May 15, 2024 • 38 mins
In this episode, Matisse chats with Karl Groves, a pragmatic solution-finder and thought leader in the accessibility industry, about issues with what is being sold as accessibility overlays.
About Karl Groves
With 20 years of experience in web development, usability, and accessibility, Karl Groves is widely regarded as a pragmatic solution-finder and thought leader in the accessibility industry. As CEO of AFixt, Karl focuses on pragmatic and efficient ways of improving the accessibility of websites and software.
Connect with Karl:
LinkedIn
X (formerly Twitter)
Mastodon
Websites
KarlGroves.com
AFixt
Eventably
Learn more about overlays
Overlay False Claims
Overlay Fact Sheet
Resources
WebAIM
LinkedIn Learning
Connect with PR & Lattes:
Website: PR & Lattes
Instagram: @PRAndLattes
Host: @MatisseNelis
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (00:01):
Hello and welcome to PR & Lattes, the
podcast where you can fill upyour cup on everything PR and
communications. I'm your hostMatisse Hamel-Nelis. And I am so
excited to have you join metoday for another special
episode of the podcast in honourof Global Accessibility
Awareness Day. Before we getstarted, make sure you subscribe
to this podcast wherever you'relistening to it to get notified
(00:23):
whenever we drop a new episode.
And this week, it's every day.
You can also subscribe to ournewsletter by visiting our
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And of course, make sure you'refollowing us on Instagram at
@PRAndLattes and on LinkedIn, PR& Lattes. On today's special
(00:45):
episode, I'm chatting withaccessibility guru Karl Groves.
With 20 years of experience inweb development, usability and
accessibility. Karl is widelyregarded as a pragmatic solution
finder and thought leader in theaccessibility industry as CEO of
AFixt he focuses on pragmaticand efficient ways of improving
the accessibility of websitesand software. I am so excited to
(01:07):
chat with him today about theinaccessibility of quote unquote
accessibility overlays. So grabyour latte, sit back and enjoy.
I am so excited for today'sepisode to have Karl on the show
to talk about accessibilityoverlays and all things digital
accessibility. Karl, welcome toPR & Lattes.
Karl Groves (01:29):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (01:30):
Thank you.
So let's start off a littleeasy. Can you tell me in the
listeners a little bit aboutyourself your journey in digital
accessibility and all that fun
Karl Groves (01:38):
Do you have enough time? Because for a while? So,
stuff?
so my name is Karl Groves. I'vebeen doing accessibility stuff
for over 20 years now actually.
Good Lord. Yeah, so I startedout as a web developer kind of
got dragged kicking andscreaming into this
(01:58):
accessibility thing. Because I'min the DC area, and because of
Section 508 and all that sort ofstuff, turns out I liked it. So
I got work at SSB BART Group,which is now Level Access,
worked at Deque, worked at TPG.
I started my own company calledTenon. Tenon was around for 2014
(02:20):
and 2021. Tenon got bought byLevel Access in 2021. And now
I'm at a company that I juststarted called AFixt, which is a
company that does accessibilityremediations.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (02:33):
Amazing.
And you also have another littlefun thing that you're working
on, you want to tell thelisteners about that.
Karl Groves (02:39):
Yeah, so that is that is Eventably. So Eventably
is a events management andticketing platform. So it's
meant for people who want toeither do meetups or free
community events, or do full onconventions, and expos and trade
shows and all that sort ofstuff. The difference being of
course, that ours is going to beaccessible .
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (03:01):
Which is a win and something that is so
desperately needed, particularlyfor PR and comms pros who are
putting on these events andconferences and something that
maybe doesn't get thought aboutright off the bat. So this is a
fantastic, fantastic opportunityfor them to make their stuff
accessible. And we'll talk abouthow they can get involved or how
they can learn more about it atthe end of the podcast.
Karl Groves (03:22):
Yeah. Thank you!
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (03:23):
Perfect. So let's dive into what we're
talking about today.
Karl Groves (03:26):
Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nel (03:27):
Accessibility overlays. You start by
explaining to the audience whatan accessibility overlay is, and
how they are marketed toorganizations currently.
Karl Groves (03:36):
Yeah, so So I'll give you the non technical
description first. And you'veseen these, everybody's probably
seen these at this point, at thebottom left or bottom right of
the website, there's going to bea little icon at the bottom,
that little icon has either theuniversal access symbol, which
is the arm stretched down, orit'll have the handicap symbol
(04:00):
with this person in awheelchair. Either way, you
click on the little thing, awidget appears. And the widget
looks to have the capability ofmaking the website more usable
for people with disabilities. Sothat's really the non technical
kind of thing is it presentsthis this widget. Now behind the
scenes, different products dodifferent things. But some of
(04:20):
them purport to alsoautomatically fix code level
errors on the website itself.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (04:27):
And why did these overlays initially seem
appealing to businesses andorganizations who are looking to
improve their web accessibility?
Karl Groves (04:34):
So they look really appealing, right? Because
there's a multiple, multiplereasons for this. Part of the
reason is, because there's a lotof litigation around
accessibility in the UnitedStates, at least in the United
States. We have we tend toenforce our laws through
litigation, especially when itcomes to a private citizen
(04:55):
asserting their civil rightsthey tend to force that with
litigation...litigation. Someunethical lawyers out there have
decided that this is a great wayto make a ton of money is suing
getting their pay payday andmoving on. So this sort of
opened up this cottage industryof people wanting to sell things
(05:16):
that make the problem go awayquickly because accessibility is
kind of nebulous, you know,digital accessibility,
especially, you know, physicalaccessibility is one thing you
can sort of see, you can seedips and curbs and the, you
know, the railing or the largersize, bathroom stalls. And so
these are really tangible kindof things are easy to see. And
it's also easy to understandlike, oh, yeah, that's yeah, we
(05:39):
need to make it so somebody witha wheelchair can get into the
place. You know what I mean?
Digital accessibility is a farmore squishy, it's far more
nebulous. People don'tunderstand how to do it, they
don't understand why it'simportant. They don't understand
a lot of stuff about it. Sohaving somebody sort of swoop in
and say, Hey, we got this, we'regoing to do this for you. We're
going to be just put this littlething thingy on your website and
(06:02):
all your problems magicallydisappear. It's beautiful. It's
like a perfect storm. Bigproblem, easy solution.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (06:11):
So you mentioned that they some of
these overlays are promotingthat they could fix the
accessibility issues at codelevel, can you share some of the
more technical or key technicallimitations of overlays that
prevent them from actually beingeffective solutions?
Karl Groves (06:26):
Well, there's a lot of them. So let's talk about
that widget itself. The widgetitself actually can be
disruptive for people who usescreen readers, particularly.
Because what'll happen is thewidget has its own accessibility
problems. Quite ironically, wedid a study of these during a
(06:48):
during that lawsuit where I wasan expert witness, and we
studied a bunch of them. And onein particular, I'm not going to
name search for the case, if youwant. And what we found was it
actually introduced newaccessibility problems, because
the people who coded it didn'treally understand accessibility
anyway. There's also a lot ofother problems with that, which
(07:10):
is that, which is that you'reintroducing something that is,
that is adding stuff to yourcode. And I don't want to say
arbitrary ways, but it is areally complex problem, right.
So let's talk about the some ofthe technical problems. One is
that there is a there's a lot ofthings that you can do to
(07:33):
improve accessibility with whatI call third-party code, to be a
little less technical about it,I can put JavaScript on your
site, that that makesimprovements after the page is
loaded, that's a real thing. Andyou can actually do that and
it's in it's in, it's relativelyeasy to do. And so you can
indeed fix a lot of problemsthat way. Some of the other
(07:56):
things you can't do, unlessyou're willing to overreach,
would be things like fixingcolour contrast problems, fixing
text alternatives for images,I'll get back to that in a
second. Fixing labels for forthings. Because there's a
there's a context to the entirepage, that is important to
(08:17):
understand, when you're tryingto make it accessible. And these
third-party, we just don't know,they don't understand that
context. I'll give you a coupleof really good, really good
technical examples. And thefirst one is, as I said, I will
get back to as the alternativetext for images, when you have
something visual on the page isa couple of things that that
(08:39):
could be, it could be somethingthat's just real purely
decorative, it can be somethingthat is provides additional
context or, or makes it easierto understand, or the non visual
or the what we call non-textcontent, the image itself could
be critical for understanding.
And these widgets, these thequote unquote, AI image
(09:03):
recognition that they usedoesn't understand any of that
sort of stuff. And also can justplain get it wrong. So and that
was another thing that we foundin that case that we were
working on is the AI imagerecognition didn't...First off,
it could get it could often getthe thing wrong entirely. And
that's just a shortcoming of AIimage recognition. But the other
(09:24):
part is it didn't understandcontext, it didn't understand
why this picture was there. Socouldn't understand any of that
sort of stuff. And then there'sanother really, really big one
that's sort of geeky, which iswhat we call components or web
components or component drivenarchitectures that what the UI
is created in a way that we havea bunch of key things that are
(09:47):
on the page that are based incode that we call a component.
If you look on your favouritewebsites, you're always going to
see that there's going to belike a The logo on the top left
a search box on the top right,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Those aren't repeated throughoutthe site. They're one piece of
code. That's, that's, that'srendered to the screen as part
(10:10):
of the entire what we call aview. And architecturally, these
things have their own behavioursand their own, what we call
states and properties that theymanage internally. I know this
is really, really geeky, butthink of it as a thing. That man
is, is what it's doing on itsown. And what happens is, you
(10:31):
can't penetrate that withthird-party scripting. Because
you can, you can try to modifythe initial state of it. But
then as soon as it changes itsstate. In other words, let's say
it's a, you know, Google, andyou can type on the search field
and a bunch of recommendationscome down. As that's happening.
events happen, properties andstates are changing. And that
(10:55):
third-party script from theoverlay can't understand what's
doesn't know what's going on,can't detect it, and it can't
change it. So there's all sortsof other complex behaviour,
things that are going on, thatthe overlay can't even touch.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (11:10):
So how does this...How did these overlays
put organizations at risk fornon compliance with web
accessibility regulations andpotential legal challenges? If
they're saying, Hey, we're goingto help you be accessible?
Karl Groves (11:22):
Right? I think that there's, I think that the, the
big problem is sort of howthey're marketed, that there's
the other problems that Imentioned before, which
sometimes the widget itselfcould cause new accessibility
problems. But that's not auniversal problem. It's not like
all of them have that. A lot ofthem do, but not all of them.
(11:43):
The big challenge, the big riskthat it puts in terms of
creating additional problemswhere you is when you trust that
it's doing the job on its own.
So what I mean is, we talkedabout the automated repair, some
of them were really cool, inthat they have custom repairs,
what that means is that thecompany has a additional
(12:05):
services that you can pay forthat they will scan your site,
run some testing, do their owncustom fixes. Now, there's a
little bit of brittleness tothat anyway, but I'll ignore
that for a second. What happensis you say I put this widget on
my site, I'm good. That's notthe case. They can't fix
everything I taught. I've talkedabout how you could fix some
(12:27):
things. And that's a good thing.
They can't fix everything. Soyou think as a customer of it,
well, I'm done. Right? No,you're not, that's probably a
portion of what you were youshouldn't be doing. I think you
can do it without the overlay inthe first place. But let's just
(12:47):
for sake of argument, let's sayyou're doing it anyway, you're
still not done. Right. Sotrusting, trusting that
salesperson says don't worryabout this, we got this, that's
the biggest problem is saying,oh, yeah, we've put this on
there. The other thing, too, isnot going for those custom
fixes. Because this is, so atthe very lowest bottom end. It's
(13:11):
like $49 a month for some ofthese things, right? But you get
nothing. Like you get just thewidget to get the all the custom
repairs on it. So that's really,really, really, really
expensive. If you're a bigwebsite, big e-commerce website
that's superduper expensive. Andfrankly, speaking, brittle, like
I said a second ago, becausewhat happens with these custom
(13:32):
repairs is as soon as somebodyelse manages the site, right?
Because you websites are livingthings, they always change,
you're always adding content,you're always maybe changing
products, or whatever, as soonas you make changes, then all of
a sudden, those custom changesare broken. And so now, you're
in this state where you're sortof beholden to this thing. It's
(13:54):
really, really expensive, andnot able to make changes on your
own site, lest you break thatstuff. So there's a whole host
of like, website managementchallenges that comes up with
this, that even if you're payingfor the top tier of service, you
still have to stay on top of allthis other stuff, and probably
(14:15):
start getting to the point whereyou're managing your own
accessibility without having todeal with that stuff.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (14:20):
Yeah, and one thing I think that gets
forgotten about is the whenfolks think about accessibility,
they think it's just achecklist. I'm meeting WCAG or
the Web Content AccessibilityGuidelines, and if they are
checking those boxes, whetheractually doing that or not,
depending on the overlay.
They're forgetting about theuser experience.
Karl Groves (14:41):
Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (14:42):
Can you speak a bit about the impact
that overlays typically have onthat user experience,
particularly for those who areusing assistive technology?
Karl Groves (14:49):
Yeah, that's been a that's a frequent. That's a
frequent complaint from peoplebecause they can...it seems as
though some of these productswere made by people who don't
understand the way screenreaders and stuff work. And
that's semi-ironic, as well. Buta lot of the complaints that you
(15:09):
get from people who usescreeners is that these things
can be overly verbose that ifyou turn on the so called
accessibility mode that'senabled by this thing, what you
actually get is a worseexperience. Because now the
screen readers announcing stuff,it's repetitiously announcing
(15:29):
things, it's it's not allowingyou to manage what's called
focus focus, it's a programmaticthing where you're interacting
with the controls on the on thepage, and there should be a
certain order of it that'snatural and easy to, to use. So
there's all these other thingsthat happen that are actually
(15:51):
negative, negative to theexperience, and a lot of it has
to do with either the widgetitself being inaccessible, or
these quote unquote,improvements, that are actually
more disruptive. It's gotten badenough that there are there is
people who've made a chrome anda blind engineer, made a Chrome
(16:12):
extension to remove it. So it'sgot AccessiByeBye. And it's a
it's a Chrome extension thatthat screenreader users install,
to eliminate having to deal withthose things. Yeah.
What it surprises me that intoday's world, that it's still
something that, you know, these,these vendors of overlays are
(16:36):
able to get by and sort ofwiggle their way into
organizations and businessessay, Hey, this is what you need.
What are those typicalmisleading claims that you've
heard in your research andeverything that these overlay
providers are using to convincecompanies that their solutions
are the comprehensive andeffective, you know, one stop
shop?
Unknown (16:57):
Yeah, then there's a bunch of them. There's a website
that, that I created calledOverlayFalseClaims.com. Where
we, we, it's more like anarticle than, than a website.
But the the article is, youknow, titled truth and
(17:17):
advertising doesn't exist foroverlay vendors. And the main
article just has a series ofclaims, that, that they that
they typically will use acrossthe industry, not specific ones,
you know, so that the number onething that they say is, adding
the product is the only thingthat the customer needs to do
(17:39):
for accessibility, which is,which is shocking, to say the
least, because, you know, youthey say that, they say that,
all you have to do is, isinstall our thing with a single
line of code. And that's all youneed to do for accessibility.
When the truth is that if youexamine their features, first
(18:02):
off, that's just not true. Andsecond, second of all, what they
do facilitate doesn't even getyou to where you need to be
anyway. And so that's the secondfollow on is to say, by using
the product, the customer sitewill become compliant with
whatever standards there are outthere - ADA, WCAG, EN 3015 49
(18:25):
for the Canadians, theAccessible Canada Act or AODA,
you know, they'll say, oh, yeah,these these are the these are
all you need to do to becomecompliant. And and that's
really, really risky. If wethink about it this way. Section
508in the US, the EN 3015 49,which is the European thing.
(18:48):
They both contain functionalperformance criteria, which says
basically, you can meet allthese technical standards and
still be non compliant, if itdoesn't work for people with
disabilities. And we alreadytalked about how these things
can sometimes be a net negativefor accessibility. And the other
one is that there is some ofthese laws are also based on the
(19:10):
on WCAG, which is the WebContent Accessibility
Guidelines. That's a technicalstandard that outlines what it
looks like to comply andoutlines several dozen success
criteria. And if you meet thesuccess criteria, then you're
considered compliant. Theconverse is also true. If you do
not meet every single one ofthose success criteria, you're
(19:33):
non compliant. And so that'swhere a lot of times it can be,
you know, really easy to showthat these things just can't do
that. And I've already providedsome examples, which is like
where it gets the textalternatives wrong or, you know,
that sort of stuff.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (19:48):
Yeah. From a PR standpoint, so the
listeners are mostly working inpublic relations,
communications, marketing, thatsort of thing. It can seem like
a quick fix and you know, witheverything going on quick fixes
tend to be things that theygravitate towards. But with
overlays, they can have anegative impact on themselves in
the organizations. What type ofmishaps Have you seen, if you
(20:15):
will, from a reputationstandpoint with organizations
and companies using overlays?
And then it's sort of coming tobe that not that accessible?
Karl Groves (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there is real risk of
reputational harm. When it comesto someone who has a decidedly
inaccessible site, who also usesone of these things that's like
the magic magic formula forreally looking bad from a from a
PR standpoint, because becausethey've done a bad job of
(20:46):
accessibility to begin with. Andthen they add this thing on is a
bandaid. And, and so that'llthat'll make its rounds really
quickly among people who are whoare concerned with accessibility
and stuff like that. So that'sa, that's kind of a big deal.
The other part, too, being therisk of litigation. So one of
(21:08):
the big claims that these overlyvendors will say is, oh, this
will save you from from yourlegal risk. That's really,
really not the case. As a matterof fact, there's rumours that
some of these lawyersspecifically go after companies
that use that, not as a not as avendetta thing, but almost as a
(21:29):
symbol that these folks aresensitive to this and yet aren't
no are not willing to go thefull path of accessibility. And
so that's certainly the case.
It's definitely the case thatthere's no, there there is no...
no shielding from this, becauseI get it. So I get an email
(21:52):
every morning of new lawsuitsthat have been filed in the US
system. And sometimes I'll takea look and see who it is,
especially if it's a name Irecognize. It's a company I
recognize. And I'll take a lookat sometimes they'll see the
little widget thing there and belike, that didn't say.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (22:10):
yeah. Yeah.
And I think that's sort of wherea lot of companies and
organizations rely on what wehave the little icon, it means
that we're accessible.
Karl Groves (22:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (22:20):
Right? So we're good. We're we're trying
we're doing things. But likeyou've said, there are so many
issues that occur with overlaysthat they don't provide that
sustainable long-term solutionfor web accessibility. So what
do you recommend for thosecompanies and organizations who
are like, we want to do this theright way. But maybe we don't
have capacity, or we just don'tknow where to start?
Karl Groves (22:43):
Well, that's where that's where this becomes a
challenge, that I really dosympathize with people. We've
had customers come to us, forinstance, in the past, who said,
Oh, I need an audit of mywebsite, because a lot of people
have heard, oh, you if you haveaccessibility problems, you
should get an audit. And thenyou talk to them, you know,
(23:04):
you're on the phone. And then herealized that they're really
just a small business, a teeny,tiny, small business, they
didn't pay much for theirwebsite, maybe they're on a
Shopify store. And they justused a theme that they found
somewhere, maybe they paid $450,for a theme, and now they're
dealing with a lawsuit orsomething like that. And so I
have a lot of sympathy forpeople who are in that
(23:25):
situation. Because in somecases, I've had to recommend
people, we're gonna throw yourwebsite away and start over. And
that's, that's really a hardthing to stomach. For some
people now, there's so there's acouple of ways that you can deal
with this. One is, if you ifyou're on a WordPress site, or
(23:46):
WooCommerce, or Bigcommerce, orShopify or any of these sort of
big platforms. The one thing youcan do is start with an
accessible theme. How do youknow that? You don't. Sorry. But
now, you're going back toShopify as as an example,
(24:07):
actually, Shopify offers eightfree themes. I think they're
eight. I think they're addingmore but no, one time was eight.
Those free themes are accessiblefrom the get go. And so that's
that's the number one thing tokeep in mind is there are themes
out there that are free or lowcosts that are already
accessible. And so you can findthose for WooCommerce and things
(24:31):
like that to just using Shopifyas an example. The next one is
get educated on accessiblecontent. Now, there's a ton of
resources out there maybe maybewith the with the the podcast,
we can get some links for somefree training organization
called WebAIM has some reallygood stuff out there. So there's
(24:51):
lots of resources out there tolearn how to manage the content
excessively. And then the otherpart is when you're shopping for
it with designer web developer,do, make sure you vet them,
don't just look at how beautifultheir work is. I know, I know,
personally, that that's, that'sone of the top ways of vetting
(25:12):
somebody. Does their stuff lookgreat, and not nice to not only
look great, but be accessible aswell and verify that and not
just ask them, Hey, is your workgonna be accessible? Because
they're gonna say yes, becausethey want the money, right? They
want to close the deal. So butso verify it somehow. Verify it
by looking at their their otherstuff, or maybe find somebody
(25:34):
who knows accessibility toverify it, or hire somebody,
this is my little sales pitch,hire somebody like me, who knows
how to do this stuff in firstplace. Because it's a really,
really important thing to justget it right the first time and
keep it right, get it right thefirst time by hiring a developer
who knows what they're doing.
Keep it that way, by learninghow to manage your own content
(25:55):
in a way that's accessible.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (25:59):
Yeah, and when hiring a vendor to the web
developer or somebody to createthe website, what are those
types of questions they shouldbe asking aside from the obvious
well, is your stuff going to beaccessible? What sort of
questions that will make themthink and really answer in a way
that will provide them with moreinsights on, Yes, this is the
right vendor for us.
Karl Groves (26:19):
I guess one of the first things you could ask them
is, do they have to do any oftheir developers hold the CPWA
certification from IAAP on apersonal level, you know, I do
have my own hangups a little bitabout the whole certification
idea, because I don't thinkthey're rigorous enough
personally. But the CPWA, thethe requirements to get the CPWA
(26:44):
not only our knowledgerequirements, but experience
requirements as well, you havefive years of, of actual
experience doing accessible webdevelopment. So when you're
looking for a vendor, see ifthey have certain people who
have certifications in this,because it means they take it
seriously. And they put the workin. Some of the other things to
(27:06):
ask is like, what do you do toensure that this stuff is
accessible? And specifically,maybe ask what tools they use
and how they use them. This is areally great way to weed out
people who don't know whatthey're talking about, because
they won't give you anyspecifics, like the lower the
detail is, when they respond tothis, the more likely it is that
(27:28):
they're full of it. The youknow, so in other words, I can
give you specific questions toask them. But some of these
other some of these initialquestions I'm saying are the
good ones to weed out the peoplewho just don't know what they're
doing. The other thing that Iwould look for is just ask them
what they do for accessibility.
If they say, Hey, we can makeyour website accessible, it's
(27:50):
going to cost X dollars more,that's another reason to walk
away, right? Because a person asa web developer who's focused on
accessibility, after a while, itjust becomes how you do things,
right. Everybody does their jobthe same way. Right? Regardless
of what your job is, you'redoing your job the same way over
(28:11):
and over and over. And so forme, for instance, all of my work
is accessible and secure bydefault, because it's just been
doing things for a long time.
Yeah. Yeah,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (28:23):
that's a great point, you. And also, I
find that in a lot of cases,those developers who don't
necessarily know accessibilityas well as maybe they promote
themselves to chargesignificantly more to make
something accessible versus itjust being accessible, because
that's how they build it likeyou say you do.
Karl Groves (28:41):
Yeah, yeah. Now I do. I do charge a premium for my
stuff, too. But that's,regardless of who the customer
is. And accessibility andsecurity is free. Because you're
getting a premier service. Ifsomebody says...You're
it's...it's $1,000 for nonaccessible and $1,800 for
(29:02):
accessible, whatever theirpricing structure is. And you're
like, Dude, why are you chargingalmost twice as muchfor this?
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (29:06):
Yeah. It's because they may have to do the
research.
Karl Groves (29:09):
Right? They might have to. Exactly.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (29:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So let's say a company ororganization has purchased a
subscription or was working withan overlay vendor. And that's
now on their site. They're stuckin a contract and so on and so
forth. What tips or advice wouldyou provide them to ensure that
their content is stillaccessible, even though there
(29:33):
are those shortfalls from theaccessibility overlay?
Karl Groves (29:39):
Yeah, well, that's a good one. So there's a couple
of things that are really reallyimportant. By volume. The colour
contrast is a big deal. Incolour contrast, problems,
impact people who are colourdeficient, either through colour
blindness or other other visualvisual impairment or something
(30:00):
like that. And these tools arenot going to fix that. So that's
one thing I would do really,that's a high impact thing is
check the colour contrast ofyour site, especially your text,
and anything that people areusing to click on, if somebody
clicks on it, somebody has toread it, then those are the
things to pay close attentionto, with with respect to colour,
(30:23):
or with with with respect toaccessibility. The next one will
be text alternatives, makingsure that you're using text
alternatives correctly. In yourCMS, regardless of what CMS
you're using, there is going tobe a way to add text
alternatives for each time youadd an image. So make sure you
go through and those things areall correct. And then the other
(30:43):
thing too, is just make sure thecontent itself is well
structured. And what I mean bythat is use headings correctly
use bulleted lists correctly,all that sort of stuff. And like
I said, there's there's gonna besome resources that you can use
to learn about these things. Butit's not rocket science. And
some of that has to do some ofthat particularly has to do with
(31:04):
like writing style, and just howyou structure content and things
like that. Do that, and you'llbe pretty far down the road.
Now, if you have really a highlevel of interactivity. Like if
your website has a lot ofinteractive stuff on it, that's
when you probably do want tobring in a specialist who knows
how to do this stuff. But reallyquickly the stuff you can do on
(31:25):
your own text alternatives,color contrast, and good
structure to content.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (31:29):
Excellent.
So how can PR and communicationsprofessionals better advocate
for proactive, authenticaccessibility best practices
within their organizations?
Karl Groves (31:38):
Yeah, well, I think I'm gonna steal one from my good
buddy, Billy Gregory, hisapproach was just to do it. You
know, when Billy worked at, Ithink he worked at Deloitte and
Canada before he worked at TPG.
And his approach was to just doit. Just to do the
accessibility, just be theperson doing the thing, is a
huge way of doing advocacy.
(32:00):
Especially if you show peoplethis is another one that is I
still, I'm gonna steal this onefrom a customer. There was a
developer that I interact withwhen I was working at the
College Board. And the coolthing about this particular guy
was not only was he just doingit, like Billy did, but also
showing how cool it could be. Soin other words, you're you're
(32:20):
going to make improvements,you're going to be making
improvements to what you do in away that impacts real people,
share it, share it with somebodysay, look, this is the before
and after, of the thing I wasworking on. And these changes,
which were relatively simplemade this made this big impact
on how this works. And seeingthat something cool, and seeing
(32:42):
it as something that that is animprovement in the way you work
and then just sharing it withlike, co-workers and peers.
That's a great way to advocatefor it.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (32:53):
Amazing.
And we talked about resourcesbefore so we mentioned WebAIM
what other resources do yourecommend for those who are
wanting to learn more and buildon web accessibility and content
creation?
Karl Groves (33:04):
So there's a there's a number of free course
or I don't know if they're free,free or almost free courses that
are on lynda.com from peoplelike Joe Dolson, Marcy Sutton,
Gerard Cowen, people like that.
So there's some really goodresources out there for if
you're not, you know, if youdon't want to read a bunch of
stuff, but you do want to, likewatch some videos on that's a
(33:24):
great way to do it. There is aSlack channel or Slack
community, it's I think it'sweb- one wide on slack.com.
That's a great community ofpeople. The WebAim, webaim.org,
also has a mailing list. I knowthis is really old school, this
email discussion on this kind oftopic. But what's great about it
(33:46):
is it goes back all the way backinto the early 2000s. As a
matter of fact, you can see mein posting there back in, I
think it was 2003. Some of myearliest posts there. And what's
great about that communitythough, is it's not like a
mailing list where people likeget angry at each other and
flame each other and call eachother names and are nasty or
(34:07):
whatever. It's really, reallyfriendly atmosphere, people
helping one another. So you cango there and ask for advice. You
can ask yours stupidest questionyou ever come up with, and
people will politely answer itwithout calling you stupid.
Like, that's the kind ofcommunity it is. So I always
recommend women, they werecritical in my own development
of accessibility person. So Ilove that one.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (34:32):
Excellent.
Excellent. And if you could giveone piece of advice to an
organization that's evaluatingaccessibility solutions right
now, what would it be?
Karl Groves (34:41):
Well, I would, I would say, ask for proof. Prove
It, right if somebody makes aclaim, regardless of what the
claim is, ask for proof, actualproof, independent proof if
possible. The other thing too,is Google All right Google
(35:01):
somebody's Google the product,Google the solution, Google the
claim. See, see what otherpeople have said out there.
Those are going to be the thoseare going to be the big biggest
things. Salespeople, regardlessof what they're selling, want a
sale, right? It's matter offact, they're their very
livelihood is based upon theirability to sell stuff. So I
(35:25):
don't want to say salespeopleare liars because I do sales
myself. But keep in mind thattheir goal is to sell you
something that they believe thatyou need, you need to be the one
to determine whether youactually need what they're
selling.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (35:38):
Amazing.
This has been such a fantasticchat, Karl, I really appreciate
it. But before I let you go, Ihave one question. I asked all
my guests. Okay, since this isPR & lattes, what is your
favourite go to caffeinatedbeverage?
Karl Groves (35:51):
I am boring. Plain old coffee. Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (35:58):
Amazing.
Again, thank you so much forbeing on the podcast today,
Karl. And thank you for beingpart of our special for Global
Accessibility Awareness Day. Ifpeople want to get in touch with
you or follow you on socialmedia and learn more about
Eventably, where can we findyou?
Karl Groves (36:12):
Okay, so I'm on all the social medias as Karl
Groves, that's K-A-R-LG-R-O-V-E-S. That's the username
on Twitter, LinkedIn everywhereelse. If you see a guy that has
big, big muscles, that's not me.
That's Karl Groves, who's ayounger dude in England. But in
them for the most part there.
(36:35):
It's Karl Groves everywhere. Soprogress on LinkedIn, Mastodon
and Twitter. My own website, mymy company websites, is AFixt,
afixt.com. Eventably, isliterally that, eventably.com.
And my own personal websiteKarlGroves.com K-A-R-L
G-R-O-V-E-S dot com. So thoseare the three to go to. And
(36:58):
follow me on LinkedIn connectwith me on LinkedIn, because I
also publish some good stuffthere as well. Twitter's
politics, and yes.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (37:10):
Definitely follow Karl on LinkedIn and
really everywhere in my opinion,but that's that's maybe a little
biased. And we're not sure wehave all that information in the
description of this podcast, soit's easy for everyone to access
again, Karl, thank you so much.
Thank you. You've been listeningto a special episode of The PR &
Lattes podcast. Make sure youstay up to date on all things
that are happening with PR &Lattes by visiting our website
(37:32):
prandlattes.com. You can alsofollow us on social media,
@PRAndLattes on Instagram and PR& Lattes on LinkedIn. Thank you
so much for listening to thisspecial series in honour of
Global Accessibility AwarenessDay. We'll have a new episode
for you each day this weekfocused on a different aspect
around digital accessibility andcommunications. So make sure
you're following PR & Lattes,wherever you listen to your
(37:55):
podcasts. I've been your hostMatisse Hamel-Nelis. And I can't
wait to share our next episodewith you with a brand new latte.
Until then, bye for now.
Hello and welcome to PR & Lattes, the
podcast where you can fill upyour cup on everything PR and
communications. I'm your hostMatisse Hamel-Nelis. And I am so
excited to have you join metoday for another special
episode of the podcast in honourof Global Accessibility
Awareness Day. Before we getstarted, make sure you subscribe
to this podcast wherever you'relistening to it to get notified
(00:23):
whenever we drop a new episode.
And this week, it's every day.
You can also subscribe to ournewsletter by visiting our
website prandlattes.com. On thewebsite, you'll also find our
podcast episodes and our amazingblogs with new ones being
uploaded every Monday morning.
And of course, make sure you'refollowing us on Instagram at
@PRAndLattes and on LinkedIn, PR& Lattes. On today's special
(00:45):
episode, I'm chatting withaccessibility guru Karl Groves.
With 20 years of experience inweb development, usability and
accessibility. Karl is widelyregarded as a pragmatic solution
finder and thought leader in theaccessibility industry as CEO of
AFixt he focuses on pragmaticand efficient ways of improving
the accessibility of websitesand software. I am so excited to
(01:07):
chat with him today about theinaccessibility of quote unquote
accessibility overlays. So grabyour latte, sit back and enjoy.
I am so excited for today'sepisode to have Karl on the show
to talk about accessibilityoverlays and all things digital
accessibility. Karl, welcome toPR & Lattes.
Karl Groves (01:29):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (01:30):
Thank you.
So let's start off a littleeasy. Can you tell me in the
listeners a little bit aboutyourself your journey in digital
accessibility and all that fun
Karl Groves (01:38):
Do you have enough time? Because for a while? So,
stuff?
so my name is Karl Groves. I'vebeen doing accessibility stuff
for over 20 years now actually.
Good Lord. Yeah, so I startedout as a web developer kind of
got dragged kicking andscreaming into this
(01:58):
accessibility thing. Because I'min the DC area, and because of
Section 508 and all that sort ofstuff, turns out I liked it. So
I got work at SSB BART Group,which is now Level Access,
worked at Deque, worked at TPG.
I started my own company calledTenon. Tenon was around for 2014
(02:20):
and 2021. Tenon got bought byLevel Access in 2021. And now
I'm at a company that I juststarted called AFixt, which is a
company that does accessibilityremediations.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (02:33):
Amazing.
And you also have another littlefun thing that you're working
on, you want to tell thelisteners about that.
Karl Groves (02:39):
Yeah, so that is that is Eventably. So Eventably
is a events management andticketing platform. So it's
meant for people who want toeither do meetups or free
community events, or do full onconventions, and expos and trade
shows and all that sort ofstuff. The difference being of
course, that ours is going to beaccessible .
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (03:01):
Which is a win and something that is so
desperately needed, particularlyfor PR and comms pros who are
putting on these events andconferences and something that
maybe doesn't get thought aboutright off the bat. So this is a
fantastic, fantastic opportunityfor them to make their stuff
accessible. And we'll talk abouthow they can get involved or how
they can learn more about it atthe end of the podcast.
Karl Groves (03:22):
Yeah. Thank you!
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (03:23):
Perfect. So let's dive into what we're
talking about today.
Karl Groves (03:26):
Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nel (03:27):
Accessibility overlays. You start by
explaining to the audience whatan accessibility overlay is, and
how they are marketed toorganizations currently.
Karl Groves (03:36):
Yeah, so So I'll give you the non technical
description first. And you'veseen these, everybody's probably
seen these at this point, at thebottom left or bottom right of
the website, there's going to bea little icon at the bottom,
that little icon has either theuniversal access symbol, which
is the arm stretched down, orit'll have the handicap symbol
(04:00):
with this person in awheelchair. Either way, you
click on the little thing, awidget appears. And the widget
looks to have the capability ofmaking the website more usable
for people with disabilities. Sothat's really the non technical
kind of thing is it presentsthis this widget. Now behind the
scenes, different products dodifferent things. But some of
(04:20):
them purport to alsoautomatically fix code level
errors on the website itself.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (04:27):
And why did these overlays initially seem
appealing to businesses andorganizations who are looking to
improve their web accessibility?
Karl Groves (04:34):
So they look really appealing, right? Because
there's a multiple, multiplereasons for this. Part of the
reason is, because there's a lotof litigation around
accessibility in the UnitedStates, at least in the United
States. We have we tend toenforce our laws through
litigation, especially when itcomes to a private citizen
(04:55):
asserting their civil rightsthey tend to force that with
litigation...litigation. Someunethical lawyers out there have
decided that this is a great wayto make a ton of money is suing
getting their pay payday andmoving on. So this sort of
opened up this cottage industryof people wanting to sell things
(05:16):
that make the problem go awayquickly because accessibility is
kind of nebulous, you know,digital accessibility,
especially, you know, physicalaccessibility is one thing you
can sort of see, you can seedips and curbs and the, you
know, the railing or the largersize, bathroom stalls. And so
these are really tangible kindof things are easy to see. And
it's also easy to understandlike, oh, yeah, that's yeah, we
(05:39):
need to make it so somebody witha wheelchair can get into the
place. You know what I mean?
Digital accessibility is a farmore squishy, it's far more
nebulous. People don'tunderstand how to do it, they
don't understand why it'simportant. They don't understand
a lot of stuff about it. Sohaving somebody sort of swoop in
and say, Hey, we got this, we'regoing to do this for you. We're
going to be just put this littlething thingy on your website and
(06:02):
all your problems magicallydisappear. It's beautiful. It's
like a perfect storm. Bigproblem, easy solution.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (06:11):
So you mentioned that they some of
these overlays are promotingthat they could fix the
accessibility issues at codelevel, can you share some of the
more technical or key technicallimitations of overlays that
prevent them from actually beingeffective solutions?
Karl Groves (06:26):
Well, there's a lot of them. So let's talk about
that widget itself. The widgetitself actually can be
disruptive for people who usescreen readers, particularly.
Because what'll happen is thewidget has its own accessibility
problems. Quite ironically, wedid a study of these during a
(06:48):
during that lawsuit where I wasan expert witness, and we
studied a bunch of them. And onein particular, I'm not going to
name search for the case, if youwant. And what we found was it
actually introduced newaccessibility problems, because
the people who coded it didn'treally understand accessibility
anyway. There's also a lot ofother problems with that, which
(07:10):
is that, which is that you'reintroducing something that is,
that is adding stuff to yourcode. And I don't want to say
arbitrary ways, but it is areally complex problem, right.
So let's talk about the some ofthe technical problems. One is
that there is a there's a lot ofthings that you can do to
(07:33):
improve accessibility with whatI call third-party code, to be a
little less technical about it,I can put JavaScript on your
site, that that makesimprovements after the page is
loaded, that's a real thing. Andyou can actually do that and
it's in it's in, it's relativelyeasy to do. And so you can
indeed fix a lot of problemsthat way. Some of the other
(07:56):
things you can't do, unlessyou're willing to overreach,
would be things like fixingcolour contrast problems, fixing
text alternatives for images,I'll get back to that in a
second. Fixing labels for forthings. Because there's a
there's a context to the entirepage, that is important to
(08:17):
understand, when you're tryingto make it accessible. And these
third-party, we just don't know,they don't understand that
context. I'll give you a coupleof really good, really good
technical examples. And thefirst one is, as I said, I will
get back to as the alternativetext for images, when you have
something visual on the page isa couple of things that that
(08:39):
could be, it could be somethingthat's just real purely
decorative, it can be somethingthat is provides additional
context or, or makes it easierto understand, or the non visual
or the what we call non-textcontent, the image itself could
be critical for understanding.
And these widgets, these thequote unquote, AI image
(09:03):
recognition that they usedoesn't understand any of that
sort of stuff. And also can justplain get it wrong. So and that
was another thing that we foundin that case that we were
working on is the AI imagerecognition didn't...First off,
it could get it could often getthe thing wrong entirely. And
that's just a shortcoming of AIimage recognition. But the other
(09:24):
part is it didn't understandcontext, it didn't understand
why this picture was there. Socouldn't understand any of that
sort of stuff. And then there'sanother really, really big one
that's sort of geeky, which iswhat we call components or web
components or component drivenarchitectures that what the UI
is created in a way that we havea bunch of key things that are
(09:47):
on the page that are based incode that we call a component.
If you look on your favouritewebsites, you're always going to
see that there's going to belike a The logo on the top left
a search box on the top right,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Those aren't repeated throughoutthe site. They're one piece of
code. That's, that's, that'srendered to the screen as part
(10:10):
of the entire what we call aview. And architecturally, these
things have their own behavioursand their own, what we call
states and properties that theymanage internally. I know this
is really, really geeky, butthink of it as a thing. That man
is, is what it's doing on itsown. And what happens is, you
(10:31):
can't penetrate that withthird-party scripting. Because
you can, you can try to modifythe initial state of it. But
then as soon as it changes itsstate. In other words, let's say
it's a, you know, Google, andyou can type on the search field
and a bunch of recommendationscome down. As that's happening.
events happen, properties andstates are changing. And that
(10:55):
third-party script from theoverlay can't understand what's
doesn't know what's going on,can't detect it, and it can't
change it. So there's all sortsof other complex behaviour,
things that are going on, thatthe overlay can't even touch.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (11:10):
So how does this...How did these overlays
put organizations at risk fornon compliance with web
accessibility regulations andpotential legal challenges? If
they're saying, Hey, we're goingto help you be accessible?
Karl Groves (11:22):
Right? I think that there's, I think that the, the
big problem is sort of howthey're marketed, that there's
the other problems that Imentioned before, which
sometimes the widget itselfcould cause new accessibility
problems. But that's not auniversal problem. It's not like
all of them have that. A lot ofthem do, but not all of them.
(11:43):
The big challenge, the big riskthat it puts in terms of
creating additional problemswhere you is when you trust that
it's doing the job on its own.
So what I mean is, we talkedabout the automated repair, some
of them were really cool, inthat they have custom repairs,
what that means is that thecompany has a additional
(12:05):
services that you can pay forthat they will scan your site,
run some testing, do their owncustom fixes. Now, there's a
little bit of brittleness tothat anyway, but I'll ignore
that for a second. What happensis you say I put this widget on
my site, I'm good. That's notthe case. They can't fix
everything I taught. I've talkedabout how you could fix some
(12:27):
things. And that's a good thing.
They can't fix everything. Soyou think as a customer of it,
well, I'm done. Right? No,you're not, that's probably a
portion of what you were youshouldn't be doing. I think you
can do it without the overlay inthe first place. But let's just
(12:47):
for sake of argument, let's sayyou're doing it anyway, you're
still not done. Right. Sotrusting, trusting that
salesperson says don't worryabout this, we got this, that's
the biggest problem is saying,oh, yeah, we've put this on
there. The other thing, too, isnot going for those custom
fixes. Because this is, so atthe very lowest bottom end. It's
(13:11):
like $49 a month for some ofthese things, right? But you get
nothing. Like you get just thewidget to get the all the custom
repairs on it. So that's really,really, really, really
expensive. If you're a bigwebsite, big e-commerce website
that's superduper expensive. Andfrankly, speaking, brittle, like
I said a second ago, becausewhat happens with these custom
(13:32):
repairs is as soon as somebodyelse manages the site, right?
Because you websites are livingthings, they always change,
you're always adding content,you're always maybe changing
products, or whatever, as soonas you make changes, then all of
a sudden, those custom changesare broken. And so now, you're
in this state where you're sortof beholden to this thing. It's
(13:54):
really, really expensive, andnot able to make changes on your
own site, lest you break thatstuff. So there's a whole host
of like, website managementchallenges that comes up with
this, that even if you're payingfor the top tier of service, you
still have to stay on top of allthis other stuff, and probably
(14:15):
start getting to the point whereyou're managing your own
accessibility without having todeal with that stuff.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (14:20):
Yeah, and one thing I think that gets
forgotten about is the whenfolks think about accessibility,
they think it's just achecklist. I'm meeting WCAG or
the Web Content AccessibilityGuidelines, and if they are
checking those boxes, whetheractually doing that or not,
depending on the overlay.
They're forgetting about theuser experience.
Karl Groves (14:41):
Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (14:42):
Can you speak a bit about the impact
that overlays typically have onthat user experience,
particularly for those who areusing assistive technology?
Karl Groves (14:49):
Yeah, that's been a that's a frequent. That's a
frequent complaint from peoplebecause they can...it seems as
though some of these productswere made by people who don't
understand the way screenreaders and stuff work. And
that's semi-ironic, as well. Buta lot of the complaints that you
(15:09):
get from people who usescreeners is that these things
can be overly verbose that ifyou turn on the so called
accessibility mode that'senabled by this thing, what you
actually get is a worseexperience. Because now the
screen readers announcing stuff,it's repetitiously announcing
(15:29):
things, it's it's not allowingyou to manage what's called
focus focus, it's a programmaticthing where you're interacting
with the controls on the on thepage, and there should be a
certain order of it that'snatural and easy to, to use. So
there's all these other thingsthat happen that are actually
(15:51):
negative, negative to theexperience, and a lot of it has
to do with either the widgetitself being inaccessible, or
these quote unquote,improvements, that are actually
more disruptive. It's gotten badenough that there are there is
people who've made a chrome anda blind engineer, made a Chrome
(16:12):
extension to remove it. So it'sgot AccessiByeBye. And it's a
it's a Chrome extension thatthat screenreader users install,
to eliminate having to deal withthose things. Yeah.
What it surprises me that intoday's world, that it's still
something that, you know, these,these vendors of overlays are
(16:36):
able to get by and sort ofwiggle their way into
organizations and businessessay, Hey, this is what you need.
What are those typicalmisleading claims that you've
heard in your research andeverything that these overlay
providers are using to convincecompanies that their solutions
are the comprehensive andeffective, you know, one stop
shop?
Unknown (16:57):
Yeah, then there's a bunch of them. There's a website
that, that I created calledOverlayFalseClaims.com. Where
we, we, it's more like anarticle than, than a website.
But the the article is, youknow, titled truth and
(17:17):
advertising doesn't exist foroverlay vendors. And the main
article just has a series ofclaims, that, that they that
they typically will use acrossthe industry, not specific ones,
you know, so that the number onething that they say is, adding
the product is the only thingthat the customer needs to do
(17:39):
for accessibility, which is,which is shocking, to say the
least, because, you know, youthey say that, they say that,
all you have to do is, isinstall our thing with a single
line of code. And that's all youneed to do for accessibility.
When the truth is that if youexamine their features, first
(18:02):
off, that's just not true. Andsecond, second of all, what they
do facilitate doesn't even getyou to where you need to be
anyway. And so that's the secondfollow on is to say, by using
the product, the customer sitewill become compliant with
whatever standards there are outthere - ADA, WCAG, EN 3015 49
(18:25):
for the Canadians, theAccessible Canada Act or AODA,
you know, they'll say, oh, yeah,these these are the these are
all you need to do to becomecompliant. And and that's
really, really risky. If wethink about it this way. Section
508in the US, the EN 3015 49,which is the European thing.
(18:48):
They both contain functionalperformance criteria, which says
basically, you can meet allthese technical standards and
still be non compliant, if itdoesn't work for people with
disabilities. And we alreadytalked about how these things
can sometimes be a net negativefor accessibility. And the other
one is that there is some ofthese laws are also based on the
(19:10):
on WCAG, which is the WebContent Accessibility
Guidelines. That's a technicalstandard that outlines what it
looks like to comply andoutlines several dozen success
criteria. And if you meet thesuccess criteria, then you're
considered compliant. Theconverse is also true. If you do
not meet every single one ofthose success criteria, you're
(19:33):
non compliant. And so that'swhere a lot of times it can be,
you know, really easy to showthat these things just can't do
that. And I've already providedsome examples, which is like
where it gets the textalternatives wrong or, you know,
that sort of stuff.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (19:48):
Yeah. From a PR standpoint, so the
listeners are mostly working inpublic relations,
communications, marketing, thatsort of thing. It can seem like
a quick fix and you know, witheverything going on quick fixes
tend to be things that theygravitate towards. But with
overlays, they can have anegative impact on themselves in
the organizations. What type ofmishaps Have you seen, if you
(20:15):
will, from a reputationstandpoint with organizations
and companies using overlays?
And then it's sort of coming tobe that not that accessible?
Karl Groves (20:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there is real risk of
reputational harm. When it comesto someone who has a decidedly
inaccessible site, who also usesone of these things that's like
the magic magic formula forreally looking bad from a from a
PR standpoint, because becausethey've done a bad job of
(20:46):
accessibility to begin with. Andthen they add this thing on is a
bandaid. And, and so that'llthat'll make its rounds really
quickly among people who are whoare concerned with accessibility
and stuff like that. So that'sa, that's kind of a big deal.
The other part, too, being therisk of litigation. So one of
(21:08):
the big claims that these overlyvendors will say is, oh, this
will save you from from yourlegal risk. That's really,
really not the case. As a matterof fact, there's rumours that
some of these lawyersspecifically go after companies
that use that, not as a not as avendetta thing, but almost as a
(21:29):
symbol that these folks aresensitive to this and yet aren't
no are not willing to go thefull path of accessibility. And
so that's certainly the case.
It's definitely the case thatthere's no, there there is no...
no shielding from this, becauseI get it. So I get an email
(21:52):
every morning of new lawsuitsthat have been filed in the US
system. And sometimes I'll takea look and see who it is,
especially if it's a name Irecognize. It's a company I
recognize. And I'll take a lookat sometimes they'll see the
little widget thing there and belike, that didn't say.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (22:10):
yeah. Yeah.
And I think that's sort of wherea lot of companies and
organizations rely on what wehave the little icon, it means
that we're accessible.
Karl Groves (22:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (22:20):
Right? So we're good. We're we're trying
we're doing things. But likeyou've said, there are so many
issues that occur with overlaysthat they don't provide that
sustainable long-term solutionfor web accessibility. So what
do you recommend for thosecompanies and organizations who
are like, we want to do this theright way. But maybe we don't
have capacity, or we just don'tknow where to start?
Karl Groves (22:43):
Well, that's where that's where this becomes a
challenge, that I really dosympathize with people. We've
had customers come to us, forinstance, in the past, who said,
Oh, I need an audit of mywebsite, because a lot of people
have heard, oh, you if you haveaccessibility problems, you
should get an audit. And thenyou talk to them, you know,
(23:04):
you're on the phone. And then herealized that they're really
just a small business, a teeny,tiny, small business, they
didn't pay much for theirwebsite, maybe they're on a
Shopify store. And they justused a theme that they found
somewhere, maybe they paid $450,for a theme, and now they're
dealing with a lawsuit orsomething like that. And so I
have a lot of sympathy forpeople who are in that
(23:25):
situation. Because in somecases, I've had to recommend
people, we're gonna throw yourwebsite away and start over. And
that's, that's really a hardthing to stomach. For some
people now, there's so there's acouple of ways that you can deal
with this. One is, if you ifyou're on a WordPress site, or
(23:46):
WooCommerce, or Bigcommerce, orShopify or any of these sort of
big platforms. The one thing youcan do is start with an
accessible theme. How do youknow that? You don't. Sorry. But
now, you're going back toShopify as as an example,
(24:07):
actually, Shopify offers eightfree themes. I think they're
eight. I think they're addingmore but no, one time was eight.
Those free themes are accessiblefrom the get go. And so that's
that's the number one thing tokeep in mind is there are themes
out there that are free or lowcosts that are already
accessible. And so you can findthose for WooCommerce and things
(24:31):
like that to just using Shopifyas an example. The next one is
get educated on accessiblecontent. Now, there's a ton of
resources out there maybe maybewith the with the the podcast,
we can get some links for somefree training organization
called WebAIM has some reallygood stuff out there. So there's
(24:51):
lots of resources out there tolearn how to manage the content
excessively. And then the otherpart is when you're shopping for
it with designer web developer,do, make sure you vet them,
don't just look at how beautifultheir work is. I know, I know,
personally, that that's, that'sone of the top ways of vetting
(25:12):
somebody. Does their stuff lookgreat, and not nice to not only
look great, but be accessible aswell and verify that and not
just ask them, Hey, is your workgonna be accessible? Because
they're gonna say yes, becausethey want the money, right? They
want to close the deal. So butso verify it somehow. Verify it
by looking at their their otherstuff, or maybe find somebody
(25:34):
who knows accessibility toverify it, or hire somebody,
this is my little sales pitch,hire somebody like me, who knows
how to do this stuff in firstplace. Because it's a really,
really important thing to justget it right the first time and
keep it right, get it right thefirst time by hiring a developer
who knows what they're doing.
Keep it that way, by learninghow to manage your own content
(25:55):
in a way that's accessible.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (25:59):
Yeah, and when hiring a vendor to the web
developer or somebody to createthe website, what are those
types of questions they shouldbe asking aside from the obvious
well, is your stuff going to beaccessible? What sort of
questions that will make themthink and really answer in a way
that will provide them with moreinsights on, Yes, this is the
right vendor for us.
Karl Groves (26:19):
I guess one of the first things you could ask them
is, do they have to do any oftheir developers hold the CPWA
certification from IAAP on apersonal level, you know, I do
have my own hangups a little bitabout the whole certification
idea, because I don't thinkthey're rigorous enough
personally. But the CPWA, thethe requirements to get the CPWA
(26:44):
not only our knowledgerequirements, but experience
requirements as well, you havefive years of, of actual
experience doing accessible webdevelopment. So when you're
looking for a vendor, see ifthey have certain people who
have certifications in this,because it means they take it
seriously. And they put the workin. Some of the other things to
(27:06):
ask is like, what do you do toensure that this stuff is
accessible? And specifically,maybe ask what tools they use
and how they use them. This is areally great way to weed out
people who don't know whatthey're talking about, because
they won't give you anyspecifics, like the lower the
detail is, when they respond tothis, the more likely it is that
(27:28):
they're full of it. The youknow, so in other words, I can
give you specific questions toask them. But some of these
other some of these initialquestions I'm saying are the
good ones to weed out the peoplewho just don't know what they're
doing. The other thing that Iwould look for is just ask them
what they do for accessibility.
If they say, Hey, we can makeyour website accessible, it's
(27:50):
going to cost X dollars more,that's another reason to walk
away, right? Because a person asa web developer who's focused on
accessibility, after a while, itjust becomes how you do things,
right. Everybody does their jobthe same way. Right? Regardless
of what your job is, you'redoing your job the same way over
(28:11):
and over and over. And so forme, for instance, all of my work
is accessible and secure bydefault, because it's just been
doing things for a long time.
Yeah. Yeah,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (28:23):
that's a great point, you. And also, I
find that in a lot of cases,those developers who don't
necessarily know accessibilityas well as maybe they promote
themselves to chargesignificantly more to make
something accessible versus itjust being accessible, because
that's how they build it likeyou say you do.
Karl Groves (28:41):
Yeah, yeah. Now I do. I do charge a premium for my
stuff, too. But that's,regardless of who the customer
is. And accessibility andsecurity is free. Because you're
getting a premier service. Ifsomebody says...You're
it's...it's $1,000 for nonaccessible and $1,800 for
(29:02):
accessible, whatever theirpricing structure is. And you're
like, Dude, why are you chargingalmost twice as muchfor this?
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (29:06):
Yeah. It's because they may have to do the
research.
Karl Groves (29:09):
Right? They might have to. Exactly.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (29:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So let's say a company ororganization has purchased a
subscription or was working withan overlay vendor. And that's
now on their site. They're stuckin a contract and so on and so
forth. What tips or advice wouldyou provide them to ensure that
their content is stillaccessible, even though there
(29:33):
are those shortfalls from theaccessibility overlay?
Karl Groves (29:39):
Yeah, well, that's a good one. So there's a couple
of things that are really reallyimportant. By volume. The colour
contrast is a big deal. Incolour contrast, problems,
impact people who are colourdeficient, either through colour
blindness or other other visualvisual impairment or something
(30:00):
like that. And these tools arenot going to fix that. So that's
one thing I would do really,that's a high impact thing is
check the colour contrast ofyour site, especially your text,
and anything that people areusing to click on, if somebody
clicks on it, somebody has toread it, then those are the
things to pay close attentionto, with with respect to colour,
(30:23):
or with with with respect toaccessibility. The next one will
be text alternatives, makingsure that you're using text
alternatives correctly. In yourCMS, regardless of what CMS
you're using, there is going tobe a way to add text
alternatives for each time youadd an image. So make sure you
go through and those things areall correct. And then the other
(30:43):
thing too, is just make sure thecontent itself is well
structured. And what I mean bythat is use headings correctly
use bulleted lists correctly,all that sort of stuff. And like
I said, there's there's gonna besome resources that you can use
to learn about these things. Butit's not rocket science. And
some of that has to do some ofthat particularly has to do with
(31:04):
like writing style, and just howyou structure content and things
like that. Do that, and you'llbe pretty far down the road.
Now, if you have really a highlevel of interactivity. Like if
your website has a lot ofinteractive stuff on it, that's
when you probably do want tobring in a specialist who knows
how to do this stuff. But reallyquickly the stuff you can do on
(31:25):
your own text alternatives,color contrast, and good
structure to content.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (31:29):
Excellent.
So how can PR and communicationsprofessionals better advocate
for proactive, authenticaccessibility best practices
within their organizations?
Karl Groves (31:38):
Yeah, well, I think I'm gonna steal one from my good
buddy, Billy Gregory, hisapproach was just to do it. You
know, when Billy worked at, Ithink he worked at Deloitte and
Canada before he worked at TPG.
And his approach was to just doit. Just to do the
accessibility, just be theperson doing the thing, is a
huge way of doing advocacy.
(32:00):
Especially if you show peoplethis is another one that is I
still, I'm gonna steal this onefrom a customer. There was a
developer that I interact withwhen I was working at the
College Board. And the coolthing about this particular guy
was not only was he just doingit, like Billy did, but also
showing how cool it could be. Soin other words, you're you're
(32:20):
going to make improvements,you're going to be making
improvements to what you do in away that impacts real people,
share it, share it with somebodysay, look, this is the before
and after, of the thing I wasworking on. And these changes,
which were relatively simplemade this made this big impact
on how this works. And seeingthat something cool, and seeing
(32:42):
it as something that that is animprovement in the way you work
and then just sharing it withlike, co-workers and peers.
That's a great way to advocatefor it.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (32:53):
Amazing.
And we talked about resourcesbefore so we mentioned WebAIM
what other resources do yourecommend for those who are
wanting to learn more and buildon web accessibility and content
creation?
Karl Groves (33:04):
So there's a there's a number of free course
or I don't know if they're free,free or almost free courses that
are on lynda.com from peoplelike Joe Dolson, Marcy Sutton,
Gerard Cowen, people like that.
So there's some really goodresources out there for if
you're not, you know, if youdon't want to read a bunch of
stuff, but you do want to, likewatch some videos on that's a
(33:24):
great way to do it. There is aSlack channel or Slack
community, it's I think it'sweb- one wide on slack.com.
That's a great community ofpeople. The WebAim, webaim.org,
also has a mailing list. I knowthis is really old school, this
email discussion on this kind oftopic. But what's great about it
(33:46):
is it goes back all the way backinto the early 2000s. As a
matter of fact, you can see mein posting there back in, I
think it was 2003. Some of myearliest posts there. And what's
great about that communitythough, is it's not like a
mailing list where people likeget angry at each other and
flame each other and call eachother names and are nasty or
(34:07):
whatever. It's really, reallyfriendly atmosphere, people
helping one another. So you cango there and ask for advice. You
can ask yours stupidest questionyou ever come up with, and
people will politely answer itwithout calling you stupid.
Like, that's the kind ofcommunity it is. So I always
recommend women, they werecritical in my own development
of accessibility person. So Ilove that one.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (34:32):
Excellent.
Excellent. And if you could giveone piece of advice to an
organization that's evaluatingaccessibility solutions right
now, what would it be?
Karl Groves (34:41):
Well, I would, I would say, ask for proof. Prove
It, right if somebody makes aclaim, regardless of what the
claim is, ask for proof, actualproof, independent proof if
possible. The other thing too,is Google All right Google
(35:01):
somebody's Google the product,Google the solution, Google the
claim. See, see what otherpeople have said out there.
Those are going to be the thoseare going to be the big biggest
things. Salespeople, regardlessof what they're selling, want a
sale, right? It's matter offact, they're their very
livelihood is based upon theirability to sell stuff. So I
(35:25):
don't want to say salespeopleare liars because I do sales
myself. But keep in mind thattheir goal is to sell you
something that they believe thatyou need, you need to be the one
to determine whether youactually need what they're
selling.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (35:38):
Amazing.
This has been such a fantasticchat, Karl, I really appreciate
it. But before I let you go, Ihave one question. I asked all
my guests. Okay, since this isPR & lattes, what is your
favourite go to caffeinatedbeverage?
Karl Groves (35:51):
I am boring. Plain old coffee. Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (35:58):
Amazing.
Again, thank you so much forbeing on the podcast today,
Karl. And thank you for beingpart of our special for Global
Accessibility Awareness Day. Ifpeople want to get in touch with
you or follow you on socialmedia and learn more about
Eventably, where can we findyou?
Karl Groves (36:12):
Okay, so I'm on all the social medias as Karl
Groves, that's K-A-R-LG-R-O-V-E-S. That's the username
on Twitter, LinkedIn everywhereelse. If you see a guy that has
big, big muscles, that's not me.
That's Karl Groves, who's ayounger dude in England. But in
them for the most part there.
(36:35):
It's Karl Groves everywhere. Soprogress on LinkedIn, Mastodon
and Twitter. My own website, mymy company websites, is AFixt,
afixt.com. Eventably, isliterally that, eventably.com.
And my own personal websiteKarlGroves.com K-A-R-L
G-R-O-V-E-S dot com. So thoseare the three to go to. And
(36:58):
follow me on LinkedIn connectwith me on LinkedIn, because I
also publish some good stuffthere as well. Twitter's
politics, and yes.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis (37:10):
Definitely follow Karl on LinkedIn and
really everywhere in my opinion,but that's that's maybe a little
biased. And we're not sure wehave all that information in the
description of this podcast, soit's easy for everyone to access
again, Karl, thank you so much.
Thank you. You've been listeningto a special episode of The PR &
Lattes podcast. Make sure youstay up to date on all things
that are happening with PR &Lattes by visiting our website
(37:32):
prandlattes.com. You can alsofollow us on social media,
@PRAndLattes on Instagram and PR& Lattes on LinkedIn. Thank you
so much for listening to thisspecial series in honour of
Global Accessibility AwarenessDay. We'll have a new episode
for you each day this weekfocused on a different aspect
around digital accessibility andcommunications. So make sure
you're following PR & Lattes,wherever you listen to your
(37:55):
podcasts. I've been your hostMatisse Hamel-Nelis. And I can't
wait to share our next episodewith you with a brand new latte.
Until then, bye for now.
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