[Robert] Howdy y'all, I am Robert Kingett and I am I'm a person that wears a lot of hats. I am a journalist, I am an author, I am an amateur comedian, I am a columnist, and I am an advocate who happens to be number one, incredibly handsome, and number two, blind and vision impaired. And I'm here today to essentially tell all of you guys why having your sites and/or applications is a good idea to have your sites and/or applications accessible.
So to preface the talk, I will open up with a little tale. In November of 2014, a friend and I were at the park and we were talking about Net neutrality and the FCC and Net neutrality rules and regulations and all that and he presented a dare to me. And the dare was not to use any Internet for a whole month, at all. In the twenty first century, I could not use Internet at all. And if you want to read about that, you could buy my book "Off the Grid: Living Blind Without the Internet."
I learned that the Internet is a utility. It helps us to create jobs for those who can't travel and it's a great resource if you know how to use it and if you stay off of horrible, horrible forums like porchen and h-chen and all of those. It really can open up someone's world, and it can broaden their horizons if it's accessible to everyone.
There's a common myth that if an application or a site is usable, it's accessible. And that's not entirely the case. For someone who uses a screen reader, like me, your code has to be, your code has to have labels in it, it has to have elements that tell the screen reader what this is, and how we should interact with it.
A great example I like to use often is edit fields. If you're using a screen reader chances are you're going to tab through multiple edit fields. And if you hear "edit" and nothing else, you're thinking, "Okay, what am I filling in?" So, it is incredibly important to have your edit fields labeled, have your links labeled in a way where everybody knows where they lead. For example, if I'm looking at a blog, and I'm an advanced user, so I navigate very differently than a person who is just learning how to use NVDA or JAWs, which is a screen reader. I would navigate via elements. I would tell my screen reader to, okay, show me a list of all the links on the page. And if I scroll through all those links and every link is "click here," "click here," or my favorite ... "click here,"
[Laughter]
[Robert] It's incredibly hard to know, ok, what do these links ... A person who might use, you know, interpretive mouse inputs or keyboard input might actually like how those links are because they're short and maybe in their case it's easier to click on.
So that's why I strongly advocate for user testing. I heard consultants who know their stuff because I'm going to be honest with you, no matter how long you use a screen reader, you're just never going to learn as much as a person who uses it every day of the week. And, also, if you hire accessibility consultants, you're giving a lot of disabled people a job that they have never thought about.
So, and I'm sure everybody in this room wants to help out our economy, in some way or another. I have low vision also, so I use high contrast on my Windows machine, so everything is white text on black surface, it's easier to see. And, one time, I asked the developer, I said, "Ok, well, can you make this accessible for high contrast because I'm running through your site and I'm testing it and the developer asked, "well, how many people actually use high contrast?" I said that kind of doesn't matter. It's kind of like the old adage, if you build it they will come. If you make your sites and apps and software accessible more people will use it, more people will tell other people about your services and then more will flock to you and say I love you very much, you're totally awesome, that kind of thing. So it's ... the blind community talks and we know how to talk amongst ourselves, we know how to create a flurry of testimonials on Twitter, we know how to get the word out about your product or service out there.
Recently, I won a many year long campaign against Netflix, for their inaccessibility. And, this is getting into the dark side of not making site and service accessible. You will get a lot of push back, and it's not because we just want to create havoc for you. We just want to use your application or service or product.
One myth I hear all the time and this is when I talk to developers and everything, they say that well, I don't have enough money to make my site or app accessible. So, then I say, okay, well how are you able to write your code then, because obviously you're writing your code on a free and or open source software. If you have any money to make your site it's all code. So it literally does not cost you any monetary value. It just costs you a little time, and sometimes a little problem solving, and sometimes a little bit of asking questions and receiving feedback from the community that you're trying to make accessible.
There's companies out there that have a team of contractors who will go through your site and/or app and/or service and give you feedback. And one of these is a company I work with. It's called AccessibilityOz. They ... what I like about companies like that is they take in a lot of people who use a lot of adaptive technology, so you get a lot of feedback. One thing to note about hiring accessibility consultants however is sometimes they think they're all that and they are not really interested in improving your service. They just want to tell you to do things. So that is one thing I take into account when I consult others on their apps and sites is okay, well if I were a beginning user who has never used a screen reader and how would I navigate?
So, like anything else, accessibility is not a one size fits all solution. Something that might be accessible for me might not actually be accessible to someone else because they haven't learned how to, say, have you do links list in JAWS or NVDA. And this harkens back to usability and accessibility and the differences between the two.
Let's look at the open source community for a bit. LibreOffice, which I use to write very controversial articles on things, is halfway accessible. It's completely usable, it's just halfway accessible to someone using a screen reader, except the community over there is great, although you get a few developers who again, they think usability and accessibility are exactly the same, and it's always interesting to have to explain it. It's almost like you have to explain the difference between a brownie and a cupcake.
[Laughter]
[Robert] One thing that I see a lot of people do in terms of development is that they want to make their sites incredibly flashy, like have moving images and flashy animations and everything of that nature. That's all great, except you also have to remember that this is 2016 and chances are someone is going to go to your website on a iPhone or an iPad or something of that nature, not a desktop computer. So if your site is made out of, let's say Flash for example, and I have seen this happen several times, your site is made out of Flash, then how are these mobile devices going to access the Flash. So you have to integrate usability and accessibility early on otherwise it is going to be really hard for you later down the road. From a coding standpoint and from a frustration, uh I just want to pull my hair out because these disabled people want to use my site and I have no idea how to do this, kind of thing. When I talk about inclusion, I also stress very much so that you don't make an alternative accessible mirror of your site. Because, you're just one developer, so chances are you won't have the time to update your separate mobile site on this other server.
Try to have everything integrated into one if at all possible. Make your main site and/or app accessible. Try not to have a separate version of your site or app because number 1, it kind of makes us feel like ok, we're like second natured to them so we don't matter enough to where they can't include us when they are designing their main site. And, number two, it's hard on you as a developer to try to maintain two applications rather than one application.
A lot of people today use sites like Wix or Squarespace or Weebly to design their sites. If at all possible, try not to rely on them for accessibility because they will fail because none of their platforms were designed with accessibility in mind. So if you just make a site with any of them, with Wix or Squarespace, chances are that number one, you're not going to be able to edit all your code, and number 2, it is such a basic site that accessibility has not been considered on their end, so you have to go off and have to clean up all the mess.
There is one exception to this however, if you are making a site using WordPress, and their platform is entirely accessible and there are accessible feeds out there so you don't have to do anything or much of anything extra. You might have to fiddle with some alt text here and there, you might have to fiddle with a few headers and things but overall you'll save yourself a lot of work and time and energy.
The last thing I want to talk about and I'll take questions afterwards.
I'm sure you guys know that in 2016, alt text is a good thing. It improves your sales and it improves your accessibility as well. Because, Google will crawl the web for alt text and if you have good alt text on your images, Google will place your site higher than anyone else's. So you as a developer ought to be going "Yes!" So, yes, I know it takes a lot of hard work to write a few lines of extra code. And yes, that was sarcasm.
[Laughter]
[Robert] But in the end, it helps everybody, it helps you, and it helps the end user as well. So, to conclude, if you want to visit me on the web or check out my journalism or if you want to read my dating column about the very attractive men that I go out with, you can find all of that on the Internet at blindjournalist.wordpress.com.
Thank you everybody.
[Applause]
[Dennis] I have a question. From the time that you ... When did you first start online?
[Robert]: I first, um, do you mean writing online?
[Dennis]: Well ...
[Robert]: Or all of the above?
[Dennis]: All of the above.
[Robert]: Oh, like, many moons ago. When I was itty bitty, as we say in the country. Like about eight or nine, and I was hooked on the Internet. I had more vision than I do now, so I wasn't using screen readers back then and even if I was, it was just to read really really long articles and forums posts about Star Wars vs. Star Trek.
[Dennis] So, would you say that, from the time that you more depended on assistive technology to today, and actually this reminds me of a question that always comes up in the screen reader survey that WebAim comes out with annually, How is the Internet doing today? I mean I know it was awful I mean two or four years ago. Would you say, in your circles, is it an improvement, improving and where would you say it is improving? Obviously, Facebook and Twitter, they're now offering alt text, so that's leaps and bounds now, but ... from your experience ...
[Robert]: From my experience, I see things improving now because of the legal cases that happened in the past. I think that the web has improved dramatically. There are a lot of blind people who would vehemently disagree with that admission. I tell them, hey, look, you don't have as awesome hair as I do, so yeah. In terms of pure design, I would say that the web has improved greatly. And I really think that it has finally starting to sink in that, oh, hey disabled people like go online and stuff. Like it's not a phenomenon any more. However, in terms of content, that's where things really need improvement because even now captions hardly exist on the Internet. You have these automated captions that just aren't sufficient. And a lot of people think a lot of people are lazy even to me and they're like, "Oh, I don't need to caption my videos because Google will caption it for me." And that's not the kind of attitude we should have. But it's an attitude I see even in today's laziness.
[Dennis] Yeah, it's funny that you say that. I have a personal and profession experience with the autocaptions. This meetup, in December, we tried Google Hangouts for the first time just to see how it would work. And, one of our assistant organizers at the time, he had bandwidth problems, and I happened to catch it was already set on autocaptions, I hadn't set it up from the get go because I didn't know that much about Google Hangout at the time, but the bandwidth issues were so strong that the autocaptions at one point of time, our male assistant organizer was quoted in the captions as having a juicy "arse."
[Laughter]
[Dennis]: That's not something that you want to be public. Professionally, I work for United Airlines and we publish a lot of videos, like your flight safety videos, your ... we have this "Big Metal Bird" thing which, I'll be honest, I don't get yet. But I'm slow, so... And they have thought that they could get away with autocaptions. What has amazed me is, until I called them on it and said "What are you doing?" I don't think they ever turned on captions to see what the captions said. And it was beyond embarassing to the brand, what they were allowing to be public. So we had to call them out and say click the captions there, and it wasn't twenty seconds until they were like "Oh my god!" It's like, this is a two minute video, and it takes, because you already have the script, it takes ten, fifteen minutes to get the captions synced up and put on. You couldn't have done that? Now it's part of their workflow. But it's only when they saw the shock and horror of what autocaptions provides.
[Robert]: Yeah, and also, just from a PR standpoint, you don't want the media to report on you or let's say me, you don't want me to report in the Chicago Tribune, like, United Airlines has horrible captioning. So, yeah, it's just good practice. And I'm sure that a lawsuit is not something you want in the future either, so.
[Dennis]: Well, we're mandated by the government anyways, so there's still a compliance thing there.
[Steve]: You mentioned some conversation about alt tags, and I'm wondering what's most meaningful both from a SEO standpoint and from a usability standpoint? For instance, you could really describe a photo well or you could just do it in a cursory way. "Child playing with block on floor." "Three-year-old, cheery, preschool child in Evanston, Illinois, playing with a block on the floor." What would you advocate?
[Robert]: From a sales standpoint and from a user standpoint, I would say try to limit your alt text to two sentences. Try to limit your alt text to one sentence. If you're not a good writer, you could just hire me.
[Laughter]
[Robert]: But if you're not a good writer I would look at websites that have alt text with just one sentence. Some websites, even though they are for the blind and the vision impaired, sometimes even they go way overboard with alt text. Like, I was looking at a consulting website and their alt text for their logo is literally a paragraph long. So, I was just like "Whoa." How do you describe a logo? They were saying the color of the logo, how large the letters were, I was like, "no."
[Laughter]
[Robert] It's like way too much information to try to edit. So from sale and user experience, try to limit to one or two sentences. Also, when you are writing alt text, what is most important to you in the picture? When you look at the picture, what stands out to you? So I hope that answers your question.
[Steve]: Yeah, thank you.
[Dennis]: Any other questions?
[Attendee]: The group that you referred to for consulting to review your website, are companies like that more geared for enterprise-level type of jobs, or are they ... there's a lot of consultants that just have a bottom line that, it's not accessible from a finance standpoint, for small sites, small apps, start ups, that kind of thing.
[Robert]: For those kind of sites, like AccessibilityOz, they're more for enterprise and they're more for companies rather than individuals, so if you're an individual, I would suggest looking for a freelance accessibility consultant. If you're not satisfied with one, never hire them again. That's ... typically freelance accessibility consultants charge around forty to seventy dollars an hour. I did see a lady charge eighty dollars an hour, and I just had to take her aside and say, "Look, honey, individual people who are just making a website for the first time, they are not going to have that much money. And her whole market, she tried to market to individuals, and so. In answer to your question, companies like AccessibilityOz and others, yeah, they're geared more towards corporations and enterprises. If you can afford their services, hire them. Hire them for the sheer fact that you get a lot of opinions versus one. So, anybody have any other questions?
[Dennis]: Any other questions?
[Attendee]: I know there is a number of WCAG guidelines out there. Rather than read through the guidelines, is there a Website Accessibility for Dummies book?
[Robert]: No.
[Laughter]
[Dennis]: And actually there is. It has a red cover. I can't think of it off hand. But it's supposed to take WCAG, and it's 2.0, and I think it's called WCAG 2.0 Made Easy. I think that's the name of it. It puts WCAG in, what I'll call, common language. It's fine, its good, and actually there is, and I don't know the URL off the top of my head but I just found, this past week, I think it's called, Interactive WCAG and it has a lot of filters. It basically strips out what you're not looking for. Like if you're just looking for what you're not looking for just like ... things that deal with images, so your alternative text, contrast, it'll just show you those things. So, you can actually filter down to maybe just what you are looking for instead of scanning through this forty-three page, you know, if it were printed, forty-three page ...
[Laughter]
[Dennis] But yeah, WCAG is dry. One thing that came out of CSUN, and actually Karl Groves, the Viking in the Viking and the Lumberjack, he said, and I knew this but It didn't resonate until he said it at CSUN. It was like, you go to WCAG, you'll have all the principles and the guidelines and such and then on the right side you'll see "Understanding" and then whatever this critique is. Read that. That goes into, I'm not going to say plain English, but it puts it into common English, what they are referring to and it goes into more details than just having these statements or these bulleted lists. Any other questions for Robert?
[Attendee]: What comes after Netflix?
[Laughter]
[Robert]: My next target is Hulu. Because their site ... they still use Flash in 2016. Yeah, so, Hulu. I want to go after educational sites more because I've learned that colleges are the worse at making their sites accessible ... apart from the government. The government actually, ironically, if you go to a site that is made by our government, if you look at their code, you would see it is horrible in terms of accessibility, there is two, there is a thing where having too many accessibility options the government kind of over reaches, and it makes their sites incredibly hard to use. They try to cater to one disability, and it makes it hard for everyone else to use the stuff.
[Dennis]: Last question...
[Attendee]: I have one. Where do you hang out on the Internet?
[Robert]: Oh my. Well, I'm a frequent Reddit user. I mostly am on Twitter. I am tweeting idiotic hashtags like #cupcakesrule
[Dennis]: That's how I found Robert.
[Laughter]
[Robert]: I am incredibly vocal in the media. I pop up every now and then on Facebook, not so much. I tend to hang around Reddit a lot more right now than I did in the past. If you want like a central place to hunt me down you can go to my website blindjournalist.wordpress.com. My Twitter is @theblindwriter. So, yay! Also, just a little, shameless plug, I also have a Patreon account, so if you want to make a donation because you like my column about some really hot man over here in the corner, then you can make a donation to patreon.com/blindwriter. If you want to hire me as a consultant or a copywriter or as a freelance email writer or as an advertising writer, then shoot me a tweet or an email. I'll holler at you.
[Dennis]: Well, thank you very much, Robert.
[Applause]