Inclusive Content Strategy

good morning so I want to preface this

with we can make this into a discussion

or I can just present so if at any time

someone has something they want to say

or interject I'm willing to a discussion

type format versus the presentation Andy

ma'am will you shut the doors thank you

so we're talking about inclusive content

strategy today let's see

Who am I I am Amy June Heinlein and

that's a title camelcase

for programming all one word I am the

open source community ambassador at

canopy studios and what that means is I

don't do client work I basically just

give back to the community all the time

and I get to pick and choose what parts

I like and I'm I am an advocate for a

lot of different groups I mentor and

train at jabal at jew camps and

DrupalCon somehow people who aren't

coders can give back to the Drupal

Drupal code base I help organize camps I

helped organize a top with my friends

Carrie Fisher and Donna Vanguard that we

do every month called allied shops and

that's short for accessibility talks and

we get speakers together once a month

and we have discussions and

presentations on all things

accessibility and my preferred pronouns

are she in her reminder contribution day

is tomorrow from 10:00 to 4:00 and there

will be a training from 10:00 to noon on

if you're not tech savvy or you're new

to tech or maybe tech hasn't been in

your background or you are a coder or

you are a designer and you know those

things and want a refresher we're going

to do like a little training on how to

get back to Jupiter morrow so can't be

sponsors next time we do Drupal

WordPress have Enterprise half nonprofit

space we do have build half

have support they are nice enough to let

me go out and talk at camps and that

sort of thing and we work on we

specialize in data-driven websites that

make an impact who are you so who hears

in coding who codes okay

who's a designer okay who's in white

client services sales content end-user

content okay so where everybody for

everybody and we come from every

platform and we come from every genre so

what is inclusion so inclusion can mean

different things to different people we

can think about inclusion on a personal

level we can think about inclusion on a

community level and we can think about

inclusion on a global level and again

inclusion is something different to

everyone

diversity versus inclusion or diversity

and inclusion I think sometimes those

two are lumped together and they're

assumed to be the same thing but I just

don't think that that's the case I think

that in the workplace diversity

represents or means representation but

without inclusion we don't make those

connections that make the diversity

important we don't build those

relationships we don't foster the

collaboration we don't have the

creativity that comes from being

inclusive and that can that means that

business your business growth sort of

stagnates without the without the

inclusion part diversity can focus more

on tracking versus

tracking characteristics and identities

versus you know in the inclusive part of

it it invites people who have been

previously excluded into the

conversations you then that can be

sexual orientation that can be gender

that can be race it can be experience it

can be anything so up here I have some

definitions for diversity and it says

diversity refers to the vast array of

human differences and inclusion refers

to the intent of individuals or systems

to actively include and support those

differences and I have a picture up here

of a quote from Temple Grandin that says

I'm different not less I really like

that one inclusion is about the

welcoming and embracing of people in our

community it amplifies the marginalized

voices and ideas that the diverse

community brings us it's a conversation

that's deepened by diversity

so if Erna Myers this is a quote up on

the board that says diversity is being

invited to the party

inclusion is being asked to dance I

think that's a good representation of

how the two are different and there's a

blog series that I that I recalled

leading differently and one of the

quotes really struck me it said

diversity is when you count the people

and inclusion is when the people count

it's called leading differently is the

series and for the marginalized

communities or underrepresented

communities this can be the difference

between feeling tolerated and feeling

included so

and how do we embrace accessibility

first we need to understand what

accessibility is in this context I'm

going to talk about providing rich

engaging content that everyone can

access so that's how we're going to

embrace accessibility in the next few

minutes and being accessible means it's

accessible to everyone

it means your services your venues your

written content everything that is

content should be accessible inclusion

is not giving special privileges it

means that we reduce the barriers for

those people to get the information so

and what makes accessible content I'm

going to use the whip tag standards we

need to that there's four of them that

we consider we need to make it easy to

see so we accommodate visual needs we

need to make it easy to hear so we

accommodate auditory needs we need to

make it easy to interact with

so we accommodate motor needs and we

also need to make it easy to understand

so we accommodate cognitive needs we

need to make the experience as

equivalent as possible to everyone again

not special privileges just reducing the

barriers and this can be things that we

don't think about that computer type or

a phone tablet size or assistive

technology

so I'm going to talk about these things

later so I'm just going to breeze

through them now to make accessible

content we need to use plain language we

need to use hierarchy in a structure

that's predictable and consistent

provide text alternatives transcripts

captions and subtitles again we're going

to talk about these as we go through

different kinds of content so meaningful

content what does it mean to have

meaningful content in my little

description for my talk I'm going to

quote it I say inclusivity is at the

heart of an effective content strategy

accessible code may be imperative for

inclusion but all the code in the world

doesn't do any good if the content is

not meaningful for our users and who are

our users you know of course we have

some target audiences but when we've

talked about like the broad scope of

content everyone is our users but again

you know there's white papers there's

technical documentation there's medical

papers where we're gonna like not have

some of this stuff but for the most part

when we're writing our blogs and we're

writing you know our event and venue

information and our emails out to people

we want to make sure that it's

everyone's included morning Jenni so

meaningful content means we can't make

assumptions right assumptions create

barriers we shouldn't assume a person's

political stance we shouldn't assume

their socioeconomic class we shouldn't

assume anyone's abilities because

remember as we get older and I'm getting

older we become more disabled with time

you know our hearing it goes down a

little bit you know my sight and wearing

glasses and then we have to think about

situational abilities and you know

there's the woman on the bus who's

holding her tablet and she forgot her

headphones but the video she's watching

it doesn't have subtitles and recently I

had a broken collarbone and a broken arm

and I could not use my phone and a lot

of fun a lot of you know apps and

and blogs that I read weren't accessible

because I couldn't get to them with my

situational disability people can be

recovering from lasix they can be

reading their smartphone in the Sun you

know so the color contrast isn't good

and then we have to remember that not

every disability can be seen there's the

tea there's migraines

there's neurodiversity there's you know

we can't see if someone's death we might

not be able to see if someone is has

vision impairments that sort of thing

and then we have to think about you know

mental health disorders and learning

differences to their assumptions we just

shouldn't make and of course we should

make assumptions around people's gender

identity sexuality and their pronouns

either I mean you've got to remember

that in our content

so inclusive language this can mean

different things to different people and

again there's this line of like are we

being too PC right you know that's a

conversation to have they will kind of

talk about that but increasing the

inclusivity of our language means we're

striving to understand the way that what

language means to different people we

want to make sure that without our

language doesn't unconsciously make

those assumptions about people either

they can unintentionally breanne for re

reinforce dominat norms that not

necessarily are okay a lot of gender

identity or race religious stance things

like that and Liz's talk we talked about

this a little bit in discussion about

using ablest terms a little bit and we

just want to make sure that we use terms

that people prefer so we had a

conversation in the last session about

the word disabled and some people in the

disabled community don't accept that

word anymore but other people think that

that's okay and that's something to

understand we just want to make sure

that when we're addressing our audience

that we use language that they prefer so

if we don't know what language they

prefer let's start out with using people

centered people first language so

instead of using the word disabled we

might want to say people with

disabilities

instead of using AIDS victims we might

want to say people living with HIV or

AIDS we might want to say people who use

wheelchair bound versus crippled or you

know I said that wrong we don't want to

use wheelchair bound we want to use

people who use wheelchairs

and then we want to avoid negative or

demeaning language laying crazy retarded

these are all words that I kind of drop

with and so some of them are a little

bit hard for me to change and I catch

myself we just want to make sure that we

don't make light of mental illness

because that's struggle that some people

deal with every day one that comes

across a lot is the word OCD people will

say oh it's OCD well OCD means a lot

more to some people than just a knack

for organization

it's a debilitating thing that they have

to overcome every day and making light

if something isn't being a good Ally I

don't know if I have this on a slide or

not oh yeah okay so we want to avoid

unintentional slurs that kind of crop up

in our language depending on where we

grew up instead of using the word

colored when describing people we want

to say maybe people of color because

it's more of a widely umbrella term more

acceptable jipped comes from the word

gypsy which is I was corrected on this I

say Romanian and I meant to make a note

but it's a different okay Roma people um

they're often characterized unfairly as

swindlers so when we use the word gypped

were kind of making light of you know

a slur that was in the past ghetto is

suspected to derive from the Italian

word for waste and it was used in the

concentration camps and so when we use

the word ghetto sometimes you know we

use it for the marginalized communities

and that sort of thing

we just were reinforcing that the the

social and economic disadvantage that

people have so when we use the word

ghetto in our language we want to you

know be very mindful about you know who

we're talking to and maybe just not use

that word at all

another aspect of inclusive language is

eliminating gendered terms so we want to

try to use general neutral terms so

instead of mankind let's use humankind

and this one's a hard one for me this

next one on the slide guys and dudes I

come from California so guys and dudes

are like what you call your toaster you

know it's what you call your dog right

it's just it was just this this neutral

term and coming into tech and talking at

conferences I realized that that using a

gendered introduction for a diverse

group of individuals just wasn't okay

anymore

because if a couple people find it

offensive I'd rather just not use it so

maybe we use the word folks instead or

y'all which doesn't come off my tongue

naturally because I'm not from the south

and I do say guys so much and I try to

correct myself and just to put things

into perspective

mansplaining is not a gender-neutral

term and it has no place in an inclusive

space

we talk about inclusive language we have

to think about privilege we shouldn't

use language that assumes anyone's level

of education we can't make the

assumption that people have graduated

from high school that they're going to

college or that they will graduate from

high school we don't want to use

language that assumes a certain level of

socioeconomic status or financial means

not everyone may be presently employed

they may not have the means to to be

successful and in their life they might

not be able to make their basic needs we

have to remember as the internet opens

up to more people we enter the realm of

having a world stage so English is a

second language for a lot of folks and

it can be a situational privilege in

their in their in their culture you know

maybe they couldn't afford to go to

college and so we need to be mindful of

English so what do we do

so as content authors and designers we

need to like go beyond the empathy part

and be start being practical about the

way we include the participants in our

content strategy our audience is hungry

to be a part of the process they don't

want to be left behind so I'm going to

talk about a couple of things that we

can do and we'll talk about some more

this again later in this life section

but we want to make sure our content is

accessible and inclusive and a couple of

the ways we can do that again is

structure design reading levels and

inclusive language we can use clear

headlines and subtitles we can break up

our content and easy to read chunks

bullet points and subheadings and things

like that

we can use images and diagrams and

multimedia to reinforce what's on the

page we can use pronouns the user is you

the company and agency is we and we can

use words that that users use by using

key words that the users use it will

make your content more relatable

to them so according to usability.gov

ninth grade reading level is sort of the

general rule we want to strive for the

ninth grade reading level and again this

is something that that can be altered

depending on your audience your white

papers your your documentation pages

your medical documents things like that

but we want to really try to keep our

our level of the ninth grade we want to

avoid long sentences we want to try to

keep our sentences under 20 words and

then our paragraphs below 5 sentences

and that makes it easier easier to

digest we want to use plain language you

know we want to use words that are that

our audience understands and there's a

few checkers that you can use and at the

bottom of my slide deck there's

resources there's the Fletcher Kincaid

there's like usability.gov has a checker

and there's some resources where you can

run your content through like grammerly

will help you with passive versus in

passive language because non passive

language creates longer content so

little checkers like that and we have to

remember when we write our content and

use our editors that for screen readers

and tab navigation people who use

assistive assistive technology that

headings are not for style

they're for structure so we've got the

h1 and the h-60

if h1 is the most important content on

your page and then your h6 is the least

important and again you know you don't

like that style of the h3 so you use in

h4 well maybe you need to change your

styling so it's really important that we

never use that for styling and in this

slide I have a picture of the heading

structure it's very much like an outline

we have an h1 followed by an h2 followed

by an h3 and then we sort of go back to

a little bit more important content and

make it an h2 again we never want to

skip

and usually you only have one each one

on the page but that changes depending

on the content because I know I think

web accessibility standards say that you

can do it depending on how your page is

structured so but I don't know the rules

so and then let's talk about the editing

and entering of our content morning

again there's the way we enter our

content is very important for the way

people navigate it and there's two

schools of thoughts for our editors

there's the one school of thought where

the styling is for our coders and

designers and not for our content

authors so we use a bare minimum for the

tools that we give them and I just want

to say I'm not telling you which one is

better I'm just telling you two of the

schools of thought so

and then without a wizzy wave with which

is what you see is what you get the

WYSIWYG where you give them all the

buttons and all the things and all the

options to enter content so I'm going to

talk about the the bare minimum sort of

WYSIWYG and the idea that styling is for

coders and not designers and that we

only use our editors for entering

content because what you allow your

editors to modify and put in could

affect you if the theme or the

accessibility of your site so we want to

make sure we stick with style guides and

style sheets and that that everything is

on the designer and coder level versus

the content author level

I have a friend mark Casillas who works

for media current he's a senior

front-end developer over there and he

says if you allow the editors to change

the colors and change the buttons and

add divs and add tables you know do you

really want them to come back and say

that their content is broken or that it

doesn't look good

he thinks that design is all about the

consistency and allowing the content

editors to go wild on the content it's

just a recipe for disaster

and if you've setup those Styles

properly then it all should look good

after the content is entered so this is

an example of a bare-bones

editor

so you can see that there's a bulb

button there's an italicized button you

can enter a link you can enter a

blockquote you can enter an image

there's not much to it and then there's

this so I don't even know what all these

buttons do

you've got the style so that means they

can select the heading size you know

they've got a paragraph styling they can

insert tables it looks like they can add

bullet points and all kinds of stuff

you're giving them all the options so

let's talk about this one

content editors are active participants

in our website and sometimes after the

front end people are done our content

authors and editors are in the website

more they're in their day-to-day they're

in there working they're in there

creating pictures images in people's

minds they paint pictures with their

words so if we train our coders and our

designers for accessibility it seems

only fair that we train our content

editors on those same things we invest

the time and the energy and our content

authors and our content editors the same

way we invest our time and our money and

our energy and our designers and our

coders so we invest in training we

provide tooltips around the page we

limit the styles to things that are

accessible yeah our content editors are

super important and to not give them

that same education level that we give

our designers and coders just doesn't

seem fair so let's look at some

different types of content that we

produce on the web tillage hiring

practices which comes with like your

careers page and your job descriptions

and your Equal Employment Opportunity

statements which I am going to shorten

to EEO because that's a mouthful for me

so we want to make sure that if we have

something that says we say celebrate

diversity and are committed to creating

an inclusive environment environment for

employees if we're going to say

something like that in those statements

we want to make sure that we follow

through because we'll often times in

this EEO s its what our candidates

measure us by and they're only

meaningful if they reflect the truth

right so we want to make sure that we

use language in our job listings that

are consistent with our egos we want to

make sure that our

are once people are hired that are say

like a ten conference attendance

policies are also reflect inclusivity we

want to make sure that we don't use

language that excludes youth and in

protected groups for example you know

I'm new to tech and every once in a

while I think I want a different job and

I look out there and I and I read job

descriptions and there's you know oh

must be clean shaven like hmm that's the

one whisker you know but you know and

then there's words like you know know

head scarves and things like that and so

you're you're creating a content that

some people will find you know they

don't feel included in that you know so

we just want to make sure that that

we're that we use language that includes

everyone when we want everyone to

participate so events how do we make

content surrounding our events more

accessible and more inclusive and we

have to remember that accessibility

means everyone we want to make sure that

when we advertise our events we call out

for special needs you know what

accommodations can we make for you and

then when people respond back that we

make sure that we address those

accommodations do we need a family-style

bathroom do we need a lactation room are

we supporting neurodiversity is there

space in our and our venues that's quiet

and still for people who can't handle a

lot of stimuli is there a door that can

be opened or a window that can be open

to let in fresh air people get a little

bit stifled it's the venue accessible

for wheelchairs is or the or the

walkways wide enough are the doors wide

enough can they access the drinking

fountain these are all things we need to

think about when we write our content

too and then we also want to ask about

dietary

restrictions of course because you know

we have people with sensitivities we

want to make sure when we're at the

venues that our presentations are

accessible we want to make sure that the

content on our slides can be seen by

everyone we want to make sure that we

address the visual needs by having the

font size is large enough and color

contrast we want to make sure if we have

images on the screen that we describe

those images that for folks that can't

see them or understand them we want to

make sure that everyone in the room can

hear you so we adjust the the auditory

needs just you know use a microphone or

make sure you know can you hear me in

the back of the room and back to it the

the visual needs

the large fonts in color contrasts

aren't just for people who have who live

with vision impairments for people who

are in the back of the room too they

have to look over people's heads so we

want to make sure we keep our content on

the on the you know maybe the the top of

our slides we want to make sure that we

provide transcripts and captions Google

slides now has an option for live

captioning as you're talking there's

some problem still along with it because

there's no transcriptions that go with

it and then if you're putting it on

YouTube the YouTube transcriptions will

cover it up but that's something to

think about if you're in a space where

you might have someone that need you

know English is their second language or

they need that for the for for for

hearing needs you know leaves of the

bottom part of your slide blank so when

you do upload it on YouTube the YouTube

captions don't cover up any of your

content and think about pictures on the

slide too because if you have like a

real colorful colorful image your

caption might get in the way of that and

the captions sort of vary you know

sometimes the caption

we way on one side of the screen and

that's just like kind of the live and

learn thing when you when you stun with

YouTube but just make sure that we have

a space where those factions can go

we want to make sure that people who

live with vens visually induce motion

sickness can watch our presentation so

we want to avoid rapid light transitions

we want to try to avoid gifts and

animations and those can be distracting

to some people maybe have the gift play

once especially if the slides up there

for a long time we want to make sure

that we avoid flashing lights and like

real heavy animations for people who

might have seizures we want to address

their cognitive needs again back to the

not having a real text heavy slide we

want to break up our content and easy to

read the chunks we'll use bullet points

so oh I guess I kind of already went

through this on the last slide with the

witness up with the subtitles and

captions so I have a picture of a

YouTube capture of a YouTube video with

the with the ones there captions and we

can see like I do this is a new slide

deck for me but I used to have a cave

the corner of each of my slide decks

that I would reserve that bottom space

and make sure I left that open so you

can see here the transcript right with

that pay but I have a new slide deck

because we've rebranded and so I have to

still be mindful of subtitles or lines

of text closed captions are similar but

gives like the oral things like dog

barking or you know person whistling you

know music playing in the background and

I'm not too fluent on open captions

versus closed captions but I know that

open captions you can't turn off and are

always on the screen and closed captions

you have the ability to edit as you go

I'm not sure what the use case would be

for open captions because it's not

editable but that's what an open caption

is it's a caption that's on the bottom

of your screen that never turns off and

of course captioning has universal

design benefits as well not for people

with just hearing impairments again back

to the English as a Second Language it

helps them read their content and say

you're just a better

learn with the visual versus the

auditory so we want to make sure that

our images are accessible we want to

make sure we provide captionings and alt

text and verbal descriptions this is

sort of you know accessibility 101 but

on the screen I have a picture of a

broken image with the caption dog

walking having this isn't just for for

screen readers or assistive technology

it's for people who might have images

turned off in their browser or maybe

don't have good internet connection and

images take forever to load but we want

to make sure that they have that content

that everyone else has acronyms so

acronyms can be problematic for screen

readers without context sometimes

they'll read them as words instead of

the acronyms so sometimes if you want to

parse them out we'll put the periods in

between and acronyms can be muddled

because we might not know what they mean

so to see GTM up here and maybe a lot of

us in the room might assume that's

Google tag manager but it could be for

you tech media or it could be Guatemala

we don't know so we want to make sure if

we use acronyms and our content that we

were the first time we use an acronym we

define what it is in html5 the acronym

tag has been deprecated and it's not an

abbreviation tag but that works as an

alt text alternative for acronyms as

well and then there's numerous I really

like the accessibility of numeron

because it looks like a lie and a

numeron is a word with the first in the

last letter and you take out the middle

letters and that's what's left so you

have an accessibility with it you know

at the beginning and a why you take out

the eleven letters and you have a 1-1

why but we want to make sure if we use

that that people know what we're talking

about again using those short

descriptions and things like that

internationalization is a good one

people a lot of times use

and because internationalization can be

spelled with an S or a Z because you

know international so just make sure

that we that we define those so people

know what we're talking about and links

links should make you should make sure

your links make sense out of context so

without contest context a list of links

could sound weird like if you have a

page with a bunch of blog article

summaries you have here here here here

well of all your links say the word here

people with existed technology don't

know what here means they don't know

where are you leading them so we want to

make sure that we that we give our links

context with alt text or maybe you know

we program it so if it's in a list view

of blog articles that it says read more

about and then you you tag the the name

of the article we want to make sure that

it's not just a URL that we're giving

for links because that might not make

sense to some people if the URL is kind

of funky and then we have to realize

that our link text needs to be displayed

consistently through our page and

through our website so people know that

it's a link the Wieck tag 2.0 yeah I

think it's 2.0 I don't think it I think

it was before 2.1 they said that a link

should have two additional requirements

in the body field so if you have a link

like the picture up here there's two

ways to define it whether or not it's

the color change or an underlying or a

background color we want to make sure

that if people can't recognize the first

distinguishing characters stick up the

link that there's a second one that they

can distinguish and of course we don't

want to just have color be the

distinguishing factor in our links

because some people can't see the

difference in color

and then we have to remember that our

links can be anything they can be

buttons they can be menu items they can

be pagination they can be images so

think about all those places where links

are and how how our context is important

so social media you know we all like

social media the emoticons I've never

been a fan of emoticons I don't know if

it's my age or not but um this just

reinforced my not like emoticons when we

have assistive technology and a screen

reader is reading our tweets and our

emails and on our subject lines and

things like that they read the emoticons

and they read every emoticon so I have a

picture up here of a tweet from the

Parliament and it says Parliament house

of parliament adjourn to 925 thanks at D

fat thumbs up a minimum staff hand

clapping so that could be cumbersome for

someone using assistive assistive

technology and they might not even get

to the end of your tweet before they

leave and depending on your content

consumer some of them can be offensive

and we have to think about this too and

our twitter handles too not just the not

just the content we produce hashtags so

we all kind of love our hashtags right

um I thought this one was funny um when

I was looking at why we why we want to

change how we think about hashtags so it

says n o W tha T CH ER is de AD and

there were some problems on the web that

people thought cher had died so it

doesn't say that it says now facture is

dead but some people said now that cher

is dead so without those capitalization

of the separate words we we might not

know what that means

and then screen readers read it as one

word with it's just all lowercase but we

have to remember like if it's just a

short one where of course do your

lowercase but let's break up our

hashtags you know if we have I love

Twitter we've capitalized the I the L

and the T because when we type in

hashtags with capital letters and we

have type in hashtags with lowercase

letters they all come back with the same

results so in social media we want to

make sure that we include image

descriptions too and I was really

surprised to learn that just recently

Instagram has the ability to add

captions maybe some people think well

why would someone with a with a sight

impairment you know want to use

Instagram well it's a social media

platform so things like Twitter and

things like Facebook now have settings

it's not by default you have to go into

the accessibility settings and turn on

image descriptions so now when you're in

you're on your phone and in your browser

you can post an image and it will give

you a big red bar on the bottom that

says description so you have your

descriptions for people who are using

your screen readers you're not leaving

leaving anyone behind we want to make

sure we shorten our links in social

media for for people using screen

readers as well it be very mindful about

retweeting information that's not

inclusive and and accessible to so so

what now right good question about

twelve years ago I got a fortune cookie

that said begin the rest is easy and I

have this taped on my external monitor

because sometimes those first steps are

the hardest and they tell us like I have

a teacher I do a lot of different things

in the community and a mentor and you

know it's true that first step is really

hard so we just got to make sure that

that we start by being a good example

and a good ally we want to make sure

that we use tools to check our content

there's all kinds of things out there

there's accessibility formulas there's

readability format formulas there's

websites excuse me that will check for

genitive language you know most of it's

like you have your text and you copy and

you paste it in there platform and it

will give you give you things many

people are adding their preferred

pronouns to email signatures and social

media profiles and things like that to

sort of normalize gender identities and

maybe start conversations about them you

don't have to do that and some people

don't and don't want to have that

conversation so again let's look at what

is inclusion we can think about it on

those three levels you know there's the

personal inclusion level there's the

community level and there's the global

level and that inclusion can mean

different things to different people so

we just need to be mindful it's doubtful

you'll ever be called out for being to

consider it so if you have the choice of

being nice and being a jerk defaulting

to gendered language or you know why

wouldn't you make the choice to include

everyone in your content we don't want

to hurt people by our messages and we

definitely don't want to leave people

behind

so again like why would you choose

behavior that that would upset people

when you could just change your behavior

a little bit to upset no one you know

sort of defaulting to that neutrality

space

so there's that's I think the slide is

how to border so questions and

conversations I'm opening up the room to

that because I think this is you know an

important conversation and I'm willing

to like accept feedback because I don't

know everything you know and the more I

give this presentation the more feedback

I have in the more that goes on these

slides which i think is really great I

gave this presentation a few weeks ago

at the Bay Area accessibility camp with

we had it you know a lot of the users in

the room couldn't see the slides and so

we made it more of a conversation versus

a presentation and it was wonderful

wonderful for me to think about giving a

presentation in that style to more of a

storytelling and listening to everyone's

stories but when I first when they first

told me you know don't have a slide deck

it was like wow okay that's something to

think about I didn't even think about

that

so anyway does anyone have anything to

add or any questions no okay um

like I said on the back of my slides I

have some resources this is the gendered

gendered language resource text the I

over comm and that's a real good one

it's one of those copy-paste ones like

grammarly where you take your block of

text and you poke it in and/or tell you

if you have any gendered language in

there so and then remember there's

contribution Day on Saturday you know if

you want to get back to code and not a

coder I'm there to help you know with

that and then we're gonna do their

contribution all day but there's a

training in the morning so so that's it

Oh question

about putting this to use

do I work with content folks putting

used to this I am I work with my team

canopy but I work in the community and

so a lot of it is like you know I go to

places and I give the talk and we talk

about it we have a discussion and I'll

go to different venues and different

platforms you know I'm I'm in the

WordPress space now and that's a little

bit new to me and when I went to a

wordpress camp you know there's not a

whole lot of developers in the room and

that was the idea behind this is I

wanted to share some of my information

that wasn't code so a lot of their folks

who go to the word camps and meetups and

working at us and working of Europe's

our end users and bloggers and marketers

and that sort of thing so I don't I

don't work with content myself because

I'm more of a evangelist and you know an

ambassador so but I helped organize the

ally talks every month and we have

different speakers and sometimes we'll

talk about content you know the code or

whatever you know so

and when I turned how to train content

administrator to market reputation I

find that they smile and nod and then I

go to check that alt tags and it's just

a date of the event or the title of the

picture

yeah well it's accountability going back

to if we hold our designers and our

coders accountable we need to hold our

content authors accountable too so you

know if we if we make our coders go back

and fix the accessibility issues and we

should make our content editors do the

same maybe you know and we you know

after a while you don't want to go back

and redo your work so you learn from it

maybe right I don't know that's the

assumption so building it right from the

first from the start is more

economically feasible than going back

and paying the same person to fix it

again you know and there's

accountability that comes in hand that's

the only thing I can suggest

is in Florida that they actually

somebody sued they weren't accessible to

people so there are implication with

real-world implications for not doing

this type of you know work on your site

in to your site so I think that's what

they need to you know Express with

people that they're you know this is the

these are serious issues for Malati

this could be used to mean something

kind of bad for you you know maybe that

could be a way to kind of an incentive

for them to be like you don't wanna be

caught of these you know unfortunately

comes to that they opine but that's a

big yeah that's hard sometimes with the

inclusive stuff yeah you know there's no

like checks and balances and there's no

rules behind offensive content you know

so and you know that's just being

mindful and deciding you're working with

a company that that is an advocate and

Ally of those things you know so

somebody feeling like somebody's content

absolutely if they could experience what

it looks like to be somebody else

I think that's yeah I like such a

god-like it's the incentive that I'm

struggling but I believe in this and I

yeah but this is a training but then

when I go back and check content yeah

especially with people that have like

they're I'm short-staffed are there you

know so it's for that made it taste

longer to do something and so you try to

feel like how both sides and how it you

know but you're right being incentive or

something to be like this is why you

should do this for these specific

like for metropolitan Housing Muslim

that if architects design their plans

but it works as my teachers they get

more points so I want a contest like hey

your content is

[Music]

then it's like a fun thing you know no

minority group can survive on the best

wishes

so

as developer I think about enforcing

expose all of them

meaningless is there any windows of wait

like look to your point kind of to view

your stuff I mean is there like you know

is there a way to like view your site as

somebody with a you know disability you

know I don't know if there's like you

know to actually see it because you can

out of sight out of mind

and you know well when I first started

programming the accessibility room my

brother's a quadriplegic and so he said

okay you need to tie both of your hands

behind your back and now try to use like

your Dragon NaturallySpeaking and you

know okay unplug your mouse things like

that and you know I do some

accessibility testing for the for the

organization I work with and there was a

I'm not an expert by any means and I

don't catch all of the mistakes because

they were running you know just the the

programs and it's like oh no no you

can't just run their programs you have

to manually test it and then I also give

them the caveat like me manually testing

a screen writer is not the same

experience as someone who needed Lee

uses a screen reader their experience is

much different than mine so you know I'm

gonna plug another session at 225 a

co-worker of Mines talking about

accessibility for project managers but

it also touches about developers as well

and touches on some tools so definitely

check that her name is Heather Ganz

but didn't so I like the message to you

that I have heard before of yes there

are reasons for accessibility and people

with disabilities but the you know the

examples of taking a long time for

mobile because of something else it's

like you can go to leadership and say

this is why diversity is important we

should better represent our users or you

know but then you have to go back and

bring more to the table like here's the

data here's how we're going to make more

money so to paint the bigger picture of

other you know that that's that there's

going to be people in the back that you

can see like the whole big picture and

sometimes you can point out I think are

helpful and

so one of the things just fear drives

action if our clients those lawsuits

drive action we while that can be good

we don't our culture we do not like to

be driven by fear

so we've taken it upon in our

organization to make accessibility we

get it out there all the time for new

people that join so we make the

conversation internally a lot by doing

like lunch and learns and we've tried to

shift it and bring the conversation as

soon as projects start to say this is

just how we approach in how we do it and

internally everybody's nodding their

head

situational is a great thing I hurt my

thumb and had situational abilities and

then I gave a talk about accessibility

and it was very clear making it a

conscious thing you know so it should be

very here alt text ism as important as

the title of your page you know like

it's just that you have to do it it's

just a thing that you so

instilling it into the cult everything

you're talking about has that point of

action and you know you make it so that

that's you know just as it that's just

as important as your title or your you

know

did a similar exercise that as is

disabilities they had people

you know other ways of attempting to

recreate an experience but well I think

some of those exercise

awareness as a unit it's really not

as having a disability and there's

always the risk that someone's going to

come

having a lot of system would be

phenomenal of empathy

and and it's

I do it on a corporate scale of the

poster fruitful exercise for degree

especially for company like Microsoft

Business almost like there's an egg

factor up and I also spoke to

inclusivity team or whatever they call

it and they had disabilities at the

office

and use their products and they had

leadership it's really important

leadership moved in sit down with those

users and observe their struggles and he

said it's really hard for leadership

like yeah we have like billions of

dollars but we're not gonna dress keys

or any not not a lot of companies can do

that I want to do that but the web

accessible in issue

sorry

well I yeah I don't know about this area

because I live in San Francisco but we

have a group who run clinics like for

people who are launching their websites

they'll have an accessibility clinic and

where they have a set of users that they

they test with you know it fluctuates

and that sort of thing and they'll have

stakeholders come in and have this

accessibility clinic for folks and they

get to witness that firsthand you know I

think it's called what's called the

white house group in San Francisco and I

think they have one maybe in Boston I

don't know how how nationwide it is but

you know and it's really important to

make sure that we pay our testers the

way we pay our designers and coders to

you know don't expect to work for free

all right so and they also have videos I

know it's not that doesn't have the same

impact as like witnessing firsthand

someone struggling with your website but

they have videos where you can watch

people how they use their screen read or

how they use their tab navigation things

like that but a lot of it like I think

genuinely is like having those

stakeholders like try to use that access

the assistive technology themselves so

in his heart I mean it's hard to use

anyway but but trying to do a tab

navigation and getting in a keyboard

track or you know they can't skip to the

main content so they have to tab through

every single menu item and they have a

mega menu and you know so that's it for

everyone you know everyone just to try

it out sometime and see see how we you

know not easy or difficult but the

experience behind it so okay I'm going

to turn this off