 00:27:17.599
One of your suggested topics is inclusive design, but I want to really unpack that and what that actually means.
285
00:27:19.159 --> 00:27:21.440
Yeah, so inclusive design is really,
286
00:27:22.360 --> 00:27:29.029
from the start, thinking about people with disabilities and- Is it just wider space?
287
00:27:29.149 --> 00:27:29.470
Is it-
288
00:27:30.173 --> 00:27:46.381
Yeah, a lot of it is like color contrast, it's divided, which is actually, as we look at the top five issues, that's another one of them is just not having the right color contrast, not only for people with disabilities, but like we have a increasingly aging population as well.
289
00:27:46.501 --> 00:27:53.584
And as people get older, that color contrast actually matters quite a bit in how they read and are able to consume content.
290
00:27:54.445 --> 00:27:58.427
So that's part of it, but it's also just part of the,
291
00:27:59.608 --> 00:28:17.735
the designing of again, your conversion flows and your page flows is, is this content consumable in all technologies, not just somebody looking through a browser, but again, if they're tabbing through, can they get through the content?
292
00:28:17.776 --> 00:28:25.679
So a lot of times design is very much like, let me wow you with interactivity and like things moving around.
293
00:28:25.699 --> 00:28:28.100
At the end of the day, does that,
294
00:28:28.860 --> 00:28:29.862
tell the right story?
295
00:28:29.983 --> 00:28:35.815
Does that make it more clear again, what value you provide and
296
00:28:36.154 --> 00:28:41.517
how that does fit into various segments and ICPs who are coming to your site.
297
00:28:41.897 --> 00:28:52.423
So thinking about and wrapping accessibility into the planning stage isn't just a color or text exercise, although that is part of it.
298
00:28:52.963 --> 00:28:57.766
It really is thinking about the experience from multiple points of view.
299
00:28:57.866 --> 00:29:03.749
So as another example, a team who's thinking about inclusive design, in addition to saying, all right,
300
00:29:04.085 --> 00:29:12.628
we have this new site we're rolling out, let's do some qualitative interviews with the top three industries that we have and the top two personas.
301
00:29:13.068 --> 00:29:18.889
They also might now say, okay, let's bring in a person with a disability and have them go through this experience as well.
302
00:29:19.009 --> 00:29:20.130
And what's their feedback?
303
00:29:20.170 --> 00:29:27.072
So training people with disabilities as well as like a segment that you need to ask and check with the people.
304
00:29:27.652 --> 00:29:48.217
how it's working as you're building it, that makes it much easier to develop those best practices, to build it in a way, again, that works for everybody, as opposed to bolting it on after the fact where there's some things you can do, but you can't create that ideal experience as if you're building it from the get-go.
305
00:29:48.797 --> 00:29:50.018
The get-go and the ground up.
306
00:29:50.139 --> 00:29:50.919
Very interesting.
307
00:29:51.880 --> 00:29:56.025
You also have a strong background in storytelling as I introduced you.
308
00:29:56.445 --> 00:30:01.151
How does accessibility change that way we think about digital storytelling?
309
00:30:01.171 --> 00:30:02.913
Yeah.
310
00:30:04.348 --> 00:30:05.349
There's probably two things.
311
00:30:06.229 --> 00:30:18.738
And I talked with about one of them, which is just the idea of simplicity and making the story that you're telling resonate clearly with the audience.
312
00:30:18.878 --> 00:30:22.720
I think that so many companies try to be overly clever.
313
00:30:24.365 --> 00:30:31.592
they throw in jargon that makes it sound like they're experts in the industry, but at the end of the day, it doesn't actually differentiate them.
314
00:30:32.152 --> 00:30:44.323
So to me, working in accessibility has helped me really narrow in as I'm building our own website, are we just saying the most clear,
315
00:30:46.225 --> 00:30:51.990
differentiated message that we can, so that anybody can understand it.
316
00:30:52.570 --> 00:30:57.234
And the more that we've done that, it's like taking us some time to kind of get through that.
317
00:30:57.294 --> 00:31:01.297
And it shows you that maybe we don't know our values or we don't know some of those,
318
00:31:01.777 --> 00:31:03.758
pain points as well as we should.
319
00:31:04.778 --> 00:31:12.180
But once you get to them simply, it's just like a light bulb switches and I think the site becomes instantly more usable.
320
00:31:13.140 --> 00:31:30.225
That doesn't mean you can't be clever, you can't be pithy, but I think when you focus on the clarity and the simple message first, your story is able to come out and be more memorable with all the noise, like you said at the top, that we're dealing with now as marketers, but also just as people.
321
00:31:31.565 --> 00:31:42.411
The other thing that it's really taught me, there was an interesting campaign that I came across after I joined Audio, I called Assume That I Can, which is of this person with Down syndrome.
322
00:31:42.931 --> 00:31:52.216
And it's this really compelling video of her in various situations in her life where people were like, oh, you can't do that.
323
00:31:52.536 --> 00:31:55.138
So it was like going out and drinking with friends.
324
00:31:55.318 --> 00:31:57.219
It was dancing at the prom.
325
00:31:57.959 --> 00:31:58.599
things like that.
326
00:31:59.119 --> 00:32:05.521
And she said, don't let your reality or your perception of reality become my reality.
327
00:32:05.561 --> 00:32:06.441
Let me dictate.
328
00:32:07.181 --> 00:32:16.183
And that was such a great campaign, not only because it had a great message and made people think differently, but it brought people into the story.
329
00:32:16.963 --> 00:32:23.445
And to me, that was also kind of an aha because on the one side of accessibility,
330
00:32:24.245 --> 00:32:27.107
I'd say almost everybody I talk to is like, yeah, that makes sense.
331
00:32:27.607 --> 00:32:29.949
Like we should be inclusive.
332
00:32:29.969 --> 00:32:32.431
We should build a site that everybody can use.
333
00:32:33.151 --> 00:32:43.738
But then they go to their next meeting and the budget talks happen and the priorities hit and that we should do this quickly slides down.
334
00:32:43.758 --> 00:32:50.223
So I think in storytelling, in addition to that, like do good message, it's also bringing people together.
335
00:32:50.823 --> 00:33:00.554
into the story that you're telling and not just having them experience a marketing message or experience a story, but like put them in it, make them feel a part of it.
336
00:33:01.335 --> 00:33:04.338
And in our case, that means helping them feel how,
337
00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:14.508
the space of digital accessibility helps our business, helps those same priorities that might be deprioritizing accessibility.
338
00:33:15.589 --> 00:33:21.354
But it really is an illumination that there are so many misconceptions out there.
339
00:33:22.134 --> 00:33:24.276
And so I think the more marketers are,
340
00:33:25.217 --> 00:33:30.780
in whatever industry they're in, can tackle those misconceptions, top three misconceptions.
341
00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:38.283
I think that's where people start to change the way they think and change the way they act towards a product, a service, or a company.
342
00:33:40.262 --> 00:33:42.103
Very interesting also on that front.
343
00:33:42.503 --> 00:33:55.129
That, moving away from that a little bit and talking more about leadership buy-in and marketing accessibility practical, who inside the company should own the digital accessibility?
344
00:33:55.189 --> 00:33:56.729
Is it the marketing department?
345
00:33:56.769 --> 00:33:57.430
Is it product?
346
00:33:57.490 --> 00:34:00.091
Is it web, which just folds up into marketing?
347
00:34:00.151 --> 00:34:00.831
Is it legal?
348
00:34:02.632 --> 00:34:03.792
Where does this usually sit?
349
00:34:04.012 --> 00:34:09.695
And if it doesn't sit in a company, let's talk about the best place that it should be sitting.
350
00:34:10.657 --> 00:34:26.584
This sounds a little bit like a kind of easy answer, but it's wherever in that company it's going to have the most momentum and the most sustained prioritization, that's where it should sit.
351
00:34:27.384 --> 00:34:29.725
Because you need a champion, you need somebody who is going to push it.
352
00:34:30.926 --> 00:34:34.067
You're going to need somebody who can make it a collaborative effort because
353
00:34:34.727 --> 00:34:40.710
even if it's owned in marketing, there is going to be the developer impact.
354
00:34:40.730 --> 00:34:46.312
There is going to be the compliance and legal impact as maybe a suit comes forward.
355
00:34:46.472 --> 00:34:49.373
They want to know that they're protected as much as possible.
356
00:34:49.393 --> 00:34:53.555
I think one is just identifying where does accessibility have the most chance.
357
00:34:54.315 --> 00:35:01.358
Like I mentioned in the past, it was very largely a legal or a compliance team who was coming in saying, we need to do this.
358
00:35:01.938 --> 00:35:25.058
think that does still make sense but like i said we are seeing more and more where the marketers are the ones driving that discussion because they own the website or some product teams that might own the website they're owning it as well because they recognize that as they try to shift accessibility left from being that bolt-on to how do we work this into our sprints how do we work into our design and development processes
359
00:35:26.118 --> 00:35:28.600
it makes sense to be owned on those teams.
360
00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:46.333
So again, it's a bit of a wherever it makes sense, but so many businesses struggle with accessibility and, or they treat it as a one-time thing, like let's do it and then we're good, which is one of the worst approaches you can hire, another misconception.
361
00:35:47.493 --> 00:35:49.313
So it really is like, where's the champion?
362
00:35:50.174 --> 00:35:52.414
Where's the momentum going to come from?
363
00:35:52.454 --> 00:35:56.115
And then let's find that leader, get that leader excited.
364
00:35:56.175 --> 00:36:01.676
And we often are providing them with some of the enablement so they can sell it within their organization.
365
00:36:02.376 --> 00:36:03.436
Yeah.
366
00:36:04.156 --> 00:36:13.598
How can marketers make the business case for accessibility to leadership if they don't have it and they really will need to drive it home, you know?
367
00:36:14.212 --> 00:36:22.825
Yeah, I think we've seen on our end, it really does come down to the business impact because brands want to do the right thing.
368
00:36:23.526 --> 00:36:27.032
They, you know, want to, again, change.
369
00:36:27.712 --> 00:36:28.912
be inclusive where they can.
370
00:36:28.932 --> 00:36:35.395
But at the end of the day, if they can't put an ROI around that, it becomes easily de-prioritized.
371
00:36:35.895 --> 00:36:56.223
And so, uh, as we help businesses see the various impacts to conversion rate, uh, optimization to, um, loyalty and potential customer retention, the SEO benefits and, uh, AEO and GEO, that helps take a story that is just a, we should do this at some point to, uh,
372
00:36:56.748 --> 00:36:59.543
All right, the faster we can do this actually will impact
373
00:37:00.051 --> 00:37:05.315
our other marketing goals and we help them build those stories and put more ROI.
374
00:37:05.836 --> 00:37:15.304
And it's tough, like you can't have a direct ROI with I installed or started working with accessibility and saw X, Y, and Z directly happen.
375
00:37:16.225 --> 00:37:28.415
But we definitely see businesses that have seen increased retention, increased sales, better traffic from SEO, and we build that into the story that we're telling.
376
00:37:30.872 --> 00:37:38.257
I'm really curious because I'm a data analytics person, you know, just as a marketer, and I focus a lot on data and my trust moves are based on data.
377
00:37:38.317 --> 00:37:40.839
So I don't do anything unless the data is telling me.
378
00:37:41.279 --> 00:37:57.551
So what metrics and signals should companies pay attention to when improving accessibility or to be able to tell leadership, this is how our website is performing based on the hits that we're getting for the one and four that are hitting our site?
379
00:37:57.889 --> 00:37:58.089
Yeah.
380
00:37:58.690 --> 00:38:07.524
So that one's also a little bit tough because it's, you don't necessarily track who's visiting your site with a disability for obvious reasons, right?
381
00:38:09.330 --> 00:38:21.934
But the first area I would say is actually the compliance angle that we talked about before, which is you should have a dashboard that is showing what level of risk do you have at the moment.
382
00:38:21.974 --> 00:38:32.038
You kind of hinted earlier accurately that your site's never going to be 100% compliant, but you can get as close as possible to that if you're doing things right.
383
00:38:32.058 --> 00:38:33.278
And so I think that's step one is
384
00:38:33.850 --> 00:38:37.374
have some sort of dashboard that is showing you across your site.
385
00:38:37.734 --> 00:38:38.695
How many issues do you have?
386
00:38:38.796 --> 00:38:40.397
What gaps do you have?
387
00:38:40.718 --> 00:38:41.318
What are they?
388
00:38:41.338 --> 00:38:43.381
And how do you fix them in the near future?
389
00:38:44.362 --> 00:38:47.686
Some companies have like an arbitrary accessibility score.
390
00:38:47.746 --> 00:38:50.589
That's like, hey, your accessibility is 88 out of 100.
391
00:38:50.609 --> 00:38:50.749
Yeah.
392
00:38:51.950 --> 00:38:55.533
But that's just like an internal diagnostic that they've built.
393
00:38:55.553 --> 00:38:57.194
So what does it tell you?
394
00:38:57.214 --> 00:38:57.794
Not a lot.
395
00:38:58.154 --> 00:39:08.261
So I think if you can, whether it's through your tool or through your own internal reporting, build accessibility conformance and accessibility compliance into some of that reporting.
396
00:39:08.642 --> 00:39:12.604
That helps keep you safe from a compliance perspective.
397
00:39:12.744 --> 00:39:16.167
Or, again, at least know what your risk is and understand that, hey, right.
398
00:39:16.767 --> 00:39:23.093
20% of my pages have issues we need to fix or I'm okay with that level of risk at the moment.
399
00:39:24.194 --> 00:39:24.734
I love that.
400
00:39:24.895 --> 00:39:25.315
Yeah.
401
00:39:25.795 --> 00:39:27.237
So that's the conformance angle.
402
00:39:28.197 --> 00:39:38.707
Does your, and not to interrupt you, does your app track when somebody like switches it on and all that when they arrive on the site or is it something that's always on?
403
00:39:39.307 --> 00:39:39.988
It's always on.
404
00:39:40.048 --> 00:39:40.268
So,
405
00:39:41.795 --> 00:39:45.879
we strongly believe accessibly, it shouldn't be something that somebody turns on.
406
00:39:45.899 --> 00:39:49.884
It should be, they should be able to access an accessible site from the beginning.
407
00:39:49.964 --> 00:40:00.195
So the way it works is our automation, which again is about 50% of the issues, the human auditors do the other half, that automation,
408
00:40:01.220 --> 00:40:09.190
when the page loads, we'll review the issues, find the issues that are still in the source code, make those fixes.
409
00:40:09.250 --> 00:40:20.083
And so the code that is being displayed to that end user, whether I'm visually seeing it or someone's using an assistive technology, is the newly updated accessible code.
410
00:40:20.964 --> 00:40:24.727
So that's always on, that runs 24 seven, that runs on every page.
411
00:40:25.187 --> 00:40:31.231
And so that it ensures that somebody who's visiting does get that accessible experience.
412
00:40:32.552 --> 00:40:39.576
There are some companies that do have it as an opt-in and yeah, we just think that's a, a not discrimination.
413
00:40:40.136 --> 00:40:40.337
Yeah.
414
00:40:40.357 --> 00:40:43.278
And to a degree it also means you have to self-identify.
415
00:40:44.359 --> 00:40:44.719
Sure.
416
00:40:44.739 --> 00:40:46.441
So it's discrimination at the end of the day.
417
00:40:46.761 --> 00:40:47.221
Yeah, exactly.
418
00:40:48.242 --> 00:40:48.422
Um,
419
00:40:49.551 --> 00:40:51.032
without having to bend around it.
420
00:40:53.173 --> 00:41:01.418
So for practical takeaways for a small business owner listening, what is one accessibility improvement they can make this week other than signing up to your platform?
421
00:41:02.697 --> 00:41:11.941
So I think one is, which is not maybe necessarily executing something, but I would get a free site scanner.
422
00:41:12.141 --> 00:41:12.881
Audio has one.
423
00:41:13.061 --> 00:41:14.162
There's other tools out there.
424
00:41:15.262 --> 00:41:18.484
You can just search free website accessibility scanner.
425
00:41:19.764 --> 00:41:21.085
That's really helpful because...
426
00:41:21.745 --> 00:41:22.946
That gives you information.
427
00:41:23.426 --> 00:41:27.289
I think a lot of people are surprised to see how many accessibility issues exist.
428
00:41:28.190 --> 00:41:35.575
I don't think I mentioned it, but what we found in our Accessibility Index this year is the average webpage had 62 accessibility issues.
429
00:41:35.595 --> 00:41:36.575
So not website.
430
00:41:37.036 --> 00:41:38.557
Every webpage had 62 issues.
431
00:41:39.037 --> 00:41:41.720
So generally when I tell people that they'll, okay, sure.
432
00:41:41.841 --> 00:41:44.744
And they'll go run it and then they'll email me like, holy cow.
433
00:41:44.764 --> 00:41:46.767
Like I had so many more than I expected.
434
00:41:46.787 --> 00:41:51.893
So I think that is the helpful first step is just like, where are you currently?
435
00:41:52.373 --> 00:41:55.497
And again, that scanner is only measuring what a tool is.
436
00:41:55.863 --> 00:41:59.226
can measure, so there's still 50% more than an auditor.
437
00:41:59.266 --> 00:42:04.310
So that number actually kind of under inflates what your real number is.
438
00:42:04.610 --> 00:42:05.111
So start there.
439
00:42:05.571 --> 00:42:08.874
Secondly, I think recognizing that
440
00:42:09.667 --> 00:42:11.708
There's a lot to understand, all right?
441
00:42:11.768 --> 00:42:14.109
There's like all the WCAG criteria.
442
00:42:14.829 --> 00:42:16.830
Just don't get overwhelmed, just start somewhere.
443
00:42:16.870 --> 00:42:25.593
So if it's the images, the text and the forms that as you're building are the first three places you can focus, that is gonna get you
444
00:42:26.553 --> 00:42:30.156
so far better than anybody else who's doing nothing.
445
00:42:30.176 --> 00:42:46.490
Um, so I would say that, uh, those alt texts, the link descriptions and make sure your form fields are built appropriately is really going to set you up to have a strong foundation to then decide, all right, where do I want to prioritize next in the future?
446
00:42:47.171 --> 00:42:47.371
Yeah.
447
00:42:48.052 --> 00:42:54.317
Out of everything that we've discussed, what is the biggest opportunity businesses have if they actually take accessibility seriously?
448
00:42:55.413 --> 00:43:00.755
Honestly, I think it's, it is a differentiator with other businesses.
449
00:43:00.835 --> 00:43:17.222
So I think more and more again with lawsuits, with international and state led regulations becoming more and more frequent, we're going to get to a point where everybody has to do it for one reason or another.
450
00:43:17.242 --> 00:43:19.103
And so the sooner you can do that,
451
00:43:20.597 --> 00:43:23.359
that again opens up new audiences for you.
452
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:30.265
It opens up new audiences who are more loyal and better advocates of your brand.
453
00:43:30.285 --> 00:43:38.933
So it really becomes a way to get ahead of your competition in a way that they're not even thinking about or practicing.
454
00:43:39.873 --> 00:43:47.360
And so I do think it is something that for companies who get ahead of it, they really are differentiating themselves in a different way.
455
00:43:47.957 --> 00:44:02.858
If that ties into your brand, like that's a great thing to add to your brand messaging and your reputation marketing as well as the idea of being an inclusive brand that, you know, builds its sites and its digital content for everybody.
456
00:44:03.695 --> 00:44:04.135
I love it.
457
00:44:04.295 --> 00:44:04.696
I love it.
458
00:44:05.496 --> 00:44:09.778
This has been super, super, super helpful, Mike, in terms of digging into all the details.
459
00:44:09.798 --> 00:44:11.319
So I really appreciate it.
460
00:44:11.379 --> 00:44:15.921
We have a tradition before we let you go where we where we close out with rapid fire.
461
00:44:16.822 --> 00:44:19.483
So we ask one myth, one habit and one word.
462
00:44:19.883 --> 00:44:22.244
So whatever comes to mind, just fire off.
463
00:44:23.505 --> 00:44:27.127
One myth about digital accessibility that businesses need to stop believing.
464
00:44:29.935 --> 00:44:34.256
People with disabilities don't use my product or service.
465
00:44:35.516 --> 00:44:35.776
I know.
466
00:44:35.896 --> 00:44:48.839
And I, and I love that we talked about this early on in the beginning, because the person that you were talking to had this aha moment of like, oh my gosh, I could open up a completely different stream of, you know, an audience if I just actually thought about it.
467
00:44:48.979 --> 00:44:59.141
And it is kind of interesting how we have unconsciously, I want to say, siloed, uh, these folks out and, and that needs to change going forward.
468
00:45:00.444 --> 00:45:06.886
One habit every marketer should build to make their work more inclusive.
469
00:45:07.586 --> 00:45:25.170
Finding stories outside of marketing or the world that you work in and finding ways to bring those stories into your work to differentiate the way that you talk about your business.
470
00:45:27.358 --> 00:45:30.341
What's one word that defines the future of accessible marketing?
471
00:45:32.403 --> 00:45:32.903
AI.
472
00:45:35.325 --> 00:45:35.746
Very good.
473
00:45:37.327 --> 00:45:38.749
Mike, I love this conversation.
474
00:45:38.769 --> 00:45:40.050
I think it's been great.
475
00:45:40.190 --> 00:45:46.836
You know, accessibility is one of those areas in marketing that often gets pushed, as we have continuously talked about this.
476
00:45:47.557 --> 00:45:48.838
And it needs to...
477
00:45:49.389 --> 00:45:54.813
really start to move into the forefront because people assume it's too technical, it's too expensive.
478
00:45:55.174 --> 00:46:03.300
As I mentioned earlier, they think that I'm only gonna be 100% accessible if I build this from the ground up versus actually using companies like AudioEye, like yours.
479
00:46:03.820 --> 00:46:17.431
So this has been extremely eye-opening to really talk through it, especially from the legal standpoint, knowing that you're never gonna be at 100% compliant, but how can we at least make you X% compliant
480
00:46:18.832 --> 00:46:28.596
to ensure that you don't get caught in the web of any legal issues and that you are supporting those that could potentially be, you know, a customer of yours.
481
00:46:28.696 --> 00:46:31.377
So thank you so much for joining me on this conversation.
482
00:46:31.437 --> 00:46:32.317
I truly enjoyed it.
483
00:46:32.737 --> 00:46:33.197
Yeah, me too.
484
00:46:33.217 --> 00:46:33.758
I appreciate it.
485
00:46:34.898 --> 00:46:38.920
And we'll list all of Mike's information below, all the details for the website.
486
00:46:39.040 --> 00:46:42.021
So please feel free to check it out for any questions that you have.
487
00:46:42.061 --> 00:46:42.781
So thank you again.
488
00:46:53.906 --> 00:46:53.926
.
