GAAD Special - A latte with Chad Chelius and Dax Castro - PR & Lattes

Episode Transcript
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Matisse Hamel-Nelis (00:02):
Hello and welcome to PR & Lattes, the
podcast where you can fill upyour cup on everything
communications and PR. I'm yourhost Matisse Hamel-Nelis. And I
am so excited to have you joinme today for another special
episode in honour of GlobalAccessibility Awareness Day.
Before we get started, make sureyou subscribe to this podcast
wherever you're listening to itto get notified when a new

(00:24):
episode drops, and this week,it's one every day. You can also
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plus our amazing blogs with newones being uploaded every Monday
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social media on Instagram at@PRAndLattes and on LinkedIn, PR

(00:46):
& lattes. On today's episode,I'm chatting with document
accessibility experts ChadChelius and Dax Castro. Chad is
a trainer, author, consultantspeaker and director of training
solutions and principle ofchecks, training and consulting.
He resides in the Philadelphiaarea and has been using Adobe
products for over 25 years. Asan Adobe Certified Instructor,

(01:08):
accessible documents specialistand consultant. He teaches and
advises on all Adobe print andweb products specializing in
InDesign and InCopy workflows,Illustrator automation, and PDF
accessibility using InDesign,Word and Adobe Acrobat. He works
with clients both large andsmall in and outside of the
United States, helping them tosolve design workflow and

(01:31):
accessibility challenges usingAdobe products. Dax is an
award-winning Adobe CertifiedPDF accessibility trainer and
certified accessibilitydocuments specialist with more
than two decades of experiencein the marketing and
communications industry. Inaddition to providing
accessibility training tocompanies worldwide, he and Chad
host a weekly accessibilitypodcast called CHAX Chat, and

(01:54):
they run the PDF AccessibilityFacebook group. I'm so excited
to chat with both of them aboutall things document
accessibility. So grab yourlatte, sit back and enjoy.
I have been looking forward tothis podcast episode for so
long. I'm so excited to have Daxand Chad with me today. Welcome

Dax Castro (02:12):
Oh, thank you very much. Um, I honestly it's you,
both of you.
we consider you an old friend.
And so it's just like, you know,being able to get together with
old friends. We have missedyourself.

Aww... You too.

Chad Chelius (02:25):
Absolutely.

So, before we dive into all the good stuff
around accessible documents,let's start off with a simple
question. Can you tell thereaders about yourself and your
journey into accessibledocuments? We'll start with Dax.

Dax Castro (02:38):
Oh, yes, sure. So I am. I'm an Adobe Certified PDF
accessibility trainer, andcertified by the IAAP as an
accessible document specialist.
But I got my start, I worked forthe California high speed rail
project in. In 2016, they camein and said, Hey, all of our

(02:58):
stuff needs to be madeaccessible. I had no idea what
that was. And but of course, asa person with ADHD, my
superpowers took over, I gotlaser beam focused on everything
I could learn aboutaccessibility. And that started
my journey. And I'm still onthat road today. And Chad and I,
we also have a podcast and, youknow, talk about document

(03:20):
accessibility and accessibilityas a whole. It's called CHAX
Chat. But yeah, we just, youknow, it's been our passion
point since amazing.

And what about you, Chad?

Yeah, so my journey is a little bit unique,
you know, a lot of people expectme to tell them that I have a
personal connection toaccessibility, the, you know,
relative or, or somebody I lovewho, you know, is disabled. But
it's truly not really the case.
I mean, I do have friends whoare disabled. However, my path

(03:54):
to accessibility, you know, thelast 20 years of my life, I've
been an Adobe trainer, and Ispecialize in teaching all the
Adobe products. And I've beenspeaking at conferences for over
15 years now. And it was aroundI think, 2009 when I was
speaking at a conference down inOrlando, Florida, on the PDF

(04:16):
format, right, and all the coolthings you can do with PDFs. And
a woman in the back of the room,raised her hand and she said,
this is all great. But is thefile accessible? And it's kind
of like every speakers nightmareright to be asked a question.
You have no idea what they'retalking about, you know, and I

(04:37):
think I danced around thequestion. And afterwards, you
know, she came up to me, and westarted talking and we are still
to this day. Very good friends.
Her name was Vicki Richards.
Actually, maybe I shouldn't saythat. But her her and her name
you know, she she was from Theone of the federal agencies, and

(05:00):
she was already doingaccessibility like way before
anybody else was because it'sthe federal government. And she
taught me a lot. And then I justkind of took what I knew and ran
with it, and started building myknowledge and learning more and
more. And about five years ago,I met Dax at one of those

(05:22):
conferences, and we became fastfriends, because we're the only
two people at the conference whoknew anything about
accessibility. So So you know,we really kind of hit it off
pretty quick. And, you know,from there, we became, you know,
quick friends, and he had theidea to create a podcast. So we
started CHAX Chat about two anda half years ago, I think. And

(05:44):
then, ultimately, we ended upgoing into business with each
other. So yeah.

Amazing, amazing. So we're gonna talk
more about the podcast later on,that's for sure. People need to
be listening to it. Every time anew episode gets posted, they
need to be on that because Ifind it so useful. Even just
certain concepts that may be ina document I haven't done in a
in a while just because of thetype of document I always get a
refresher or I learn somethingnew is a fantastic podcast. So

(06:12):
we will definitely be chattingabout that soon. But let's get
into the good stuff. So can youexplain digital accessibility
and why it's crucial forprofessional communicators today
to understand?

Dax Castro (06:26):
Well, I think Go ahead.

Well, no, I mean, I think you're gonna get roughly
the same answer from both of us.

Dax Castro (06:34):
Either one of us we have drink the same Kool Aid, I
promise you.

I mean, fundamentally, you know, when
we're talking about digitalaccessibility, I mean, you you
can create the connection toaccessibility in the lived
environment as well. Right. Imean, you know, one of the
things you'll hear Dax and Isay, is that accessibility
benefits everybody, you know,and if you if you boil it down
to like, a very simpleexplanation, you know, curb cuts

(07:03):
that we're all familiar with, onthe corner of every street in
every city, you know, we're putthere primarily for people in
wheelchairs, right. But, youknow, moms with strollers,
delivery, guys delivering foodto restaurants, they all really
appreciate those curb cuts. Sowhen we talk about digital

(07:24):
document accessibility, it's oneof the big reasons why I got
into this industry to beginwith, because when I realized
that documents that I wascreating, may not be able to be
read by all people. That reallybothered me, right? Like, I'm
like, Well, why would I not wanteverybody to read my content. So

(07:46):
digital document accessibilityis fundamentally building a
document. So that no matter whois reading that document,
whether they be sighted, whetherthey be non-sighted, whether
they be colourblind, whetherthey be low vision, mobility
impaired, cognitive impairments,they're all going to be able to

(08:07):
read that document. Right. Andto explain to our listeners,
maybe some of you may not befamiliar with it. But you know,
people with disabilities useassistive technology to read
those documents. And it'sbasically software that, in many
cases will read the document tothem, right? So certainly, you

(08:28):
know, classic example issomebody who's non-sighted, the
software is going to read thedocument and voice it to them.
And so that allows somebodywithout vision to be able to
consume that content the sameway that a sighted user can. So
at its core, it's about creatingour digital documents to make
sure that anybody, regardless oftheir impairment, can read those

(08:51):
documents.

Excellent.
Excellent. So what are somecommon myths or misconceptions,
if you will, when it comes tocreating accessible documents
that you tend to hear whenyou're speaking at conferences,
or that you know, professionalcommunicators tend to reach out
and be like, Ah, this is why wedon't make them accessible?

Dax Castro (09:10):
Well, it's interesting because we find that
you know, a lot of people say,well, accessibility is too hard.
Or if I have to make itaccessible, I've got to, say,
dumb it down or make it plain,or I can't do my fa...fancy
graphic design. But the realityis that you can do 95% of
anything you want to do in adocument and it will still be

(09:32):
accessible. You just have tolearn the techniques to get
there. You can use millions ofcolours in your document. We see
we hear this all the time peoplelike oh, well I have to I can
only be black and white or youdon't have to make it really
plain. No, there's millions ofcolours you can use. The
difference is you can only usecertain colours together, right?
If I'm going to use yellow as mybase font, which is a one we see

(09:54):
all the time. Yellow against awhite background isn't going to
be a compliance situation.
session. So you don't use itagainst the white background, if
you want to use yellow text, yougot to put it on something a
little darker than the whitebackground. And, you know, that
goes along with I could cite abunch of different examples. But
it's that kind of thing where,you know, people think

(10:14):
accessibility is hard onlybecause they're considering it
at the end of their designprocess, or they're not willing
to make a small change to makesomething they've been doing in
the past that's not accessible,accessible for people moving
forward.

So you mentioned that was just some of
the, you know, one example. Solet's talk about some of those
basic steps and making adocument accessible from the
ground up. What are some easywins that individuals can start
doing today, when they'recreating their documents?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And, and
so, you know, I think it'simportant for our listeners to
know that not all sourceapplications are created equal,
right? Like, you can't, youcan't do this from any old
application. However, most ofthe applications that many of
our listeners are using canactually do that. And, you know,

(11:11):
Microsoft Word is one of thebetter programs that you can use
to generate a accessible PDFfrom that program. PowerPoint in
a little bit, much limited way.
Yeah. PowerPoint has some ofthose features, but it's not
nearly as good as word. So Imean, you can, you can boil it

(11:32):
down into a couple of simplesteps. The first thing we
recommend is, when you'rebuilding your document,
everybody who creates adocument, they typically will
add headings in that documentfor different sections of the
document. So if you use Stylesin Word, so when I say that many

(11:53):
people say, Oh, I didn't knowword had styles, right? And
that's okay. But if you find theStyles pane in Microsoft Word,
you're gonna see in the Stylespane, there are default heading
styles called Heading 1, Heading2, Heading 3, Heading 4, if you
use those heading styles, andyou can customize those styles,

(12:17):
by the way, you don't have tokeep them the way that they are
by default. But anyway, if youuse those default heading
styles, that will add headingstructure in the PDF file that
you generate from work. And thereason that's so important, is
because if you think about thisas a sighted user, when we read
documents, we typically scan theheadlines, right? Whether it be

(12:40):
a newspaper, or an onlinearticle, or a flyer, whatever it
may be, we typically scan thoseheadlines. Non-sighted users do
the same thing when usingassistive technology. Right. So
they will read the headings todetermine if that section is
something they want to read moreabout. The headings create

(13:02):
landmarks in the document thatallow them to efficiently
navigate through the document.
Without headings, you'rebasically saying, okay, read
this document from beginning toend. I'm not going to tell you
what each section is about, Ijust want you to read it from
beginning to end. And that's nota great experience. So so using

(13:24):
Styles in Word, probably one ofthe biggest things you could do.
The second biggest thing I wouldsay, is if you add imagery to
your document, so graphics,photos, charts, graphs, you need
to describe them. Becausesomebody who's low vision or
does not have sight, thosefigures, there's no information

(13:48):
contained in those figures thattell them what it's about. So
you and I, as the author need todescribe those figures. And I'll
boil it down to those two steps.
I would say if you do those twothings, it's going to really put
you on a very good path towardscreating a a fairly accessible
file, you know, when you exportto PDF. Do you want to add

(14:12):
anything Dax?

Unknown (14:14):
Well, I think one thing to remember is you touched on
this early on is that not everyprogram is ix can be can export
accessible content. If you're alot of companies base all their
content on Google on GoogleDocs, and Google Docs, while
there are plugins out there thathelp you, it is not the best
workflow to create a Google Docand then try to make an

(14:37):
accessible PDF out of it.
Because it just doesn't come outvery well. And you have to do a
bunch of extra work at the endto try to make it accessible.
And then that's where people arelike, well, this is really hard.
No, you started with a platformthat's problematic. And yeah,
it's Canva is another one that'sout there right now, that is
really hard to it's really easyto use, because people are like,
hey, it's an online platform. Ican throw together a flyer or a

(14:59):
marketing piece really quickly,but try to make that accessible.
It's a nightmare. There's acompany we know called Venngage,
V-E-N-N-G-A-G-E. And they have aplatform very similar to Canva.
But they they went through acouple about a year ago, they
went through a redesign, andthey said, Okay, we're at a

(15:22):
point where we're going toeither go one direction or the
other. And so they decided tomake accessibility and the
content being able to beexported, accessibly, part of
their core development path. Andso now in their program, you can
export that, that, you know, webdesigned flyer, as accessible
as, as you could out of InDesignor any other program. In fact,

(15:46):
what I thought was really cool,Chad was just talking about
describing your charts andgraphs, if you build the charts
or graphs inside Venngage, itactually uses AI to come up with
that description. And it does areally good job, I'm the first
person to say you should not useautomatically generated
anything. But I will say thatbecause you're developing the

(16:07):
charter graph inside Venngage.
It looks at trends, it looks atthe data, it can analyze your
table that you created that linegraph from and really give you
some pretty incredible results.
I was pretty, pretty impressedby that.

Amazing, amazing. And that sort of leads
in really well into the nextquestion about tools and
software. What do you recommendfor professional communicators
when it comes to checking theaccessibility of documents and
also creating them? And on topof that, is it the same for Macs
and PCs?

Dax Castro (16:39):
Well, I'll talk about the tools and then Chad,
you can talk about the Macs andPCs. Right. So the tool, the one
tool that we always tell peopleto start with is the tools that
are built in. So word has theMicrosoft Accessibility Checker,
it is does not mean that if youpass that check your your
documents accessible, it meansthat based on Word's, limited

(17:00):
understanding of accessibility,it has passed what we call no
significant barrier. So startthere use Word's checker, if
you're in Microsoft inPowerPoint, you have that same
ability to run that checker. Ifyou're an Acrobat, use the
accessibility checker insideacrobat. Those are great
starting points. But where itstarts to get a little bit more

(17:22):
complicated is that when youreally consider the user
experience, versus just simplypassing a checker, that's where
knowledge starts to come intoplay. And word trainers like
Chad and I can really help yourorganization's figure out what
it means to have an accessibledocument versus simply passing
the check. Chad?

Yeah, so I mean, you know, one of the things that
Dax and I say quite a bit isthat there are third-party
products out there that aredesigned to help you through
this process. I will I'll go onrecord to say that no program

(18:08):
natively does a perfect job.
None of them you know, Word,PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign.
Amazing program, one of my oneof the main programs that I use,
they all fall short. And so forthat reason, Dax and I both
leverage plugins to kind of getus to the finish line, right, so

(18:30):
that I so that we could workmore efficiently and get the job
done faster. You know, some ofthem do want me to talk about
some of those products.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So if you're using Word, Dax and I are both a
big fan of a product calledaxesWord. That's a A-X-E-S Word.
It's a plugin for Microsoft Wordand really does an amazing job
of, you know, kind of gettingyou to the finish line. Another
product called axesPDF. We usethat product to to remediate PDF

(19:08):
files directly. So sometimesclients will give us PDF files
and say make this compliant it'snot the ideal solution because
we're already... Dax and I wouldsay the cakes already baked
right? You know, once we havethe PDF file, cakes already
baked in now I got to work withwhat I'm given. So access PDF

(19:28):
allows us to fix a lot of theproblems in those files. And
then, if you're a graphicdesigner, like me, like Dax, we
use Adobe InDesign. There's afantastic plugin for InDesign
called Made To Tag, and Made ToTag is a plugin for InDesign
that again, I I do not make PDFsout of InDesign anymore without

(19:53):
Made To Tag. So some other onesfor people to consider. There's
a really cool...So you had alsoasked me about the platform,
right? So every so axesWord,axesPDF, Windows only. The PAC
checker, which we use toevaluate our files, Windows
only. Another product out therethat I would say is like kind of

(20:18):
at the top of the capabilitylist would be CommonLook;
CommonLook is also Windows only.
Another product out there calledGracklePDF, Windows only. And
that's a fairly new product froma company called GrackleDocs,
which is a very great product aswell. And then there's one

(20:39):
product that is Mac-based, andit's called PDFix. It's a
company out of, I'm going to getthis wrong, but it's out of
Europe. I don't want to say thewrong thing. But it is actually
Mac based. So it's the onlyproduct that I know of that is

(21:00):
actually Mac based, althoughMade To Tag is both Mac and
Windows. So that that can beeither or. So those are some of
the products that we use, likeas as professionals, because
trying to do it using the sourcedocument and only Acrobat. It's
just the hard way, and it justtakes too much time. So we

(21:21):
leverage third-party products tospeed that up and do it more
efficiently.

Excellent.
And I'll put make sure to haveall those tools and software
that you mentioned in thedescription of this.

I know it's a bunch.

Right?
That's that's always thatmisconception of like, well,
where do I even begin? I don'teven know what the products are.
So easy access. That's what wegot to do. Yeah, Dax, go ahead.

Unknown (21:45):
Well, you know, one thing to remember is all these
tools help us do it faster.
There, you really need to have acore understanding of the basic
concepts of the Web ContentAccessibility Guidelines. And,
you know, there, we've got adocument called WCAG in Plain
English, the web contentaccessibility guideline kind of

(22:07):
explained, in layman's terms fordocuments. It's a great handout,
because it is a little complex.
But without that basic knowledgeof understanding how to apply
these tools, it can really beoverwhelming when you jump into
a program like common look. Andyou and there's all these things
and you're like, oh my gosh,yes, this is a great tool. But

(22:30):
how do I use it. And so rememberthat you start small, like Chad
said, right? You styles, use alttext, you describe your images
get that far. And you're 60% ofthe way there. And then the rest
of it is stuff that you will youwill learn as you go we we
always say some accessibility isbetter than no accessibility. So

(22:52):
being able to find those easy,quick wins is a great way to
start your journey withoutfeeling like oh my gosh, how do
I do all this stuff? Becauseit's, it's a lot and it can be
overwhelming.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great point.
And also that the same progressover perfection, you're not
meant to, you're not going to beperfect right out the gate,
right. But implementing thosesteps along the way, you'll get
better and better and better.
And you may never be perfect,because it's always changing and
evolving as the technology andthe software changes. But always
being part of that evolution andstaying up to date, you'll

(23:27):
always have that progress inplace. So I love that you said
that

Dax Castro (23:32):
100% Agree.

So how can organizations ensure that their
digital content from either thewebsites all the way to PDFs
meet the accessibilitystandards?

Unknown (23:41):
Well, I think there's a difference between meeting the
standard and being a good userexperience. No one's ever going
to sue you or have an issue withyour documents, because you
didn't meet a standard, they'regonna have an issue with you or
give you a demand letter, or youhave their lawyers contact you
because they couldn't get accessto the information. So the

(24:03):
standards help us get there.
They give us a common platformor a common level of
understanding of what it meansto have an accessible document.
But really, understanding theuser experience I think is the
first thing that you should do.
Make sure you you have a goodconcept of how a person using a

(24:23):
screen reader would navigate thedocument. What is it to use a
screen magnifier? When you haveto use a screen magnifier
because not everybody who usesassistive technology is blind,
right? Some people just have lowvision and they'll use a screen
reader to enlarge the screen.
And when they do that, yourcolumns and how you align things
on the page really can affecthow much swiping a person using

(24:43):
a screen magnifier has to do ifyou have a two column layout on
a document, you have now doubledthe amount of swipes that they
have to do to read through thatcontent versus having a single
column layout where there's youknow have as many swipes to go
back and forth to read each ofthose lines. So again, you know,
understanding that userexperience, I think is the first

(25:07):
thing that you should do toreally get an idea of what it
means to have an accessibledocument. The second thing, I
think, would be passing thosecheckers. And And finally, I
think, I think not even finally,but along the way, getting the
training to really have theknowledge to feel confident

(25:28):
because we talked to so manyorganizations, right Chad, that
say, the Acrobat Checker, all weneed to do is pass the Acrobat
Checker. That's, that's foraccessible, right, and they just
don't understand that that's agreat starting point.

Yeah.

Dax Castro (25:44):
But you could be completely still a train wreck
of a document, your documentcould be nothing but paragraph
tags in your document, and passthe checker. And it makes a
terrible user experience.

That's very true. I was at a conference
recently, and somebody wastalking about even PAC the PDF
accessibility checker, thattheir document, which was about
20 pages pass pack, but the onlytag that it had were all P tags,
because it was tagged andpassed, right. So understanding
and learning what you need tolook for to ensure that it's
actually user friendly, notjust, you know, passing that

(26:20):
check, and getting thatcheckmark is so key to ensure
that your documents areaccessible.

One of the things that Dax and I say all the time
is that compliance is acombination of automated and
manual checks, because neitherone of them alone is going to be
sufficient. Right? Like as ahuman. I'm going to miss things,
I'm going to make mistakes. Andan automated checker, I always

(26:49):
say the checkers are fairlydumb, right? Like, like they,
they can check for certainthings. But as you just pointed
out, like, it's only looking foreverything to have a tag. And if
every tag is a P tag, it says,you're good to go, you know,
thumbs up, you're good to go.
When in reality, that's not agood user experience at all. So

(27:10):
yeah, it's, you know,accessibility is not without its
challenges, but it's somethingthat can be learned by
everybody. And the more you doit, the more knowledge you gain,
the easier it becomes. Right? Imean, Dax and I've been doing
this for a long time. And, youknow, we we've gotten, I'd like

(27:31):
to think we got pretty good atit.

Dax Castro (27:36):
Well, it's funny, there's this, there's this point
that one of the matrix is one ofmy most favorite movies. And
there's this point where the theoperator is sitting there
looking at the screens with allof the matrix code, kind of
streaming down the screens. AndNeil walks in, and he says, How
do you? Do you even understandthat? He goes, Yeah, I don't
even notice it anymore. I justsee blonde, brunette, redhead,

(27:58):
right? He's like, he just seesthe code chat. And I, I really
think that when I look at thePDF, and I open what we call the
tags tree, or all of theaccessibility tags, and the PDF
document, I it just sings to me,I can just tell what they did,
how they created it, whatprogram they used, if they how
they designed a certain element,just based on the tags and the

(28:20):
the order of the tags. But thatjust takes time, right? I mean,
that just takes 1000s and 1000sand 1000s of documents, right?

If you can be a fly on the wall, when one of us
is evaluating the document willbe like going down this
accurate, like, wrong, wrong,wrong. What the heck is this?
You're definitely that'stypically what you'll hear from
us, you know? So it's alwaysinteresting, you know, when
we're when we're going throughit, but he's right. I mean,
like, we can almost tell whichprogram created the file based

(28:51):
on the tag structure. You know,it's kind of bizarre.

That's...I find it interesting how there
are certain telltale signs thatdifferent software will put in
that you can learn that I knowI've had to remediate something
from Canva. And I just screamedwhy are there like so many
nested tags just to get to sortof things. So it's really

(29:15):
interesting to see that and thengetting to the point where you
can really tell where things arecoming from and all that is a
skill set that I'm hoping to getto one day like you too, that's
for sure.

Unknown (29:25):
Well, you know, there we talked about some of those
tools tools like CommonLook,right, so, so think of a
PowerPoint file. Anytime youcreate a piece of text, it gets
exported correctly as text, butthe moment you give it a
coloured box, a background or astroke or anything to the box.
PowerPoint does not understandhow to export just the text and

(29:50):
leave the box on its own.
InDesign does a much better jobat that. PowerPoint will export
a figure which is the the tagfor the box itself. And then
inside that figure, it'll exportthe paragraph or the text. The
problem is assistive technologydoesn't like that. And it
creates a whole series ofproblems. But if you have a tool
like CommonLook, you can saveyourself literally an hour's

(30:12):
worth of work, moving all thosethings around and correcting it
by simply going into common lookand saying, Hey, find all of my
paragraphs, who are nestedinside a figure tag, and pull
them out. And in literally onephrase and a couple of clicks,
you've done your entiredocument, it's that kind of

(30:32):
level of understanding that whenyou can understand how the tags
are, how what you want them tobe, then you can use these
third-party tools to make thathour long job to be literally a
minute.

Matisse Hamel-Neli (30:49):
That's...And I think it goes back to
understanding the basics of itso that you know what to look
for. And yes, get to that point.
So, you know, if some folks maybe listening and thinking, oh,
you know, well, I'll just getone of these third-party apps to
assist me with this. But youneed to know the basics to know
what you're going to be usingthat third party app for and
yeah, diving in headfirst, andbeing like, well, what does
that?

I mean, CommonLook is a great example of that. And
with CommonLook, we always say,with increased power comes
increased responsibility,because as powerful as
CommonLook, is, you can hoseyour document equally as fast
using common look, if you don'tknow what you're doing, you
know, yep. So you're really, youknow, CommonLook is tricky,

(31:31):
because it's so powerful, butyou really need to understand
the tag structure. If you'restill not solid on the tag
structure, I would not recommendCommonLook for anybody, because
it's just, it's like giving abrand new driver, a Ferrari. You
know what I mean? You know, it'sjust too much power. You know,

(31:52):
for somebody who's not familiarwith it.

Yeah.

Dax Castro (31:55):
But the nice thing is, is that when you run the
checker in CommonLook, it givesyou like, hey, we noticed this,
here's three different ways youcan fix this, pick one, and
usually the first way it tellsyou to fix it is the right way.
But like Chad said, great powercomes great responsibility. If
you pick one of those otherones, and you apply it to 50
other areas in that document,you have now either done a great

(32:18):
thing, or completely hosed yourdocument. And there is no, there
is Undo in CommonLook, for sure.
But there's no save as justlike, such a crazy, like you get
in the middle of somethingyou're like, I'm not sure if I
should do this or not, can Ijust save this as a different
copy? So that I can go back andhave a launching point? And you

(32:39):
can't?

Yeah, like every other program in the free world
has Save As, right like everyprogram, right? And so like when
you use CommonLook, you alwayshave to get into a totally
different mode. Like normallywhat I do is I'll duplicate my
file, before I open it inCommonLook so that I always have
an exit strategy, in casesomething goes haywire, right?

(33:03):
In case I screw things up. Butlike in normal programs, you
kind of do your thing. And yousay, say that right? Save a copy
of it. Not in CommonLook. It'sbizarre. It's an I, I, I can't
believe that programmatically.
It's that hard to implement. Butit just doesn't exist. It's
crazy. Yeah.

Shifting gears a little bit, we talked
about the end user experiencebeing sort of the priority and
key for a document to really beaccessible, right? Because you
can say it's accessible. But ifthe end user can't access it,
then is it accessible to them?
Not really. What are someexamples that you think of how
inaccessible content cannegatively impact a brand or
organization?

Well, I mean, I think we're where we're running
into this right now, is withsocial media, right? You know,
there's all these brands outthere who are very active on
social media, but what a lot ofpeople don't realize, like, you
know, Instagram, for example,right? Instagram is entirely

(34:12):
image based, right? And, youknow, you know, you know, Dax
and I have had people, you know,that we've been talking to and
they're like, really, blindpeople are on Instagram. And
we're like, Well, yeah, theythey enjoy it just as much as we
do, right? But, but they can'tenjoy it. If we don't describe

(34:35):
those images, right?

Unknown (34:37):
Or enough for you stuff a million hashtags in your alt
text. This is a big problemright now, where people are
using what we call Blackhattechniques, like hey, alt texts
describe my image, okay? Hashtagthis hashtag that like 50
hashtags in alt text. And so ifa person using assistive
technology wants to hear thedescription of what the image is

(35:00):
They get just a word salad ofhashtags, versus the actual
description of what's going onin the video. I see this a lot.
And like, when there's an actionhappening in a video that isn't
really apparent, right, kids canbe playing in a park and the
water and you say, you know, or,you know, the description for

(35:21):
your social media posts mightsay, just say, another wet day
at the park. And you wouldthink, Oh, they must be playing
in the water, but it's reallyyour dog. So it's a picture of a
dog slobbering all over a ball,but you didn't describe the
image. So the the description ofthe the, the post doesn't really
match the the actual image inthe in the thing? So, yeah,

(35:43):
definitely social media.

Yeah.

I mean, that's where it could negatively affect
the brand, right? Because, youknow, if you're, you know,
whatever your company is, youknow, and you're trying to, you
know, portray your brand, andyou're not describing, you know,
the images that you're posting,you know, you're, you're
excluding people from thatexperience, you know, there was,

(36:07):
there was a situation and Ican't remember who it was that
you might remember, but theywere hiding messages in the alt
text of their images. Do youremember this Matisse

I'm literally trying to Google...

Unknown (36:20):
It's McDonald's. So it was, it was McDonald's did a
little arrow down to the alttext pointing to the alt text
button inside Twitter. And theywere using it for an unintended
purpose. And they got kind of abunch of backlash for improper
use of alt text like like not,and not understanding that this

(36:40):
is a real feature that affectsreal people, and that it's
really important. And they got,they got hoodsport. On the flip
side of that, NASA has done a,it's hot and cold. NASA is a big
organization. And they post allthese great photos of you know,
stellar images and things thattelescopes have taken. But if

(37:00):
you go on their social media,some of their alt text is
amazing, very well described.
And they've gotten a lot ofgreat social media press for it.
But then you look a littlefarther down. And it's just back
to possible image of sunglasseswhen it's choose to star side by
side or something because no onebothered to actually write alt

(37:20):
text for the for thedescription, so your brand can
be positively impacted by doinga good thing. State Farm.
There's a bank in Canada, it'sred. Tell me the banks that
ScotiaBank, ScotiaBank does amajor great job at doing acts of
of incorporating accessibility

into everything they do (37:41):
video campaigns, making sure their
contents accessible, all ofthat. As an organization, you
can get a lot of really greatpress if you just consider
accessibility as part of yourculture, and not just something
you talk about on GlobalAccessibility Awareness Day.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. There was also
a really interesting examplethat Dr. Georgia Carroll put out
recently on LinkedIn, I've beenfollowing it as an F1 fan or
Formula One fan, where shetalked about how on race day, I
think it was some I think it'sin like 2% of the content put
out from f1. And the individualteams had alternative text to

(38:24):
it. So for example, the f1posted the race schedule, and
also the standings from thatrace, and there was no alt text.
And then she kind of sort ofcalled them out on it, and also
the teams and then the next raceweek, they just said, you know,
here's the standing and justwrote race standings as the
ultimate...

Unknown (38:42):
Yeah. Right. It's like, that doesn't tell you anything.
Right. Right.

So it's, it's not just, you know, the
small businesses that need tothink about this. It's also the
larger organizations andcompanies as well, when it comes
to digital accessibility,particularly on social media.
You know, you have those fanswith disabilities who love F1
and engage with it. But if theycan't do that on social because
they don't get the informationthat they deserve, and should be

(39:07):
getting through the alt text. SoI find that really interesting.
And something that you know,when I speak at conferences, and
also, you know, Beyonce gotsued. Rhianna for Fenty, and
they're like, oh, Beyonce, notBeyonce, and you're like, yeah,
it's because something as simpleas alternative text wasn't there
on their website.

Unknown (39:24):
Well, and you talk about, you know, kind of moving
a little bit to DEI, right Lizzygot, actually someone called her
out on social media for using awhat we consider, I guess,
probably a negative orderogatory term in one of her
songs. She immediately went backto the studio and re-recorded
that section and re released thesong saying, hey, as a large

(39:49):
person, I would never wantsomeone to feel that kind of
way. And so I took great care tomake sure and so it's people
like that, that hey, we makemistakes, right? We're gonna say
something wrong, you might callsomeone, you might say, Oh,
that's a blind person, whenreally you should say that's a
person who is blind, right? Forpeople first language, you're

(40:11):
gonna make mistakes. But if youif you at least learn from them
or acknowledge them, I think youdo a great service to yourself.
And to the idea that this is ajourney, we always say
accessibility is a journey,you're going to start at one
place and be farther along everyyear as long as you do the work.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So usually,
when it comes to legalrequirements, businesses and
organizations and professionalcommunicators are guilty of this
thing. Okay. Well, it's just mywebsite, forgetting that
websites also house documents.

Dax Castro (40:40):
Right.

Right? So what legal requirements do
companies need to be aware ofwhen it comes to their document
accessibility?

Unknown (40:48):
Well, depends on what you're talking about. Now, I
know that you're in Canada,right? So you have AODA, right?
AODA says that if your yourorganization is more than 50
employees, whether it's privateor public, your content must be
accessible. That includes yourdocuments and your web content.
And the United States,currently, the we just had

(41:11):
legislation that was released bythe DOJ saying that document and
web accessibility now wascovered under the Title II of
Americans with Disabilities Act.
So Ada is now absorbed, the the,the I don't know if the teeth is
the right way to call it but theacknowledgement that
accessibility is now not justfederal and state agencies, but

(41:34):
but everyone that you as aprivate as a company could be
sued on the grounds of theAmericans with Disabilities Act,
or even the Unruh Act. And andall of that to say that the
short answer is if you'reputting content out on the web,
especially documents, or, youknow, videos, or other things
that people are digesting, beprepared, make sure it's

(41:58):
accessible, because if not inthe United States, you're gonna
get sued, in Canada, you getfined. And in fact, one of the
situations says that, uh, youare a manager, and you can be
personally fined for forknowingly, when it's when you
can prove that that managerknowingly thumbed their nose at
accessibility up to $50,000.

(42:20):
That's a that's a big risk forsomeone who's a mid-level
manager in charge of, you know,content on the web.

Exactly.
And that's just not we're justtalking North America right now.
But like Ireland, for example,their accessibility legislation
has jail time associated withit.

Dax Castro (42:35):
Wow. I did not know that learn, always learning.
Right? That is that is somethingnew. And you know, and then, of
course, en 301549, to be verycomplicated about the title, I
wish they'd come up withsomething different. But the
European accessibilitylegislation is just, you know,
they just re-released kind oftheir new, their new, new thing,

(42:56):
but they have a committee thatis in charge of reviewing.
Whereas in the United States,it's kind of like, well,
organizations can hire a lawyerand sue, but in the EU, you
can...there is literally is anoversight organization now in
charge of reviewing and andmanaging accessibility rights
for organizations and forpeople.

Yeah, yeah.
And I think everyone needs tosort of look at wherever you're
listening to this, what is thelegislation requirement in your
organization, or in yourcountry, and in a lot of cases,
it's at least referring back tothe Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines, or WCAG, 2.0. Atleast, I know, here in Ontario,
AODA is from 2.0, because it wascreated so many years ago. But

(43:40):
what CAG is now at 2.2. So ifyou are just starting to
implement, try to create yourcontent in association with 2.2.
So at least your future proofingit as much as possible for when,
you know, at some point 3.0comes out.

Unknown (43:56):
Right. Well, the nice thing is the difference between
2.0, 2.1, and 2.2, pretty small.
There are things about reflowand or... repeating content and
maybe hit side the size of yourbuttons and checkboxes and
things. But overall, if youstart at 2.0, you're gonna be at
a great point to move forward.

(44:20):
And what we you know, people,most people are not going to sue
you because your hitbox was toosmall, they're gonna see you
because I open the document andthere's no tags at all. So yeah,
get to that base level, and thenimprove from there.

Exactly, exactly. Back to documents and
creating the documents, notnecessarily the heading
structure and that sort ofthing. But we always hear, and
Chad, you touched on this aswell. Well, when it comes to
creating my documents, if I'mbeing accessible, I'm losing
design and it's going to beboring, and it's going to be you
know, black and white andnothing fancy. How do

(44:54):
accessibility considerationsimpact the design process of
digital documents and And canyou be creative when you are
creating documents?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, the answer is absolutely.
And the way you do it is bybeing creative, right? Like,
that's the secret, right? So,your your designers, right? Like
your creative people, you justhave to get creative, right? You
know, there are, you know, I usethis example, we went out to a

(45:26):
restaurant recently. And theyhanded us the menu, the menu was
printed on yellow paper. And allof the headings were yellow.
Now, I was like, I was like,Ummm...problem, like, even if
you're not even thinking aboutaccessibility, like, as a
designer, right? That should befront and center, right, you

(45:48):
should be paying attention tothat, right. And so as a
designer, you just have to getcreative. There are a number of
tools out there, I wouldrecommend check out Adobe Color.
The website is color.adobe.com.
You can plug in colours, ittells you if you have any low
contrast or colourblindbarriers. As well TPGi is colour

(46:08):
contrast analyzer is a good wayto evaluate colour as well. Dax
and I have a script that wewrote for InDesign, that
generates friendly colourcombinations from all the colors
in your Swatches panel. So ifyou, you know, if you add

(46:33):
colours that you want to use,and you run this, it will show
you the colour combinations thatyou can use in your documents.
So there are tools out there,there are ways to do it, you
just have to pay attention.

Dax Castro (46:47):
In fact, the script goes a little bit farther in
that if you want to compare justto with tints, like if you want
to say okay, I want to use blue,and I want to use purple one,
tints can and so it will build achart based on 10% increments
and show you hey, if I want touse purple, I need to use 30%

(47:08):
blue, right, and so then that'sa good colour combination, and
then it'll tell you which onesdon't pass. So it's a really
great way to explore colour.
WebAIM has a colour contrastchecker that's free, that's
web-based. In fact, what'sreally cool is the eyedropper
actually works from the browseracross any document you have
open on your screen. So you knowa lot of these tools are PC

(47:29):
only. This is one that itdoesn't matter. Because if
you're on a Mac or a PC, you cansample that colour contrast, you
know, throughout. So yeah,there's definitely some good
colour contrast, good colourtools out there. And if you use
Illustrator, most people don'tknow that there is a colourblind
car simulator insideIllustrator. So if you go to

(47:49):
Preview, to print, preview, andthen change the mode, you can
change that mode to Deuteranopiaor protanopia. And really, you
could use either one that'sreally close to the same, but
it's gonna let you know ifyou've got colours that are
potentially colorblind barriersfor people looking at your
graph.

Excellent.
And I think this is this ties inreally well to the next question
in terms of how can PRprofessionals integrate
accessibility into their contentstrategy from the outset? So
considering colour right off thebat, if they're creating a
social media calendar orcampaign, right, there are all
these tools available, but whatelse? What...What else would you
recommend?

Well, I mean, colour is the easy one, right? I
mean, colour. Colour is one ofthe things that Dax and I tell
people to do at the very, very,very beginning. Like, as you're
picking colours, as you'rechoosing colours for your
design, make sure that they theyhave minimum colour contrast,
and make sure that they'recolourblind friendly, right? Do
that at the outset. Right beforeyou move on. Because if you wait

(48:53):
until the end, it's hard. That'swhen it gets hard. Right. So
colour is a big one. You know,again, it a lot of it depends on
which program you're using,right. But with all of the
products, there are somefundamental steps you can take
to make sure that when you makea PDF from those applications,

(49:17):
that your your PDF will. That'sthe difference between being
accessible and compliant. Right.
And they're not mutuallyexclusive that each one of them
has value, right. And a documentcan be accessible without being
compliant. And so so by takingsome fundamental basic steps,
you can, you know, you can getthere, it's really not super

(49:41):
hard.

Unknown (49:43):
I would say the biggest thing you can do is really set
your designers up for success.
And this is what we teach. Wehave this product we call
workflow evaluation. Webasically interview all your,
all your teams to figure out howyou're doing things and then
tell you How you can injectaccessibility along the way, and
kind of give you a battle plan.

(50:04):
But one of the key points wealways say is that you should
always have a brand style guidethat considers accessibility.
Take the pressure off thedesigners show them, hey, when
you use these four colours astext, here are the combinations
you can use for backgroundcolour, or this is the size of

(50:24):
our heading structure, or theseare our first tier colours. And
these are our second tiercolours, empower them with the
decision that with the knowledgeto know that the decisions
already been made on how to usecolour from an organization
standpoint, because then you'renot the the end designer is not
struggling, maybe not always, inevery situation, there might be

(50:46):
certain situations where like,well, I'm building this chart,
and it's not one of thesecolours. But for the majority of
decisions, it's not a decision,it's looking it up in the
guideline and saying, "Oh, ifI'm using this, then this is
what I do." And that just makesit so much easier than trying to
kind of basically reinvent thewheel every time you design a
document.

Yeah. Yeah.
And um, what? When it comes todocuments and the creation
process, you know, if we look atdocuments from 20 years ago,
when they were accessible for 20years ago, versus you know, 10
years ago versus today, right?
Some people think thataccessibility is a one and done
well, I've made it accessiblefor that, that moment in time,

(51:26):
I'm good for the future. Howdoes creating accessible content
and the evolution of it with theadvancements in technology have
either helped or hindered thelegacy documents that are on our
website? And what shouldorganizations really be
considering when it comes tothat legacy content?

Unknown (51:44):
Chad, you want to talk about the length of alt text and
how that's changed over theyears? I think that'd be a good.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I will say before
we go too far, I mean, if youmade your document compliant
within the realm of WCAG, yourdocument is mostly
future-proofed. Right? I mean,it's not like, you know, you
know, we reach 30 years afterthe date, and all of a sudden,

(52:14):
it doesn't work anymore. Youknow what I mean? I think for
the most part, you know, you'rein good shape. But, but alt text
is a great example, Dax, wherewhat used to happen was, we
always recommend for alt text,keep the alt text as concise as
you can, while stillsufficiently describing what the

(52:36):
image is about, right? And partof the reason is, because as
your alt text gets lengthy, theexperience somewhat diminishes.
Because a lot of assistivetechnology will keep repeating
the word graphic, every so manywords, if I don't know what the

(52:57):
number is off the top of myhead, but let's say it reads 256
characters. And then after that,it keeps repeating the word
graphic when you have reallylengthy text, right? Dax and
I've seen examples where peoplewrite like a short novel, of old
text, you know what I mean?
Ever, like, whoa, like, that's alittle excessive, you know. So,
the problem with alt text is,the experience is not robust.

(53:21):
There's no structure in alttext, you can't include
hyperlinks in alt text. It'sreally just like reading
notepad. Right? And, and so youwant to try to provide the user
with the best experiencepossible. Now, more recently,
we've noticed that the screenreaders have kind of adjusted

(53:43):
the way that they the way thatthey voiced that, right Dax?

Unknown (53:48):
Well, the so going back, so it used to be that a
screen reader would cut off yourtext, you've only had a certain
amount of characters to actuallyvoice. And so we used to say, it
should be two to threesentences, 250 characters, I've
even heard people say 150characters. And the reason is,
because back in the old days, Ican say that back in the old

(54:10):
days, or the olden days.

You just showed your age.

Dax Castro (54:14):
I know. You said just cut off the alt text, you'd
get to a certain point, it wouldjust stop reading. Right. So if
you designed a document in 2010,the old texts that you could
have put in for that bar chartor line graph or whatever, was
very minimal. Now today, alltexts can be much longer, you
will, as Chad said, hurt hearthe word graphic to let the user

(54:36):
know, hey, you're still in thedescription for this image. But
you can go up to 1,200 or 1,500characters. I do not recommend
that. But the idea is that theuser experience has changed. So
now if I need three or foursentences, I can do that in all
tech. So whereas you might havehad a document you did in 2010,

(54:58):
if it was compliant and a goodyou user experience that alt
text was bar chart showing, youknow, sales for 2025 at 12
million. But in today'stechnology, because assistive
technologies might, you know,has advanced, you could say
showing and then go through fivedifferent months worth of data
points. So So I think there issome some difference things like

(55:20):
title tags, and table summaries,and, and captions all have
evolved over time to allow for adifferent user experience as the
programs have gotten better.
Well, if I had 10,000 documentson my website, I don't think I'm
going back to all the ones thatare done before 2015 and
revamping them, but maybe, maybeyou look at the ones that are

(55:40):
the most downloaded off of yourwebsite and say, okay, these
100, we're going to solve. Andwe're going to make sure that
they are current and up to dateand have good user experiences,
and kind of move in thatdirection.

Excellent.

And a lot of people, you know, Dax and I
specialize in training, like,you know, when we started our
company, we started a companyunder the premise that we just
want to help people, right. And,and, of course, we're trying to
make a living doing this too.
But But fundamentally, we'rejust trying to help people. And
what we often encounter is, youknow, we'll train people, and
they're like, Oh, this is thisis great. But they're like, but

(56:18):
we currently have 500 PDFs onour website that are not
accessible. And that can bereally overwhelming for people,
right? That they're like, onthere under this mountain, other
like, how can we possibly getcaught up. And so just
understand, like, like,companies, such as Dax, and

(56:38):
myself, CHAX Training andConsulting, we offer remediation
services to help clients get outfrom under that mountain, so
that they can just start at aneutral playing field and say,
Okay, from now on, we're goingto make our documents
accessible. Right? Certainly,there's a cost involved with it.
But it's not, we're not talkingsix figures here. You know,

(57:03):
we're, you know, the cost of itis a way for you to get out from
under that mountain ofdocuments, so that you could
start at a place where you canjust focus on what you're
creating, moving forward.

Excellent.
Excellent. So from yourperspectives, being in this
industry for so long, and beingsort of the top tier go to
experts, in my opinion, when itcomes to this sort of stuff.

Dax Castro (57:30):
Oh, thank you.

Awww you're making me blush.

Listeners can't see it, but they are
blushing. I've done it. Do yousee in digital accessibility
that you think professionalcommunicators should prepare
for?

Dax Castro (57:46):
I don't know. Do you want to answer first you want me
to go?

Mine will probably be shorter. So I didn't mean
that... I didn't

Unknown (57:57):
If you could see the scowl. If looks could kill,
you'd be lying on the floor?

No, like, I think what I would say is like
accessibility legislation iscoming. Right, like, and so
there's a lot of companies outthere who are just kind of like
pushing this off. They're like,let's kick the can down the

(58:26):
road. We'll deal with it later.
We listen to federal agencieshave done this for years. You
know what I mean? Like, youknow, I've gone into federal
agencies, and we'll do like aquick introduction before class.
And people are like, Oh, well,now that it's a law, we need to
make our document accessible.
I'm like, What, whoa, whoa,whoa, it's been a law for 25
years, right? This is nothinglike, they didn't just pop this

(58:48):
on you. Right. This has beenaround for a long time. So but I
would say like, for companies,like, I do feel like, you know,
accessibility legislation isgonna get more stringent, you
know, to me, and, you know, thewriting's on the wall. Canada.
You know, Ireland, as youmentioned, some other, you know,

(59:08):
countries, you know, it's athing, right, and they've
created legislation around thelived environment. And we've had
that for some time. It's only amatter of time until digital
documents catch up. And so Iwould encourage people, you
know, jump on this early so thatit's not such a shock to your
system, right? Startimplementing things early, that

(59:32):
are going to benefit you movingforward so that when this
legislation does happen, or whenthings get more stringent,
you're not totally blindsided byit, you're already, you know,
you're already putting forth theinitiative to make it happen.

Yeah

Go ahead. Thanks.

Unknown (59:50):
So I think there's a couple of trends that I think
are interesting. So first ofall, the one trend that's out
there on the tip of everybody'stongue right now, which is AI,
and how is AI going Need toimprove accessibility? I know
we're very close ties to Adobe,we consult for them on a regular
basis. And one of the thingsthey've been actually making
some pretty groundbreakingimprovements on is the ability

(01:00:13):
to autotag the documents insideAdobe Acrobat. And so it used to
be, and I will just say thisplainly garbage. And it was not
great. And we tell people neverclick autotag, they're starting
to starting to use AI in a muchmore productive environment way
to now evaluate that documentand get much better results. Is

(01:00:36):
it perfect? Nope, they got along way to go. But it's much
better on most simple documents,you can autotag a document and
be 90% correct. And I thinkthat's huge. Whereas before, if
you add a table or anythingother than just text, good luck,
and even then the text didn'tget tagged correctly. So I think

(01:00:56):
AI is one of those things. Solearning how to use AI to write
alt text, I think is still inits infancy. Chat GPT 4.0, is
doing a much better job incertain circles for coming up
with alt text. But in othersituations, it's still falling
very short, and other people'sengines still the same. I think

(01:01:17):
we're gonna see an improvement.
But I think that we're still abetter ways from there. The
other thing I think is as atrend in the accessibility world
is getting training as anorganization, we're seeing more
and more organizations startbuilding community areas of
practice or building centres ofexcellence or having an

(01:01:37):
accessibility program withintheir organization. As this
becomes more and more of arequirement as a default, rather
than a special consideration.
Chad mentioned legislation,almost every state in the United
States has some local level ofaccessibility requirements in

(01:02:01):
the United in California, wehave AD 434, and 1757. And in
addition to the Unruh at thefederal level, and the Title II
at the federal level, so if youthink that you're going to be
you know, that, Oh, I'm adentist, or I'm a doctor, or I
just run a marketing firm, itdoesn't really apply to me.
You're gonna get a worldaccording to DAX, I think in the

(01:02:23):
next 10 years, you're gonna seethat you are going to now be
part of that group.

Chad Chelius (01:02:28):
Well, especially if you service the public,
right? And that's really Yeah,like you said, doctors,
dentists, veterinarians, andlike all these companies who,
who service the public, and youknow, Dax you and I say all the
time, other people do, too. Notevery disability can be seen.
Right. And I think that's wherea lot of people get hung up. You

(01:02:50):
know, we, Dax, and I hear thisfrom all all the time. Oh, we
don't have anybody at a companywho's blind.

Matisse Hamel-Nelis (01:02:58):
Yeah.

Okay. You got a lot of people at your company
were in these things. And theseare assistive devices to, you
know what I mean? So I'm sorry,I'm helping

Unknown (01:03:09):
I'm sorry Chad. I'm helping you along the way. I'll
help you remember that we're onon a podcast, not video. It's
all good. Well, but but

as we're doing the podcast, we could see each
other. And so that makes methink that it's a video podcast.
So I apologize, everybody, I waspointing to my glasses when I
said that. You know, a lot ofpeople forget that glasses or
assistive devices. I've onlyworn glasses, I think for two
years now. And I'm at a pointwhere if I sit down in front of
my computer without them, Ican't see. I cannot see what I'm

(01:03:40):
doing. You know, so. So I relyon those devices. So when when
people in companies say thatthey're like, oh, there's nobody
in our company who's blind?
Yeah, but they can be lowvision. They can be colourblind,
you know, one of those users maynot be aware that the biggest
part of the population of userswho are colorblind, are older
white males.

Unknown (01:04:02):
Yeah. You know, so And who are those in our
organizations, they're the CEOs,and C suites that are reviewing
our charts, graphs andinfographics and the big reports
that we put out, and I will tellyou, you you, I could never, I
could never back this up. But ifyou put out a charter, a graph
that is not colourblindfriendly, and I'm reviewing your
proposal, I'm going to be lessinclined to pick you, you know,

(01:04:25):
I gotta believe I'd be lessinclined to pick your company
versus someone else whoconsidered my colourblindness
and created a graphic becausepeople don't want to disclose
their disability. They don'twant to have to disclose what's
going on. And so and why shouldthey use it?

Exactly.

Dax Castro (01:04:43):
Yeah.

Yeah.

You should just be accessible. Right?

Yeah.

Yep.

This has been an absolutely amazing talk,
and we've only chatted for anhour. You have your own podcast
and I want folks to check it outand listen to it but I want you
both to tell us... to speak toCHAX Chat a little bit more. So
individuals who were listeningcan really buy now are probably
like, I need everything theyhave to say, just a bit more of

(01:05:10):
a promotion around CHAX Chat sothey can actually listen to this
more frequently and learn andgrow and become more accessible
as professional communicators.
So take it away and tell us alittle bit more about CHAX Chat.

Unknown (01:05:20):
Well, I will say that we have more than 50 hours of
podcast I did, I did we have 115episodes and counting are
usually about 35 minutes long.
They span all so not just deepdive into PDF documents, but we
had a lawyer on just two weeksago, or I'm not sure when this
will air but several episodesago that talked about the legal

(01:05:40):
aspects of accessibility. We'vehad people from Adobe people
with lived experiences, allsorts of things, not just
document and deep dive, but thenthere's a fair bit of that too.
You can find us on every podcastplatform out there, if you just
search CHAX or Chad Chelius. Ifyou'd search Chelius or Dax, or
CHAX, you're gonna find us, I'vemade sure that all of that's all

(01:06:03):
all tagged and correct. But Iwould say Chad, I think
following us on social media onon LinkedIn, especially look for
Chad Chelius or Dax Castrothere. And, you know, finally
the website. Right, Chad?

Yeah.

You know, we've got our classes on there. And maybe
you could talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, Dax and I, we put on a webinar every
week. Well, mostly every week, Ithink we do about three weeks
per month. We try to giveourselves a little bit of a
break every now and then. But wewe do webinars on various
aspects of documentaccessibility. I'm sure not all

(01:06:46):
specific to documentaccessibility, Dax, you do a
really good one called designingwith accessibility in mind.
Yeah, you also do one called thesecrets of writing effective
alternate text.
Yeah, those are great. Wellattended. Yeah

yeah.

I do Adobe InDesign, which is also another
well attended webinar that wedo. We also do accessibility for
Word. We do...

Forms

Forms. Yep. Yeah.
So you know, we do a lot ofdifferent topics. And we're also
always open to other topics, youknow, if anybody has an idea of
something they wish we wouldcover, just reach out to us, you
know, because more than likely,we could accommodate them.

Unknown (01:07:27):
Well, and I'll tell you, this is why I'm the social
media guy, and Chad's thetrainer, the web address for our
website to actually get there.
Right after all thatinformation, the web address is
accessibilityunraveled.com. Sothat's accessibilityunraveled,
U-N-R-A-V-E-L-E-D.com, and youcan sign up for the classes
there, you can download we havea handout called 10 things you

(01:07:53):
can do to improve accessibilitywithout being an expert, I
highly recommend any of you whoare new to accessibility, go
download that form for free orthat document for free. It's
great to distribute within yourorganizations that you don't
have to know all the technicalends. But there are simple
things you can do to make yourdocuments more accessible. So
feel free to do that.

And again, just like the other software,
the website and the documentwill be available for download.
If you look at the descriptionof this podcast to make it easy
for everybody. Thank you both somuch for today, but before I let
you go, this is PRN latte. So Ido have to ask, what is your
favorite go-to caffeinatedbeverage that gets you through
the day?

Oh my gosh. I mean, my my go to every morning
I make a pour over. Right. So Igrind my coffee fresh and I make
a pour over that. That's kind ofmy go to. We also have a
Nespresso machine. So like everynow and then I'm like really
hankering for something. Oh, Iknow you asked me for one but

(01:08:58):
I'm giving you three. Dax sentme a Moka Pot. That is one of my
favorites. I don't drink it allthe time. That's more like a
treat for myself. But you putlike espresso in there. And then
it like percolates and createsthis really rich deep dark

(01:09:19):
coffee. And if you want to do itright, you you like mix some
sugar and like create like apaste of the sugar. And then you
pour the milk over and it gets anice crema on top. It's
phenomenal.

It's delicious.

So for me a little I'll do a sidebar a bit. We have
alpaca and one of our alpaca isnamed Maki and but it stands for
caramel macchiato. So he couldmaki is caramel colored. So we
are trying to think of a nameand my favorite Starbucks is
caramel macchiato a quad. So Ido Carmo maki Got a quad. But at

(01:10:02):
home, I drink Cafe Bustillo. Ilove that as a coffee. And I get
both the beans and the ground. Iusually have a bag of beans, and
a can of ground just in case Idon't feel like grinding it at
the time. But again, I love theMoka Pot and I have a coffee
press and a tea pot. So I do theinstant hot water in like 90

(01:10:26):
seconds and use the pressbecause I can get kind of better
than a drip coffee but not quiteas good as a Moka pot. It's kind
of the in between. In fact, Iactually have mine sitting here
in my Oh, this has got to be a32 ounce coffee mug. But, but
yes, definitely a coffeeaficionado.

Amazing.
Well, again, thank you both somuch for being on today's
episode. Again, all the linksand products and software and
tools that were mentioned.
You'll find everything in thedescription of this podcast. But
thank you both so much forsharing your insights and
knowledge with me today.

Unknown (01:11:00):
Thanks so much for having us. It's been been super
amazing.

You've been listening to a special episode
of the PR & Lattes podcast. Makesure you stay up to date on all
things that are happening withPR & Lattes by visiting our
website prandlattes.com. You canalso follow 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

(01:11:27):
for you each day this weekfocused on a different aspects
around digital accessibility andcommunications. So make sure
you're following PR & Lattes,wherever you listen to your
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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GAAD Special - A latte with Chad Chelius and Dax Castro

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}GAAD Special - A latte with Chad Chelius and Dax Castro