Stop Being Afraid of Accessibility

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2026, Alycia and Marty host Shawn Jordison (“The Accessibility Guy”) to discuss why digital accessibility is not just compliance but innovation and human impact. Shawn shares his path from an 18-year-old student worker creating braille and alternate media at a community college to leading accessibility roles across California’s 116 community colleges, then launching his YouTube channel and accessibility business. He describes living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and recounts a pivotal experience helping a student with a learning disability use text-to-speech to succeed in college. They address common organizational barriers—time, money, overwhelm, and inaccessible tools—and recommend starting with accessible authoring tools, using built-in features like headings and alt text, testing with NVDA, and inventorying content before tackling legacy work. Shawn also explores AI’s growing role in access and ends with “be an accessibility champion” and “accessibility equals usability,” alongside plugs for Own It Mastery Collective and The Accessibility Check. The Takeaways That Make Inclusion Usable 🌍 Global Accessibility Awareness Day and why it matters 💻 Digital accessibility as a daily part of modern life 🧠 Accessibility is innovation, not just compliance 🧑‍🦽 Disability inclusion in technology, work, education, and everyday access 📄 Making websites, PDFs, documents, and digital tools usable for everyone 🎧 Assistive technology, screen readers, captions, alt text, and voice tools 🚪 Removing barriers before people are excluded 💡 Accessibility equals usability 🤝 Human impact over checkbox compliance 🏢 Why organizations need to invest time, money, and leadership into accessibility 🛠️ Starting small instead of getting overwhelmed by inaccessible legacy content 📋 Building an accessibility inventory and creating a realistic path forward 🤖 AI as a powerful emerging tool for access and independence ⚖️ Balancing accessibility, cybersecurity, privacy, and policy 📚 Education, employment, and the life changing power of accessible learning tools ❤️ Personal disability stories and the connection between lived experience and advocacy 🏆 Becoming an accessibility champion in your workplace and community 🌱 Progress over perfection in accessibility work 🔥 Making accessibility practical, approachable, and less intimidating Pull Quotes Worth Turning the Volume Up For “Do not compare yourself to anyone else, because comparison’s the thief of joy.” “Organizations really need to shift the mindset of, ‘This costs too much or it takes too much time,’ and instead bake it in the process.” “ I tend to ride the wave versus trying to protect myself from it.” Episode Roadmap: Your Accessible Guide Through the Conversation 00:00 Podcast Welcome 00:25 GAAD And Accessibility 03:17 Meet Shawn Jordison 03:37 Becoming Accessibility Guy 07:04 Disability And CMT 10:27 Accessibility Impact Story 13:42 Business Case For Access 15:16 Mindset And Accountability 20:26 Top Digital Access Tips 21:47 Pick Authoring Tools 22:13 Headings And Structure 23:16 Alt Text That Matters 24:22 POUR And WCAG Basics 25:53 Start With New Content 27:15 Time Money And Fear 28:20 Build An Inventory 29:33 Free Tools To Begin 31:23 AI For Accessibility 38:46 Privacy And Policy Tradeoffs 42:01 Accessibility Champion Mindset 44:42 Accessibility Check Wrap Up Free Tools to Make Access Less Scary ⁠⁠⁠NVDA Screen Reader⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NVDA is a free screen reader for Windows. Shawn recommended it as a way to start understanding how people who are blind or low vision may experience digital content. WAVE Web ⁠Accessibility Evaluation Tool WAVE helps evaluate web pages for accessibility issues directly in your browser. It is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and can be useful for testing public pages, password protected pages, intranet content, and dynamic pages. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠axe DevTools Browser Extension axe DevTools is a browser based accessibility testing extension that helps developers, testers, and designers find accessibility issues early in the web development process. W3C Web Accessibility Principles⁠ The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative explains the foundational accessibility principles behind WCAG, including perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, also known as POUR. Colorado HB21 1110 Accessibility Law⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Shawn referenced Colorado’s accessibility framework as a helpful example for organizations. Colorado HB21 1110 strengthens protections related to disability access and government information technology. Connect with Shawn “The Accessibility Guy” Jordison Shawn on LinkedIn | The Accessibility Guy YouTube Channel | The Accessibility Guy Website | Schedule 15 min. With Shawn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices