Transcripts are autogenerated:
James Schrepel: It’s definitely important to be more proactive than to be reactive. you want to show that you are, making the steps or making the effort and that, people with disabilities are heard, from that perspective
Patrick Villemaire: How often do you need to kind of monitor your website for changes?
Patrick Villemaire: All right. So I got Jimmy here today from website accessibility tool kind of powered by AI which is pretty magical. So my video here is called how to avoid the annual crisis in the annual crisis is the process of creating annual reports every year and the challenges to go along with them. So Jimmy, thanks for joining me.
James Schrepel: Thank you for having me really appreciate it. So just some background on myself. My name is I work here at accessiBe. I am a partnership manager. Basically, I help to bring accessibility and our tool to clients web design agencies and really help to ensure that people and know the importance of web accessibility for their websites. It’s really something that I would say is it’s pretty new in the digital space and digital conversations in the past couple of years. And so it’s really important to kind of spread the message and the word to everybody really
Patrick Villemaire: So accessibe so a lot of people might not know who or what accessibe is. Can you touch on kind of what’s the mission of accessibility what the tool is what it does?
James Schrepel: Yeah, absolutely. So accessibe is the name of the company. The tool specifically is the access widget What our tool does is a solution to ensure wcag compliance, which is the web content accessibility guidelines. Those guidelines were created by w3c which basically is rules standards and design guidelines to ensure that websites are accessible and navigable for people with disabilities. Our tool itself leverages two components one is an interface which allows a user to make design-related changes, like color Font adjustments pausing flickering gifts and changing contrast of the site to be more suitable for the user’s needs along with an AI powered process that ensures that the website is navigable by keyboard and other assistive Technologies. implementing descriptions for images.
James Schrepel: An icons on the site so that blind users utilizing screen readers technology can understand the content that is being displayed to them.
Patrick Villemaire: So when it comes to accessibility where are the common pitfalls that you see?
James Schrepel: Some of the major issues I would say that we include images without descriptions drop-down menus that don’t drop down not easily navigable by keyboard flashing images and gifts that are not possible or are not stoppable on the website and text not being properly sized for those who may have visual impairments. I understand as it designer and a business owner. There is a vision that you have for your website and your brand that you would like to come to life and unfortunately, some of those Visions may leave certain users behind because accessibility recognizes, that sort of downfall or Pitfall you would say the access widget allows you to keep the creative freedom that you envisioned for your brand while also allowing users with disabilities to customize their experience on your website to make sure that they have a safe and usable experience?
Patrick Villemaire: So when it comes to kind of you pulling together testing is there tools that you recommend for testing? So obviously, for example, I know accessibility has the check here we can put your website through and it’ll give you a list of pass fails, so when it comes to web accessibility in particular but in terms of we use the Chrome developer tools for checking contrast ratios font sizes or they’re like other browser tools that you recommend and to make the process easier to kind of see are things accessible?
James Schrepel: Yeah, absolutely. so there are two tools that I highly recommend if for those one is Google Lighthouse, which you can actually access through the code console on any website and it allows you to scan in that individual session and it will report back on things. if you report on anything from accessibility levels to site speed and other website aspects the other tool I also recommend is Wave by Web Aim. That is a session is the tool you can also utilize in an individual session. It’s a Chrome extension available to all users. And if you were to click into that it would report back on things like errors and contrast errors that maybe a parent on the site which can give you a good sense of where you currently stand from an accessibility level.
Patrick Villemaire: And in terms of you generating AI captions or descriptive text for images. How effective is that from your experience?
James Schrepel: The AI captions I will say are pretty effective for the most part. the only thing I would mention I think is worthy the note is obviously they would not recognize the AI doesn’t have the power to recognize that Patrick is the owner of Blue Eclipse so those might be some of the things that may,that you may come across but overall the descriptions are very very descriptive accessibe itself utilize is to components one is Irish technology, which helps us describe what’s going on within the image and the other one is OCR technology or optimal character recognition, which helps us pull any embedded text out of those images. So the combination of those two really do career really do create all text that are at least provide the necessary context for the User to understand, what content they may be viewing on the site.
Patrick Villemaire: And that makes sense. So when it comes to writing content, is there any advice for when you’re creating content to make it accessible someone’s drafting the content a word doc is there certain words that they want to avoid terms headlines and imagery is there a best practice?
James Schrepel: Yeah, I would say definitely when it comes to you want to be as descriptive as part I would say definitely want to be as descriptive as possible when creating any sort of documentation or are tagging any images. It’s important to be you don’t have to be a Pulitzer-level scholar
Patrick Villemaire: that’s great in terms of dynamic features like slideshow carousels image gallery load buns of load like another set of images text or tab accordion all those functional things is there anything to be aware of people are building on their website?
James Schrepel: yeah, absolutely. I would definitely say making sure that they are in either chronological order or making sure that they are in a format that is more excess is accessible. and it’s pretty easy to tell if you were to you, the Tab Key typically is the key that would not allow you to navigate a website by keyboard and make sure that images a galleries or any sort of carousels are just properly ordered and properly tagged on the back end of a website making sure that they do have those descriptions and making sure that
James Schrepel: That they are in it again in the order that is easily understood by a regular user and a user with disabilities. And those are some of the key components that the AI technology does take care of on the back ends of websites to make sure that those are all aligned.
Patrick Villemaire: All right, so it sounds like the best trick is to use the tab button and…
Patrick Villemaire: navigate through your website.
Patrick Villemaire: And if you can tap through it, then you’re most likely, in a pretty good spot in terms of accessibility.
James Schrepel: Yeah, absolutely. Those definitely is one of the key things that is easy for even the everyday individual. You don’t have to be too tech savvy to be able to navigate what use that Tab Key and see if you’re able to touch every aspect of your site that is interactive on it.
Patrick Villemaire: So in terms of buttons,…
Patrick Villemaire: so a lot of times we’ll see buttons links as I say learn read more click here.
Patrick Villemaire: Click your to learn more those in terms button labels.
Patrick Villemaire: Is there a kind of like a magic way to put buttons because I know in terms of accessibility…
Patrick Villemaire: if you have buttons everywhere just say learn more,…
Patrick Villemaire: it could be easy to lose the context of…
Patrick Villemaire: what that is referring to you, right?
James Schrepel: Yeah, absolutely. So offer things like buttons and icons. Those are commonly the tech the tags on the back end for them are formally known as those Aria labels. It’s an important distinction to make that they are if let’s say for example, you had a Facebook icon on your website. as individuals, we understand clicking that Facebook icon is likely going to bring you to the company’s Facebook page, but by doing that you were opening a new window in your browser session, so when it comes to tagging or a certain icons and buttons, especially if they will be bringing you to a different web page than you’re currently on. It’s important to note in your code that this button will bring you to a new window or a new tab or that you are.
James Schrepel: you’re going to be leaving your current session there again, just so that a use blind user for example may not be confused as to why the content that they are currently viewing has now changed on the website and of course, as you made as you know, they don’t have so much of the ability to browse back and forth if they don’t understand the content that they’re viewing.
Patrick Villemaire: Right. One thing that I actually read recently was that opening links in a new tab or Windows inaccessible is that’s how occurred is that because I’ve seen kind of conflicting information about whether you should open it in your tab or not.
James Schrepel: I would say I can’t really speak to overall what the view of what worldwide Web Consortium the w3c who creates these guidelines as I would say
James Schrepel: It definitely does in inhibit the experience. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to navigate a website using this key using the keyboard as is simple as it may sound having to go through every aspect of the site to get you back to the top of the page it’s not always an ideal experience. It is not an ideal experience, but it is, the reality of motor and pay motor repair individuals.
James Schrepel: So by opening a new tab on it is possible that you are inhibiting their experience by making them go back and…
James Schrepel: forth between these two tabs or these two windows, but I think making the distinction from a code level that change is going to be made does make that, does make that transition a little bit easier for the user.
Patrick Villemaire: That makes sense, So when it comes to forms on the website a lot of times we see people will delete the label input and they put the name, first name last name they put as a placeholder field right? So you basically see a form that has no label and you look at the field and see what they are. In terms of accessibility, the best practice is to have that label that we input right?
James Schrepel: Yes, absolutely. It’s definitely super important to label all aspects of your website and not even just for people with disabilities, but I also think it’s just best practice to be Pharaoh in all aspects of the work that you put into creating that website.
Patrick Villemaire: like we’ll say within Google analytics. Is there a way to engage how much traffic is coming using a screen reader or an assisted kind of device?
James Schrepel: So the access apart part of our higher tier plans are in our Advanced plus plan. They do come with Google analytics integration does allow you to track the usage of the widget. So things like user profile clicks and overall, clicks of the widget itself that would give you a good sense of if you know how many blind users maybe utilizing your technology or…how many you utilizing your website or how many, people with vision impairments or even people with ADHD,which is a profile that is covered by the accessibility that would give you a sense of you…
James Schrepel: what type of demographic maybe viewing your content but as far as I know I don’t believe Google Analytics currently has a field for recognition of So those types of Technologies?
Patrick Villemaire: Right that makes sense. So when it comes to accessibility a lot of times, developers, kind of like people will say my websites almost accessible. I’m assuming almost successful still not good enough right when it comes the accessibility standards like it’s all accessible except for this one widget or something.
James Schrepel: Yeah, so it’s what we would call, semi-compliant like you’ve done a you’ve done well enough but you there is still room for improvement and unfortunately from a tie back to a legislative perspect a legislative perspective some it doesn’t count as enough,from a legal perspective like a court of law here in the United States or from a audit perspective from maybe the Ontarian government based on the aoda guidelines, which I know or prevalent in the Ontarian District area.
Patrick Villemaire: So when it comes to liability and kind of the legal side things, what do you need to do to protect yourself? do you need to have proof of I’ve added my website and it’s accessible or do you just something arises then You how does that process work? So I imagine it’s very subjective right? the website could be accessible today and maybe a week ago it wasn’t you how would that kind of come into play?
James Schrepel: I yeah, so one of the other key aspects of the axis widget interface that I did not mention and is something I would say is best practice for those who are relatively certain that they do meet accessibility standards is something called an accessibility statement. The accessibility statement is available in all of the accessibility interfaces and
James Schrepel: you may have seen it at the bottom of some websites that accessibility statement basically explains all the adjustments that you’ve made to the website in order to make it accessible to people with disabilities, but it also provides them a field where they can read a field where they can reach out to you to let you know where some accessibility where some accessibility challenges they may have face on the website.
James Schrepel: It’s a way to keep the conversation open and allow, people to be heard as well. As you know be and then, be able to have more of a constructive conversation and less of a sort of bereavement or any other, sort of factor there.
Patrick Villemaire: That make sense, so when it comes to accessibility i’m assuming best practise should have a policy in accessibility and then have like promts where if there are concerns and accessibility reach out. It’s more in pro-active if someone runs an issue and contact to you first rather than reporting it to governing body.
James Schrepel: Exactly, except for accessibility. It’s definitely important to be more proactive than to be reactive. you want to show that you are, making the steps or making the effort and that, people with disabilities are heard, from that perspective. there’s something called reasonable best effort if we’re very understanding as human beings if you’re trying and you’re making the effort and you’re in your showing from us branding perspective that you have made a certain amount of accommodations, people will understand that and they’ll be more willing to again have a more productive conversation around it as opposed to having to go over your head to some sort of, governing body or some other, aspect like that nature.
Patrick Villemaire: I’m assuming for winter governing body.
Patrick Villemaire: They probably want to see that right do you have an accessibility policy is 90% of your website accessible have you made the effort and
Patrick Villemaire: they’re more likely to kind of I was assume give you a warning thing.
Patrick Villemaire: Make sure you’re fully compliant. Where’s if you may know effort at all
Patrick Villemaire: You have no accessibility policies. You’re not talking about it all I’m assuming
James Schrepel: Patrick Villemaire: then you’re gonna be in bigger trouble.
James Schrepel: Yeah, Absolutely. it’s kind of like a honesty is the best policy, I would say It’s kind of follows that same vein where if you have some sort of proof or effort or you have something like audit reports or something like that that you’re keeping up with on a quarterly or a monthly basis, it does show that you did take the steps and there would be more willing to assist to bring you up to that full effort. I would say
Patrick Villemaire: No, amazing. So Jimmy, thanks so much. I have one little thing.
Patrick Villemaire: I do at the end of all my videos.
Patrick Villemaire: So basically I send chat gpt a prompt and…
Patrick Villemaire: Interesting question to ask you a website accessibility.
Patrick Villemaire: And so the question I got back for you is when it comes to accessibility. How often do you need to kind of monitor your website for changes?
Patrick Villemaire: So for example, talking about okay,
Patrick Villemaire: we have a home page for example,
Patrick Villemaire: and then month later, there’s some major changes or new sections.
Patrick Villemaire: There’s new content. How often do you need to be continually monitoring your website, Because things will always change and the assumption is at some point someone may forget to add an all tag or may add a widget that’s not accessible.
James Schrepel: Yeah, absolutely. I would say it is important to constantly monitor if possible. I do understand that the bandwidth of certain businesses may not allow that that is where a tool like the axis could come into play for smaller businesses that may not have Dev teams able to dedicate their time and effort to constantly monitoring the accessibility actually offers 24-hour remediation. Basically our ai’s constantly scanning the site and sharing that accessibility adjustments are being me. So that you can ensure that accessibility is the accessibility side of things is being taken care of on your website.
Patrick Villemaire: Jimmy, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And yeah, we’ll try again later.James Schrepel: Absolutely. Thank you Patrick. Take care.