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Kelsey says: "[If] your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what's going on. And I don't have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. "Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder that the transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available at the time of the publication on the website at a11yrules.com. I want to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. And they do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Kelsey Byers. Hey, Kelsey, how are you?KelseyDoing pretty well, thanks, Nic. How about yourself?NicI'm doing good. I'm glad we connect. We've been speaking on Slack mostly for for a number of years. And we get to connect and I get to grill you with my with my usual questions.KelseyYeah.NicSo let's let's ask you what's your disability or your impairment?KelseyFor sure. So I'm actually multiplate disabled. That's the words that I use to describe my disability. Most of them come from Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a genetic condition that makes my joints loose and wobbly and causes pain. I've also got ADHD and I'm also autistic. And there's a variety of other stuff in the background.NicWhat's the interaction between all these is there? Is there anything that you know, when I don't know if you have a joints getting particularly more loose? Is that going to have an impact on how ADHD is playing with you? Or is it pretty much each in their own silos?KelseyThat's actually a really great question. So there is a lot of research that shows that people with ADHD are more likely to be hyper mobile. Some of them to the extent that they are diagnosed with Ehlers dauntless. And also autism is more common in Ehlers Danlos. So we think they're definitely related. But I don't think people have built figured out like the biological mechanisms behind that.NicFair enough. So what what impairment, what condition has the most impact for you on your use of the web?KelseyThat's a that's a really good question. Actually. It's one that I didn't mention, which is auditory processing disorder. So or APD. So this is a condition where, like, I can hear and my peripheral hearing is okay. But my ability to process audio in my brain is a little bit strange. So like, I have trouble processing sound with background noise. It's a cocktail party problem. And so anytime I'm listening to recordings, or seminars, if there's not, for example, the ability to see the person at the same time and do a little bit of lip reading a how have a lot of trouble.NicWould you say that's your biggest pet peeve or a barrier on the web, the inability to process audio?KelseyYeah, definitely. It is it is one of the two biggest barriers I have, I would say. So I was recently attending a course that had recorded lectures. And the lectures are great, but I couldn't see the lecture. And so I had a lot of trouble following the lectures, which was frustrating. And in person, this wouldn't be an issue. Obviously, I wouldn't be able to attend the course in person, but it was frustrating to not be able to understand very well.NicWe're in year three of a worldwide pandemic right now. We have discovered that providing the ability of working from home or doing remote learning is critical. And yet, we're still providing courses where we're not doing everything we can to make things accessible. And the issue you're describing to me seems like while it's pretty critical for students doing high school or even college that are actually paying to attend to be able to access information. You work in academia, I believe. How would you say this translates into your into your job rather than you as someone attending courses?KelseyYeah, that's a great question. So I don't teach and therefore I don't normally process how I would interact with students in an accessible fashion because I'm not normally teaching. But for example, when I give seminars I tried to do audio description of what people might be seeing on the slides that I'm giving. So, if the slide contains an image, I'll try to describe what the image is showing so that people can process it in different ways. Or, for example, someone with visual impairment could process the image and understand the slides. But certainly, in academia, we have courtesy the pandemic, we've gotten a lot of online seminars, which is great, but specialist language means that captioning tools often don't work if they're auto captions. And auto caption quality, as we all know, is not what it could be.NicCertainly would not. If you had one message to pass on to designers or developers about accessibility, what what would that be?KelseyI would say for me, transcripts are actually the biggest thing every time I go online, and I look at someone recommends me a podcast, for example. And I look online, and I see the podcast, I don't do audio input only very well. And so I don't tend to listen to podcasts. But for example, your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what's going on. And I don't have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. So anytime I see something that has transcripts or where someone's put a video on YouTube, and they've also added subtitles or even just enabled auto subtitling or community subtitling and like, Thank you, this is not that big of an ask, but it is so helpful.NicI'm glad my transcripts are helping you consume the show. I I think and one of these podcasts host a rare bird that actually does not listen to podcasts because I actually need transcripts to process that information as well. So it's one of the reasons why I care about having transcript from my show. Anyway, Kelsey, thank you for sharing some of your experiences with us and we'll see you around on the web.KelseyThanks so much, Nic. It's been great
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Meagan says: "Sometimes a disability or an impairment is temporary. It's situational. Most of the time I don't have issues. But when I do, I really have them. So try to keep things as simple and easy to use as possible."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts, where disabled people explain their impairment and what barrier they encounter on the web. Quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication on the website. At A one one, why are you l es.com? This is the time to thank our sponsor fable. Fable is an accessibility platform a leader in the field powered by disabled people, I think that's important because nothing about us without us. Anyway, fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Megan eller. Hey, Megan, how are you?MeaganHi, I'm alright.NicWe haven't really spoken we I think we hang around in the web accessibility slack a little bit. And we may have exchanged a few words, but I don't know you. So this is going to be fun to get to know you a little bit. My first question is typically what's your disability or your impairment, but when we were talking about having you on as a guest, you were a little bit concerned that you don't have a disability, you said, but you do have a condition that is an impairment. Tell us a little bit about that.MeaganSo I have an autoimmune hypothyroidism Hashimotos disease. And basically, I have an underactive thyroid, because my immune system attacks my thyroid and your thyroid and the hormones it produces are involved with a lot of body systems. So it can affect a lot of things when the levels aren't, you know, when you're not producing enough hormone from the thyroid. It's very easily treatable with medication. But because it's auto immune, it's not stable. So sometimes medication level isn't... Right. I ran into actually last winter, with our overwhelmed health system, having the delay in getting a correct dosage. And so that was when I had messaged you about being on the podcast, that was the kind of what I was thinking about. Where I really was for a couple of weeks, feeling very I guess. I don't find it disabling but I was definitely feeling very impaired by trying to do things.NicThat's an interesting thing to consider is that you can have a condition that is 90% of the time fine and controlled with medication or, you know, any other kind of fixes. I say fixes in quote marks, but when things get off the rails and even though you're not necessarily longterm, disabled, you still encounter barriers, right?MeaganAbsolutely. Yep. It was, I actually went and looked back at apt notes from at that time, because I had mentioned to you that I have a really great boss, that when I told him what was going on, he was very willing to work with me, but you know, explaining that, you know, I was having these difficulties and, and a big one I had mentioned to you was just the fatigue and kind of that brain fog, having trouble concentrating. It's like, I know, I can feel my brain being slow. And I know I'm not you know, doing as much work and maybe not as succinctly as I usually do, you know, in writing, things like that.NicSo how does that translate as a barrier on using the web what what kind of thing really jumped out at you and were problematic?MeaganSo the, with the just being tired and having trouble concentrating. That was making it difficult. I was rereading things I found myself every so often I'll use reader mode for articles, especially when there's a lot of motion and videos and stuff, I find that distracting normally, but I really needed that to be able to concentrate. Because I needed the simplified, maybe make the text bigger just to make it easier to concentrate. So long paragraphs of text are much more difficult. In when you're you're having to reread something to really understand it. A nice bullet pointed list is really nice, a wall of text, a lot of paragraphs, were just a lot more effort. I was also running into it wasn't cognitive, but it was the winter. So you know, dry skin normally. But that's another thing that low thyroid can affect is things like dry skin, joint pain and stiffness. So I was and dry skin you might not think about but then when say your knuckles start to crack and bleed. Which is probably more vivid than people necessarily need. But it made it hard to type or, you know, using a mouse I was trying to use smaller movements just because moving my hands was painful. So yeah, things that were continuous scroll can be difficult. Luckily, because I work in an accessibility space doing you know, I sometimes do accessibility reviews, I am familiar with using voice control, I can use a keyboard. So I was using some of the things that I use for testing, like, instead of having to scroll my mouse, that down arrow key was was a lot easier.NicYeah, it's I think in many ways, those of us who work in accessibility can kind of cheat. Because we know the resources. We know the tools. When I broke both my wrist, I ended up going to Dragon and it was steep learning curve, because I had never relied on Dragon as much. But yeah, at least I was familiar with the concepts. Now of course, I use it all the time for testing. Because, folks, we had a technical glitch, we had to stop the recording and restart it again. So Meagan, wait, you were telling us about how how you were able to use some assistive technologies because you're familiar with it. And that was a lifesaver to your ability to function on the web.MeaganSo yeah, I was just explaining how because I'm familiar with using the keyboard using voice control or speech recognition, a little bit for testing, those were some things that I was able to use. So instead of having to continually scroll my mouse, I could use my down arrow key for some things. I could turn on the speech recognition feature on my device and just use that instead of having to use my hands, which were sometimes painful.NicYeah. If you had one message for designers or developers around web accessibility, what would you like them to, to know or remember or pay particular attention to?MeaganThe big thing for me is just remembering that people are in different situations and designing you know, accessibility isn't just a blind screen reader user. That is that's an attitude that I seem to run into a lot when talking to people who aren't as familiar. And there are a lot of other audiences and sometimes a disability or an impairment is temporary. It's situational. Sometimes, you know, most of the time I don't have issues, but when I do I really have them. So just trying to keep things as simple and easy to use as possible. I think that actually helps in a lot of a lot of situations, if you're not making your interface super complicated, it's just easier when things fail to, you know, even if it's, it's as simple as a poor internet connection. So. So things are slow. If if it's not as complicated, it will fail much more gracefully. And that applies to in situations where someone is maybe using a technology they're not as familiar with, or they're having difficulty. Because they're not is they're not used to doing things a certain way or just like their their body or their brain is not functioning as well as it normally does.NicYeah. Yeah, I think that's that's certainly something that I've seen as well is this idea that, at least in the digital world, accessibility is about blind screenreader users, and in the physical world that accessibility is about wheelchair users, but I'm a wheelchair user, I and I will be the first to say, Well, no, actually, accessibility in the real world is about everybody.MeaganYeah, I, I've run in the in the physical world, there is a particular intersection, that it's a busy intersection and has, you know, the pedestrian signal. And it is completely unintuitive to me, where they've placed those signals, which one is for which direction? So even things as simple is as that it'sNicYeah, makes no sense sometimes. And maybe maybe that's the conclusion we have to reach is that sometimes things make no sense. And accessibility is about making sense of these things that make no sense.MeaganYeah. Yes.NicMeagan Eller, thank you for being a guest on the show. That was actually a great convo. I'll see you around probably on Slack.MeaganYes, thank you. Cheers.
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Manglende episoder?
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Justin says: "Error messages: Make them clear, make them understandable. Don't write a paragraph if you can write a sentence."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Justin Yarborough again. Hey, Justin, how are you?JustinI'm doing good. How about you?NicI'm doing good. I'm glad that the first encounter with me for the podcast didn't turn you off completely and that you wanted to bring up a new topic. Before we dive into that, let me ask you, for those people that didn't listen to the other episode, what's your impairment or your disability?JustinI'm blind, I basically have zero vision.NicOkay, and that means I assume you're using a screen reader?JustinYep.NicCool. So, blind screen reader user, and you said you wanted to talk about form validation? I guess that's a current pet peeve of yours. Tell me about what's the issue around form validation? How's it an impact for you?JustinIt's, I think it's I mean, it's, it's definitely a valuable one, especially, you know, for someone who's blind, but it's something that definitely one of those areas that definitely can benefit a, you know, benefits a whole host of people. It the the reason I think of it, it's an it's an it's an area that kind of just interests me, you know, as in my work day to day, working in accessibility myself, is just thinking through, like how a form is built, and how you, you know, let people know, maybe there are mistakes in it, or, and how to fix it, and stuff like that. And when I, when I emailed you, actually, or sent you a message to talk about this topic, I was actually working on a project working with this was one of the clients I work with, and was why it was fresh in the mind. You know, I think the the really important thing with form validation is just to, you know, if someone, you know, fills out that form, and like, hit submit, and maybe they have no idea what happened, you know, why is it not moving through, especially if like, you're, you're someone like me, who can't, you know, you're not seeing the screen, you hit that submit button, and it just doesn't do anything, you're just, I'm probably just going to just assume something's broken and move on. So you know, looking at a good like, form validation pattern where someone can understand what's going on, what the problems are, in, you know, be given some guidance on how to fix it is, I think, just usually important. One of the pattern that is most used with the client I work with, and one I'm a huge fan of, is when you hit that submit button, if not everything validates I love those forms where they'll automatically throw focus up to the first field with an error and have that, you know, error message programmatically associated with the form because it tells it tells me immediately, okay, hey, there's something wrong here. You know, it, it takes him to the field, it tells me there's something wrong, it gives me a description, basically, you know, of what's wrong, what, what I need to fix, and lets me know that and then, you know, since it's that that first one, if you've got, you know, say multiple fields with errors, I can just go tab, you know, tabbing through it through all the forms, see what does, you know, if there's anything else with an error and then go to resubmit? I just, it's a I, I'm a real big fan of that pattern. Just because I think just from a usability factor of anything you're doing, that's just, I think it's just the easiest way to go about it for a screener two years and have that and I feel like that kind of a pattern is going to have a benefit. For a lot more people than just screen nerd are used to,NicHow'd you feel about disabling the submit button until all the fields are actually validating?JustinI hate it. I hate it with the fire of 1000 suns.NicWhy?JustinBecause Especially like, as a screen or user, even maybe if you don't have if you don't have it set up, right, or potentially, even if you I guess I should say, if you don't have it says like, there's some sort of like an announcement, hey, this field is not valid, you know, when you like, tap out of one and move to the next. Part of the problem that creates is, you know, someone's moving through what using the tab key that submit, but that submit button is not in the tab order. So I as far as I would know, that submit button doesn't exist. And I could rightfully assume, okay, well, something with this form is broken, it doesn't have a submit button, what the heck is going on here? Why do I not understand it? I it's just, you know, it just feels like a really clunky and, you know, uncomfortable pattern to me. And it's, you know, a, I think it's something that really, really should be avoided. And, you know, like, like, we were talking about, like what, you know, the benefits of like, being someone outside of a screen reader user, I can see plenty of other users, like, you know, maybe they go look at that button, even if it is grayed out in your own, you know, problems with, you know, disabled buttons, and often not meeting color contrast, even though I know they don't need to Don't, don't get me started on that. But, you know, they're not, they might go look at it. And if especially if you're not getting given good messaging, you know, as to what's going on, they might just assume something's wrong here with the formula, it kind of puts everyone in the same. The same, what the heck's going on here, boat? Yeah. It's just, you know, I like, I remember, like this when I was taking a JavaScript class, you know, just to learn JavaScript at my previous job. One of the projects we had actually in that class was to build a form and disable the submit button until it's valid. It's a great, it's a great exercise. I feel like maybe for learning, you know, when you're trying to learn how to do JavaScript, but in the real world, gosh, I hate it as a pattern, and it is just really not. I just think it's really confusing.NicYeah. Here's another question for you around form validation. And I have my own thoughts. And I've not been shy on sharing those thoughts. But I'd love to hear what you think of it. And this is inline validation, where each time you type a character, it validates and it tells you this is not correct until it is. And they often use ARIA live assertive on that error message. How do you feel about that?JustinOh, my gosh, that's I'm just, I'm just hearing, assertive, and I'm cringing. I mean, I cringe anytime I'm hearing Aria, you know, assertive ARIA live, that's, that's odd automatically cringe worthy. This is this, I am I'm having flashbacks to like the, the, the the text area inputs that might be have a character limit. And they'll put an aria live on the you have, you know, the 132 characters remaining. And every time you're typing, it's just immediately saying again, and it's just going to keep throwing that in your ear it, that kind of thing just could be really, really annoying, and could really throw off someone, especially a screen reader and a screen reader user. I don't have a problem with I mean, I can understand like some, to a point at least like the valid, you know, why someone might want to do a validation like that, although, I mean, if you want to do like a validation of each field, I would feel like using doing it on blur would be a much better way to go about it.NicThank you this, this is what they actually recommend. It's wonderful to hear an actual screen reader user say this is better. So thank you.JustinYeah, do it on Blur, or I mean, even if you're going to do like an aria live something while someone's typing it, at least, you know, set it up in a way so that you're not getting an announcement till maybe the person hasn't typed for a second or two. Yeah, you know, that would at least make it a little less painful if you want to go with that pattern. But yeah, do it on or why. Why not?NicWhy not? Yeah. We're talking about validation, which is really, in some way a very A dev specific kind of implementation, but I guess designers also have their, their say in, in what things should look like. But if you had one message for designers and developers around for validation, what would it be?JustinThe biggest thing and this would fall into if you're going to talk in like designers or you know, in this, like a content writer type role. The big, the biggest emphasis, I would say, is just, you know, when you provide those error messages, make them clear, make them make them understandable. And, you know, don't, you know, don't write a paragraph when you could write a sentence. Be basically, yeah, be succinct. Make it clear, make it understandable. So someone can go, okay. Hey, I know what I did wrong here and how I can fix it. But you know, like, it's like I said, don't write a don't write a book or a paragraph. Give it to me in a sentence.NicJustin, thank you very much for sharing that. I'm loving this discussion. And maybe you'll think about another topic to bring up at some time in the future. But in the meantime, let's call it a wrap. Thank you, Justin.JustinI thank you for having me again.
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Brennan says "people who create and teach and have disabilities actually use this stuff. We're out in the world creating things while using the products that you're making. It can't just be the first layer of the system that you're making meet bare level of accessibility."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.Transcript NicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Brennan Roy. Hey, Brennan, how are you?BrennanAlright, how are you?NicI'm good. I'm good. I'm glad that we are finally connecting. We've been juggling our sheduled for a little bit. And it's been fun. So here we are. Let me ask you the very first question I ask just about everybody else is what's your disability or your impairment?BrennanI have a number of them. I'm.. I have disabilities that impact my mobility, my vision, my cognition, a number of things I think the most impactful are vision and mobility and yeah... Cognition. I have like a current concussion I have a damage to my optic nerve from intracranial hypertension. I have Chiari that impacts my brain pressure kind of all the time. And Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which impacts my joints and pain levels. Yeah, those are the big ones.NicSo you you really one of the trifecta of disabilities right there. What... What conditions of these one or two are the ones that impact your web use the most?BrennanI think they all do in different ways.NicOkayBrennanAs I'm looking at my computer setup, right now I have like an adapted... Well, I have an external keyboard with a trackpad in front of it. Because a typical keyboard is hard to use. I have bigger monitors with a number of software adaptations on them and resolution changes so that I can see them. So it's both vision and mobility, I would say that are the biggest ones. My CCTV beside me here that allows me to read printed text.NicCool. We don't see those very often in individuals' places. It's typically at the library for reading microfilms, isn't it?BrennanYeah, I was really lucky. In Ontario, there's a program through the University of Waterloo, where you can get used from individuals who have had them funded through the assistive devices program. So when they finished with them, if you want one that's been used, you can buy it from the University of Waterloo who have refurbished them for $250.NicWow, that's, that's a good, good scheme. So we're looking at mobility and visions are probably where you're having the most problem on the web. Tell us a little bit about maybe your biggest two barriers or pet peeves that you encounter related to your disability when you use the web.BrennanI think like, for me, one of the some of the biggest things are like that things are difficult to navigate physically like it requires a lot of like mouse navigation. And it's not like obvious where you need to go. So that's one and so I find that I'm doing a lot with my hands to get to where I need to be. And if I try and tab through it doesn't sensically follow.NicYes.BrennanAnd another one is that If I try and do something in dark mode, most of my computer's in dark mode, pop ups, the text is invisible, like the text won't follow the dark mode. Like if I have to pick a pet peeve, that's probably one of the biggest ones. Or if I'll switch of like a program using one of my dark mode overlays, the whole text just disappears, especially with Google Docs. That's a really bad one for it.NicThat's, that's interesting. It's not, it's not an experience I've had. I'm not a dark mode user. So I hadn't heard that as being something to consider. But that's really, yeah, that's good. So what message would you like designers or developers to remember about accessibility?BrennanI think like that, people who create and teach and have disabilities actually use this stuff. And we're out in the world creating things while using the products that they're making. So it can't just be like the first layer of the system that they're making. Meet the, the, like, their level of accessibility. Like, I work with programs like Audacity and iMovie, and things like that to create videos. And, like, I'll get three or four layers into more complicated action, and suddenly, the access thing doesn't work. Or like, I'll have my screen zoomed in, and I can't see half the program because it won't resize to my screen. And I'm like, why can't I resize this window? So I'm just really frustrated at the things that they don't expect disabled people to be doing with their programming. Yeah. Or like an Audacity? How, like, half of the hover text will work for their symbols, but the other half won't. It's just really annoying.NicYeah, I, I used to use Audacity all the time. And I had some blind friends that use Audacity and they said, it's the most accessible free audio editing software out there. I have since switched to Adobe Audition. So I don't know where audacity is gone now. But I do find it frustrating as well, when you start getting comfortable with an application and it feels like hey, this is actually comfortable and accessible. And then suddenly, when you start digging in, it's like, oh, what's just happened there?Brennanlike, okay, so I have half of it. I guess I will squint. get really, really close to my screen. Yes, that's okay. Kind of,NicKind of. Yep. I actually think that this conclusion for for the show. It's okay. Kind of is fantastic. So, Brennan, thank you for being a guest on the show, and I'll see you on Slack or on the web somewhere. Thanks for being a guest.BrennanThanks for having me.
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Nash says, not quite jokingly, that the entire internet is unusable for him without ad blockers!Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Nash Van Gool. Hey, Nash, how are you?NashHi, Nic. I'm doing good. How are you?NicI'm good. I'm glad to see you. This is our third go at recording this show. The first time I forgot to press record the second time we had a gremlin that dropped us. So let's make sure that this works this time.NashThird time's the charm.NicSo we we have been talking a lot on enough primary through slack and Twitter. And you told me a lot of really interesting things about your disability. So for our audience, what's your disability or your impairment?NashI have ADHD predominantly inattentive, which means I don't so much have the typical ADHD hyperactivity and impulsivity. I do have that to some degree. But my problems are more with attention span and motivation. So yeah, I don't have an attention span to speak of really?NicHow does that translate itself? When you use the web, then what what would you be say your barrier is or your, your pet peeve is around?NashWell, I can't really, yeah, I can't really keep my attention on, on whatever I'm doing for very long most of the time. So anything that requires an attention span, to speak of is very difficult to do. And also I'm extremely distractible by things like moving images and sounds and whatnot. So that that gets in the way of staying on track as well.NicWhat concrete example, could you give us a website or platform that is particularly difficult for you to use?NashWell, the entire internet without an ad blocker is fairly unusable. It's, it's horrible by anybody's standards, of course. But when when most of the content is obscured by moving images and things that make noise and things that move around, things that pop up, it becomes impossible to get anything done. I don't know if any concrete sites specifically that do anything that gets in the way without an ad blocker there, there are platforms that are centered around keeping you distracted and keeping your attention on on everything things like tick tock and YouTube lately with the shorts or you get lost in there for hours. But otherwise, some bloggers like to use animated GIFs and things like that, that really gets in the way of reading which is a struggle anyway because sometimes my brain just stopsNicalright, I have to say I really liked this this answer the entire internet is broken for disabled people, which actually is true. But that's that's a different topic altogether. I think we could talk about for a while. If you one message for designers or developers around making the web more usable to you considering that they may not have control over ads and stuff what what would you tell themNashAccount for people not having the attention span to perform whatever task you want them to perform in one go. So that means things like not having a session timeout for instance, because f I need some external thing to use what I'm using, and that could be a password manager or an external website or anything, I may well get distracted while doing that. And I could be back in five minutes, or I could be back in weeks. That's not an exaggeration that has actually happened. So if my session times out, and I've lost all my work in that, in that time, that makes it that much harder for me to use whatever, whatever project you have. But also things like, video instructions are absolutely horrible. It takes me an hour to watch a two minute video. So if all I have is a video showing me how to use your product, chances are I won't be able to use your product other than just messing around and finding out what button works.NicThat's, that's fascinating. Actually, I never considered that. For someone with ADHD, a two minute video could take an hour to watch, because I hate video-only instructions, I can read a five minute video in 30 seconds, I can jump straight to the point where I want to see it. And sure video is good for some people. But I I do like the idea of giving both. But this argument that you just made, you know, I'll get distracted, I will not be able to process your information. That's really powerful.NashYeah, and it's it's, you make a good point also with with processing information, because it's not always getting distracted, I'll sometimes find myself watching a video and just having completely missed the past few minutes. Because I've zoned out. And I just don't know what you've said in your video for the past few minutes. And then I find myself having to backtrack to where I where I lost my attention. Chances are I'll lose my attention while backtracking. So that really makes it makes it hard to hard to follow along. Transcripts are a lifesaver for that, by the way, because then I can just skim back to what I missed and find out where I where it was so awesome. That does help.NicCool. Nash. Thank you for being candid and and sharing your experiences and we'll see you around on the web.NashDefinitely. It was good to be here. Nice to have you. Cheers. Thanks for having me.
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Guy says that "Everyone is different. Everyone has different needs and preferences. It's very hard to build a one-size-fits-all design."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, I have transcripts available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. This is the time to thank Fable, our sponsor for the show. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. They move organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. And they do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Guy Kisel. Hey, Guy, how are ya?GuyHi, I'm pretty doing pretty well.NicGood. We've been talking a lot in the background about all kinds of stuff that's super fascinating. But obviously, this is my soundbite. So we're not going to be able to cover everything all the things. Let's start with what's your disability or your impairment that you want to talk about today?GuyOh, good question. Yeah, I have some RSI issues in my hands. Basically, just from overuse over the years of playing a lot of video games and spending a lot of time on the computer and so on. Largely like tendinitis in my wrist and my hands and and then yeah, the sensory issues, I've always been extremely sensitive, and had issues with, like sensory processing. And that includes, you know, being extremely sensitive to smells, and getting easily overwhelmed and sounds and like feelings and textures and all these things. And yeah, it does sometimes, you know, cause issues with technology or with gaming or stuff like that. On that note, to be clear, I work in the games industry, but I'm only here to represent myself and my own, like perspectives and opinions and not have any sort of official representativeNicthat that's totally fair. Now, being very sensitive to smells, I guess, is not a big problem using computers games, we haven't yet gotten to smell-o-vision. And I think I'm happy about that. But how does does this sensory overload? How does that translate in either gaming or using the web or working digitally?GuyYeah, good question. I'm also very grateful that we have not yet invented smell-o-vision. Even you know, virtual reality doesn't seem to have that yet. And for me, at least, I'm thankful for that. It doesn't always actually have an effect. You know, in a lot of cases, Everything's just fine. But the sort of things that can happen are, it's often like, related to hearing things. So I'm not, I'm not deaf or hearing impaired in any way that I'm aware of. I'm actually very sensitive to sounds. But what that can result in is that I have trouble filtering out... sounds. So like, as an example, if I'm in a crowded room, and there's a lot of conversations going on, it can be really hard to pick out the conversation I'm trying to participate in. And so what can happen in, you know, online situations, is, if you're in a call with people, and there's a lot of background noise coming through their microphone, it can be like nearly impossible to understand them, which I know everybody, or a lot of people probably experienced this as frustrating or difficult. But it can be get, like, especially bad. Or if there's high pitched sounds like feedback, or especially for whatever reason, I'm super sensitive to like whistling. But, you know, if you suddenly have headphones on, you suddenly hear somebody whistling. It's almost like it's being projected directly into your brain. It can be kind of difficult to cope with.NicSo you're not talking about just a bit of a frustration or annoyance. You really are talking about these kinds of sounds, wreck your brain in some way.GuyYeah, it can lead to just all like thinking or processing or anything. You know, trying to actually be a person just stops and for as long as as you know, whistling are there. high pitched noises are going on. I'm just desperately trying to survive it or get past it. And then you know, if that goes away, then try to resume a normal train of thought or conversation or something. It takes a while to like, collect myself. Of course, you know, this varies, it's like, if I'm really tired, this can be a lot worse than if I'm like, in good spirits or so on.NicYeah, but isn't that the thing about accessibility, though that situation vary, situations vary for individual depending on time of day, day of week or period of the year. But that doesn't mean that because it's not always the same. It's any less important, does it?GuyOh, yeah, for sure. I agree. I'm definitely not like an expert on accessibility or anything. I'm just, from this point of view, survive, as a normal user, try my best to get through the day and do the things I want to do. But yeah, I agree with you that it shouldn't, it shouldn't matter that much. I guess I just add that for like, context or color.NicFair enough! Guy, if you had a message for designers, or developers around web accessibility, or digital accessibility or, or things like that, what what would you want them to remember about either disability, inclusion, or accessibility?GuyI mean, I think part of it is just that everyone's different. Everyone has different needs, and preferences, and so on. And it's very hard to do like a one size fits all design. So I, I always really appreciate any software tools or websites that have controls and settings basically, like, let me toggle on and off different sound effects, or turn on and off, sound entirely or music entirely. Often I really liked when things default to not having sound and then have you like opt into sound or something like that. Right? I've often experienced websites that you know, you go to a website to read some documentation about a product and a little chat window pops up in the bottom right with like a cloud high pitch, dinging noise, asking if you want to check with Representative and like, I really appreciate the the effort to provide good service and support. But it's also often like very startling. And the first thing I want to do after after one of those things pops up is just like closed the website and never go back.NicYeah, so they're trying to be helpful, but in fact, they are pushing customers away.GuyYeah, it can happen. And you know, it's one of those tricky things because it's clearly well intentioned, but intentions aren't always enough. Yeah,Nicyeah. I like that intentions aren't always enough. Guy. Thank you very much for sharing your your thoughts and experiences with me and we'll see you around on the web.GuySounds good. Thanks for having me on.NicCheers.
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Alex says that "running into the same barriers every time a new platform or app is released is very frustrating. It's realizing some of my students are struggling with the same kind of issues I was struggling with 30 years ago when I was a student."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. As usual, transcripts are available for this episode and all other episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yryules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this show. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experience. They do that through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Alex Marositz. It's Hey, Alex, how are you?AlexHi, good morning.NicGood morning. So you reached out and you said after I asked you said yeah, I'm game to have you ask me some questions. So here's my first question. What is your disability or your impairment, Alex?AlexWell, yeah, I guess I am blind. And I use a screen reader and electronic Braille display to access the computer and the internet. A little bit about me is I spent 12 years teaching assistive technology and access technology and training students to use it in the in the community college system. And then I spent the last three years doing accessibility audits and testing for accessibility and kind of handling the compliance piece. And then about four days ago, I started a new job, which is exactly why I reached out to yo. I was kind of going through a little bit of a switching roles a bit coming back to the community colleges, and I had some some time on my hands and just was participating in the accessibility community overall. So aside from that, I do write for the top tech tidbits flying blind website and participate in some of the other accessibility spaces. I'd say kind of just throughout my career, you're right, kind of the basis of that was having to learn accessible technology, and how to use a screen reader and mix sort of Braille and auditory learning styles. But that's on the computer now.NicI'm going to get away from my usual questions, because you are the right person to ask this. I'm going to circle back to my other questions. But as someone who has done education and teaching people how to use screen readers for for good portion of time. And as someone who has also worked in the accessibility field, what would you say your top one or two tips for people doing accessibility testing fairly new to it? What would you say the two top tips are for someone looking to learn how to use a screen reader for testing if they are sighted users?AlexYou know, that's a good question. And I can only tell you what's kind of helped me, and I feel has kind of set me apart in that space is try to find some time engaging in an activity that you enjoy doing or something like that. Volunteer in some way with an organization that involves disabled people in some way. So I don't know if that means volunteering at an at a youth camp sports camp for persons with disabilities or find something in your area and actually just get to know you know a little bit about the culture and the lives of the people whose work you'll be impacting moving forward. And I just I can't tell you how valuable that is interacting with students every day for 12 or 13 years really gave me sort of a unique perspective and also just kind of oriented the work that I was doing in a better way. You know, knowing what WCAG standards for example are going to impact which folks is a little bit easier to understand when you when you've met them when you when you've met them in a social space for example, like I kind of said rather than just understanding it from from the standards themselves and and why they matter and so forth type documents.NicI actually love that. I have... Here I am asking for a tech tip and youre really flipping things over the head in a way that I really love is, if I paraphrase you, learning how to use a screen reader is not so much about tech and how you use a screen reader. It's about understanding the culture, and the lives and experiences of people who use screen readers, because I guess you can learn the tech, but unless you understand the people who use the tech, it's not really going to be as useful as it could be,AlexYou know, and just an example that comes to mind, and it's not a great one, but we're just talking here, you might work for a company that does simulations of flying cockpits kind of thing, you know, that you might not think that accessibility is very important, right in your work until you maybe join a social group and realize, you know, there are screen reader users who are interested in this field, and, and so forth. And, and just knowing that your work actually matters just as much as in that space, as it does in a banking app, or, or something that we all know that everybody needs to, you know, access.NicSo coming back to the usual shedule of my show, what would you say for you personally, as a screen reader user, what's your biggest barrier, or your biggest pet peeve on the web?AlexYou know, okay, I'm glad you use the word pet peeve, a little bit because I kind of flipped the answer around a little bit, from barrier to frustration. And I did that, because I think, you know, we kind of know what some of the barriers are in this space for a screen reader user, right? We know about, you know, using color to identify errors on a form, right? We know about, you know, alternative text on buttons and charts and, and to an extent, images as well, you know, and we kind of do know about what makes what would make if you're a screen reader user, if there's if there's no keyboard access, then that's going to present an absolute barrier, right to your web application. So I think since we kind of already knew that, I think I'm just gonna share kind of what my frustration is. And in that, when on new platform, a line of business application or entertainment website, that sort of video or what have you, ticketing application. Social media is obviously in the news right now quite a bit with new social media platforms out there, running into the same barriers, every time a new platform is released, is the biggest frustration that I think I have on the web. I come from the education space, right. So just kind of the example I had here was just realizing that a student is struggling with some of the same things that I struggled with 30 years ago on a website, right?NicYeah.AlexEvery time you come up with a new application, you know, we seem to make the same mistakes again. And that kind of leads me into my, the your third question, which is what message would I share moving forward right?NicYeah.AlexAnd that is participate, you know, if you find out something new, really participate in the accessibility space in any way that you can, whether it's coming on a podcast like this, sharing something on Twitter, joining the a11y Slack channel, which is where you and I met, right?NicYeah.AlexAnd just participate and share, take the time to learn, but also just share tips and really just participate and be active in the community. I think that that's the only way we're going to prevent repeats of the same accessibility barriers throughout, you know, new products and things like that.NicI love that: Participate, get involved. That's a fantastic message to end the show on. Alex, thank you so much for your sharing your experiences and your thoughts, and we'll see you around the web.
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Nick Colley says "... in the analytics somewhere, there's a dashboard, and it says when they released shorts, I really started to enjoy Instagram. But actually, if you came in, saw what the impact is, it's like me miserably hooked to this dopamine loop of it is like, is really not enjoyable."Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. Learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Nick Colley Hey, Nick, how are you?NickHello. Yeah, I'm Nick with a k.NicYes! One Nic without K talking to another Nick with a K. So, my first question to you like everybody else is, what's your disability or your impairment?NickSo, I have ADHD. So I guess the, for me, disability side of things is like if, if I am struggling, it tends to be more outside the web too. And it's like in my work life and things like that. And I can end up with depression or anxiety, depending on different situations. So that's kind of like, yeah, how things can manifest. I'm not necessarily disabled, specifically from ADHD. Its often I feel disabled from specific environments. I mean, if it's a Yeah, people aren't like, not used to working with people with ADHD and stuff like that.NicSo it's not the ADHD itself that is disabling for you. It's all the surrounding conditions that derive from it.NickYeah, it's not cut and dry. So sometimes, there has been a few things in my personal life where I was, like, if I could just concentrate now, I'd be great. Yeah, a lot of like, the worst things that tend to be being in spaces where I'm not really being supported in the way I'd hoped. And then, yeah, it can lead to feeling really bad about yourself if you can't get stuff done and things like that. Which, yeah, leads to like, longer term issues and stuff like that.NicRight! So how, how does that translate onto the web? So, you know, my, my typical web question is, what's your greatest barrier, or your greatest pet peeve related to your disability on the web?NickSo, I was thinking about that, because a lot of like, a lot of the stuff that impacts me is not necessarily directly related to the web. But the main, the main thing I've been thinking about is, like, a lot of the high engagement stuff I find, like, I imagine for a lot of people that quite like, it keeps them hooked, but for me, it's like, I can lose like, four hours consuming something, I don't enjoy it. And like it can ruin my day kind of thing. So I think the My biggest like pet peeve in that in that respect is like yeah, a lot of engagement patterns that aren't really thinking about what happens if you're quite suspect susceptible to more like addictive things. So it's a bit like, like an extreme example would be like online gambling and you've got examples of like loot box stuff where you've got this concept of whales kind of people who are relying on people to like spend a lot of money on things. I think that's the main thing that I find bad on the web is like, yeah, I a lot of the like YouTube and Instagram app I delete them. I tried Tic Tok and I was like scrolling for hours and hours. I imagine a lot of people like that. But like, for me, it's like, I can be there for like six hours like yeah, and then YouTube's added it and then I'm not that I'm not there to watch like a Tic Tok on YouTube. I'm there to watch longer form videos and stuff, but I'm still like falling into these design patterns that are designed to engage, but I think they're too engaging.NicYeah. So obviously a platform wants to get their audience engaged. But it becomes almost like a dark, dark pattern where you just, you're hooked and you can't get off.NickYeah, I just have to delete the whole thing. Yeah, to get rid of Instagram. I like Instagram, because it's take like taking pictures and stuff. But again, I'm not there for the shorts, but then I ended up. So in the analytics somewhere, there's a dashboard, and it says my account like, Oh, um, when they released shorts, I really started to enjoy Instagram. But actually, if you came in, saw what the impact is, it's like me miserably hooked to this dopamine loop of it is like, is really not enjoyable.NicIt hink that's a brilliant point that the analytics data may not actually reflect the reality of your audience. Because, yeah, what you describe is, okay, so just this user is spending four hours, they really must like it. But in fact, it's No, I hate it. Let me off here.NickYeah. I don't know how we could get better at I guess it is making sure that you don't focus too much on just quantitative data and have more like quality stuff? So like conversations with people, interviewing people? Yeah, it's the fact that I've got fireworks going off in the background, because it's Halloween. So if that's a problem..NicNo problem. No problem. We are all dealing with real life. I know some podcasters that, you know, they freak out if a dog is scratching a colar, and there's a jingle in the background, of fireworks, but it's not really interfering at all. So let's let's not worry about it. We are all living in real life.NickYeah, if I if I struggled to keep on track, cuz there's currently like bangers going off in the background.NicSo obviously, a message you could have for developers was... Don't use these patterns to keep audiences engaged. But would you have something else to let developers or designers think about accessibility?NickI think. Yeah. And on that pattern, specifically, I think it's, it's, we do have a responsibility, I guess, as designers to consider like, is that is there such thing as too much engagement? And I think the answer is definitely yes. And you can only really get to that conclusion, if you focus on the people that will be the most impacted. So I think it's about like inviting people that are more susceptible to Addictive patterns and things like that into the design process. Yeah, so trying to do more user research of neurodivergent people and cognitive accessibility is something that people are starting to get into. And I think, if people invest more in that, it's going to make a big impact on how you think about engagement. It's not just like, Oh, someone's really enjoying themselves. Like, it could be someone is ruined out there all day. And now they've had to delete your app. It's like, it's not. It's not like, yeah, trying to get the why behind some of this data and not just assume,NicIs this something that could be solved through a user preference interface? So you know, hey, I want to see all these shorts or No, please hide them from me?NickYeah. Even just like, I think I always talk about is that the difference between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing? They're, they're not exactly the same game. But if you think about that, for anyone, I don't know if you played them, butNicI am afraid I have not played them.NickThey essentially the game loop. In Stardew Valley, you're a farmer. And each day you farm crops, and then you sell the crops. And there's nothing really stopping you from playing that forever, right? So when I played it, I played it for three days straight. Whereas Animal Crossing is similar kind of vibe, you you kind of do things in the day, but it's based on real time. So when it when it gets to 6pm in your real in real life, the shops close in the game and encourages you to take a break just by the nature of design. So I think I think we can learn a lot from just just that kind of design practice where you're thinking about like, how do you you can still do engagement, but I played Animal Crossing for like many months, maybe like six months, but I was only playing maybe like an hour a day. And that to me, that to me is like healthy engagement. I'm enjoying myself. I'm not burning out. Where Stardew I played for four days straight. I still think it's an excellent game. But I, I cannot go back to it because I just it makes me feel like a burn out for you. So I think trying to, it's not about necessarily straying away from patterns that keep people coming back to whatever you're building. It's more about thinking about how do you do that in a sustainable way. Ultimately, like that is like if you want a catalyst take on it. That is the way to keep your thing successful for the long term because then you've got people, if someone's consuming your thing for an hour, over five years, that's much more impact than four days of straight. Yeah. Four days.NicAbsolutely. Hey, Nick, thank you so much for your insight that was really good and powerful. And I'll see you around on the web.NickYeah, look forward to talking to you
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Alyssa says "sometimes accessibility is kind of still up in the air and a lot of corporate managers don't really understand that until a big bug happens and you lose customers because of it". Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. I just want to remind you that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do that through product testing and customer courses. You can learn more about how fable can work with you and your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Alyssa Cheeseman. Hey, Alisa, how are you?AlyssaNot too bad? How's it going with you?NicIt's going good. I'm glad we connected. We didn't know each other before this. So it's going to be a fun show to get to know you and your experiences on the web a little bit.AlyssaYeah, thank you for having me.NicLet me start by asking you this, what's your disability or your impairment?AlyssaSo I am actually considered legally blind. I do have some usable vision. But not of course, not enough to be able to drive. I also have a guide dog named Ruth, who has a yellow yellow Labrador Retriever. And she is amazing and always there. But overall, my condition is legal blindness with some residual vision.NicThank you. Service dogs are amazing. And I say this. I say this, as Winston, my mobility assistance dog is sleeping on my feet right now. So it's wonderful. However, we're not here to talk about service dogs, because so far, they haven't managed to help us on the web.AlyssaYeah!NicWhat would you say your greatest barrier or your greatest pet peeve when you're using the web is?AlyssaSo my biggest pet peeve is that sometimes I hear about different products that are going to be implemented, especially if they're my company that I work for now. And I haven't even seen it yet. But they say that it's WCAG compliant. And whenever I get to the website, it's actually not. And the biggest fear that I have is when there's a bunch of unlabeled links and buttons, it makes it very challenging for screen reader users to be able to navigate. And I use the JAWS screen reader with a blue refreshable Braille display. And it makes it really hard if there's just a ton of unlabeled things and buttons.NicSo what I'm hearing is twofold, really first is unlabeled elements make it really difficult for you to perceive and understand what's on the page. But the other aspect of that is that these products are coming to you as being supposedly WCAG conformant. But they're not.AlyssaRight, exactly. Like there's some, there was one instance where we had launched a flagship product, and there was just a bunch of unlabeled buttons. And I test, I actually test our products for accessibility. But sometimes it gets to us and I go to test a product and before it gets to the other customer. And I see these bugs, and I'm just like, this is really crazy. Why didn't we see this new design before it even got to the public?NicYeah, that's... As an accessibility consultant myself, that is something I've been struggling with, on and off. It's, it seems like there's a big disconnect there. So what would you say your, your message for designers or developers would be? Is it related directly to that? Or is it something sideways?AlyssaWell, it's very similar to that is if you're testing for screen reader accessibility, you can't just hit Tab through the page. That's not just that's not going to get to where you need to be in terms of screen reader testing, you need to tab into the page as well as arrow down the page using arrow keys. That'll make it easier to know where things are located on the screen visually, and making sure that things are in the tab order because if you're just tabing you may not visually see that something isn't in the tab order. So it's really important to actually arrow through the page, as well as have when you're testing for screen reader accessibility.NicThank you for that. I was just talking with a QA tester last week who had logged a bug. And he said, I cannot tab through all the cells in a table. And I told them, why do you need to do that these cells are not interactive. And he says, well, screen reader users need to be able to tap to the content in a data table to be able to understand it and...AlyssaNoNicYeah, nope, is exactly right.AlyssaThat's not the case.NicNopeAlyssaThat is not the case. Because yes, there are table shortcut commands. But that's not necessarily tabbing through.NicYeah. Alyssa Cheeseman. Thank you very much for being a guest on the show this week.AlyssaYeah, of course, I'm glad to be able to spread the word about accessibility and the fact that things definitely need to change from the top down because in just major corporations like the one I work in sometimes accessibility is kind of still up in the air and a lot of corporate managers don't really understand that until a big bug happens and you lose customers because of it.NicThat's a fantastic message to end the show on. Thank you, Alyssa. Have a good rest of your week.AlyssaAwesome. Thank you so much.
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Negoslav explains how a lack of accessibility on government websites may mean blind screen reader users can't access critical documents.Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encountered on the web. Just a reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from my website at http://a11yrules.com. I want to take the time to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform. They are powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do this through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work with your team at http://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Negoslav Sabev. Hi, Negoslav, how are you?NegoslavHi Nic, I'm fine, thank you.NicWe've been interacting on Twitter on enough for for a while. And finally we connected. So thank you for for willing to come and chat with me about the barriers you experience on the web.NegoslavThank you for the invitation.NicYou know by now my first question is what's your disability or your impairments? So can you tell us a little bit more about that?NegoslavI'm blind. I was born with glaucoma. And through a series of operations. Finally, I reached here. So since 2001, I'm totally blind. And I'm using computers and other electronic devices since 2003.NicWhat's your favorite screen reader?NegoslavOh, it's it's different experience on different devices. So it's hard to say to tell that on Windows, I mostly use JAWS because I'm doing a lot of text editing. I also use NVDA, for reasons. And on iOS device. So you know that there is only one screen reader and that's quite sober. So I use them.NicThank you. What would you say your greatest barrier or your biggest pet peeve is when you're using the internet.NegoslavSometimes I feel that the developers and teams that are working on websites are trying to hide... trying to hide something from me and try to lock me out. What I mean is that sometimes text that should be heading is not a heading and just a big and bolded text. Sometimes there's a CAPTCHA that I have to solve. And it's not accessible at all. Even it has no alternative. Or the audio that is playing as an alternative is so bad that I can hardly hear it, even though I have very good hearing abilities. And I can give some examples. Last year, I was trying to get documents from the Ministry of Justice that I'm not been I have not been judged. And it I went to the website, I filled the form, I paid the tax to get this document and the document was in electronic format. And I had to open a link to to see it. But when I get got there and open the link, there was a CAPTCHA that had no alternative that even the screen reader couldn't see as a picture.NicWow.NegoslavSo I was locked out and never saw this document and I was contacting the people that were working there some government agencies but unfortunately, no result and sometimes accessibility work is happening so slowly. That it's so bad. It's so bad. I read today someone who was tweeting. "I want it all, I want it now. But step by step."NicYes. And so what you're describing is an experience where it's not just a small barrier, it's not just something that's annoying. It's not that you can't order something on an online shopping platform, it really is that you aren't able to get critical government documents because they're creating barriers for you.NegoslavYes, unfortunately, there are many other examples, I can give that somehow a content is hidden, I had such an experience, while trying to enter a pin that was presented in a totally inaccessible way no screen reader could see where I should, should press with the mouse or something else. The keyboard wasn't working, or there's something like pressing a button, and content is somewhere on the window. And I have to, to look through it thoroughly to see to see what's there and to interact with it.NicIf you had one message for designers or developers, what would that message be?NegoslavMaybe to be more open minded for different users with different abilities or different needs. Because for some people, reaching to something, reading something or interacting with something that is inaccessible is essential to do. But they cannot enough because they are stupid, not because they are unable to do this not because they are incompetent, just because the technology is preventing them from doing this or not. Not exactly the technology. But the way technologies are implementedNicI like this. It's not the user who's incompetent. It's the designer and the developer who didn't do the job correctly.NegoslavYes, and that makes things hard, but they could be much easier.NicNegoslav Sabev. Thank you for sharing your insight that's been actually really, really powerful for me. So thank you, and we'll see you around on the web.NegoslavThank you, Nic.
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Lē Silveus McNamara says consuming Tech has a stimulant effect on the nervous system and the overconsumption of a stimulant, like technology [is] bad for your health.Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just to remind you that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. I am really grateful to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work with your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Lē McNamara. Hey, Lē, how are you?LēHi, I'm doing well thank you, Nic.NicIt's been a while since we've been in touch on and off on the web. And we worked a little bit together a while back on the Knowbility internet accessibility rally. And that was fun. And finally we get to connect. So let me ask you this, what's your disability or your impairment?LēSo well, I am a multiple neurodivergent. So I and I also live with a chronic illness. So the nuts and bolts are C PTSD, chronic pain condition and autoimmunity with self diagnosed autism, which is kind of a recent discovery that I have made of myself as part of being a part of the accessibility world. And man has that discovery, blown some things up wide open for me. So it's been that's been an exciting adventure the last few years.NicIt can be very exciting to realize you, you have something that has never been diagnosed, but suddenly when you realize it's like all the pieces of puzzle come together.LēExactly. Yep. Yeah.NicSo we're talking about barriers on the web, what would you say your your greatest barrier or your biggest pet peeve related to your disabilities and using the web? What what would that be?LēSo I would say the number one is going to be the overuse of high saturation, or what I call emergency colors. So when you are neurodivergent, although many of us see especially high saturation colors differently. So if you imagine, in your mind, a bright red, we might see that as more of a neon. And that same mechanism of you know, when you see when you're online and you see an emergency pop up, for example, and it's in that bright, high saturation red, that same mechanism that makes it so that that red gets your attention is overly stimulating for me. Right. And so when that color, whether it's high saturations reds, yellows, or oranges, when those colors are used, outside of the context of their intention, which is to say, an emergency, we need your attention right now. That hook, right, that hook into the mind can be very problematic. And in fact, when I see a website that uses especially high saturation, red as a branding color, and so you'll see it in blocks all over the side, or see buttons all over the site. It actually causes both high anxiety and nerve pain so that overstimulation can be so severe that it puts the nervous system into overload. And the experience of that internally is anxiety, frustration, sometimes a sense of panic, but also active pain that can last sometimes for a few minutes, but sometimes for several days.NicWould you say then that companies that have red as a brand color need to change that or what would be a solution there?LēYes. So really, what we're looking at is the saturation level. So you can use red, but you want to bring the saturation level down. Right. And actually, if you want to see examples of what I mean by this, I did write a blog post that is currently posted on the TPGi website. It's called Going beyond WCAG losing spoons online. And in that article, I extrapolate some of the various issues that I have found on the internet and one of these, this is one of the issues and I do give visual examples that you can consent into or not for my, my neurodivergent peers, and also hex codes so that you can really see what I mean by high saturation, but your designers will know what you mean. And so you just want to bring the saturation down. So if you're using a warmer read that that's better Right. And then I would just say if you do you know, if you're a company that sort of stuck with a high saturation color that you've invested a lot of time in marketing in, and it's in your logo. Well, if it's just in your logo that might be okay. But take it out of the website in large blocks, right? Take it out as a big block background color, or as button colors, text colors, etc.NicThank you. If you had one message for designers or developers, what would it be? Is it along the lines of beware your colors? Or do you have something else for for them to think about?LēI think it's I think it's broader than that. I think one of the things that, as a culture we are still overlooking when it comes to these new technologies, and how much time we're all spending with them is that at the end of the day, consuming Tech has a stimulant effect on the nervous system. And this is true for everyone, regardless of whether or not they're neuro divergent, but not unlike the consumption of overconsumption of a stimulant, like caffeine, for example, is bad for your health, the overconsumption of a stimulant, like technology, like the screen based technologies that we use, is also bad for your health. And that's just even more so true for those of us with what we call sensory sensitivities who are neurodivergent. Right? So I would encourage designers to educate themselves on the basic neuroscience of that and be thinking about it as they're designing to minimize their does minimize the stimulant nature of their designs, you know, as that as that light comes in through the eyes and affects the brain and affects the nervous system, right. So and that can be that can be a lot of things that can be minimizing motion, minimizing the amount of content on the screen at any one time, so minimizing clutter, you know, not not putting too much information all in one space. Limiting limiting color, color variance, decreasing the saturation of colors across the color spectrum, right. So there are a lot of things that we can think about and imagine to do to say, to say we understand this as a stimulant, naturally. So what can we do to minimize that effect, and that is going to not only help my population, but it's also going to decrease the negative long term effects of technology use on the population at large.NicLē, thank you so much for sharing your your experiences and giving some advice to our listeners. So thank you. Yeah, thank you
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Sam asks "why people who produce content where they have the script, they have the content, they have the time, they have the resources, don't provide captions that are accurate?"Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and the barrier they experience on the web. Just a quick reminder, transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. I would like to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organization from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experience through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable works with your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic.NicSo today I'm talking with Sam Evans. Hey, Sam, how are you?SamDoing very well today. Thank you, Nic.NicWe have been talking a lot over the years. I've been trying to organize you coming on this show for a little bit. So I'm glad we finally connect. Let me start with the question I asked everybody. The first question is what's your disability or your impairment?SamThe biggest challenge I face is being hard of hearing I have... I use hearing aids. And so I am very much relying on captions. And if I'm in person with someone lip reading, or if their image is large enough on a screen to compensate for being able to hear and understand clearly what the spoken word is.NicHow does doing video calls like this on a platform where there's not necessarily captions? How does that work?SamI'm familiar with your speaking tone and, and how that works for you. And having seen your face in person, and a clearer view of your face where we have video while we're chatting. But I turned my audio up. Now if you're if you're covering your mouth, I wouldn't be able to but but I turned my audio up. And I also have my hearing aids tuned in for audio input from a computer device. So I rely a lot on trying to understand context, if it's on a video call. And trying to catch what's happening, I'll often use a secondary tool or device if there's not captions included in the episode or in the event. Most of that is AI. So at best 60%, 70%, maybe 80% accuracy. So it's a lot of guestimation which is a lot of cognitive load on top of trying to engage.NicThat would actually be very tiring. I mean, everybody finds video calls tiring. But if you have to have that added cognitive load on top of it, how... What's the effect, if you have, you know, three or four or five hours of video call in a day?SamIt's exhausting. And for those of us who've come up in trying to multitask and functionally do more than one thing at a time, you cannot do other things other than follow along, listen, try to hear, read and engage. So even if you are dedicated to doing nothing but being on focus, it's still a lot of load. It's mentally strenuous, in addition to trying to take in what audio my ears can hear.NicAll right, so that seems like a pretty significant thing. But my usual second question is what's your biggest barrier or your biggest pet peeve on the web related to your disability? Is it different from from this thing that we've just been talking about? Or?SamOne of the other things that accompanies that, for me is vestibular disability about balance and motion. And so if those two things come together with online video content, it's it can be just absolutely draining for the day. So my biggest pet peeve is why people who produce content where they have the script, they have the content, they have the time they have the resources, don't provide captions that are accurate or don't make the time to invest in accurate and usable captions, perhaps not understanding and I think that's the biggest challenge. For me, the biggest pet peeve is not understanding what quality accurate usable captions mean to people who need them. And this concept of just turn the captions on and you're done. And that seems to skip over the entire part of understanding the people who have a need. And I don't think it's malicious and intent, but the outcome is the same for people who are prevented and from engaging and face that barrier.NicYou talk about accurate captions, and you throw out some numbers before. We said 60% or 70%, maybe 80%. Isn't 80% success rate good enough? I mean that, you know, if you use sit to test, typically 80%, you've passed the test 80% When I was at university is an A.SamIt is for evaluations for maybe knowledge assessments. But when we talk about the accuracy of captions, every 1% loss and accuracy in captions in the research I've read most recently is about a 10% loss in comprehension. So if we're talking 80% As a best for AI, that's a 20% loss in accuracy. And if you multiply that by 10%, for comprehension, we've reduced the comprehension by 200%.NicNice. That's very nice. I mean, it's not but it's, it's, it's an interesting set of numbers. Thank you.SamSo 1% accuracy if we consider just a simple word, and it depends on someone's pronunciation, or accent or speaking patterns. If AI, artificial intelligence gets the word can't C A N, apostrophe T wrong, then somebody is going to say, oh, I can do this. One word.NicYeah.SamAnd make a massive difference in the guidance, instructions, or information someone comes away with. So that's one to 20%. That's massive, and change.NicYeah, I come across that all the time. I use voice to text on my phone very often. And I cannot use voice to text without editing what I'm sending. And a couple of days ago, I had a good laugh. I said argument, and Siri wrote sex garment. And it was in the context of a business communication. So that would not have gone very well.SamI also cannot trust Siri to hear and translate what I speak all the time. I tried to double check, but we're not there yet. And 20?NicYeah, we are not there yet. So if you had one message for designers or developers around accessibility, what, what would that be?SamI want to encourage designers and developers to first think about the people. So first, start by understanding disability. Pick one, two or three types of disability and consider the barriers that disabled people face with digital engagement and learn just some of those personas, and how disabled people engage, and how inaccessible content prevents them from having an equitable experience. If we can start with the who, then we can think about why there's a challenge a barrier or how we, as developers, designers, can change our methods to remove a barrier instead of creating or sustaining existing barriers. And I think if developers can take one moment to think I want to make the world less full of barriers, they don't have to remove them all. But what can I do to remove one barrier? I think that's a really empowering opportunity for developers, when they can make it a personal effort, as opposed to a task list or challenge or an add on to what they're already doing in their busy days. If they can find a personal commitment to why it affects humans, to make the world a better place, I think that usually is the way that I find developers most likely to voluntarily affect change in their process.NicI love that. Sam Evans, thank you for being such a good guest. And I'm sure we'll see you around on the web.SamWe will. Thanks so much for having me join today, Nic, I appreciate it.
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Barry says he has to guess a lot about what elements do what on a site, because semantically meaningful markup isn't being used.Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. A reminder that there are transcripts for this, and all other episodes on the podcast's website a11yrules.com/Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences, through product testing and custom courses. Learn more about how Fable can work for your team at: makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Barry Hill. Hey, Barry, how are you?BarryI'm good. Thank you very much happy, I'm healthy,NicHappy and healthy is good, is good. You come to us from the UK. So we... We had a little bit of fun and games scheduling these things. You're You're in my future right now.BarryYes, yes. It's nearly time for me to make dinner over here. And I think you've just about finished breakfast.NicThat's right. That's right. Breakfast and dinner. Nothing wrong with having breakfast for dinner. Anyway, Barry What's your disability or your impairment?BarryI've been blind for 28 years now. I went blind, suddenly, through a car crash. Many hours, a sales rep driving for a living. And then I had a horrific car crash and woke up in hospital with no sight. You never know what's going to happen to you the day after?NicYeah, that would be quite a quite a shock and a complete change of lifestyle, wouldn't it?BarryOh, yes. Yes, it was.NicSo 28 years blind, you've probably come to develop a lot of coping mechanisms and techniques to function on the web. But I'm still quite certain you encounter barriers, what would you say is your biggest barrier or your biggest pet peeve on the web?BarryMy biggest pet peeve is the way that developers program writers have gone from writing basic code to using WYSIWYG and drag and drop programs. So you're not writing code anymore. And it seems like everything, either is a hacked or needs to be hacked. And that makes it difficult for me to use my screen reader online as I would to interpret websites. It's not as straightforward. So I have to guess a lot of things or work around them, I have to figure out workarounds, or go by experience of when I've come across this hash up before and just don't like it when there's an easy alternative. It really does irritate me that it's there. People just don't understand that we have tools there that can make things so much simpler.NicSo if I understand correctly, what you're saying is that the reliance on JavaScript frameworks is making everything worse for you as a screen reader user.BarryYeah, yeah. I don't know the language. But JavaScript do sound very much like what's happening. But yes, without a doubt, people are just and it's not just that as well. People are using links for buttons and buttons for links, they are coding divs as buttons, and I just don't understand why they need to do that sort of thing. Why not just use the proper elements?NicYeah, well, that's certainly a rant I've been on about for for a little while, you know, HTML matters. Yeah. Yeah. Barry, my message to designers and developers, it's HTML matters. But what would be your one message to designers and developers as regards to web accessibility?BarryIt's that very thing. I just wish that coders would learn HTML, it's not difficult. I learned HTML, took me two months to learn that 100 different pieces of code for it. And I wrote a website and that was about 10 or 12 years ago. Did that. I can still remember a lot of it. So it's really not difficult to do and some of the things that are really useful for me the structural HTML, you only need maybe 12 or 15 of them to know how to go to a website to make it so that I can navigate a website with ease, using things like headers, footers, main skip links. It just makes it so much easier. If I can open a webpage, and my screen reader will just tell me the whole layout of that page through this semantic markup, and I know what to expect then before I even started looking at. So I can almost get a feel for the page at the same speed as a sighted person when they glance at our page, if it's got proper semantic markup.NicThank you, Barry. I love to hear this message coming from a screen reader user. Because, you know, a lot of people in the accessibility community are saying the very same thing. So we're not just inventing things it's the lived experience of a blind screen reader users. Use semantic HTML user outlines. This is fantastic. Thank you.BarryYou're welcome.NicBarry, thanks for being a good guest and your candid answers, really appreciate it. And we'll see you around on the web.BarryDefinitely. And probably on Twitter as well. I've been following you on Twitter for a while as well, Nic.NicProbably on Twitter. I spent a lot of time there. Barry, thank you.
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John says, among other things: "Let the user choose. Don't ever dictate to someone's assistive technology".Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts, where disabled people explain their impairment and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at a time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. Learn more about how fable can work for your team at makeitfable.com/nicNicToday I am talking with John Tubbs. Hey, John, how are ya?JohnGood to be here. Nic. Thank you.NicWell, thanks for joining me. Let's talk a little bit first about what's your disability or your impairment?JohnIt's an interesting question. I've never had a formal diagnosis. But working with the whole area of accessibility, universal design such in my work at the University, I've been able to kind of self diagnose and looking back at my history academically, educationally, developmentally, I could see where there were certainly some things that I did not address or were not addressed with me by people in my past institutions, in my past that they probably should have! Really what I can trace it down to is I have a language processing, a Semantic Processing problem that really jumbles words, re... puts words back together in odd situations, or relationships. The best way to describe it, and for folks that are from America, and of my age, which is late 50s. You probably remember the electric company is a children's show on public television. And they had a learning skit that they always did, and they took an opening consonant sound, and a closing vowel consonant sound, and then assemble them pa at Pat, cup at cat. So what my processing does is it will look across a sentence of words on a page, and it will start reassembling the words on me. So I will see Pat instead of cat or bat instead of cat, as I'm reading through, and the biggest place where I see it happen often is between lines of text. So as I'm reading through, I will be reassembling words based on letters in combination and see in other lines while I'm reading. So it's it's pretty difficult for me to consistently read through long form, especially if it's tightly compressed words on a page or on the screen. The other interesting thing about this though, it's not just in my own reading practice, it comes to me just... It rolls in my head as noise. So the best option I can ever description I can give of this is growing up I played hockey. And I would remember being on the ice, like lining up for a face off. And I would hear these, the electric company playing in my head. It was something I would see something in the stairs on the scoreboard on the stands, a sign a fan might be who knows, a word would hit me and I would start spinning of all what consonant combination in my head as I'm playing hockey, so it's something that once my head starts spinning, it's it's like the roulette wheel with the ball going around in one direction and balls go in the other direction. And it just becomes this cognitive noise. That is just nerve racking. Yeah, and I've never outgrown that, surprisingly.NicSo, if we were to put a label on, at least the first part of what you describe, I would associate that strongly with dyslexia.JohnYeah, that's been that's been my take on it. My wife who also studies disability and has a lot of experience with her own students, as a professor would go to the same way, come to the same conclusion. I would also have to add, you know, I do have some of the classic can't do left, right. Right, I'll say left. And I mean, right, and vice versa. And so that is obviously a very difficult situation.NicYeah.JohnWhen you're driving with somebody,NicYes, I can see that. So what would you say your biggest pet peeve or your biggest barrier related to that and accessibility on the web is?JohnWell, the web gives me a fighting chance, sometimes. A printed page, I'm stuck with the printed page, I can't do anything about it. But the web, at least gives me the opportunity to do some things with my devices, whether it be a browser on screen or mobile device, or whatever else if I can control the CSS. Now, the problem is, for me, it's not just bigger letters. That doesn't help. Because the relative space between the lines stays the same, the letters just get bigger, maybe it's a bigger problem. Hard to say. But what, when I first learned about CSS, all of a sudden, in the places I had some control over CSS, I could take better control of my reading, in that I could adjust the line spacing, at a doesn't have to be double space, you know, the page, the density of text on the page, all that would contribute. But if I could change the line spacing, I was really, I was in a much better situation, I could turn off the noise that I would see between lines of text. So if it's densely packed, and I can't do anything about it, that's tough, you know, sometimes, just reorienting, the length of the line can help it. So if I'm on a mobile device, especially I can go portrait landscape flip. And sometimes that helps, because I changed, again, just the density of lines. And sometimes, you know, you go with the go there and the CSS changes, you know, because you're in different views. So it's it that can be helpful. It's not necessarily helpful. But, you know, over over the years, I've just come to instinctively do different things to try to give myself a leg up.NicSo what I'm hearing from you is that the web can either be really helping you because if you have control, you can actually interact with the content in a way that works for you. Or it can be just as bad a barrier as the printed word. Because if you can't adjust to your own print preference, if you want.JohnRight,Nicthen you're stuck.JohnYeah, yeah. Again, in, you know, traditionally, we think with, you know, either some visual challenges or, you know, cognitive challenges and reading, reading, processing, you know, large screen text and stuff was often the thing that you'd be, you know, considering, but that doesn't help me seemingly. So yeah, the web gives me this fighting chance, like I was saying, now it comes down to, you know, great user interface design, that would allow you to have that available to the user, so they can make their own decisions. And not to let the cat out of the bag about you and I Nic. But we've had lots of discussions over the years, just about user preference to handle their assistive technologies. We and you know, myself and my background as a instructional media designer, and producer. You know, I learned the hard way, by getting, you know, some incredible pushback from disability, disabled people that were in my classes that I was providing content for, that they didn't like what I provided them, because it didn't fit what they wanted to use. And the example of course, that we've discussed it at length in the past is I provided what would be the textbook, assistive technology and remediation and content for someone who was blind. That person didn't want the textbook blind, accommodation. They wanted something else. I was doing what I thought was the best thing and it was not what they needed. And then I said to myself as a content creator and producer, how do I know? I never will when you do big online learning. I in the courses that I was designing for I had half A million learners in a single course half a million. That's 50,000. At minimum, folks with some sort of need for an accommodation.NicYeah.JohnI will never know, know those 50,000 people. So you know, the web and the user interface design is crucial that it lets the user make their own decisions. And that's what I had to do. And maybe I just did I put that in the back of my mind and said, Gosh, here's the user interface that I really like, because I can change the line spacing. Or I can do this or I can do Yeah, so my brain can see the page can connect with the page and make, derive meaning from that page.NicIf you had one message for designer or developer, would it be around this concept of let the user choose? Or would it be something else?JohnOh, let the user choose is my mantra, and has been my mantra for the last 10 years, really, if it just has to be the case, I as a designer, I never wanted to let a good, universally designed page look bad, esthetically. And so I always was, you know, wandering between my designers, and my content. And then my folks that work with accessibility stuff along with me to make it all come together all, you know, in something that's beautiful, but yet completely universally designed. So then every user can have a successful experience. So it's, it can be done. We've, I've I've worked very, very hard on trying to do that it can be done. It takes effort, and it takes, you know, again, great knowledge of CSS, but then also knowing what kind of CSS accommodations to build for what what what do I put in that CSS control panel that can be called out easily. And you know that it's there as a user on that page. That allows it not just for oh, you're blind, you're deaf, you're this You're that you? Whatever. Have it open the CSS open enough that anybody can choose their way of participating. So if there's like a magic bullet, or you know, the ultimate target to shoot for, that's what I would look for, not to ever, ever, ever dictate to someone's assistive technologies.NicYeah. Thank you, John, that that is a very powerful way to finish the show. John Tubbs, thank you for sharing that stuff with us and we'll see you around on the web.JohnThank you very much Nic, appreciate it.NicCheers.
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Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences, through product testing, and custom courses. Learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Andy fueling. Andy is I think going to talk more about gaming rather than specifically, web accessibility. But I think it all falls into the realm of digital accessibility and it's good stuff to know about. Hey, Andy, how are you doing?AndyHey doing good, how about yourself?NicI'm doing all right. I'm glad we connected. We haven't really spoken before, but super excited about talking about this topic.AndyYeah, me too. Me too.NicSo what's your impairment or your disability?AndyUm, so I am missing most of my right arm, I actually have one hand, and a very little portion of my right arm itself, actually.AndyOkay, so how does that impact your gaming? I mean, the obvious thing I could think of is if you have a console controller, which is basically a two handed thing, but is there any? Any other thing that is maybe less obvious9:38, yeah. So yeah, first one, absolutely correct. Controllers themselves for year, I've had issues with constantly because the fact that Yeah, they really are a two handed object. You kind of need both hands to use both sides of the actual controller, primarily the triggers. For a very long time, I was never able to play FPS games, like first person shooters, or any game that really required you to use both the left triggers and the right triggers simultaneously. At the same time, I always ran into that issue. And I had workarounds, you know, like I would, you know, like, jam the controller into my hip, so that I could hit ... or like my thigh, so I could hit the right trigger, or the right bumper if I needed to. But I was always discouraged from playing games like Halo, and Call of Duty, even Forzas games, like with a lot of like automobile games, like you had to use the right trigger. So I always ran into issues with that. And then the only other main thing that I have always seen as a big issue with games was custom button. Yeah, button mapping. So like, you know, you can make certain inputs on your controller different from what they are inside of the game. So say you wanted to make a like left trigger, you could do that. I've always enjoyed it when I found games I could do that with because I could actually customize it to my own specific needs. So yeah,NicSo okay, so apart from controllers what else is there that is a significant barrier for you and gaming?AndyOutside of the actual button mapping, and everything else, I would say it's the competition. And just general play with other people, because the way that I see it, and if you go into and you look around with different players, there are multiple ways you can hold on to a controller. But on top of that you have mouse and keyboard players at the same exact time. I have never been able to play with mouse and keyboard actually. So bringing back too many games, one of the biggest ones is World of Warcraft. I was always, always ran into issues trying to play that game because you kind of do need to have both functionalities of both hands, to press things on the keyboard and to press things or to you know, point and click with your mouse. And so one thing that I've always wanted to be able to see was more customization and possibilities for anything that is mouse and keyboard can also be for controller. And also seeing that as a huge disparity because, you know, it brings you away from gameplay, it isn't the way the developers initially intended you to play the actual game. But the way that I've seen is that everybody has an interest in wanting to play almost any kind of game, you know, specifically, World of Warcraft, for me, I played it here and there, but it was very, very pulled back for me, I wasn't able to be able to press certain buttons on the keyboard fast enough, as I was moving back and forth. With my one hand, trying to use both the mouse and the keyboard or, because I do have like a knob is the actual medical terminology for it. I can't press more than two buttons at the same time. So, you know, I'm trying to cast a spell on trying to activate an ability, and I'm hitting two at the same time. So it's like one to gray both at the same exact time. So I'm like, well, that's, that's not going to work out. So I'm having to like, you know, go move back and forth and everything. But um, yeah, on top of that, it's also like, the adjustments you can do for the analog sticks. And or mouse's, like, menu, cursors, changing fonts, sizes, and their aspects for the screen, so that I, you know, can take a little more time to having to press exactly what I need to press, instead of only pressing one I don't want to. And I've seen games here and there that actually do very, very well with that. One primarily being Apex legends right now. Very much enjoy it. But then another game, I have issues with this Call of Duty, because it's very, very, very, very, like, what's the word I'm trying to think of, like, strict, it's very rigid in the way that it kind of have it, there's not really that too much customization. They only have like six or seven different controller button mapping inputs that you can change around, and I can't do much of it. So it's very discouraging more than anything for me, because I really want to play the games. I just can't.NicYeah, that's kind of defeating the purpose. The idea of gaming is to be fun and exciting. And if you are left with a feeling of discouragement, it just, it's really well, discouraging.AndyYeah.NicYeah. If you had a message for game builders, game designers, developers, what would it be?AndyBring us in any of us, individuals with disabilities or impairments, we are more than willing to help you. Because of our in general love for games. We just want to see them, you know, to be more fair to be more accessible to just allow for everybody to play with any sort of disability or impairment. So just let us know, bring out like, have an ad or whatever. Just know that we are out there. We want to help you. Because we want to play your games.NicYeah, I like that. Bring us in. We are out there. Last census I think said there's 26% of adults with disabilities in the United States. So it's not a negligible number really, is it?AndyNo, no, not at all.NicRight. Well, Andy, thank you so much for sharing that information. And hopefully we have game developers and game studios that pay a little bit of attention to this and improve things.AndyYeah, yeah. And if they do, just Yeah, that's the biggest thing is we are out there. We play your games. We enjoy them. We want to make them better because we know you want to make them better as well. So let's do it together.NicAwesome. Andy Feuling. Thank you.AndyAbsolutely. Thank you.
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Robert says: "The message I had to give folks if it was just one is don't make assumptions about how people with disabilities use the web".TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barrier they encounter on the web. A quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Today I'm talking with Robert jolly. Hey, Robert, how are you?RobertHey, Nic, I'm doing well. Thank you.NicGlad to be talking to you. You've been on the show before for the long form. Actually, I think you were the very first guest of the podcast back in Oh, 2017. So it's been a while?RobertIt definitely has, it's good to be back.NicIt's good to have you back. So let me start by asking you this, what's your disability or your impairment?RobertSo Nic, I had a stroke a little over 10 years ago, and that stroke had some some significant initial effects that I've largely recovered from, but I still have some, some cognitive deficits, where I, I have some memory issues, sometimes I can't hold a train of thought, for a long time, especially on a complicated matter. So you know, definitely I have a bit of a disability with, with how my brain is working these days.NicSo how does that impact your use of the web? Is there... What would you say your greatest barrier, or maybe your greatest pet peeve is around web use and cognitive impairments?RobertI think, both a barrier and pet peeve because it's really frustrating to have overly complicated interfaces, you know, presented to me or, or if there are a series of instructions, or a lack of instructions, and just the assumption that I'm going to know exactly what's needed of me, especially if I'm inputting information somewhere. You know, one of those examples is, you know, having instructions in placeholders that disappear. That's really, you know, off putting to me, you know, both because I've worked in accessibility, but also just as a person who can't remember what the label was in that field from, you know, potentially 5 or 10 seconds ago. That makes me you know, that makes me either do one of two things, either I try to refresh the page with it being blank, so I can review that, that placeholder and then go back to filling out the form. Or if it's something that's really complicated, and I'm super frustrated, I'll just leave and, and so that's the, that's the area where like, you know, overcomplicating things, making making people think really, really hard in in the process of, say, navigating a transaction that makes me just say, like, this isn't worth it, and I'm, I'm just gonna go somewhere else. It's not worth it for me, my brain to hurt or for me to question, you know, my ability to complete the task.NicRobert, what would be your one message to designers or developers around web accessibility?RobertI think the message I had to give folks if it was just one is don't make assumptions about how people with disabilities use the web. What I mean by that is, is that I think there are sometimes generalizations that get made are often generalizations that get made. And those could be very incorrect without having a you know, good education and background in the diversity of web users or technology users. And you know, just because you build a thing, and you think that your user doesn't have a disability, they certainly might. And, in my case, mine is relatively invisible until it shows up when I'm trying to speak or, or, you know, form a complex, you know, thought or, you know, or speak in some sort of way that I don't have to like pause and think about it, right. So, so that, that sort of, you know, assumptions and generalizations and, and, and sort of decision making that happens that exclude people whether it is intentional or not, is what I see as a really big barrier that kind of perpetuates the problem that we see in, in people not understanding the depth and breadth of accessibility and why, why it's needed so badly to be a part of our practice areas.NicReally like that don't make assumptions. I think. I think it would serve all of us well, to keep that in mind in all areas of work. But you're right. As it relates to accessibility. I think it's critical.RobertYeah, me too.NicRobert, thank you for your candid responses, and I'll see you around on the web.RobertThank you, Nic. I will see you around as well.NicCheers.
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Jessie says that accessibility does not mean just catering to a specific group of people. Accessibility is not just for people with disabilities, accessibility is for everyone!Thanks to White Coat Captioning for providing in-kind sponsorship for this episode.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and you're listening to the A11y Rules Soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web.Thank you to today's sponsor, White Coat Captioning. The White Coat Captioning team specializes in and focuses on tech, medical, science, and social justice jargon so that your domain‑specific language is typed correctly. Get the best captioning you can for your event, large or small, internationally.Today I'm talking with Jessie Zhang. Hi, Jessie, how are you?JessieHi, Nic, it's nice to meet you. I'm doing pretty well.NicGood, it's very nice to meet you, as well. Let me start with the first question. What's your disability or your impairment?JessieWell, so my name is Jessie, and I identify as Deaf or hard of hearing. If you want me to be more elaborate, I would say I have bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, but to put it, I'm deaf.NicThank you. It's good to ‑‑ I have to say, it makes me happy to show that people running podcasts not only can make the podcast accessible for Deaf people at the end, but we can have Deaf guests if we try to figure out how it works, so thank you for being willing to participate and show that to my audience.JessieFor sure.NicSo what would you say your biggest barrier on the web is?JessieI think on the web ‑‑ or on the mobile ‑‑ on the phone, as well ‑‑ my biggest barrier would be captioning and videos, and also podcasts, as well. So in general, when I'm browsing a website, like CNN or NPR, I usually watch videos, but sometimes the videos are not captioned, or I don't have any indication that the video is being captioned, and even if it is captioned, sometimes it's not much or sometimes there is a lag or sometimes ‑‑ I cannot tell you how many virtual conferences or events or meetings I have missed out on because there is no captions. And even if there is captions, like on Zoom, I have to request that the host enable captions. But sometimes captions are not enabled.NicYeah, I am always surprised at the lack of captions, at the lack of transcripts for podcasts. It's not that difficult to make happen. I mean, sure, it can be technically a little bit more complicated than just doing whatever we're doing, but the impact on Deaf and hard of hearing folks, and so many other people. If you had one message for designers or developers on the web, what would you like them to know about accessibility?JessieUm, that accessibility does not mean just catering to a specific group of people. Accessibility is not just for people with disabilities, accessibility is for everyone! And that includes people with disabilities. That includes people who speak a different language, and people who might have difficulty accessing a website in any way or any form. So I'm asking designers to be really mindful of that and try not to create more barriers, but instead, to put captions on videos. You do not have to go with what is already there. You can do something new, and you can do something that is more creative, more innovative, and also include people with disabilities in the process, too. I just realized that was more than one thing I shared.NicThat's awesome. Yeah. I mean, get out of my brain! You say what I'm thinking. Thank you for that. I'm so glad we're on the same wavelength.JessieAlso, I'm really excited to help pave for a better future that is more accessible for everyone.NicAwesome, Jessie. Thank you so much for being a great guest, and we'll see you around on the web, whether it's Slack or Twitter or elsewhere. Thanks again for being a guest.JessieThank you so much for having me here.
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Justin asks us to think outside of our use case, and that not everyone uses the web the way we do.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Today, I'm talking with Justin Yarbrough. Hey, Justin, how are you?JustinDoing pretty good today? How about you?NicI'm quite happy. I'm quite happy. Happy to finally connect, as we were talking about in before the recording. It's been nearly three years since we've been planning to do this chat. So it's, it's good to finally connect in front of a microphone.JustinYes, yes.NicSo just let me start by asking you, what's your disability or your impairment?JustinSo I am almost completely blind. I just have a little light perception.NicOkay, almost completely blind. And what would you say your greatest barrier or pet peeve on the web is?JustinBoy, where do I start? The one I can think of, that I've been kind of tinkered around on my head today was we were thinking about this is just on Twitter, which is, you know, where we kind of met know each other, is just folks not using alt text. I mean, you know, it's such a visual medium, everyone loves all their pictures. And it's like, I want to know what you're talking... what you're posting about, or, or more even, you know, the even where it really gets under my skin isn't maybe necessarily just okay, it's, you know, someone showing their picture of what they have for lunch, or whatever. But where it really gets me is, it's like, politicians, news organization, something like that. And they, they're that trend, they just love taking that screenshot of their statement, or whatever, and just posting that thing without any alt text. So that, you know, if I see something firm, I will just give you an example, like the mayor of Phoenix, early in the pandemic, you know, she was all the time posting updates like that, and those never had alt text on them. So I had no idea what the mayor was, you know, tweeting about at that, at that time, you know, what, what are we trying to find out and you know, early in the pandemic, stuff coming from folks like them, it was kind of important.NicIt sounds like, from what I'm seeing a lot of is more and more organizations are moving to social media to pass on some critical information around emergency messaging, and nine times out of 10. It's through an image of text, and there's no alt text. So folks, like you who rely on alt texts are really up the creek without a paddle.JustinYeah, yeah, that's a really, that's a great way to describe it. You know, it's, I need this information too, hello, it's important enough that you're sharing it, share it, so everyone can take advantage.NicWhat I find interesting is, I've been talking about the importance of alternate text on the web, since the mid 1990s. And I just feel like I never managed to reach everyone that needs to be reached, do you have any ideas how we can expand the reach and make sure that the people that need to hear about it, a hear about it and be start implementing these, these habits of making images accessible to all?JustinI think that, you know, a lot of a lot of the times with it, if you know, we have groups like this maybe you know, political candidates or folks who are in office or government organizations or stuff like that, what I've been doing a lot is I just say, you know, I just have been posting kind of a simple reply, hey, kind of like just going like, hey, blind guy here. Next time, could you please include alt text just so that I can understand what's going on here too. And then I throw in a link to the article actually up on my own website that I'd written about using alt texts on social media a few years ago. And does it get the attention? Sometimes it actually, you know, sometimes it kind of gets ignored and, you know, whatever. But, uh, you know, occasionally I've had some areas that are really receptive to and like, oh my gosh, I didn't know about that. And they, you know, they learn and then start working on it and getting into the habit. And in so much really, especially on like a social media platform like Twitter or something. What I tell a lot of people with it is, especially when they find out about, I think it's cool, they really want to do it. So much I emphasize what it's really is just getting in the habit of doing it and remembering to do it. I mean, it's getting a little easier now with Twitter's you know, started to roll out that reminder feature to some people, you know, that's gonna, I think that's going to help make a difference, especially for, at least for those people who really do want to, but just aren't in that habit, you just need to build that muscle memory.NicYeah, I like that concept, build your muscle memory about adding alt text. So what we've been talking about really is around the end users doing their bit for, for making sure the content they publish is accessible. What would be one message you'd have for designers or developers around web accessibility?JustinYou you'd think I'd have a lot for this, considering that I work with him every day. But you know, this is another one of those just pinning it down to one thing is tough, but I guess maybe not so much related, just specifically to just what we've been talking about with all text and social media and stuff, but it's just, just in general, it's just to remember to think not everyone, remember, just not everyone uses the web like you do. And then to think about to think about those kinds of things. So think about your screen, you're using your keyboard only users, your folks with cognitive disabilities, you're all all those kinds of things. So just to just think outside of think outside of your use case. And that it's open Beyond Good. Because believe me, I, I understand, it's easy to think, Oh, well, you know, what my use case? This is? What would do? I mean, I would say I've probably been guilty of it myself at times. You Yeah, I mean, as a, you know, as a blind screener to us. I mean, granted, you know, I wasn't always so, but I didn't really go. I wasn't doing any, like, web development or accessibility work or anything like that when I was when I was in that case. And it was it was something I would have never thought about. Prior to losing my sight of how a screener user might go do something I probably, I think I was aware that screen readers existed. But that was pretty much all I knew.NicYeah. Justin, thank you very much. I like this, this idea of not everybody uses the web the way we do. To think about that to just expand a little bit our horizons as that's fantastic. Thank you for being a guest and sharing one of your pet peeves. I'm sure I'm sure we might record another one at some point. Maybe not in three years from now, maybe sooner, but I'll give you a little bit of time to come down with another with another one that really irks.JustinCertainly, certainly I'll be in touch and be thinking about and thanks for having me.NicThanks for coming on board. Justin. See you around on the web.JustinAll right. You're welcome. Thank you.NicCheers.JustinTake care.
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Matt says only gather necessary data on web forms. Break down the form into multiple steps. Let user come back and add information when they are able to. This will lead to a higher completion rate.TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Today I'm talking with Matt Trask. Hey, Matt, how are you?MattI'm good. How are you doing?NicI'm doing okay. We're a little bit smoked out with wildfires right now. So that's, that's not fun. But other than that, doing good.MattAah I saw that on Twitter. That's not fun, especially like for the photography aspect of what you want to do.NicYeah, there's no photography happening. There's no birds out there No, nothing. Let's let's get started with my first opening question to you, what's your disability or your impairment?MattMostly around depression and anxiety is really I think, what I would be classified under, just and it's it's one of those things where I've been diagnosed with both of them. I manage them, both through medications and also therapies and things like that. It's, it's one of those things that I've just accepted that I will never be fully rid of, I just have to manage it the best that I can with the tools available to me.NicHmm. So depression is not typically something you hear about in relation to web accessibility. What would be your greatest barrier, or maybe pet peeve that ties to web accessibility and depression.MattIt's... I... So depression presents in everybody very differently. In fact, I asked my wife about this because she also has depression. And she is also very much on the internet, probably more than I am at this point. Because once it's like four or five o'clock, I shut my computer and just try and hide. I t, at least for me, when when depression really strikes it, two things happen. Whenever I'm browsing the web one is just a very hard time synthesizing other people's achievements, and good news and anything like that. And it it kind of drives me away from the internet, because I'm just I, the lens of depression makes me not want to be around that. And that's not something that can be fixed. That's just a thing that happens with me. But it's also if I'm on a webpage, and I have to sign up for something. Car insurance is probably a really good example, where they ask a lot of questions and a lot of information, and I have to have it all very much ready to answer these questions. If I'm in a very depressive state, it, it requires a massive amount of effort for me to push through the form or to answer the questions, anything like that. See, it's with me it is it is the biggest challenge I face is the drive to accomplish anything that requires a ton of information and more time than I would deem willing to spend on something if that makes sense.NicYeah, that does make sense. What's the solution? Is making forms shorter or no breaking it down in steps or what would be a solution from your perspective,MattI think a multi step form that is saveable to a point might be one way to do it. Whether that is I have to log back in after the fact and finish it when I have time or the mental capacity to do that. Or if they give me a gentle nudge reminder say hey, you know your form is still here. We'd like you to come finish it. I think those are those are two possible things I think another thing too and while the car insurance thing was a great example upfront, you can't finish the form until you have all the information for the car insurance company to say we will insure you for X amount of money or whatever it is. But breaking you know figuring out looking at the forms that you have on on your websites on your apps, like is all this information absolutely necessary or can I come back and fill it out later? Like most websites you need an email and a password to get started. You know if you want my name if you want my birthday if you want to know where I live if you want to know you know reference to photography, if it's a camera website, what cameras am I am I playing on these days? What lenses do I have? Make all that optional, make it where I can fill it in on my time. So if on Monday if my depression strikes really hard, I can just get through with just the bare minimum amount of effort required and then Wednesday, when I'm feeling better, I can come back and say, you know, okay, cool, I have this and this, here's my birthday, here's all this, I think, I think that's kind of is paring down your forms to the absolute bare minimum possible, and allowing your users to come back to filling it out when they have time when they have the energy to do so.NicYeah, it makes sense. If you had one message to give designers or developers around web accessibility, what would that be?MattI mean, in terms of like depression and stuff, I mean, it at least like when my depression presents, it's very blue. It's like I see the world in a very blue sadness lens, I would say pull back on the blues, just because that just only makes things worse Am I it to when I'm going through a depressive state. But really, it's just make... Make it... Make a form... And forms are really the only thing users going to interact with on your on a site. So that's why I come back to them, make the form as clear as possible, and make it as as simple as possible to start and finish it within one sitting. Any information that does not require app like is absolutely required, push it off, and let your users come back to it. And I think if you'll see a lot more people who have severe chronic depression that maybe don't have the access that I do to manage these things, they will be able to finish those forms that users or websites are sitting here like I wish these are finished that way we could close that out or something like that, just make it just simplify the process down to the bare minimum and let people come back. And I think overall, you'll see better adoption throughout your site with regards to users with depression.NicFantastic. I love that. I, for me, it makes sense because I mean, it is one of the web content accessibility guideline concepts, you know, you can save the data and people can return to it to complete stuff. That's mostly around financial and other kinds of personal data. But I think in terms of any kind of forms, as you say, if if you don't need it right now to do things, let the user complete it later. Matt, thank you. That was super good. And we'll see you around on the internet.MattAbsolutely. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure.
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Iris tells us that "The web has gotten more and more inaccessible over my lifetime".TranscriptNicHi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Today I'm talking to Iris McCleary. Hey, Iris, how are you?IrisI'm doing well today made it to work in time to record which is that smallest.NicThat's a bonus. I'm very, very happy to talk to you. We've been, we've been trying to organize this for a few weeks now. And finally, the stars align. So let me ask you this, what's your disability or your impairment?IrisThree main ones, ADHD, bipolar type two and chronic pain. The ADHD is definitely the one that gets me in the most trouble on the web, it's gotten more and more inaccessible over my lifetime.NicMore and more inaccessible. That's that's actually a dire indictment of the state of the web. If you had one major pet peeve or barrier to talk about what, what would be the biggest thing that causes problem for you?IrisOh the monetization of everything, and the rise of the addiction based model of value measurement, the idea that the best thing you can do as a product is keep eyes on your product or on your website for as long as possible, because that very intentionally hooks into those parts of the brain that are involved in hyperfocus and addictive tendencies. And I can't use social media anymore since the rise of infinite scroll and the algorithmic feed, because it's designed to hook and keep your attention. And I can't get out. I f I open Facebook, I'm losing minimum an hour of my life no matter how self aware I am, so I just can't use it anymore, which is a shame because there are friends whose contact info I primarily have on there, and it's a struggle to get back in touch.NicThat's actually quite a massive barrier considering more and more of our human interactions are happening on social media.IrisYep, for example, I live in San Francisco and Munis primary method of an most reliable method of disseminating service alerts is Twitter. And I don't have an active Twitter account, it only lets you scroll so far without giving you the little login block.NicRight. That is, yeah, that's quite, quite something. So what's the solution?IrisI think fundamentally, the incentives for the industry are pretty majorly broken. The incentives to monetize everything at all costs, the ignoring of the effect on human attention. I understand wanting, there's a difference between getting people to return to your product and holding them on it for as long as possible in each interaction. And that is, I think, something that the company I work at, has started to recognize and we've started to do in our product where we're much more interested in did we get you to value fast? Because if you're spending your entire day looking at your product analytics and Mixpanel, we have failed as a product because we're not giving you answers, and you're not spending your time doing your actual job with that data. And then, then the question is, okay, well, Was it useful? Did you come back and do it again, and then go do whatever your actual job is, then do to come back and find more data and then go do whatever your actual job was? Like? I think that kind of model is much. It's much healthier. And also, interestingly, it's much more. We are a b2b company. And so that is part of it. Like we know that people are using our product to do their jobs.NicYeahIrisThey're spending their entire day on it. That's no one's 100% day job. But I think that kind of model for something like a social platform could also be valuable. It's like, you logged in and you did some stuff and you and you had good interactions with some friends. And then you wandered off and did something in the real world. You chose to come back and it's that lack of trust that your customers will choose to come back. Or maybe your investors lack of trust that they will choose to come back that I think really drives that pattern.NicYeah, yeah. I think in some ways, this barrier you're experiencing on the web is really a reflection of a broken society. And there's no easy fix there, unless we get a massive meteor that comes and wipes us out. But that's also not really a solution. I don't think.IrisNo, not so much wishing for the apocalypse doesn't seem like... That's, that's a big one. And that's one that's hard to... It's big. And it's very societally structural, and it's hard to directly counteract there are, there are a lot of smaller ones, though, like websites have gotten more complicated, infinite scroll in and of itself, rather than having to click to the next page, it removes that moment of interaction that would give me a chance to reflect and go do I actually want to click the button like that? That minuscule instant is something I could potentially hook into? And decide, no, I don't want to load more of whatever this is. I need to go do the dishes.NicYou shouldn't be able to multitask. You can do infinite scroll, and the dishes at the same time if your device is waterproof, right?IrisOh, that sounds like a recipe for a huge mess. I'm just imagining my kitchen after this attempt.NicYeah. Hey, Iris, if you had one message for designers of developers, other than you know, don't keep me hooked up and don't use infinite scroll. What would you suggest to them? I know, asking you to pick one thing is a bit of a torture thing. ButIrisOh, decision paralysis. Keep your design, layout and content simple and easy to navigate.NicKeep design and layout simple and easy to navigate. I like that. Keep it simple.IrisYeah, that's the modern web is kept getting more complicated more bells and whistles, more things, animate and move and drag my eyes off to some other part of the screen. And, you know, bits that don't appear until you hover over them or... it's just hard for my brain to process. And the navigation layout of websites is not as... I mean, there were times when the old web was extremely ugly. But it was not hard to navigate a lot of the time.NicYeahIrisFind where the links were no one got rid of Link formatting. You don't have to mouse over every line of text looking for where you put the link. That is exhausting.NicYeah, yep. Bring back HTML 1, gray pages, black headings, blue links, purple underline visited links. There is something to that though, isn't there? It's it was fugly, but it was usable?IrisYeah, it was. And then even progressing beyond that you can start adding some styling to it and maybe your link, you know, maybe your color scheme was something that you found prettier. But and maybe the margins of your page were more visually pleasant and readable. But it retained that sort of fundamental structure and the links had their own styling and color for a long time. And then we got fancier and we moved farther and farther away from that, and it feels like bells and whistles, animated, aesthetically pleasing, and it's a lot harder to just read a website and read the data, even if it looks way, way prettier.NicYeah. Iris, thank you for being such a great guest. I look forward to people's reaction to this podcast. And we'll talk to you at some point in the near future, I'm sure.IrisYeah, sounds good. And if you ever want to have me back, you know where to find me.NicI will find you I will hunt you down. That didn't sound right But yeah, let's chat. Cheers.IrisThank you
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