AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast

Join co-hosts Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 20th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. They discuss their latest project, WCAG in Plain English, a collection of simplified articles derived from the official WCAG guidelines.  The project aims to make WCAG requirements more understandable and accessible to everyone, with clear language, illustrations, and a redesigned organization. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie Garz, and I’m the co-host. And with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, your cohost. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert. And in today’s episode, we’re going to go over this long-time project that we’ve been working on, and we’re ready to announce, launch, and share with everybody. What is it, Natalie? What are we, what are we launching today? Natalie MacLees: We are launching WCAG in Plain English, a collection of dozens of articles that we have translated from the official WCAG guidelines into easy-to-understand language. Natalie Garza: Mm-hmm. Yes, because if anyone has ever visited the WCAG website and WCAG articles, what is the problem? Natalie MacLees: Oh, they’re so hard to understand. They’re very dense. They’re very technical. They also have some bad advice in them.  Funnily enough, I think because some of the techniques have been around for, you know, a decade or more, some of the advice is actually not very good. For example, telling you that you can use a title attribute on an image instead of alt text. Which we know doesn’t actually work.  So we took out the ones that we know don’t work. And you did some wonderful illustrations. Do you wanna talk about those? Natalie Garza: Yes, so every single article was handwritten. We read through all the understanding docs. We went through every single technique page.  If you’re familiar with the WCAG articles, there’s first off a large page explaining what it is. Like who it applies to. Some examples. It links out to resources, and then it links out to techniques, which are their own separate pages showing you how to implement or how to fix that issue. And any given article, like 1.1.1 has like 30 technique pages that you would have to go visit separately, read through, see if it applies to you, and then come back, just keep going back and forth and back and forth.  So we went through the trouble of going through all of those for you and translating them into plain language. And on top of that, where it would be helpful, we did illustrations to show you, at a glance, you can see like, “Oh, that’s what the solution would be like, “Oh, like that’s what a caption is. Or like, oh, that’s what it means with contrast.” So we rewrote them. We boiled down the techniques so that you don’t have to go clicking around page to page, to page to page, with clear illustrations.  And then Natalie, do you wanna talk about the organization of our new resource? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so we used all the different ways that WCAG itself organizes them. So you can browse by what level, whether it’s A, AA, or AAA, you can browse by

25 Apr 13min

Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 19th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. In this episode, they discuss the vital practice of user testing, especially with people with disabilities. From defining user testing to its execution and why it’s indispensable, learn how involving disabled users can uncover specific issues that would otherwise be missed. They also explore how to find and recruit disabled testers, the help available from specialized organizations, and the benefits of conducting tests remotely. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 19. I am Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is. Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, accessibility expert. Natalie Garza: And in today’s episode, she’s going to teach us all about user testing, specifically with people with disabilities. So, to get started, what is user testing in general? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so when you’re building a product or a website, you can do testing with real users, and that can look like a few different things that we’ll talk about today. But basically, you sit down real users in front of your product. And have them try it out. And it is one of the most maddening and frustrating things you will ever do because no matter how carefully you have designed something and you think it’s so beautiful, users will not be able to figure out how to do anything and it will drive you up the wall. But basically, you sit them down and give them a task and say, you know, “Hey, find information about elephants on this website,” or “put a product in a cart and check out.” You give them a task like that to complete, and then you kind of observe as they go through that task. You see where they run into problems, where they run into issues, and where they get confused, and you keep track of how long it takes ’em to complete the task. Natalie Garza: Yeah. As frustrating as it can be, it’s probably one of the most valuable things you can do. Natalie MacLees: Absolutely, you can learn so, so much about your product and you could, you could spend hours looking at a screen of your app, for example, and in two or three user tests get way more information on what should be changed and how it should look, by watching some real users attempt to use it. Natalie Garza: Yeah, it’s a real eye-opener, ’cause you realize not everyone treats technology the same as you. Natalie MacLees: And not everybody is super tech savvy, you will have situations where you have a giant flashing red button in the middle of the screen that says, “click here,” and users will go,” I don’t, I don’t see where to click. I don’t.” And it’s really hard to not just do it for them.  Natalie Garza: Yeah, you, you can’t help ’em if they’re just staring blankly. You just have to let them. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. You can kind of step in and kind of gently nudge them if they start to get really frustrated. But yeah, you should generally try not to participate too much. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and I would say user testing usually is targeted towards like the audience of the product that you’re working on, like if it’s a business product, you’re gonna get the business people to come test it. Or if it’s for non-tech-savvy people, you’re gonna get non-tech-savvy users. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, exactly. So you wanna figure out who your user base is, and then that’s who you wanna recruit to come in and do the user test. Natalie Garza: But often disabled users get overlooked, so why should...

16 Apr 13min

Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees on the 18th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss various browser extensions that aid in digital accessibility testing. They provide a comprehensive overview of popular tools like the Web Developer extension, aXe by Deque, WAVE by WebAIM, and IBM’s Equal Access Accessibility Checker. The episode also introduces AAArdvark’s tool for automated and manual accessibility audits and highlights the importance of combining automated testing with manual audits for effective accessibility compliance. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 18. I’m Natalie Garza, and with us today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees  Natalie Garza: and she’s an accessibility expert here to teach us new things about digital accessibility. So, in this episode, we wanted to start the conversation. Not fully go through the whole topic because it’s just so expansive; we wanted to start talking about tools to help with accessibility testing, starting with browser extensions. Natalie MacLees: Yes, browser extensions, which I think is where a lot of people get started. I think a lot of people, a browser extension is their first experience with scanning a webpage for issues and finding out about accessibility testing. Natalie Garza: Yeah. And again, disclaimer: there’s a lot of ways, a lot of methods, a lot of tools to help you with accessibility testing. We’re just gonna start cracking the surface here. Natalie, what should we expect from a browser extension, and what’s out there right now? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so browser extension, you’ll install it in your browser and they, they have accessibility extensions for Chrome, for Firefox, for Edge. So it doesn’t matter which browser you’re using; you install it, and then usually there’s a little button that you click somewhere in the extension to say, scan this page. And it’ll go through the page and find any of the issues that can be identified by an automated checker, which is, it depends on who you talk to, but somewhere between 20 and 30% of the different types of accessibility issues that can be found on a page can be found by a checker. And then, it will show you some kind of interface to show you what those errors are so that you can figure out what’s going on in your site and have an idea of how to get it fixed. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and I also feel like there’s another category of browser extensions where it helps you flag stuff down. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. That’ll help you turn on different things make information that’s normally invisible on the website visible, so it makes testing easier because you can see something that you wouldn’t normally be able to see. Natalie Garza: Right. It’s kind of like an x-ray. Natalie MacLees: Like an X-ray. Sure. An MRI. It’s a CAT scan. Natalie Garza: Yeah. But without the dangers of radiation poisoning. Natalie MacLees: No radiation involved. Well, no, that’s not probably not true. I’m sure that all of our devices are emitting radiation at us all the time. Natalie Garza: True, true, true. EMF. Anyway, do you wanna go over some popular browser extensions and what they do? Natalie MacLees: Sure. Yeah, so if you’ve watched any of our live streams where I go through accessibility testing live, you’ve probably seen me use the

11 Apr 14min

Join hosts Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza on the 17th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the misconceptions about website accessibility certifications and why they don’t exist. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 17. I’m Natalie G, the host and mic MC. And with me today is Natalie MacLees: Natalie Mac, accessibility expert. Natalie Garza: yes, she is an accessibility expert here to answer all our questions. And in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about, “I wanna get my website or app certified as accessible.” Why can’t we get our website certified as accessible, Natalie?  Natalie MacLees: Yeah, this is something that clients often ask for more often than you might think because they want to have, I think they want two things. I think number one, they wanna have some kind of certification that they can display on the website to say, “Look, my website is accessible.” And then I think the second thing that they’re hoping to get is peace of mind, that nobody is going to be able to sue them or send them a demand letter saying that their website isn’t accessible. And unfortunately there is no like official accessibility certification. We have talked extensively in other episodes of the podcast and I like all over online, if you could look up information on accessibility. You’ll see WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines, referred to over and over again. And those are just a set of guidelines. They’re not a certification scheme in any way, shape or form, and they’re also not comprehensive. So meeting WCAG does not mean that your website is a hundred percent accessible. It’s just a baseline of accessibility. So unfortunately, there is no way to actually certify a website as being accessible.  Natalie Garza: No, because accessibility is not a one-and-done kind of procedure. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, that’s definitely one of the challenges because if, for example, there was some kind of website certification, you would have somebody come in, test your site, certify it as accessible, and then as soon as you went in and made one edit, that would be out the window. You would have to start all over again, and it wouldn’t be cheap, right? It would be pretty time-consuming and pretty time-intensive. Websites change all the time, and it makes it really hard to have, you know, any report or anything that you do is just a point in time, right? On the day that this report was finished, here’s what the state of accessibility was on the site, but it is not like a certification of that status, because probably maybe even that later, that same day, something on the website changed, something new was added, something was edited, something was removed, and now those test results are invalid. Natalie Garza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s like trying to certify a human is healthy, Natalie MacLees: That’s a good analogy. Natalie Garza: The next day, they can catch a cold. That certificate goes out the window. Natalie MacLees: You might cut your finger, you might stub your toe Natalie Garza: A Gator can bite your hand off. Natalie MacLees: My goodness!  Natalie Garza: Sorry, Natalie just came back from Louisiana, you guys, Natalie came from Louisiana where she could have gone on the Gator tours, but she decided not to. Natalie MacLees: Have both my hands, though. Natalie Garza: Yes. Natalie MacLees: I did not feed marshmallows...

31 Mar 13min

In the 16th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, hosts Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees discuss the importance of integrating web accessibility from the very start of the development process for developers and agencies. They tackle common misconceptions held by developers, the necessity of educating clients, and the legal implications of inaccessible websites.  Natalie G: Hello everybody and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie G. I’m the Mic MC here and with us today is… Natalie M: Natalie M. Accessibility expert. Natalie G: Yes, and in today’s podcast, we are going to do the part two to last week’s episode, where we talk about web accessibility when building websites from scratch. This one is geared towards developers and agencies, basically, anybody who is actually making the website. Natalie M: Professionals who build websites. Natalie G: Professionals who build websites. And so we’re gonna start off with why is it important to build a website to be accessible from scratch? Natalie M: Yeah. So we touched on this a little bit last time, but I think it’s worth doing a quick review. Your favorite metaphor, Natalie, you can’t put the chocolate chips in the cookie after it’s baked. So the best way to end up with an accessible website is to build it to be accessible from the very beginning. It is the most cost-effective option. If you try to come back and make an inaccessible website accessible later, it’s going to be very expensive, very time-consuming, and very difficult, and the end result won’t be as good. And accessible websites are important, of course, because that way, there are no barriers to customers or users to the website. Everybody has equal access to all of the information and services. The user experience of an accessible website is better for everybody who uses the site. You get a little SEO boost. And you can avoid legal risks ’cause people do get sued for having websites that aren’t accessible. And you could look at increasing your audience and potentially your revenue by about 20% if you are inclusive and allow everybody to easily use your website.  Natalie G: Yeah, and that means everything on your website, like the checkouts, like the memberships, like the ability To give your website owner money. Natalie M: Make donations to a nonprofit. Yep. All of it should be accessible. Natalie G: Yeah, and there’s a lot of misconceptions that developers have when it comes to making accessible websites. Natalie M: They do, they do. A lot of developers don’t, you know, we talked about in an earlier episode how there’s a real lack of accessibility training in any kind of web development training. If it’s there at all, it’s often just one unit that’s kind of tucked in, in the middle of the class, and it’s not taught holistically throughout the entire curriculum. And because of that, developers often make a lot of assumptions and think, “Oh, it’s really difficult. It’s really time-consuming. It’s expensive. It will constrain what we can do. It will constrain the design. Can’t be fancy and beautiful.” They’ll think, “Oh, we aren’t gonna be able to build certain kinds of functionality. And the website is not gonna be as modern or fun or as exciting if I have to make it accessible.” And so they’re reticent to kind of dive in and figure out how to make that all happen.

20 Mar 20min

Join Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza on the 15th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the importance of web accessibility for website owners. Learn why it’s crucial to consider accessibility from the beginning of a website project, the benefits of an accessible website, and practical tips on choosing the right tools and expertise. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the 15th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie G, and I’m an accessibility novice, and with us today is: Natalie MacLees: Natalie Mac, accessibility expert. (Full name is Natalie MacLees, and her nickname is Natalie Mac!) Natalie Garza: And, in today’s episode, we are going to talk about web accessibility when building websites from scratch. So we ended up making this a two-parter. This one is gonna be geared towards website owners, (Natalie Garza accidentally set off the built-in Apple Confetti reaction.) Natalie MacLees: We are really excited about that. Natalie Garza: Website owners! And the next part is gonna be geared towards developers and agencies. So to kick us off, Natalie, why is it important to build a website to be accessible from scratch? Natalie MacLees: Oh, it’s your favorite metaphor, Natalie, from Lainey Feingold, that you cannot put the chocolate chips on the cookie after it’s baked. So if you try to build your website and then come back and try to make it accessible, it’s gonna be a nightmare. It’s not gonna be fun, and it’s probably going to at least double the cost of your website. Because going back to a website that was built without accessibility in mind and trying to make it accessible is very difficult and very time consuming, and it could double or even triple the cost of having the website built to begin with. If you instead build an accessible website from the very, very beginning, I would say you’re probably looking at maybe about 20% more cost to have an accessible website versus an inaccessible one. Natalie Garza: Yeah, so for one, it’s very cost-effective. But there are other benefits too. Natalie MacLees: There’s benefits to having an accessible website. They’re more SEO friendly and who doesn’t want their site to be found in search engines? I mean, you put it online because you wanted people to find it, presumably. You can avoid legal risks, so you won’t be getting demand letters. Or if you do get a demand letter, you’ll have proof that you have been working on the accessibility of your website and it has been improving. The overall user experience of an accessible website tends to be better. They tend to be more performant. Having an accessible website could also increase your potential audience by up to 20% because there are between one in five and one in four, Americans who are people with disabilities. So you’re gonna capture even more of the market and potentially increase your revenue by up to 20%.  So, if your website is accessible, it just means more people can interact with it, more people can understand it, can get to all the parts of your website that you want them to interact with, like your contact forms, your checkout pages, all that good stuff. They can get to all the good stuff and they can get to it no matter what device they happen to be using. If they’re out and about and trying to buy something from your website on their phone, it’s gonna work. If they’re at home on their laptop or their tablet, it’s...

13 Mar 16min

Join accessibility expert Natalie MacLees and novice Natalie G. in the 14th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the significant gaps in web development courses regarding accessibility training. They also reflect on the current state of web development education and the misconceptions surrounding accessibility and provide recommendations for resources and training to improve developers’ knowledge of web accessibility. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 14th episode. I’m Natalie G, and here with us today is Natalie MacLees: Natalie M.  Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert. While I’m an accessibility novice here to learn along with all of our podcast viewers too. So, in this episode, we’re gonna talk about web development courses and their general lack of accessibility training. What is the current state of web development education, Natalie? What would you say? Natalie MacLees: I would say most web development courses at any level, whether that’s online courses, boot camps, college courses, et cetera, have either no training at all about accessibility or will have like one unit on it, you know, out of 20 units that you might do. Will have one little unit introducing accessibility. So, a lot of web developers are coming out of those courses. You know, whatever kind of course it is, with no background, no history, no knowledge of accessibility really at all, or just the tiniest hint that it might be something that they need to pay attention to. Natalie Garza: What is your journey through accessibility? ’cause you started in web development. Natalie MacLees: I started in web development, but I’m old. So, I started in web development before there were any courses. So, I started in web development. When you taught yourself, or you didn’t learn, you just figured it out yourself, or you didn’t learn. So, I got super excited, I got my first, internet enabled computer in 1996 and really quickly realized going on AOL that having your own website was an option that you could do. And I was like, wait, what? You can have your own website. Oh my gosh. And I spent hours, hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours on this website. And I just got really excited about it. And then a few years later, realized like, wait, this is something people will pay you to do. So I got really excited about it. And then pretty early on in the year 2000, I got a job at Penn State University, building websites. Specifically, I was working in the chemistry department there and building the websites for the courses. Right, so if you were taking Chem 12, which is like the intro to chemistry that freshmen would take, there would be a Chemistry 12 website. That you could go, you could get the notes, you could get the study guides for the exams and all of those kinds of things. And that was my job, was doing all of those, course websites. And I was about two weeks into it when one day my phone at my desk rang and it was the disability services office saying, ” excuse me, what do you think you’re doing on these websites? Students with disabilities can’t use them.” And I was just like, “What? What are you talking about.” And so they provided me, at no cost to me, at their own cost. Tons and tons of training in how to build websites in an accessible way, which was, you know, web development. In the early days, it was the wild, wild west. There was no training, there was no official certifications, there was just nothing. And so I got all of that training and I learned how to build websites to be accessible and then was shocked when I moved on from that job three years...

7 Mar 20min

Join Natalie and Natalie in the 13th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they demystify the myriad of acronyms, numeronyms, and keywords you encounter in accessibility. Topics include WCAG, ARIA, live regions, and the importance of semantic HTML. The episode also touches on assistive technologies and accessibility laws like Section 508. Add to your accessibility knowledge with a speed round of common numeronyms and crucial keywords that lay the foundation for accessible web design. Natalie G: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 13th episode, and here with us today is, Natalie M: Natalie MacLees. Natalie G: And she’s an accessibility expert, and I am Natalie G, the other Natalie, an accessibility novice. And in our 13th installment, we are going to talk about acronyms, numeronyms, and keywords in accessibility. Cause if there’s anything you’ll notice once you start learning is that there’s a lot of acronyms and a lot of keywords and a lot of things from like coding backgrounds and you may not understand all of them, but we’re going to cover them all today. Natalie M: All!? That’s ambitious. Natalie G: A lot of them Natalie M: I bet we forget something. Natalie G: Yeah. If we  Natalie M: forget anything, There’s just so many. Natalie G: leave a comment in the description below. What? Leave a comment in the comments below. Alright, so do you want to start with the one overwhelming, most commonly used, everywhere you see the accessibility, this is mentioned too, acronym.  Natalie M: Yeah, WCAG or WCAG or WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So a set of around 80, I think, total success criteria that basically lay out how to build an accessible website or web application. Natalie G: It covers a lot of different tests, different standards, different rules you should follow for web content. Natalie M: Yes. Natalie G: And it’s everywhere because…  Natalie M: It applies to all websites.  Natalie G: Yeah. Applies to all websites and it’s the most commonly enforced across laws. Natalie M: Yes, most of the accessibility laws around the world are either directly say to implement WCAG or indirectly have a set of rules based on WCAG. Natalie G: Yeah. And there’s different versions of WCAG too.  Natalie M: There are 1.0, which is very old, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and they’re working on 3. Yes.  Natalie G: And, there’s different levels of WCAG. Natalie M: Yes, A, AA, AAA. A being the easiest one to achieve, but also the least accommodating, and then AAA being the most accommodating and the most difficult to achieve. Most of the time, people are going to try to comply with AA, so just that sweet spot right in the middle, and most of the laws refer to WCAG AA. Natalie G: And funny enough, the A’s are not actually acronyms. Natalie M: No, they’re not. They’re just letter grades. Natalie G: A, 2A, and 3A. Natalie M: Yes. Natalie G: And they’re not acronyms in AAArdvark either, in the name AAArdvark. Natalie M: No, they’re no...

27 Feb 31min