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Accessibility in Publishing
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Accessibility in Publishing
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
JEFF LANGE: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the fifth SSP webinar of 2021, and the start of our fall lineup. You're joining us for a discussion titled accessibility and publishing. I'm Jeff Lange with the American Chemical Society, and co-chair of the SSP education committee. We're so pleased you could join us today. Your audio will remain muted in consideration of our presenters as we start this panel.
JEFF LANGE: And please use the Q&A feature or the chat to send in your questions. The moderator will review these as we go through. So to help him please specify which presenter you'd like your question to go to. Also please send your questions as we go through, they'll be addressed throughout the session. Please remember the SSP code of conduct, and be respectful to all speakers and attendees in your comments, and questions.
JEFF LANGE: At the conclusion of today's session, you'll receive a webinar evaluation via email. We encourage you to provide feedback so that we can continually improve the SSP webinar program. You'll also receive a link via email to the recorded broadcast at this webinar. Our moderator today is Jason Pointe who is the new SSP webinar working group chairman.
JEFF LANGE: And an experienced scholarly publishing executive with over 25 years of experience, mostly in journals and publishing. With Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, and now at the International Anesthesia Research Society. Now I'm turning over to Jason, so that he can introduce the panel and get us started.
JASON POINTE: Thank you Jeff, good morning everybody. So today's speakers will present a practical approach to making scholarly content accessible. First up we have Violaine Iglesias, the CEO and co-founder of Cadmore Media. And she will speak about why content accessibility should be a priority, the problems it addresses, opportunities it presents, and resources and commitment required. Next, Alan Maloney executive user experience manager at SAGE Publications, will pick up from there to discuss why a successful approach to accessibility requires change to be made top down, at the personal and organizational levels.
JASON POINTE: And finally, Nina Amato lead user experience designer at the American Chemical Society, will bring it all together with tips for authors, editors, and publishers about how to make their content more accessible. Our panelists presentations will be followed by discussion and Q&A. So as Jeff mentioned, please submit your questions throughout the presentation. Now, over to Violaine.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Hello, good morning. So bear with me while I share my slides. All right. Can the panelists give me a thumbs up if you can see the right screen, big blue screen? Thank you very much. All right. So good morning everyone, my name is Violaine Iglesias. I am the CEO and co-founder of Cadmore Media, which is a video hosting company that specializes in serving scholarly societies and academic publishers.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: The reason why I'm here today is because accessibility is not only at the core of the mission of the company that I co-founded, but it is actually something that's just near and dear to my heart. So on this panel today, I'm not going to be the expert. I'm not going to be the one giving you specific tips on how to make your content accessible. But what I wanted to do is just talk a little bit about what I've learned on my accessibility journey.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So I started becoming what you would call an accessibility evangelist a few years ago. This actually started at-- I've told this story many times, but this actually started at an STEM pre-annual meeting seminar in accessibility. With George Kershaw standing at the podium, and telling the audience that he had started reading the paper for the first time when he was 28 years old.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And I thought that was just-- something clicked in me where I thought, wait this is a very good way for me to just understand why it's important. So I'm going to find out about it. I'm going to make it at the core of my mission. Accessibility is not my job, it's not my daily job. What I have done throughout my career in academic publishing is try to make it an important component of everything that we do.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I've done that. And I'm going to give you kind of high level thoughts that I've gathered probably over the past 10 years. Before handing over to the other panelists who are going to be a bit more practical than I am. So the first thing I wanted to say is, something that I used to conclude any accessibility talk by saying. And here are all the reasons why you should do this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And by the way, it's the right thing to do. And I've actually started to switch that. And now, I want to start with the fact that it's actually the right thing to do. A very large proportion of the US and global population is affected by a disability. And it is just the right thing to do to be inclusive of everyone. So we're going to review all the stats about how many people, what kind of disabilities we're talking about.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But I really want to start there by saying, yes you're going to hear legal arguments, you're going to hear usability arguments. But the first argument that I think we should remember, is that making content accessible is a moral imperative. The second thing I've learned is really that accessibility is not just about technology. And what we often see is that organization approach that approach accessibility as a technical challenge.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: How are we going to make content accessible? How are we going to make our platforms accessible? But actually it's people you're trying to make your content accessible to. So it's really important to involve people with disabilities in the process of making your content accessible by asking them about their needs, and by also involving them in any testing process. So just remember, you're not going to be able to just achieve compliance by trying to check boxes on a list, that's actually one of my other slides.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: You really need to make sure that actual people can access the content in real life. And the third thing I wanted to talk about is that accessibility is actually not the same. You can't just make your content accessible period. You have to make it accessible to people who have a wide variety of disabilities. So when we talk about disability, the first things that come to mind are going to be hearing impairments, visual impairments.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Those are probably the first two and are the ones that I've highlighted on this slide. But actually there's a lot of disabilities that need to be taken into account. So you can have cognitive disabilities, including think of problems like dyslexia. You could also have motor impairments that prevent you from using a mouse, or from using a keyboard.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So you could very well be doing a great job by making your content accessible to people who can't read a screen by, for example, making your platform compatible with a screen reader. But actually that doesn't mean that your content is going to be accessible to everyone. Checklists are not enough as I mentioned a little bit earlier. So there are ways, there are of course checklists that are going to help you make sure that your content is accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: There are compliance requirements such as WCAG. If you're in publishing you've probably had to do a VPAT before. So Voluntary Accessibility Test that assesses how accessible your content is on your platform. The reality is just because you check all those boxes in the compliance requirements, doesn't mean that your content is really going to be accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Sometimes you can pass a VPAT, but when you put your content in front of somebody with a disability, they're actually going to be unable to access it. That's why it's so important to put people at the core of testing, and at the core of your accessibility efforts. Checklists are necessary, there are not enough.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It will not be free. So if you have already started addressing accessibility you know that. If you have not, yes, it costs many, and it costs resources. And it's a commitment, it's a continuous investment. It's also not something that's going to be just a one time investment. So it's important to really integrate this into your business.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's going to be worth it, but it is going to be an investment. So don't just expect one person to be doing all the job on this side as they're doing their regular daily job. It is a journey. You will never be done. So nobody's done with accessibility, nobody can say, yes, all of my content is accessible, all of my platforms are accessible, I can be done with it and move on to something else.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: First of all, not many organizations actually get to the stage where everything is properly accessible that they have. So there's often something left even if they've done a good job of it. But then even those who are pretty accessible, they're going to be confronted to new requirements from new needs for people maybe. That they are expressing special needs that weren't taken into account before.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: New content is going to be produced. So it's really something that's ongoing. It's not something that's ever done, which is why it's going to require a long term commitment. It is worth it. There's a carrot, it is worth it for many different reasons that my colleagues here on this panel are going to get into in more detail. One of them is that, first of all, the most obvious one is that people with disabilities represent what?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: 20% of people on the planet. It is a really untapped market. And if you make your content accessible, you're just going to tap into a market that is completely under-served. So from a purely commercial standpoint it is worth it. It is also worth it because in many cases, making your content accessible, is going to actually improve the design of your content for everybody.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: When the example, I always use as a video hosting company is captions, I am not a native English speaker, I always have captions on no matter where I am. Just because it makes it easier for me to understand accents. Or maybe if I'm in a noise environment, et cetera. It's just a habit that I have. It's also I actually have learnt English is by watching movies in English with English subtitles, that was a great way for me to do that.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I can hear perfectly well, it's still useful for me. There are many examples of that. You have to start somewhere. Baby steps are OK. Don't wait for your three year plan to be ready to get started. As I said, it's a journey. It's not going to be something that is ever going to be completed.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But it's also OK not to say, listen, I've got 200 years of backlist, I can't make that accessible, where do I start? Pick something in your front list. Pick the most critical content. Pick the content that's the easiest to make accessible, don't start with the complex figures maybe. Or we all know that PDFs are going to be, maybe we don't know.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But if we don't know that's a spoiler alert. PDFs are harder to make accessible. Start where it's possible to start. So when you do an analysis of your content what should be made accessible? Start with what's the content that's critical? And that's probably easier. And then have a plan for the rest. Oftentimes even when an organization is sued for not having their content accessible, what is actually required of them is to have a plan to make the content accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not going to be that all of the content is accessible overnight. It's coming anyway. So I think I said in our prep goal for this panel, hey, there's the BA is coming after DEI. So you've probably heard of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives popping up everywhere these days, it's really a deep trend. And now we're adding the age to it we're adding the accessibility A to DEIY, sorry, the DEIA.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Really hard to pronounce apparently. [LAUGHS] It is going to be a moral imperative to do this. And I strongly believe that it's going to become completely socially unacceptable to not have content and websites accessible, might as well get started now. Everybody in your organization is going to need to be educated. Really don't count on one evangelist in one corner of the company to take care of this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: This Is going to take effort from your authors who might need to create extra content. For example, to describe the images in the figures that they produce to the production, your technology vendor. Really, there's going to be involvement from a lot of people in your company. So educating everybody about why accessibility is important is really critical to success.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not just about the content. Content is one thing, of course, we're the Society for Scholarly Publishing, we all care about content. But actually what's going to happen, we need to have a holistic approach about this. I'll give one other example, I have no idea where I am with time. So Jason just stop me if I can't do that.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So OK I.
JASON POINTE: Still OK.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I'm still OK. So it's not just about the content really. I'm going to give you a personal example here. There's the content, but there's also your back end systems for example. Your peer review systems, are those accessible? Because you might have your final article accessible, but how about an author, or peer reviewer who actually also needs to have access to systems that are critical to their daily jobs?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Same thing with hiring and your staff. So when you start really caring about accessibility and making your content accessible, then you're going to realize, wait I've got staff who also have needs. And am I addressing those properly? And as an accessibility evangelist we have made it a rule, of course, that we want to be inclusive in our hiring process as well.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And recently, I've had to deal with a situation that I had not anticipated. So even talking about accessibility all the time. This was a person in our team who is just at the onset of a new disability, they don't know how to deal with it, we don't know how to deal with it. This was not something that I was equipped to sort out. So I actually went and talked to a few people that I know who are active, and or who have a disability.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And I talk to them about what was fair, what was possible. And we came out with a plan that worked for everybody. I had to look at accessibility from a completely different angle. And it was really an educative experience kind of going back to the idea that you're really never done. Finally, get some help. There are plenty of experts out there. There are firms that are really going to be happy to help you.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Whether that's the to help with adding old text to content, helping with your platform, helping with a policy, for example, there are consultants, there are firms. Probably don't start by yourself. Maybe you're lucky and you've got Alan and Nina on your staff who can actually do a lot of stuff. But maybe you're a smaller company, small organization, smaller society who does not have the means to do that. There are definitely experts who can help, who can help you come up with a plan, who can look at your content and maybe in the long run you'll have the internal resources to do this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: That is all for me. I have created an extra slide that is actually a summary of all of the other slides. This is intended as a takeaway. So you can print it out. I was going to say, tape it to your office door, but nobody's in the office anymore. Anyway this is really your takeaway. It is a start, it is just tips, things to remember when you're getting started on your accessibility journey.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And that is all for me.
JASON POINTE: Thank you Violaine. Alan you're up.
ALAN MALONEY: Cool. So my slides aren't going to be probably as printable, and make for as nice a poster as Violaine's. As you'll see once I bring them up. Can you see my screen by any chance?
JASON POINTE: Gotcha.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Cool and it's in presentation mode and everything yeah. Cool. So I am going to talk about some tactics that you can use to bring people along, when you try and make your products more accessible. So some of it will be complementary to some of the things that Violaine was saying hopefully, try not to overlap too much. Although some of the messages I think will be the same because a lot of what Violaine said, I completely agree with.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So just as a way of introduction, I'm Alan Maloney, I work for SAGE Publishing. We have offices across the world. I report into the London office. Actually remotely based from Dublin. My efforts to get that added to the masthead have been unsuccessful so far. So what I do is I just write it on all of my slides, just to give a little bit of recognition to the new remote world that we're all working in at the moment.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But this is my standard bio-slide. So I started at SAGE in 2008. I'm actually showing the wrong screen am I? No, am I sharing my notes?
JASON POINTE: No, we have your slides.
ALAN MALONEY: I'm not sharing my notes. OK, that's good. Had a small heart attack for a second there. [LAUGHTER] So yes, started as an editorial assistant in 2008, then an assistant editor, and then development editor, before making the transition into digital products in 2011. Where I now manage our small but growing user experience team. And I quite like pointing out that I started in editorial, because I think it informs how I approach my current job of creating good user experiences.
ALAN MALONEY: Because it gives me an appreciation and a respect for our content, which at the end of the day is what our users are here to see. Always feel like I have to make the same disclaimer that I've worked for the same company for 13 years. Because I'm aware that might mean my perspective can be slightly institutionalized. But also I think it puts me in quite a privileged position as well.
ALAN MALONEY: Because in those 13 years I've worked across lots of departments, with lots of people, built lots of very solid relationships I can draw on when doing accessibility work. So my first tip would be work somewhere for 13 years. It just makes getting buy in for all of this stuff so much easier. But in all seriousness I just want to give you an acknowledgment that I've thought about that, and the importance of good relationships.
ALAN MALONEY: And the importance they have on everything that I'm going to say, really. And also working in the same company for 13 years is obviously, good for your health. If my before and after mugshots are anything to go by. And the Alt text for that is me looking like I'm in physical pain having my picture taken as an editorial assistant. So I wanted to go through some things that I've done in my career that have helped improve accessibility at SAGE.
ALAN MALONEY: And the first one of those I'm calling the shotgun approach. This is where you're always in complete command of all of the reasons why accessibility matters to you. And you throw them, all of them at your stakeholders, whenever you give the chance. And we've touched on some of these already. But I'm just going to give you an example of how I do it. This is an actual slide that I use whenever I'm talking about accessibility internally.
ALAN MALONEY: And I'll run through it very quickly. So there are lots of arguments for accessibility. The first one is the moral argument. And like Violaine, I like to use that first. If we want to make our content available to everyone, no matter what their disability device or location, then we need to think about accessibility when we build our products. I'm really happy to stop there.
ALAN MALONEY: I personally think that's all that needs to be said. But sadly that message isn't quite as universal as we would hope. So we have to make more arguments. Such as the usability argument, that designing for accessibility often forces you to think about the best way to make something available for the largest number of users. And that tends to make things more accessible for everyone.
ALAN MALONEY: There's the business argument. So in the UK at least around 11% of students in higher education report a disability. And so if our products aren't accessible, then our customers would, obviously, rather purchase something that accommodates 100% of their students rather than 89%. The legal argument. So the vast majority of our customers are legally obliged to procure technology, and content that is accessible to people with disabilities.
ALAN MALONEY: So they could be sued, or we could be sued, and that's obviously not something that the leadership of the company would ever want to see. And there's also a selfish motivation as well. So if you don't currently consider yourself to have a disability. Well, that could change with time. If you live into your 80s then you'll probably suffer some kind of vision loss, or some kind of hearing loss, arthritis.
ALAN MALONEY: These things are inevitable. And wouldn't you prefer to live in a world where your needs have been considered? Now, I doubt this point convinces anyone on a practical level, but it's certainly useful for countering apathy if you're seeing it. But I think the most important thing about this slide is that if you only have one reason, there's less chance of that given reason resonating with a particular colleague or stakeholder.
ALAN MALONEY: But if you've got five reasons then that's five times the chance of your stakeholder agreeing with one of those things at least. And actually they only really need to agree with one of these reasons for you to have planted the seed with that person. I like to mix up my communication styles when I do that. This is a slide I like to throw in when making the point that accessible products have more users.
ALAN MALONEY: It's hard to disagree that we want more people to use our product. So mantras like this, "When user experience doesn't consider all users they should be called some user experience, or SUX." Mantras like that can get the point across really effectively. Second tip. Something I've had a lot of success with recently, is introducing people to an idea called the persona spectrum.
ALAN MALONEY: So one of the points on the previous slide alluded to accessibility making better products and content for everyone. And one form that argument takes is called the persona spectrum. So this isn't my idea, I think it was first popularized by Microsoft, who in general do excellent work around inclusive design. So do you follow that link that's on the slide, that's microsoft.com/design/inclusive. But the persona of spectrum is, simply put, the idea that disabilities can be permanent, temporary, or situational.
ALAN MALONEY: So here are some examples of permanent disabilities. Any given user might lose a limb, they might have permanent vision loss, they might be deaf, or communicate non-verbally. And we absolutely should, and do consider these personas when we create our content. But people face similar challenges on a temporary basis as well. So you might temporarily lose the ability to use an arm because it's broken.
ALAN MALONEY: You might have cataracts or an ear infection that affect your ability to see or hear. You might have a head cold or something like laryngitis that affects your ability to speak. And as well as temporary impairments, you can also think about situational impairments. So if you only have one hand free, or you're visually distracted, or you're in a noisy environment, or speaking with an accent that people around you aren't used to.
ALAN MALONEY: Those will all impair your ability to use content and technology that is built around those senses. So the message of the persona spectrum is that if you accommodate people with permanent impairments, you create a better experience for everyone. Because everyone has at least a situational impairment from time to time.
ALAN MALONEY: Going to use the same example as Violaine. Subtitles or the classic example of this. Most people who use subtitles don't have a permanent hearing impairment. They probably don't even have a temporary one, they have a situational hearing impairment. Because they're in a really noisy environment where they can't hear the sound, or conversely they're in a really quiet environment where they can't have the volume too loud.
ALAN MALONEY: Maybe the kids are running around screaming, maybe the kids are in bed, maybe you're watching The Wire and everybody is mumbling for some reason. Pretty much all of us has experienced that kind of situational hearing impairment. So we're really grateful that disability legislation mandates that all videos have to have subtitles when we do. So this is a great way of thinking about how many people benefit from inclusive design.
ALAN MALONEY: Saying that there are 26,000 people with permanent limb loss in the United States, might not be helpful to you in building a persuasive business argument for making sure that your app can be used with one hand. But to design for that person is also to design for the 13 million people with broken arms, or the 8 million new parents in the United States at any given moment.
ALAN MALONEY: And the point is that by including those 26,000 people in your design, you're creating a better world for everyone, for all users. And that's really not just a business argument, that's a human argument. A couple more. Pitch at the right level. So this is the point where I abandoned the sports metaphor because I can't think anymore after this.
ALAN MALONEY: So don't just have one style of talking about accessibility. There are some principles to bear in mind that work well with everyone, such as it's better to be specific. So for example a problem statement that says the PDF isn't accessible, that isn't very useful when you're talking to people about that. Because people have different mental models of what accessibility is.
ALAN MALONEY: Like one of the things that you'll learn the more you talk to people about accessibility, is that they all mean something slightly different by it. So be specific, say exactly what the problem is. Screen readers read this PDF in the wrong order is a much more actionable piece of feedback, than just saying the PDF isn't accessible. But don't go too far with that and show off with your knowledge of technical standards.
ALAN MALONEY: I could talk all day about WCAG, I could talk about the finer points of individual WCAG criteria, until the cows come home. Most people don't want to do that. So get good at translating these technical standards into plain English. And also adopt the message to the audience because senior managers might not care that much about usability, or audio descriptions per se.
ALAN MALONEY: But if you know the threat of a lawsuit is going to scare a senior manager into action, make sure that they know about that one somebody in your industry gets sued. And use it in the language that they will understand. Link it to a wider mission. So your company probably has some kind of mission statement. And this can be a really good indication for how you should talk about accessibility if you want to be listened to.
ALAN MALONEY: So on the screen is a fairly randomly selected list of mission statements from famous companies. I think pretty much all of these can be used to make the case for accessibility at these organizations. Some of them make it really easy. Twitter says that it wants to give everyone the power to share ideas without barriers. Google wants to make the world's information universally accessible.
ALAN MALONEY: So those are both great, they're talking in our language. But even ones that don't specifically mention stuff like that make the question of accessibility. Because can Paypal build the world's most convenient payment solution, if their competitors are more convenient for users with disabilities? Probably not. Having all of this stuff applied to everyone is implied in a lot of these mission statements.
ALAN MALONEY: So if your organization has a lofty mission statement like this, use it to your advantage. Mission statements aren't just for customers, they're for internal people to rally around as well. And more importantly, they're the language that your senior management is using. So you can't really go wrong using their language. Lastly, once you've refined and practiced your message on accessibility the most important thing is never to shut up about it.
ALAN MALONEY: So even if you can't immediately get stakeholder buy in to invest or take the time for accessibility, very few stakeholders can dictate to you what you talk about. So use your voice and your perspective to bring accessibility into every conversation. Some ideas for this. When you're reviewing something and you spot an accessibility barrier, whether that's missing Alt text, or color contrast, lack of keyboard controls, mention it.
ALAN MALONEY: People will start to have a Pavlovian response if you're that person you always send something back because it's inaccessible, and they'll start to send you more accessible things. Do the same in meetings. Sneak it into job descriptions. So if you have the chance to write a job description then make sure it mentions accessibility, and make sure you ask about that interview stage.
ALAN MALONEY: Because the best way of making progress with accessibility is hiring people who are really good and passionate about accessibility. Share any interesting news items or other information that you come across. Have some mantras and axioms. I mentioned a couple on this call, accessibility is designing like you give a damn. User experience that excludes people is some user experience.
ALAN MALONEY: If you're in control of any policies, processes, or principles, then insert accessibility into them if you can. So doing all of that can be effective, but it's also quite intense. So there are times that I felt like I was becoming a bit of a one trick pony. There's probably a year or two of my career where it felt like all I have to contribute was droning on about accessibility.
ALAN MALONEY: But then a cool thing started happening. Rather than having to poke my nose into those conversations, people started coming to us, to my team, for advice on accessibility. I think they just wanted to shut us up but it worked. Here's an example of a policy that I'm in some control of, these are our design principles for our online reference and journals platforms. One of them is around accessibility.
ALAN MALONEY: So the one that says, build bridges not barriers, which is that our content doesn't discriminate on user ability or device. We champion and embed knowledge of inclusive design throughout the team, so that accessibility is built in rather than bolted on. Accessibility is in everyone's job and everyone's interest, because accessible products are usually products that are more usable to all.
ALAN MALONEY: And that's effective because I've taken my own advice and tied it to one of our wider missions. One of our current marketing messages is that SAGE wants to build bridges to knowledge. So this is a good example of taking that wider organizational language that you probably hear every day, and linking it to how accessibility contributes to that. So having accessibility as a formal design principle in our design system, just makes it much easier to advocate for it in individual design decisions.
ALAN MALONEY: I'm going to stop talking now. So thank you. I've left my email up on the screen. If any of that was too fast, or if I didn't go into as much detail as you wanted, feel free to follow up with me individually if you don't get the chance to ask a question in the chat. Or we could talk later as part of this webinar.
JASON POINTE: Thank you very much Alan. And now Nina. Next up.
NINA AMATO: Everyone, I'm Nina Amato. And I'm a lead user experience designer at the American Chemical Society, specifically I work in ACS publications. I've been working on accessibility work since 1998. I was working as a web developer for the federal government at the time. And that is when the law changed to say that all federal websites had to be accessible to people with disabilities. And all the web developers were sent to training to learn how to do that.
NINA AMATO: And I've been doing it ever since. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some tips to do that today. And as our previous speakers mentioned, when we think about accessibility we are thinking about a lot of people. And one of the accessibility rules is that your website has to be usable without a mouse. There are people who are paralyzed, who can't use their hands, and so they operate the web with a mouthpiece.
NINA AMATO: And as Alan mentioned, you could have a broken arm or have one arm available, and you can't use a mouse. And a few weeks ago, I was trying to buy clothing online for my son at a major retailer, when the battery died in my mouse. And I thought, well, no problem, I'll just tap through the site and I'll do it that way. And I wasn't able to because their site wasn't accessible. So that's just one example of it helping everybody.
NINA AMATO: But what I'm going to focus on today are tips to make your website more accessible to people with visual impairments. I'm going to focus a lot on scientific figures today. Just some numbers for you, there are 43 million people in the world who are blind, and about 550 million people with vision impairments. Also approximately one in 12 men are color-blind, and 0.5% of women of northern European descent are also color-blind.
NINA AMATO: And we're going to talk a little bit about the implications of color blindness today. So people who are blind use a screen reader to navigate the web. A screen reader is, it's a software that you have on your computer, that will read everything out loud to you. If you're working on Microsoft Word it will read that out loud to you.
NINA AMATO: And then if an Outlook email comes in, it's going to interrupt you and it's going to read that too. And in ACS we know that 5% of our readers use a screen reader on both their computer and their mobile device. Now, web analytics won't tell you this. We know this because we ask. Our amazing marketing team does a survey every year, and we ask them to include a question, do you use assistive technology such as a screen reader on your computer?
NINA AMATO: And then another question, do you use it on your mobile device? And 5% said yes to both. So one of my recommendations to everybody listening is test your website with a screen reader. And you probably have a screen reader on your computer right now, and you may not even know it. If you're on Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, if you're on a Chromebook, if you're on a Mac, you have a screen reader.
NINA AMATO: And I'm going to put these links in the chat later, and I am going to share my slides, because I have links to tutorials on how to use a screen reader. And I want to mention that it is not just people who are blind who use a screen reader. A few years ago I was giving a talk with one of the directors of Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind, which is an organization that teaches people who are blind how to live independently.
NINA AMATO: And one of the things that they teach is how to use a screen reader. And he told me that he had recently been sent to an organization to teach somebody who was not blind, but who had dyslexia. And once he taught her how to use a screen reader, he said, her work just became so much easier, and it opened up to her. So if any of you are parents of a child with dyslexia, if you're professors and any of your students have dyslexia, if they have one of these computers they have a screen reader that could be really helpful for them.
NINA AMATO: So I want to talk about figures in manuscripts. So we're thinking about scientific figures here, they're normally much more complex than this. But I wanted to give an example. And so I made the ugliest possible pie-chart here, but I did this for a reason. I'm using this very, very bright red, and this very, very intense green on the left. And this is a standard pie-chart.
NINA AMATO: And then on the right, this is what it would look like to somebody who is red-green color-blind which is the most common kind of color blindness. If there's any designers there, I actually did this in Photoshop. Photoshop and Illustrator both have a setting that will let you see what anything looks like to somebody who is color-blind.
NINA AMATO: So one of the rules for accessibility is that you can't use color alone to show meaning. And I think that's kind of abstract. But when you think about a pie-chart that's exactly what you're doing. And if you can't see, I mean, here you can't even tell which of these slices is fruit or vegetables, because the colors look the same to someone who is color-blind. So the most important thing you can do when you are using shapes like this, is always show the data.
NINA AMATO: So here I added the values that again, I made up. But I added the numeric values here, so that somebody who was color-blind, or somebody who was blind was listening to a screen reader would be able to get these, assuming you add it Alt text which I will talk about. Also just in general, when you have two adjacent colors separate them by a border that's very high-contrast, usually black or white.
NINA AMATO: You can see I also adjusted some of the saturation levels here just to make it a little more distinguishable. Now as we age, our ability to see color contrast decreases. And when you look at this text you might think, I can read all of this, and I can read this center line. But there actually is an equation. There are websites you can use where you enter the color code for your text color, and your background color, and it will tell you if it has sufficient contrast.
NINA AMATO: But the rule of thumb is only really, really strong contrast will pass. And here I made nine examples of white text on a colored background. These are all join now buttons. And so just take a second to think about how many of these you think have sufficient color contrast to be seen by everybody. The answer is only the last one.
NINA AMATO: We think about designers love to use those beautiful yellow buttons, and they're gorgeous, and I love them. Except you cannot use yellow with white text on it, you just can't. If you need to use a yellow button you have to use very, very dark text on it so it will pass. When we have text images, you want to avoid putting text on an image.
NINA AMATO: If you have a data table in your manuscript submit it as a data table. If you have equations submit them as equations. And also when you're posting on social media and you're posting text, don't put text on an image. And here's an example of why that could be dangerous. So here is a college that had a really nice intent. They were hosting an event designed for students with visual impairments.
NINA AMATO: And they put all the details for the event on this image. This is text on an image. And then somebody who's blind tweeted back, sorry, can't see it I'm blind. Could you give me the information? And then here's me typing the information, and then explaining that you don't use text on images. But this is a real world example of why you don't want to do this.
NINA AMATO: This would have been a much more efficient if you just use text. And so it was a well meaning, it was just a mistake, but it's the kind of thing we want to avoid. And so here I have links to instructions on how to add text to images in different things. So here's instructions on how to add Alt text to an image in Microsoft Word, how to add it to images on Twitter, and how to add it to images on Instagram.
NINA AMATO: When I meet with people who use screen readers, who rely on screen readers to navigate the web, people who are vision impaired, people who are blind. The first thing I ask them is say, OK, you googled, you landed on an article on our website, you've just opened it, you're about to read it. What is the very first thing you do? And usually what they say to me is, I open the headings list.
NINA AMATO: And a headings list reads all of the headings on a page. And so if you're thinking about-- if you've gone to a really tech savvy page like a scholarly article, chances are you're looking for that big bold text that's going to break up the different sections, the abstract, the conclusions, the methods. Well, people who use screen readers do that too. But they can only do it if we've coded that big bold text as a heading.
NINA AMATO: So any developers on there I'm talking about an H1, an H2, an H3. And you can also do that in Microsoft Word, you can do it in Google Docs. In Microsoft Word there's a style paint that appears on the right, and then there's a dropdown you can choose to select all headings or all styles, and that will give your styles. So that way if somebody is using a screen reader to read your document even on Microsoft Word, if you have a coworker who's using a screen reader, they will be able to use it the way you intended.
NINA AMATO: So that's really, really important. And finally, I think it's really important that we incorporate stories of social, sorry, stories of people who need accessibility accommodations into our everyday lives. And so when you're on social media like Twitter, follow hashtags like hashtag accessibility, hashtag A11Y, that's code word for accessibility. And get Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
NINA AMATO: You read a lot of personal stories about people who struggle with accessibility. And it will help build empathy, and it will help give you every day tips. And finally, follow groups who represent people with disabilities. Such as the National Federation for the Blind, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the World Federation for the Deaf.
NINA AMATO: There are other organizations too, I just posted these as examples. But when you start incorporating this into your everyday social media feed, you're going to really get a better understanding of accessibility. And that's it for me.
JASON POINTE: OK, great. Thanks Nina, and thank you as well Violaine, and Alan. We've got some questions that have been coming in in chat. And I see Violaine, and Alan, and Nina you've all been responding to some of those already. We also have a question that's come in through Q&A from Monica Feltez at the AHA. And her question is, does anyone include Alt text on advertising graphics on their websites? Do the ad servers accommodate Alt text?
NINA AMATO: So browsers will accommodate Alt text. If we're talking about a website then yes, as long as Alt text is added, it will be read to a screen reader. Alan.
ALAN MALONEY: Yeah, the Alt technology itself I think, does give the opportunity for ad authors to add Alt. I think basically, well, Google Ads certainly serves something like a banner ad as an image element. You can add Alt text to that, we do that for most of our house ads. For the commercial ads that we sell to advertisers then I think probably we're relying on them to supply that, just as we're relying them to supply the images and the copy itself.
ALAN MALONEY: Whether they do that I don't have a great grasp of. I have to imagine that sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. But I think we'd encounter the same issue that you'd have with any type of content. You're talking about author supplied content so you can certainly encourage that, and send the content provider guidelines just as you would with an author.
ALAN MALONEY: And it's up to the organization how much they enforce that. I don't have a great handle on how much we did enforce that on the commercial sales side of things. But I'd imagine it's a bit of a mixed bag, but the technology is there to do it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And you really feel it's silly not to do it for them. Because if it's not done then the screen reader is just going to skip it, so the ad is not visible for sure. Small effort for a big benefit there.
ALAN MALONEY: And most of the time those ads are just stylized images of text. So the Alt text would just be the text. Like you'd give an equivalent meaning. So in theory doesn't sound difficult to me, but you'd maybe have to speak to advertisers if that's not happening.
JASON POINTE: All right. Thank you all. Another question from Philip Devietro. Has anyone used an outside service to audit their websites for compliance? What is that process like? Explain how you interact with the auditor and then how you can make their results actionable within your organization.
ALAN MALONEY: We have. We found it really useful at the start of our accessibility journey when we didn't know much about accessibility. We knew we wanted to do it, we didn't have the in-house expertise, so we worked with external providers. So they audit our sites, they wrote VPAT for us, they provided giant spreadsheets of things to fix. Which were very overwhelming when you don't know [CHUCKLES] much about accessibility at the time.
ALAN MALONEY: But a lot of these organizations will provide kind of aftercare as well. So they'll make themselves available for a call to talk through remediation plans and things like that. We have less need of-- we learned a lot from them basically, and that's part of the value that they add. If you're starting from a point where you don't have much in-house expertise around accessibility. It is just a good opportunity to learn from people who know a lot.
ALAN MALONEY: We have learned a lot from them, we still work with external providers of those services. Because providing things like third party VPAT is just a very good thing to do. Because there are a lot of VPAT out there that are created in-house, you don't necessarily know how much to trust them. If they're created by an independent third party agency, accessibility experts, then customers can generally put a lot more faith in that VPAT being honest and accurate.
ALAN MALONEY: So four major redesigns we do still work with third party providers of audits and VPATs because it just gives a lot more credibility to the information that we're sending out there to customers.
JASON POINTE: So Alan if I can, we tend to be acronym heavy in scholarly publishing. And if any in our audience are neophytes to accessibility like I was, until our introductory phone call the other day. I had to go away and look up VPAT which you just used about five times in your answer, and WCAG. Because I had no idea what those things were. Could you just give a quick definition of both of those, in case there's anybody else who like me didn't know?
ALAN MALONEY: So WCAG is the Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines. There are the W3 standards, W3C standard, that's another acronym. That's the World Wide Web Consortium who are in charge of web standards. So those are the accessibility guidelines which most people try to conform to. Because increasingly they're referenced in legislation worldwide.
ALAN MALONEY: They're also a really good useful comprehensive set of guidelines. Which the world is kind of coalescing around as being the guidelines that we should pay attention to, if we're looking to create accessible experiences. VPAT as Violaine mentioned, is the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. And it is a conformance document. It is a standardized conformance document that allows you to go through and assess product against the WCAG guidelines.
ALAN MALONEY: Now, a VPAT is just one template, you can use any template you want if you want to communicate your level of conformance against WCAG. Most customers that we work with sort of their internal policies ask for a conformance document, and suggest a VPAT just because that is something that people are increasingly more familiar with. So we use VPATs, but we're also happy to sort of mix up the communication as well.
ALAN MALONEY: And if we enter a situation where a VPAT is going to be too technical, and too heavy-weight to answer a customer query, then we can create more light-weight forms of that. But basically those are two emerging industry standards. You've got WCAG which are the guidelines themselves, and then the VPAT which is a document that assesses conformance against it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I want to add one thing, which is interesting, which is that there is no certification for being accessible. So I'm not sure why actually, but I often compare so the security compliance with accessibility compliance. The security compliance you can actually get certified, and obtain a certain level of certification through an official or organization that is accredited to do it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not the case for accessibility. So you can be-- I don't know if that's going to come, and I don't know what the other panelists think about that. But that's why it's called a Voluntary Product Assessment. It's never going to be an official document that you have.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And a lot of it is your personal assessment of how accessible your website is. So there's a lot of subjectivity still involved.
JASON POINTE: Good to know. We've got a couple of other questions that have come in in the Q&A. One from Nicole Waffle. Violaine you mentioned about it being harder to make PDFs accessible. Do you, or Nina, or Alan, have specific tips you can offer resources that someone could use, that would help improve the accessibility of PDFs?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: That's probably going to be more of a question for Nina or Alan actually, but what I was referring to is oftentimes a PDF is actually-- you've got two kinds of PDF. You've got a PDF that's like an image, and then you've got a PDF that's actually a web PDF, which is properly coded. And if you have an image then it's really hard to make it accessible. And if you have a PDF that's actually properly converted.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's kind of easy to tell. If you've got a PDF sometimes you can copy and paste the text, and sometimes you can't. Well, if you can't copy and paste the text it's not going to be accessible no matter what. If you can, that means it's properly coded and maybe you have a chance to do that. But I'm not going to go into the details, because I'm not the expert on that.
NINA AMATO: I spent years working making PDF accessible, and now it's been almost nine years since I've done it. So it's been a while. But I used to have to do it all the time for the government, because the government PDFs are accessible. I just put a link in the chat, I believe it went to everybody. It's to Adobe's page where they have tips on how to do it. Because reading orders is really important and by default most PDFs are not accessible. So Adobe has tips it's a great starting point, the government also has tips on how to do it.
NINA AMATO: But start with Adobe's that are in the chat. Do the accessibility check, check the reading order. Also be careful about you want to make your Word document accessible. I mentioned putting in headings and putting in Alt text in your Word document, because often your Word document is then going to be converted to a PDF. When I saw the biggest problems it was when InDesign documents were converted in a PDF, that was tougher.
NINA AMATO: But I'm sure they have tips on their website, it's been a while. But definitely follow those to start.
JASON POINTE: OK. Got a question from Rosana Isola for people on the training side of things. And I'm interested in this too because you've all talked about the necessity to address this issue from the creation of the content, so with the authors. So what are some of the important points for editors and internal customer service teams?
JASON POINTE: Rosana shares that she became interested in accessibility because a blind author that she was trying to help submit their article, had to guide her step by step on how to send him links and instructions. She felt she had no idea that she was doing something incorrectly. And they had a lot of patience with her, so she appreciated that.
JASON POINTE: But are there resources you can point someone to on how to guide your team in beginning to deal with this appropriately?
ALAN MALONEY: Yeah, there's quite a few. I'd struggle to think of examples off the top of my head. When somebody asks questions about introductory accessibility I often send them to WebAIM. So it's W, E, B, A, I, M I think AIM stands for Accessibility In Mind. Gives a very good overview of how people with disabilities interact with the web in many different ways. No matter what the disability is, it will sort of run through what some of the different forms of interaction will be, and how you can help accommodate those.
ALAN MALONEY: I think in general if you're talking about training authors and an internal teams, accessibility is so context specific even right down into the fine detail. Like Alt text for example. You'll find good general principles of how to write Alt text on WebAIM, but it might not have examples of scientific diagrams and things like that.
ALAN MALONEY: So when you're talking with people within the same industry as you are, within the same organization as you, it is really helpful to have a slide deck of pre-crafted examples. Nina had some really good examples there of pie-charts that didn't meet color contrast guidelines and use of color alone. I think every organization should have something like that.
ALAN MALONEY: And I think if they don't, then I think why not spend a day or two trawling WebAIM, looking through some of the other general guidance that's out there and creating that. And actually starting to lead the conversation in your organization. That's how I did it. I took some of the general guidance and made it specific to SAGE, and people found that really useful.
ALAN MALONEY: So I think start out with those general guidelines by all means. But there's a lot of power in starting to craft that around the specific context for your users and on your internal teams.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I want to just add one quick thing, which is that actually was it, sorry, I've missed her first name now. Rosana, what you did actually was right. She talked to the author, and did what the author needed. And oftentimes, as Alan said, accessibility is context specific. You're not going to be able to preemptively make everything accessible. So having a button or a way to say, that's obvious on the site that says, hey, if you need help with accessibility reach out to us.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And then have different ways that are going to be accessible to everyone to reach out. Because oftentimes, a person with a disability wants one thing. Is to be able to talk to somebody about what they specifically need. So that's actually an efficient way to do it. Because that means you don't have to imagine every problem that may happen, you can get started somewhere by helping a specific person.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS:
JASON POINTE: OK, great. We have time for I think one more question and then we need to wrap up. I have another question from Phil Devietro. Overall do we have a general sense as an industry that lawsuits and fines are increasing as a result of not being accessible?
ALAN MALONEY: Yes.
JASON POINTE: Violaine you're nodding your head so.
ALAN MALONEY: I just googled the numbers because I actually put them in a report a while back. So last year in the United States alone there were 3,550 lawsuits brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is a 23% increase on 2019. So absolutely, yes, they are increasing more and more I'll link to the full report in the chat because it's very interesting to dig into some of the detail. A real increase in the number of educational institutions that are facing ADA digital lawsuits as well, which is obviously really close to us as a business as well.
ALAN MALONEY: But yeah, it is growing more and more. There are several factors for that. Interestingly a lot of organizations are sort of finding themselves getting sued again, and again, and again. So I'm not sure what's happening there. Whether it's a case of some organizations becoming a target for that kind of thing. But it's certainly something that is growing and that is a really kind of good for lighting the fire under the organization.
JASON POINTE: I wonder how much of that growth in numbers for last year had to do with the pandemic, and everything being driven to a virtual environment. And thus putting a much greater spotlight on especially you mentioned, education. And suddenly all kids needed to be educated virtually. So that's a very good point. All right, very good. Thank you very much everybody.
JASON POINTE: Thank you to the panelists, I have certainly learned a lot. And now we go to Jeff for our closing comments.
JEFF LANGE: Well, that was fantastic, and very informative. Thank you to Jason, Violaine, and Nina, and Alan for leading this discussion, and for helping us all understand a bit more about this problem, and what we can do to help. Thanks also to our sponsor Straive, and thanks to all of you for attending and bringing your questions. Once again, please do take the time to respond to the webinar evaluation that you receive over email.
JEFF LANGE: Your feedback helps us to continually improve this webinar program. Please join SSP for the new directions seminar on October 6th and 7th. That's How To Move Fast And Not Break Things. And also for the next SSP webinar on October 14th where you'll see Jason again, titled The New 3Rs, response, responsibility, and relevance. We are concluding, please enjoy the rest of your day.
JEFF LANGE:
Segment:0 .
JEFF LANGE: Hello, everyone. And welcome to the fifth SSP webinar of 2021, and the start of our fall lineup. You're joining us for a discussion titled accessibility and publishing. I'm Jeff Lange with the American Chemical Society, and co-chair of the SSP education committee. We're so pleased you could join us today. Your audio will remain muted in consideration of our presenters as we start this panel.
JEFF LANGE: And please use the Q&A feature or the chat to send in your questions. The moderator will review these as we go through. So to help him please specify which presenter you'd like your question to go to. Also please send your questions as we go through, they'll be addressed throughout the session. Please remember the SSP code of conduct, and be respectful to all speakers and attendees in your comments, and questions.
JEFF LANGE: At the conclusion of today's session, you'll receive a webinar evaluation via email. We encourage you to provide feedback so that we can continually improve the SSP webinar program. You'll also receive a link via email to the recorded broadcast at this webinar. Our moderator today is Jason Pointe who is the new SSP webinar working group chairman.
JEFF LANGE: And an experienced scholarly publishing executive with over 25 years of experience, mostly in journals and publishing. With Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier, and now at the International Anesthesia Research Society. Now I'm turning over to Jason, so that he can introduce the panel and get us started.
JASON POINTE: Thank you Jeff, good morning everybody. So today's speakers will present a practical approach to making scholarly content accessible. First up we have Violaine Iglesias, the CEO and co-founder of Cadmore Media. And she will speak about why content accessibility should be a priority, the problems it addresses, opportunities it presents, and resources and commitment required. Next, Alan Maloney executive user experience manager at SAGE Publications, will pick up from there to discuss why a successful approach to accessibility requires change to be made top down, at the personal and organizational levels.
JASON POINTE: And finally, Nina Amato lead user experience designer at the American Chemical Society, will bring it all together with tips for authors, editors, and publishers about how to make their content more accessible. Our panelists presentations will be followed by discussion and Q&A. So as Jeff mentioned, please submit your questions throughout the presentation. Now, over to Violaine.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Hello, good morning. So bear with me while I share my slides. All right. Can the panelists give me a thumbs up if you can see the right screen, big blue screen? Thank you very much. All right. So good morning everyone, my name is Violaine Iglesias. I am the CEO and co-founder of Cadmore Media, which is a video hosting company that specializes in serving scholarly societies and academic publishers.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: The reason why I'm here today is because accessibility is not only at the core of the mission of the company that I co-founded, but it is actually something that's just near and dear to my heart. So on this panel today, I'm not going to be the expert. I'm not going to be the one giving you specific tips on how to make your content accessible. But what I wanted to do is just talk a little bit about what I've learned on my accessibility journey.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So I started becoming what you would call an accessibility evangelist a few years ago. This actually started at-- I've told this story many times, but this actually started at an STEM pre-annual meeting seminar in accessibility. With George Kershaw standing at the podium, and telling the audience that he had started reading the paper for the first time when he was 28 years old.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And I thought that was just-- something clicked in me where I thought, wait this is a very good way for me to just understand why it's important. So I'm going to find out about it. I'm going to make it at the core of my mission. Accessibility is not my job, it's not my daily job. What I have done throughout my career in academic publishing is try to make it an important component of everything that we do.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I've done that. And I'm going to give you kind of high level thoughts that I've gathered probably over the past 10 years. Before handing over to the other panelists who are going to be a bit more practical than I am. So the first thing I wanted to say is, something that I used to conclude any accessibility talk by saying. And here are all the reasons why you should do this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And by the way, it's the right thing to do. And I've actually started to switch that. And now, I want to start with the fact that it's actually the right thing to do. A very large proportion of the US and global population is affected by a disability. And it is just the right thing to do to be inclusive of everyone. So we're going to review all the stats about how many people, what kind of disabilities we're talking about.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But I really want to start there by saying, yes you're going to hear legal arguments, you're going to hear usability arguments. But the first argument that I think we should remember, is that making content accessible is a moral imperative. The second thing I've learned is really that accessibility is not just about technology. And what we often see is that organization approach that approach accessibility as a technical challenge.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: How are we going to make content accessible? How are we going to make our platforms accessible? But actually it's people you're trying to make your content accessible to. So it's really important to involve people with disabilities in the process of making your content accessible by asking them about their needs, and by also involving them in any testing process. So just remember, you're not going to be able to just achieve compliance by trying to check boxes on a list, that's actually one of my other slides.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: You really need to make sure that actual people can access the content in real life. And the third thing I wanted to talk about is that accessibility is actually not the same. You can't just make your content accessible period. You have to make it accessible to people who have a wide variety of disabilities. So when we talk about disability, the first things that come to mind are going to be hearing impairments, visual impairments.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Those are probably the first two and are the ones that I've highlighted on this slide. But actually there's a lot of disabilities that need to be taken into account. So you can have cognitive disabilities, including think of problems like dyslexia. You could also have motor impairments that prevent you from using a mouse, or from using a keyboard.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So you could very well be doing a great job by making your content accessible to people who can't read a screen by, for example, making your platform compatible with a screen reader. But actually that doesn't mean that your content is going to be accessible to everyone. Checklists are not enough as I mentioned a little bit earlier. So there are ways, there are of course checklists that are going to help you make sure that your content is accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: There are compliance requirements such as WCAG. If you're in publishing you've probably had to do a VPAT before. So Voluntary Accessibility Test that assesses how accessible your content is on your platform. The reality is just because you check all those boxes in the compliance requirements, doesn't mean that your content is really going to be accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Sometimes you can pass a VPAT, but when you put your content in front of somebody with a disability, they're actually going to be unable to access it. That's why it's so important to put people at the core of testing, and at the core of your accessibility efforts. Checklists are necessary, there are not enough.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It will not be free. So if you have already started addressing accessibility you know that. If you have not, yes, it costs many, and it costs resources. And it's a commitment, it's a continuous investment. It's also not something that's going to be just a one time investment. So it's important to really integrate this into your business.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's going to be worth it, but it is going to be an investment. So don't just expect one person to be doing all the job on this side as they're doing their regular daily job. It is a journey. You will never be done. So nobody's done with accessibility, nobody can say, yes, all of my content is accessible, all of my platforms are accessible, I can be done with it and move on to something else.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: First of all, not many organizations actually get to the stage where everything is properly accessible that they have. So there's often something left even if they've done a good job of it. But then even those who are pretty accessible, they're going to be confronted to new requirements from new needs for people maybe. That they are expressing special needs that weren't taken into account before.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: New content is going to be produced. So it's really something that's ongoing. It's not something that's ever done, which is why it's going to require a long term commitment. It is worth it. There's a carrot, it is worth it for many different reasons that my colleagues here on this panel are going to get into in more detail. One of them is that, first of all, the most obvious one is that people with disabilities represent what?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: 20% of people on the planet. It is a really untapped market. And if you make your content accessible, you're just going to tap into a market that is completely under-served. So from a purely commercial standpoint it is worth it. It is also worth it because in many cases, making your content accessible, is going to actually improve the design of your content for everybody.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: When the example, I always use as a video hosting company is captions, I am not a native English speaker, I always have captions on no matter where I am. Just because it makes it easier for me to understand accents. Or maybe if I'm in a noise environment, et cetera. It's just a habit that I have. It's also I actually have learnt English is by watching movies in English with English subtitles, that was a great way for me to do that.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I can hear perfectly well, it's still useful for me. There are many examples of that. You have to start somewhere. Baby steps are OK. Don't wait for your three year plan to be ready to get started. As I said, it's a journey. It's not going to be something that is ever going to be completed.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But it's also OK not to say, listen, I've got 200 years of backlist, I can't make that accessible, where do I start? Pick something in your front list. Pick the most critical content. Pick the content that's the easiest to make accessible, don't start with the complex figures maybe. Or we all know that PDFs are going to be, maybe we don't know.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But if we don't know that's a spoiler alert. PDFs are harder to make accessible. Start where it's possible to start. So when you do an analysis of your content what should be made accessible? Start with what's the content that's critical? And that's probably easier. And then have a plan for the rest. Oftentimes even when an organization is sued for not having their content accessible, what is actually required of them is to have a plan to make the content accessible.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not going to be that all of the content is accessible overnight. It's coming anyway. So I think I said in our prep goal for this panel, hey, there's the BA is coming after DEI. So you've probably heard of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives popping up everywhere these days, it's really a deep trend. And now we're adding the age to it we're adding the accessibility A to DEIY, sorry, the DEIA.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Really hard to pronounce apparently. [LAUGHS] It is going to be a moral imperative to do this. And I strongly believe that it's going to become completely socially unacceptable to not have content and websites accessible, might as well get started now. Everybody in your organization is going to need to be educated. Really don't count on one evangelist in one corner of the company to take care of this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: This Is going to take effort from your authors who might need to create extra content. For example, to describe the images in the figures that they produce to the production, your technology vendor. Really, there's going to be involvement from a lot of people in your company. So educating everybody about why accessibility is important is really critical to success.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not just about the content. Content is one thing, of course, we're the Society for Scholarly Publishing, we all care about content. But actually what's going to happen, we need to have a holistic approach about this. I'll give one other example, I have no idea where I am with time. So Jason just stop me if I can't do that.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So OK I.
JASON POINTE: Still OK.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I'm still OK. So it's not just about the content really. I'm going to give you a personal example here. There's the content, but there's also your back end systems for example. Your peer review systems, are those accessible? Because you might have your final article accessible, but how about an author, or peer reviewer who actually also needs to have access to systems that are critical to their daily jobs?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Same thing with hiring and your staff. So when you start really caring about accessibility and making your content accessible, then you're going to realize, wait I've got staff who also have needs. And am I addressing those properly? And as an accessibility evangelist we have made it a rule, of course, that we want to be inclusive in our hiring process as well.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And recently, I've had to deal with a situation that I had not anticipated. So even talking about accessibility all the time. This was a person in our team who is just at the onset of a new disability, they don't know how to deal with it, we don't know how to deal with it. This was not something that I was equipped to sort out. So I actually went and talked to a few people that I know who are active, and or who have a disability.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And I talk to them about what was fair, what was possible. And we came out with a plan that worked for everybody. I had to look at accessibility from a completely different angle. And it was really an educative experience kind of going back to the idea that you're really never done. Finally, get some help. There are plenty of experts out there. There are firms that are really going to be happy to help you.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Whether that's the to help with adding old text to content, helping with your platform, helping with a policy, for example, there are consultants, there are firms. Probably don't start by yourself. Maybe you're lucky and you've got Alan and Nina on your staff who can actually do a lot of stuff. But maybe you're a smaller company, small organization, smaller society who does not have the means to do that. There are definitely experts who can help, who can help you come up with a plan, who can look at your content and maybe in the long run you'll have the internal resources to do this.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: That is all for me. I have created an extra slide that is actually a summary of all of the other slides. This is intended as a takeaway. So you can print it out. I was going to say, tape it to your office door, but nobody's in the office anymore. Anyway this is really your takeaway. It is a start, it is just tips, things to remember when you're getting started on your accessibility journey.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And that is all for me.
JASON POINTE: Thank you Violaine. Alan you're up.
ALAN MALONEY: Cool. So my slides aren't going to be probably as printable, and make for as nice a poster as Violaine's. As you'll see once I bring them up. Can you see my screen by any chance?
JASON POINTE: Gotcha.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Cool and it's in presentation mode and everything yeah. Cool. So I am going to talk about some tactics that you can use to bring people along, when you try and make your products more accessible. So some of it will be complementary to some of the things that Violaine was saying hopefully, try not to overlap too much. Although some of the messages I think will be the same because a lot of what Violaine said, I completely agree with.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So just as a way of introduction, I'm Alan Maloney, I work for SAGE Publishing. We have offices across the world. I report into the London office. Actually remotely based from Dublin. My efforts to get that added to the masthead have been unsuccessful so far. So what I do is I just write it on all of my slides, just to give a little bit of recognition to the new remote world that we're all working in at the moment.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But this is my standard bio-slide. So I started at SAGE in 2008. I'm actually showing the wrong screen am I? No, am I sharing my notes?
JASON POINTE: No, we have your slides.
ALAN MALONEY: I'm not sharing my notes. OK, that's good. Had a small heart attack for a second there. [LAUGHTER] So yes, started as an editorial assistant in 2008, then an assistant editor, and then development editor, before making the transition into digital products in 2011. Where I now manage our small but growing user experience team. And I quite like pointing out that I started in editorial, because I think it informs how I approach my current job of creating good user experiences.
ALAN MALONEY: Because it gives me an appreciation and a respect for our content, which at the end of the day is what our users are here to see. Always feel like I have to make the same disclaimer that I've worked for the same company for 13 years. Because I'm aware that might mean my perspective can be slightly institutionalized. But also I think it puts me in quite a privileged position as well.
ALAN MALONEY: Because in those 13 years I've worked across lots of departments, with lots of people, built lots of very solid relationships I can draw on when doing accessibility work. So my first tip would be work somewhere for 13 years. It just makes getting buy in for all of this stuff so much easier. But in all seriousness I just want to give you an acknowledgment that I've thought about that, and the importance of good relationships.
ALAN MALONEY: And the importance they have on everything that I'm going to say, really. And also working in the same company for 13 years is obviously, good for your health. If my before and after mugshots are anything to go by. And the Alt text for that is me looking like I'm in physical pain having my picture taken as an editorial assistant. So I wanted to go through some things that I've done in my career that have helped improve accessibility at SAGE.
ALAN MALONEY: And the first one of those I'm calling the shotgun approach. This is where you're always in complete command of all of the reasons why accessibility matters to you. And you throw them, all of them at your stakeholders, whenever you give the chance. And we've touched on some of these already. But I'm just going to give you an example of how I do it. This is an actual slide that I use whenever I'm talking about accessibility internally.
ALAN MALONEY: And I'll run through it very quickly. So there are lots of arguments for accessibility. The first one is the moral argument. And like Violaine, I like to use that first. If we want to make our content available to everyone, no matter what their disability device or location, then we need to think about accessibility when we build our products. I'm really happy to stop there.
ALAN MALONEY: I personally think that's all that needs to be said. But sadly that message isn't quite as universal as we would hope. So we have to make more arguments. Such as the usability argument, that designing for accessibility often forces you to think about the best way to make something available for the largest number of users. And that tends to make things more accessible for everyone.
ALAN MALONEY: There's the business argument. So in the UK at least around 11% of students in higher education report a disability. And so if our products aren't accessible, then our customers would, obviously, rather purchase something that accommodates 100% of their students rather than 89%. The legal argument. So the vast majority of our customers are legally obliged to procure technology, and content that is accessible to people with disabilities.
ALAN MALONEY: So they could be sued, or we could be sued, and that's obviously not something that the leadership of the company would ever want to see. And there's also a selfish motivation as well. So if you don't currently consider yourself to have a disability. Well, that could change with time. If you live into your 80s then you'll probably suffer some kind of vision loss, or some kind of hearing loss, arthritis.
ALAN MALONEY: These things are inevitable. And wouldn't you prefer to live in a world where your needs have been considered? Now, I doubt this point convinces anyone on a practical level, but it's certainly useful for countering apathy if you're seeing it. But I think the most important thing about this slide is that if you only have one reason, there's less chance of that given reason resonating with a particular colleague or stakeholder.
ALAN MALONEY: But if you've got five reasons then that's five times the chance of your stakeholder agreeing with one of those things at least. And actually they only really need to agree with one of these reasons for you to have planted the seed with that person. I like to mix up my communication styles when I do that. This is a slide I like to throw in when making the point that accessible products have more users.
ALAN MALONEY: It's hard to disagree that we want more people to use our product. So mantras like this, "When user experience doesn't consider all users they should be called some user experience, or SUX." Mantras like that can get the point across really effectively. Second tip. Something I've had a lot of success with recently, is introducing people to an idea called the persona spectrum.
ALAN MALONEY: So one of the points on the previous slide alluded to accessibility making better products and content for everyone. And one form that argument takes is called the persona spectrum. So this isn't my idea, I think it was first popularized by Microsoft, who in general do excellent work around inclusive design. So do you follow that link that's on the slide, that's microsoft.com/design/inclusive. But the persona of spectrum is, simply put, the idea that disabilities can be permanent, temporary, or situational.
ALAN MALONEY: So here are some examples of permanent disabilities. Any given user might lose a limb, they might have permanent vision loss, they might be deaf, or communicate non-verbally. And we absolutely should, and do consider these personas when we create our content. But people face similar challenges on a temporary basis as well. So you might temporarily lose the ability to use an arm because it's broken.
ALAN MALONEY: You might have cataracts or an ear infection that affect your ability to see or hear. You might have a head cold or something like laryngitis that affects your ability to speak. And as well as temporary impairments, you can also think about situational impairments. So if you only have one hand free, or you're visually distracted, or you're in a noisy environment, or speaking with an accent that people around you aren't used to.
ALAN MALONEY: Those will all impair your ability to use content and technology that is built around those senses. So the message of the persona spectrum is that if you accommodate people with permanent impairments, you create a better experience for everyone. Because everyone has at least a situational impairment from time to time.
ALAN MALONEY: Going to use the same example as Violaine. Subtitles or the classic example of this. Most people who use subtitles don't have a permanent hearing impairment. They probably don't even have a temporary one, they have a situational hearing impairment. Because they're in a really noisy environment where they can't hear the sound, or conversely they're in a really quiet environment where they can't have the volume too loud.
ALAN MALONEY: Maybe the kids are running around screaming, maybe the kids are in bed, maybe you're watching The Wire and everybody is mumbling for some reason. Pretty much all of us has experienced that kind of situational hearing impairment. So we're really grateful that disability legislation mandates that all videos have to have subtitles when we do. So this is a great way of thinking about how many people benefit from inclusive design.
ALAN MALONEY: Saying that there are 26,000 people with permanent limb loss in the United States, might not be helpful to you in building a persuasive business argument for making sure that your app can be used with one hand. But to design for that person is also to design for the 13 million people with broken arms, or the 8 million new parents in the United States at any given moment.
ALAN MALONEY: And the point is that by including those 26,000 people in your design, you're creating a better world for everyone, for all users. And that's really not just a business argument, that's a human argument. A couple more. Pitch at the right level. So this is the point where I abandoned the sports metaphor because I can't think anymore after this.
ALAN MALONEY: So don't just have one style of talking about accessibility. There are some principles to bear in mind that work well with everyone, such as it's better to be specific. So for example a problem statement that says the PDF isn't accessible, that isn't very useful when you're talking to people about that. Because people have different mental models of what accessibility is.
ALAN MALONEY: Like one of the things that you'll learn the more you talk to people about accessibility, is that they all mean something slightly different by it. So be specific, say exactly what the problem is. Screen readers read this PDF in the wrong order is a much more actionable piece of feedback, than just saying the PDF isn't accessible. But don't go too far with that and show off with your knowledge of technical standards.
ALAN MALONEY: I could talk all day about WCAG, I could talk about the finer points of individual WCAG criteria, until the cows come home. Most people don't want to do that. So get good at translating these technical standards into plain English. And also adopt the message to the audience because senior managers might not care that much about usability, or audio descriptions per se.
ALAN MALONEY: But if you know the threat of a lawsuit is going to scare a senior manager into action, make sure that they know about that one somebody in your industry gets sued. And use it in the language that they will understand. Link it to a wider mission. So your company probably has some kind of mission statement. And this can be a really good indication for how you should talk about accessibility if you want to be listened to.
ALAN MALONEY: So on the screen is a fairly randomly selected list of mission statements from famous companies. I think pretty much all of these can be used to make the case for accessibility at these organizations. Some of them make it really easy. Twitter says that it wants to give everyone the power to share ideas without barriers. Google wants to make the world's information universally accessible.
ALAN MALONEY: So those are both great, they're talking in our language. But even ones that don't specifically mention stuff like that make the question of accessibility. Because can Paypal build the world's most convenient payment solution, if their competitors are more convenient for users with disabilities? Probably not. Having all of this stuff applied to everyone is implied in a lot of these mission statements.
ALAN MALONEY: So if your organization has a lofty mission statement like this, use it to your advantage. Mission statements aren't just for customers, they're for internal people to rally around as well. And more importantly, they're the language that your senior management is using. So you can't really go wrong using their language. Lastly, once you've refined and practiced your message on accessibility the most important thing is never to shut up about it.
ALAN MALONEY: So even if you can't immediately get stakeholder buy in to invest or take the time for accessibility, very few stakeholders can dictate to you what you talk about. So use your voice and your perspective to bring accessibility into every conversation. Some ideas for this. When you're reviewing something and you spot an accessibility barrier, whether that's missing Alt text, or color contrast, lack of keyboard controls, mention it.
ALAN MALONEY: People will start to have a Pavlovian response if you're that person you always send something back because it's inaccessible, and they'll start to send you more accessible things. Do the same in meetings. Sneak it into job descriptions. So if you have the chance to write a job description then make sure it mentions accessibility, and make sure you ask about that interview stage.
ALAN MALONEY: Because the best way of making progress with accessibility is hiring people who are really good and passionate about accessibility. Share any interesting news items or other information that you come across. Have some mantras and axioms. I mentioned a couple on this call, accessibility is designing like you give a damn. User experience that excludes people is some user experience.
ALAN MALONEY: If you're in control of any policies, processes, or principles, then insert accessibility into them if you can. So doing all of that can be effective, but it's also quite intense. So there are times that I felt like I was becoming a bit of a one trick pony. There's probably a year or two of my career where it felt like all I have to contribute was droning on about accessibility.
ALAN MALONEY: But then a cool thing started happening. Rather than having to poke my nose into those conversations, people started coming to us, to my team, for advice on accessibility. I think they just wanted to shut us up but it worked. Here's an example of a policy that I'm in some control of, these are our design principles for our online reference and journals platforms. One of them is around accessibility.
ALAN MALONEY: So the one that says, build bridges not barriers, which is that our content doesn't discriminate on user ability or device. We champion and embed knowledge of inclusive design throughout the team, so that accessibility is built in rather than bolted on. Accessibility is in everyone's job and everyone's interest, because accessible products are usually products that are more usable to all.
ALAN MALONEY: And that's effective because I've taken my own advice and tied it to one of our wider missions. One of our current marketing messages is that SAGE wants to build bridges to knowledge. So this is a good example of taking that wider organizational language that you probably hear every day, and linking it to how accessibility contributes to that. So having accessibility as a formal design principle in our design system, just makes it much easier to advocate for it in individual design decisions.
ALAN MALONEY: I'm going to stop talking now. So thank you. I've left my email up on the screen. If any of that was too fast, or if I didn't go into as much detail as you wanted, feel free to follow up with me individually if you don't get the chance to ask a question in the chat. Or we could talk later as part of this webinar.
JASON POINTE: Thank you very much Alan. And now Nina. Next up.
NINA AMATO: Everyone, I'm Nina Amato. And I'm a lead user experience designer at the American Chemical Society, specifically I work in ACS publications. I've been working on accessibility work since 1998. I was working as a web developer for the federal government at the time. And that is when the law changed to say that all federal websites had to be accessible to people with disabilities. And all the web developers were sent to training to learn how to do that.
NINA AMATO: And I've been doing it ever since. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some tips to do that today. And as our previous speakers mentioned, when we think about accessibility we are thinking about a lot of people. And one of the accessibility rules is that your website has to be usable without a mouse. There are people who are paralyzed, who can't use their hands, and so they operate the web with a mouthpiece.
NINA AMATO: And as Alan mentioned, you could have a broken arm or have one arm available, and you can't use a mouse. And a few weeks ago, I was trying to buy clothing online for my son at a major retailer, when the battery died in my mouse. And I thought, well, no problem, I'll just tap through the site and I'll do it that way. And I wasn't able to because their site wasn't accessible. So that's just one example of it helping everybody.
NINA AMATO: But what I'm going to focus on today are tips to make your website more accessible to people with visual impairments. I'm going to focus a lot on scientific figures today. Just some numbers for you, there are 43 million people in the world who are blind, and about 550 million people with vision impairments. Also approximately one in 12 men are color-blind, and 0.5% of women of northern European descent are also color-blind.
NINA AMATO: And we're going to talk a little bit about the implications of color blindness today. So people who are blind use a screen reader to navigate the web. A screen reader is, it's a software that you have on your computer, that will read everything out loud to you. If you're working on Microsoft Word it will read that out loud to you.
NINA AMATO: And then if an Outlook email comes in, it's going to interrupt you and it's going to read that too. And in ACS we know that 5% of our readers use a screen reader on both their computer and their mobile device. Now, web analytics won't tell you this. We know this because we ask. Our amazing marketing team does a survey every year, and we ask them to include a question, do you use assistive technology such as a screen reader on your computer?
NINA AMATO: And then another question, do you use it on your mobile device? And 5% said yes to both. So one of my recommendations to everybody listening is test your website with a screen reader. And you probably have a screen reader on your computer right now, and you may not even know it. If you're on Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, if you're on a Chromebook, if you're on a Mac, you have a screen reader.
NINA AMATO: And I'm going to put these links in the chat later, and I am going to share my slides, because I have links to tutorials on how to use a screen reader. And I want to mention that it is not just people who are blind who use a screen reader. A few years ago I was giving a talk with one of the directors of Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind, which is an organization that teaches people who are blind how to live independently.
NINA AMATO: And one of the things that they teach is how to use a screen reader. And he told me that he had recently been sent to an organization to teach somebody who was not blind, but who had dyslexia. And once he taught her how to use a screen reader, he said, her work just became so much easier, and it opened up to her. So if any of you are parents of a child with dyslexia, if you're professors and any of your students have dyslexia, if they have one of these computers they have a screen reader that could be really helpful for them.
NINA AMATO: So I want to talk about figures in manuscripts. So we're thinking about scientific figures here, they're normally much more complex than this. But I wanted to give an example. And so I made the ugliest possible pie-chart here, but I did this for a reason. I'm using this very, very bright red, and this very, very intense green on the left. And this is a standard pie-chart.
NINA AMATO: And then on the right, this is what it would look like to somebody who is red-green color-blind which is the most common kind of color blindness. If there's any designers there, I actually did this in Photoshop. Photoshop and Illustrator both have a setting that will let you see what anything looks like to somebody who is color-blind.
NINA AMATO: So one of the rules for accessibility is that you can't use color alone to show meaning. And I think that's kind of abstract. But when you think about a pie-chart that's exactly what you're doing. And if you can't see, I mean, here you can't even tell which of these slices is fruit or vegetables, because the colors look the same to someone who is color-blind. So the most important thing you can do when you are using shapes like this, is always show the data.
NINA AMATO: So here I added the values that again, I made up. But I added the numeric values here, so that somebody who was color-blind, or somebody who was blind was listening to a screen reader would be able to get these, assuming you add it Alt text which I will talk about. Also just in general, when you have two adjacent colors separate them by a border that's very high-contrast, usually black or white.
NINA AMATO: You can see I also adjusted some of the saturation levels here just to make it a little more distinguishable. Now as we age, our ability to see color contrast decreases. And when you look at this text you might think, I can read all of this, and I can read this center line. But there actually is an equation. There are websites you can use where you enter the color code for your text color, and your background color, and it will tell you if it has sufficient contrast.
NINA AMATO: But the rule of thumb is only really, really strong contrast will pass. And here I made nine examples of white text on a colored background. These are all join now buttons. And so just take a second to think about how many of these you think have sufficient color contrast to be seen by everybody. The answer is only the last one.
NINA AMATO: We think about designers love to use those beautiful yellow buttons, and they're gorgeous, and I love them. Except you cannot use yellow with white text on it, you just can't. If you need to use a yellow button you have to use very, very dark text on it so it will pass. When we have text images, you want to avoid putting text on an image.
NINA AMATO: If you have a data table in your manuscript submit it as a data table. If you have equations submit them as equations. And also when you're posting on social media and you're posting text, don't put text on an image. And here's an example of why that could be dangerous. So here is a college that had a really nice intent. They were hosting an event designed for students with visual impairments.
NINA AMATO: And they put all the details for the event on this image. This is text on an image. And then somebody who's blind tweeted back, sorry, can't see it I'm blind. Could you give me the information? And then here's me typing the information, and then explaining that you don't use text on images. But this is a real world example of why you don't want to do this.
NINA AMATO: This would have been a much more efficient if you just use text. And so it was a well meaning, it was just a mistake, but it's the kind of thing we want to avoid. And so here I have links to instructions on how to add text to images in different things. So here's instructions on how to add Alt text to an image in Microsoft Word, how to add it to images on Twitter, and how to add it to images on Instagram.
NINA AMATO: When I meet with people who use screen readers, who rely on screen readers to navigate the web, people who are vision impaired, people who are blind. The first thing I ask them is say, OK, you googled, you landed on an article on our website, you've just opened it, you're about to read it. What is the very first thing you do? And usually what they say to me is, I open the headings list.
NINA AMATO: And a headings list reads all of the headings on a page. And so if you're thinking about-- if you've gone to a really tech savvy page like a scholarly article, chances are you're looking for that big bold text that's going to break up the different sections, the abstract, the conclusions, the methods. Well, people who use screen readers do that too. But they can only do it if we've coded that big bold text as a heading.
NINA AMATO: So any developers on there I'm talking about an H1, an H2, an H3. And you can also do that in Microsoft Word, you can do it in Google Docs. In Microsoft Word there's a style paint that appears on the right, and then there's a dropdown you can choose to select all headings or all styles, and that will give your styles. So that way if somebody is using a screen reader to read your document even on Microsoft Word, if you have a coworker who's using a screen reader, they will be able to use it the way you intended.
NINA AMATO: So that's really, really important. And finally, I think it's really important that we incorporate stories of social, sorry, stories of people who need accessibility accommodations into our everyday lives. And so when you're on social media like Twitter, follow hashtags like hashtag accessibility, hashtag A11Y, that's code word for accessibility. And get Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
NINA AMATO: You read a lot of personal stories about people who struggle with accessibility. And it will help build empathy, and it will help give you every day tips. And finally, follow groups who represent people with disabilities. Such as the National Federation for the Blind, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the World Federation for the Deaf.
NINA AMATO: There are other organizations too, I just posted these as examples. But when you start incorporating this into your everyday social media feed, you're going to really get a better understanding of accessibility. And that's it for me.
JASON POINTE: OK, great. Thanks Nina, and thank you as well Violaine, and Alan. We've got some questions that have been coming in in chat. And I see Violaine, and Alan, and Nina you've all been responding to some of those already. We also have a question that's come in through Q&A from Monica Feltez at the AHA. And her question is, does anyone include Alt text on advertising graphics on their websites? Do the ad servers accommodate Alt text?
NINA AMATO: So browsers will accommodate Alt text. If we're talking about a website then yes, as long as Alt text is added, it will be read to a screen reader. Alan.
ALAN MALONEY: Yeah, the Alt technology itself I think, does give the opportunity for ad authors to add Alt. I think basically, well, Google Ads certainly serves something like a banner ad as an image element. You can add Alt text to that, we do that for most of our house ads. For the commercial ads that we sell to advertisers then I think probably we're relying on them to supply that, just as we're relying them to supply the images and the copy itself.
ALAN MALONEY: Whether they do that I don't have a great grasp of. I have to imagine that sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. But I think we'd encounter the same issue that you'd have with any type of content. You're talking about author supplied content so you can certainly encourage that, and send the content provider guidelines just as you would with an author.
ALAN MALONEY: And it's up to the organization how much they enforce that. I don't have a great handle on how much we did enforce that on the commercial sales side of things. But I'd imagine it's a bit of a mixed bag, but the technology is there to do it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And you really feel it's silly not to do it for them. Because if it's not done then the screen reader is just going to skip it, so the ad is not visible for sure. Small effort for a big benefit there.
ALAN MALONEY: And most of the time those ads are just stylized images of text. So the Alt text would just be the text. Like you'd give an equivalent meaning. So in theory doesn't sound difficult to me, but you'd maybe have to speak to advertisers if that's not happening.
JASON POINTE: All right. Thank you all. Another question from Philip Devietro. Has anyone used an outside service to audit their websites for compliance? What is that process like? Explain how you interact with the auditor and then how you can make their results actionable within your organization.
ALAN MALONEY: We have. We found it really useful at the start of our accessibility journey when we didn't know much about accessibility. We knew we wanted to do it, we didn't have the in-house expertise, so we worked with external providers. So they audit our sites, they wrote VPAT for us, they provided giant spreadsheets of things to fix. Which were very overwhelming when you don't know [CHUCKLES] much about accessibility at the time.
ALAN MALONEY: But a lot of these organizations will provide kind of aftercare as well. So they'll make themselves available for a call to talk through remediation plans and things like that. We have less need of-- we learned a lot from them basically, and that's part of the value that they add. If you're starting from a point where you don't have much in-house expertise around accessibility. It is just a good opportunity to learn from people who know a lot.
ALAN MALONEY: We have learned a lot from them, we still work with external providers of those services. Because providing things like third party VPAT is just a very good thing to do. Because there are a lot of VPAT out there that are created in-house, you don't necessarily know how much to trust them. If they're created by an independent third party agency, accessibility experts, then customers can generally put a lot more faith in that VPAT being honest and accurate.
ALAN MALONEY: So four major redesigns we do still work with third party providers of audits and VPATs because it just gives a lot more credibility to the information that we're sending out there to customers.
JASON POINTE: So Alan if I can, we tend to be acronym heavy in scholarly publishing. And if any in our audience are neophytes to accessibility like I was, until our introductory phone call the other day. I had to go away and look up VPAT which you just used about five times in your answer, and WCAG. Because I had no idea what those things were. Could you just give a quick definition of both of those, in case there's anybody else who like me didn't know?
ALAN MALONEY: So WCAG is the Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines. There are the W3 standards, W3C standard, that's another acronym. That's the World Wide Web Consortium who are in charge of web standards. So those are the accessibility guidelines which most people try to conform to. Because increasingly they're referenced in legislation worldwide.
ALAN MALONEY: They're also a really good useful comprehensive set of guidelines. Which the world is kind of coalescing around as being the guidelines that we should pay attention to, if we're looking to create accessible experiences. VPAT as Violaine mentioned, is the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. And it is a conformance document. It is a standardized conformance document that allows you to go through and assess product against the WCAG guidelines.
ALAN MALONEY: Now, a VPAT is just one template, you can use any template you want if you want to communicate your level of conformance against WCAG. Most customers that we work with sort of their internal policies ask for a conformance document, and suggest a VPAT just because that is something that people are increasingly more familiar with. So we use VPATs, but we're also happy to sort of mix up the communication as well.
ALAN MALONEY: And if we enter a situation where a VPAT is going to be too technical, and too heavy-weight to answer a customer query, then we can create more light-weight forms of that. But basically those are two emerging industry standards. You've got WCAG which are the guidelines themselves, and then the VPAT which is a document that assesses conformance against it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I want to add one thing, which is interesting, which is that there is no certification for being accessible. So I'm not sure why actually, but I often compare so the security compliance with accessibility compliance. The security compliance you can actually get certified, and obtain a certain level of certification through an official or organization that is accredited to do it.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's not the case for accessibility. So you can be-- I don't know if that's going to come, and I don't know what the other panelists think about that. But that's why it's called a Voluntary Product Assessment. It's never going to be an official document that you have.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And a lot of it is your personal assessment of how accessible your website is. So there's a lot of subjectivity still involved.
JASON POINTE: Good to know. We've got a couple of other questions that have come in in the Q&A. One from Nicole Waffle. Violaine you mentioned about it being harder to make PDFs accessible. Do you, or Nina, or Alan, have specific tips you can offer resources that someone could use, that would help improve the accessibility of PDFs?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: That's probably going to be more of a question for Nina or Alan actually, but what I was referring to is oftentimes a PDF is actually-- you've got two kinds of PDF. You've got a PDF that's like an image, and then you've got a PDF that's actually a web PDF, which is properly coded. And if you have an image then it's really hard to make it accessible. And if you have a PDF that's actually properly converted.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: It's kind of easy to tell. If you've got a PDF sometimes you can copy and paste the text, and sometimes you can't. Well, if you can't copy and paste the text it's not going to be accessible no matter what. If you can, that means it's properly coded and maybe you have a chance to do that. But I'm not going to go into the details, because I'm not the expert on that.
NINA AMATO: I spent years working making PDF accessible, and now it's been almost nine years since I've done it. So it's been a while. But I used to have to do it all the time for the government, because the government PDFs are accessible. I just put a link in the chat, I believe it went to everybody. It's to Adobe's page where they have tips on how to do it. Because reading orders is really important and by default most PDFs are not accessible. So Adobe has tips it's a great starting point, the government also has tips on how to do it.
NINA AMATO: But start with Adobe's that are in the chat. Do the accessibility check, check the reading order. Also be careful about you want to make your Word document accessible. I mentioned putting in headings and putting in Alt text in your Word document, because often your Word document is then going to be converted to a PDF. When I saw the biggest problems it was when InDesign documents were converted in a PDF, that was tougher.
NINA AMATO: But I'm sure they have tips on their website, it's been a while. But definitely follow those to start.
JASON POINTE: OK. Got a question from Rosana Isola for people on the training side of things. And I'm interested in this too because you've all talked about the necessity to address this issue from the creation of the content, so with the authors. So what are some of the important points for editors and internal customer service teams?
JASON POINTE: Rosana shares that she became interested in accessibility because a blind author that she was trying to help submit their article, had to guide her step by step on how to send him links and instructions. She felt she had no idea that she was doing something incorrectly. And they had a lot of patience with her, so she appreciated that.
JASON POINTE: But are there resources you can point someone to on how to guide your team in beginning to deal with this appropriately?
ALAN MALONEY: Yeah, there's quite a few. I'd struggle to think of examples off the top of my head. When somebody asks questions about introductory accessibility I often send them to WebAIM. So it's W, E, B, A, I, M I think AIM stands for Accessibility In Mind. Gives a very good overview of how people with disabilities interact with the web in many different ways. No matter what the disability is, it will sort of run through what some of the different forms of interaction will be, and how you can help accommodate those.
ALAN MALONEY: I think in general if you're talking about training authors and an internal teams, accessibility is so context specific even right down into the fine detail. Like Alt text for example. You'll find good general principles of how to write Alt text on WebAIM, but it might not have examples of scientific diagrams and things like that.
ALAN MALONEY: So when you're talking with people within the same industry as you are, within the same organization as you, it is really helpful to have a slide deck of pre-crafted examples. Nina had some really good examples there of pie-charts that didn't meet color contrast guidelines and use of color alone. I think every organization should have something like that.
ALAN MALONEY: And I think if they don't, then I think why not spend a day or two trawling WebAIM, looking through some of the other general guidance that's out there and creating that. And actually starting to lead the conversation in your organization. That's how I did it. I took some of the general guidance and made it specific to SAGE, and people found that really useful.
ALAN MALONEY: So I think start out with those general guidelines by all means. But there's a lot of power in starting to craft that around the specific context for your users and on your internal teams.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I want to just add one quick thing, which is that actually was it, sorry, I've missed her first name now. Rosana, what you did actually was right. She talked to the author, and did what the author needed. And oftentimes, as Alan said, accessibility is context specific. You're not going to be able to preemptively make everything accessible. So having a button or a way to say, that's obvious on the site that says, hey, if you need help with accessibility reach out to us.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And then have different ways that are going to be accessible to everyone to reach out. Because oftentimes, a person with a disability wants one thing. Is to be able to talk to somebody about what they specifically need. So that's actually an efficient way to do it. Because that means you don't have to imagine every problem that may happen, you can get started somewhere by helping a specific person.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS:
JASON POINTE: OK, great. We have time for I think one more question and then we need to wrap up. I have another question from Phil Devietro. Overall do we have a general sense as an industry that lawsuits and fines are increasing as a result of not being accessible?
ALAN MALONEY: Yes.
JASON POINTE: Violaine you're nodding your head so.
ALAN MALONEY: I just googled the numbers because I actually put them in a report a while back. So last year in the United States alone there were 3,550 lawsuits brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is a 23% increase on 2019. So absolutely, yes, they are increasing more and more I'll link to the full report in the chat because it's very interesting to dig into some of the detail. A real increase in the number of educational institutions that are facing ADA digital lawsuits as well, which is obviously really close to us as a business as well.
ALAN MALONEY: But yeah, it is growing more and more. There are several factors for that. Interestingly a lot of organizations are sort of finding themselves getting sued again, and again, and again. So I'm not sure what's happening there. Whether it's a case of some organizations becoming a target for that kind of thing. But it's certainly something that is growing and that is a really kind of good for lighting the fire under the organization.
JASON POINTE: I wonder how much of that growth in numbers for last year had to do with the pandemic, and everything being driven to a virtual environment. And thus putting a much greater spotlight on especially you mentioned, education. And suddenly all kids needed to be educated virtually. So that's a very good point. All right, very good. Thank you very much everybody.
JASON POINTE: Thank you to the panelists, I have certainly learned a lot. And now we go to Jeff for our closing comments.
JEFF LANGE: Well, that was fantastic, and very informative. Thank you to Jason, Violaine, and Nina, and Alan for leading this discussion, and for helping us all understand a bit more about this problem, and what we can do to help. Thanks also to our sponsor Straive, and thanks to all of you for attending and bringing your questions. Once again, please do take the time to respond to the webinar evaluation that you receive over email.
JEFF LANGE: Your feedback helps us to continually improve this webinar program. Please join SSP for the new directions seminar on October 6th and 7th. That's How To Move Fast And Not Break Things. And also for the next SSP webinar on October 14th where you'll see Jason again, titled The New 3Rs, response, responsibility, and relevance. We are concluding, please enjoy the rest of your day.
JEFF LANGE:
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