March 26, 2024 • 40 mins
This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching.
This week's guest is Cam Beaudoin.
After I read Cam's post and image of what I call the "Gap Kid", I immediately went into research mode, and within a few minutes, I messaged him to request an interview.
But that post only scratched the surface of Cam's work. Like many entrepreneurs, it was an unintended adventure while at corporate giant IBM that led him to his company, Accelerated Accessibility (check it out HERE) where his mission is to make technology more accessible for all users.
The following quote from Cam should give you a good idea of what he's all about: “Together, we can drive the Disability Inclusion Revolution”
Oh... In case you're wondering what a11y means: Count the number of letters between the A and Y in the word 'accessibility. Cam wears his sense of purpose on his head.
The Gap Kid
Note: Oftentimes, links are not available on platforms such as Apple, iHeart, etc.. They are available within this episode on our website at https://lifesaroadtrip.podbean.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio for this road trip is Cam Bodewain.
Using his experience in sales, software development, technical consulting, Cam brings a unique
perspective on how teams can tackle digital accessibility within their organization.
Many appreciate his hands-on knowledge of planning, executing and delivering accessible
solutions with practical real-world examples.
(01:19):
Yes, simple techniques do exist to help teams simplify accessibility backlogs, gain empathy
and integrate sustainability, sustainable workflows.
Cam's down-to-earth style, engages groups for the moment he meets them and leaves them
with a cool confidence in their ability to handle the ambiguous world of digital accessibility.
Audiences often appreciate that he could speak the same language as their technical teams
(01:43):
or business leads.
Hi, Cam.
Scott, how's it going today?
Not too shabby.
Hey, I'm in central Wisconsin and we are actually looking at crack in 50 and seeing some snow
melt.
Yay.
Oh, my God.
Us too.
I'm not being Toronto, but we don't call it 50.
We call it 8 degrees.
So.
Oh, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
(02:04):
I got to get this stuff out of here because I have a...
I coach a state select soccer team and we're supposed to start training in less than two
weeks.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Soccer ball versus a snowball.
There's a bit of a difference.
A little bit.
A little bit.
Hey, on March 17, you hosted an online seminar titled Activism and Advocacy Progress Enables
Collaboration with Dylan Raffany.
(02:26):
I dropped in and found you include a sign language interpreter and of course he's going
to do that.
So tell me about how to go.
That was so great.
You know what?
There's such a difference between advocacy and activism.
When I think about activism, let me get up on this on the soapbox and let me shout and
let me really try and push people into it, into a change of mind.
(02:50):
There's advocacy I see much more as let's all get together and change the world.
So I think it's a much better way of pushing something forward and especially around the
ideas of disability inclusion.
And you know, in this world of tech, we tend to put a lot of effort into how do I make
my website accessible and how do I do this?
And there are so many more things and so many more ways that we can push disability
(03:13):
inclusion forward.
And it can be something as simple as, you know, did we add a policy to accommodations
in our organization that we work for or have I, you know, influenced people in my community
as well to help out people with disabilities?
You know, there's so many avenues and we tend to take this really hard-nosed approach
whereas to me it's more, it's all about the collaboration.
(03:34):
There should be more simplicity on it, but as I read about you, it seems like that's
the route that you're taking.
Talk about simplicity and spring things on.
This is what got me to contact you is we're both on LinkedIn and we tend to cross
paths quite a bit.
We have a lot of the same people that are within our groups.
And God, I don't know how long ago it was, but it popped up.
(03:57):
I call it the gap kid.
And there's going to be a link to the photo of this folks is going to be on the Life's
of Road Trip website so you can see it.
But here's how the post read.
This is what grabbed me, well, aside from the photograph.
Mom, dad, he looks like me.
I've never seen someone who looks like you ever, admittedly, I've never felt that before,
(04:20):
but I do know people who showed shared stories like this.
I don't know how much, I don't know much about Gap, Inc., their hiring practices or
the company towards people with disabilities.
What I do know just from seeing that is someone in the marketing department somewhere decided
to hire a photographer to take a photograph of a boy wearing prosthetic legs while wearing
Gap Kids clothing.
And I think it's pretty cool.
(04:42):
Talk about that.
Yeah, representation really does matter.
And I think that that's where there are so many gaps in our society.
I think that a lot of parents out there don't know how to speak about people with disabilities.
A lot of educators, grade school, high school teachers don't know how to talk about disabilities.
I think a lot of HR departments out there don't know how to speak about disabilities, even
(05:05):
internally within the organizations that they work for, which is kind of unfortunate because
man, especially in invisible disabilities, we just don't know, we just don't know who's
next to us.
We don't know who is sitting next to us in class or sitting next to us or virtually next
to us at work either.
And I think that this whole idea of, so that actually I took that picture myself at tomorrow.
(05:28):
Gee, you really?
Yeah, yeah, I just had a picture.
I saw it in the front of Gap and I said, you know, that's a cool picture.
I said this.
And if you imagine a retail store, they've got doors in the middle of their storefront,
right?
And they've got two large bay areas where they've just, they're displaying clothing or what
have you.
And this picture occupied an entire bay like in front.
(05:51):
So half the store before you walk in, you're seeing this image of this kid.
And I'm like, that's pretty cool.
Because what's going to happen is there's going to be people who walk by who have a
child with a disability, who have a child who has, who's amputee.
And they're going to see that picture and say, hey, that's cool.
You know, or people on the other side who have never seen that before, who aren't exposed
to people with disabilities, they're going to see that as well.
(06:13):
And they're going to say, what's that?
And I think that question of what's that is really what's missing.
It's, I've have friends who've said, you know, even as far back as the most read book in
the world, the Bible, the Bible says that people with disabilities should be thrown
rocks at them because they do not, they do not deserve.
And if that's the idea, if that's where we're starting from, we've got a lot of work to
(06:36):
do, right?
We've got a lot of work to do to bring that to the forefront.
So whenever I see these types of, this type of media, these types of imagery, it's like
that's something to be celebrated.
And yeah, what's interesting is in those comments, I saw people who said GAC doesn't do enough
or these other companies don't do enough.
But I'm like, it's something.
It's something.
It's something more than it was yesterday, the day before.
So I thought it was pretty cool.
Well, that thing has over, last check, it was, it was over 13,000 comments and, you know,
(07:02):
thumbs up and clamps and everything on just on LinkedIn.
And I have to tell you, Cam, that seeing that was what totally changed my direction for this
show, because it made me think, I don't want to be doing this just to present information
and different people that happen to have disabilities, damn it, I want to get into taking the disability
(07:28):
drive forward that I found the disability community to be quiet and I want to stir it
up.
And that's why I'm digging into and contacting and having guests on the show like you that
did that.
So that photograph did a lot for me.
And I have to thank you for taking that and posting it.
Because it's spurring me on it, it's getting the raw raw on me.
(07:50):
Now I also read something about you.
And I thought this was pretty interesting as I dig into my guests.
I like to find little kernels and see where they go and find threads.
And I heard an interview with you, you were talking about your startup and you were working
with a little company called IBM.
A company.
Yeah, just no one's ever heard of it.
So don't worry.
We can say what we want about them.
Yeah.
(08:11):
I'm not going to come back at us.
So if that was your base, what did you go into IBM with?
What credentials?
What was your experience going into IBM?
And what did you carry out from IBM?
And we're not talking about physical things that you stole in your briefcase.
So I still got that thumb drive.
(08:32):
Yeah.
IBM brought me on as a junior developer.
I've actually only had seven months experience as a front end developer at the time.
And yet I did something in that interview and here's to anyone who's listening who wants
to get into tech.
The people who are interviewing you, they want to hear honesty and I went in there.
And I think I said, I don't know, to about 50% of the questions that were asked for the
(08:54):
technical interview.
And I went up and said, hey, I don't know the answers.
But what happened the next day is I emailed the answer to every single question I could
remember that I didn't know the answer to.
Okay, cool.
And I emailed the hiring manager and I said, hey, here's the answer.
I do know how to Google and that got me the job.
But I didn't know.
I didn't know at the time that they were looking for somebody who could help out with
(09:17):
the technical parts of accessibility.
And there was a backlog of about 3000 issues that was just sitting in an in a queue somewhere
waiting to be fixed.
So I was told, hey, we're waiting six weeks for logins.
Well, we want you to learn everything you can about accessibility.
Here's something called the WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines.
Go learn it and you're going to be the guy.
(09:39):
I loved it.
I thought it was so cool because we always try and differentiate ourselves at organizations
we work at, you know, how do we become essential?
How do we become important to the team?
And that was my thing.
And in Canada here, we have something called AODA, accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities
Act, which stipulates that if you do business in the province of Ontario, you must be accessible.
(10:01):
And that a lot of companies that are regulated, so insurance and banking and transportation
and telecommunications, they were all scrambling to become accessible by 2021.
So what ended up happening was you never get fired for hiring IBM.
So I started to get pulled into these projects of accessibility and hey, how would you fix
(10:23):
this?
How would you do this?
And there I was as a developer, right?
I'd wear my hoodie into meetings where everyone else was stakeholders at banks and they're
all wearing three-piece suit.
And I was told, I was told, Cam, I think you need to go get a jacket.
So I did.
And it got me invited to more conversations, these really high-level conversations.
(10:44):
And by the way, I fixed that backlog of 3,000 issues.
And to switch gears a little bit here, I'd never actually met somebody who is on the other
side of those fixes.
So I'd never met anyone who had any kind of vision impairment, never met anyone who
had, who was deaf or hard of hearing.
And there was a traveling accessibility coach who was at IBM and he would go around to all
(11:07):
the offices and he was blind himself.
And it was funny because my boss at the time, he was like that ex-sales guy.
You're a met someone like that who's like, you know, popped collar, walks around like
I was going to be a deal, right?
He walks up to my friend Tom and he says, hey, Tom, my name's Jim and he sticks his hand
in his face.
And I met someone who's blind, they're not going to know there's a hand.
They're not going to know in the face.
(11:28):
And my boss who is like staring him down saying, you know, like, who's going to flinch first?
Because my hands out and your hands not there.
I died of embarrassment.
I ran back to YouTube.
I typed in how to shake a blind person's hand and learned that really all you need to
do is just say, can I shake your hand?
Right?
That little cue is enough to demonstrate that, you know, he stuck his hand on a shick's
(11:51):
hand.
That's what kind of led everything.
It's not about the tech.
It's about people.
How can I start to talk about people in every conversation about disability inclusion?
I can have every civil conversation about accessibility has got to be surrounded around people.
So that's where I got started speaking.
And I left I left IBM talk as much more of like a coach and speaker and consultant than
(12:12):
a technical developer.
So that's where I took away from IBM.
So you came into this and you got involved because you don't mind roll up your sleeves.
You want to go solve problems.
So you got that your problems over.
They put you in the right place.
You landed in the right place.
And you just grab that those rains and you just went with it.
But then by meeting, for example, a blind person and finding out more about it.
(12:38):
Was that a pivot point in the direction of you were going to how where you were going
to go with this next?
I mean, not a specific pivot point, but it sounds like within while you're at IBM, you
came up with an idea for where you actually are now.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when I started going out and started talking about accessibility to all these different
(13:01):
little teams, I started getting invited to to more conversations inside IBM.
So absolutely turning point.
It's funny because we don't realize those turning points are happening when you're in
the middle of it, right?
And all of a sudden when everyone starts to call you for that same reason, say we really
need your help doing this.
I think that we have to make decisions at those points.
(13:23):
Do I want to keep that conversation kind of where it is now?
And I could have continued talking about technical aspects or like, this is how you add labels
to buttons.
And I still do have those conversations.
But there was a very conscious decision with intent at some point.
When I started speaking for IBM at conferences like CSUN, which is the big accessibility conference
(13:44):
in California.
I started being really, you know, intentful and saying, you know, where can this conversation
go?
How far can we, can we start to educate more people earlier on about accessibility?
And that was, that was where the real conversation started to happen.
Well, it just blows me away with the more I talk with guests, the more it seems like
(14:06):
there's commonality between everyone because they have a drive inside of them that something
happens to spur that on and it pops out of them.
Let's talk about accessibility within Canada.
Funny money.
Tell us about, we've got, I think 85% of our listeners in the United States are going to
have no idea what you're talking about.
(14:27):
But when you're done with this, they're going to say, why the hell don't we do that?
So, go ahead.
Tell us about the Canadian dollars.
Yeah, back in 20 and 2000 or 2001, the Bank of Canada decided we're going to put Braille-like
features on our money, on our cash.
And so people with sight loss can actually identify their bills through a tactile method.
(14:48):
So usually in my talks, what I do is I'll actually hold up a Canadian bill and I'll say, you
know, where did you know that our bills have tactile features?
Because what I heard is that many people with, with vision loss or, you know, who are blind
in the US have to fold their bills in a certain way and tuck it into their wallets like that
so they can identify it later.
And all the Bank of Canada needed to do was change the plates.
(15:11):
Now mind you, it costs money to change those plates, right?
And this parallels the large organizations who are like, well, we don't want to make
change, it costs too much money and all this kind of stuff.
And all they need to do is change the plates in their printing process to say we want to
add these dots on here.
And all of a sudden now all bills in Canada for the past 23 years are accessible.
(15:34):
And what is more accessible than our money?
And this is, I bring this into conversations with large, you know, banking or financial
institutions too.
I mean, how frustrating would it be to get paid and you don't even know how much money
is in your bank account, right?
And that's the reality.
That's the reality of what it is.
If you don't make your technology usable by people with any ability.
And so I bring a lot of parallels into what I talk about, but that is something that,
(15:57):
you know, what strikes deeper than, you know, do you even know how much money is in your
wallet, right?
Like what is, what is more fundamental to everything than that?
Can you, can you pay for it?
Do you know how much money you have?
And if you didn't, man, how frustrating would that be?
Yeah.
When I, when I came across that, it just, it makes sense.
So why not?
But I do understand you ask, Oh, it costs money.
(16:19):
Well, come on.
Let's, let's get things done right so we can move forward.
Another thing I came across when I was researching you and sometimes I get into a guest then,
and I'm not, I'm starting to look at them, but something I stumble over carries me over
in another direction.
And, and through you, I came up with global accessibility awareness day, which is coming
(16:43):
up on May 18th.
And then I came across some statistics and I'll mention this for folks and let you talk
about it, Cam.
According to this group causes for most, most common accessibility failures, which are percentages
of home pages, there, I'll list a few of them, low contrast text, which is 86.3% missing
(17:07):
image alt text empty links.
Now those are statistics, but what all of them come together with is 98.1% of all home
pages with at least one of these six that are a failure and 60.9 is the average number
of errors per home page.
(17:31):
Okay, you know, for most people we don't notice that, but you're talking about accessibility
for disabled and other people.
So go into it, will you please?
Yeah, sure.
And what I think is the most important thing to remember here is that these are really
easy issues to fix.
These are really, really simple things to correct.
And we're not talking about rewriting entire pages or there's another one that's, you
(17:56):
know, reflow, which says that you can expand or reduce the size of a browser window or,
you know, mobile device, whatever, and it'll match up with that.
Those are hard to fix.
Those are like redesigns and rebuild in some situations.
But the most common issues on most websites are fixable, you know, in an afternoon, right?
And that's where most of these problems lie.
(18:18):
So non-text contrast.
So there's not enough contrast between the text on the screen and the background behind
it.
And if anyone, if anyone, unless things have been driving, you see a billboard on the
side of the road and they've got like, you know, dark red on the block background and
you're like, yes, what?
Who's the marketer that approved that?
Like, you know, we're driving at, you know, 60 miles an hour.
(18:40):
You got three seconds to convince someone and you can't even read the text on the billboard.
It's like, come on.
That's non-text contrast.
And it's fixable really easily on a website.
You can see the link links that don't describe where they're going, click here, click here,
you know, things like that.
If you have more than one click here, you know, you should be describing where the link
goes.
(19:01):
Buttons as well that aren't labeled properly.
Images of buttons are another big one too.
You know, you have a submit button and you took a graphic of the button, submit, you
paste it on there.
It doesn't happen too much anymore.
But, you know, these, these website crawlers prove that a lot of big companies out there,
they're not updating their websites nearly as much as we think they do, right?
So they've still got legacy code back from, who knows, the 2000s where they've got some
(19:24):
images of buttons and things like this, which are really just old, old pieces of data, which
just need to be updated.
And, you know, putting proper text on the submit button, I want to know if I'm going
to transfer my money to, you know, going back to a banking example, if a button's not labeled
properly, I want to know if I'm transferring my money to, you know, the government or my
(19:46):
friend, you know, if I need to do an e-trans
(20:15):
right now, we're just doing audio folks, but cams weren't right now.
It hasn't, it's a, the number 11 Y on it.
That's a numeronym, like 911 is for help in 24 seven work 24 seven.
What is that?
Could you define us what that is, please?
Yeah, a one one Y stands for accessibility.
(20:36):
We use it pretty often in the world of development to everyone's trying to short form everything.
Another one is internationalization, I 18 N is the other one that's used quite frequently
in the world of development.
But so I try and bring it around like this, because it fits really nicely on swag on
that stuff like that.
Even behind me for viewers, I've got my podcast studio here as well.
(20:57):
I've got hashtag A11Y pro tips or accessibility pro tips, because this is really what, what
it's all about, accessibility is a long word here.
You got two C's, two S's in there.
It's hard to start to start.
So a lot of people trip up on it, so a one one Y is a really easy way to talk about it.
Now a screen reader will actually read it as A11Y.
(21:18):
So now we understand that that's accessibility, but it's a great conversation starter.
It's a great way to enter a conversation.
I wear it to conferences and people now know me by this, by this hat.
So in fact, if I want to go invisible, I just take the hat off and that's probably the
easiest way to know it because you're not wearing that.
Well it had me going into Google.
I went and I went and Googled.
What the heck is that?
(21:39):
Oh, okay.
I mean, if we're only 10 letters, it'd be a super lingo word on the game show.
Yeah.
But hey, can I just say, you said what the heck is that?
Right?
Isn't that what we're trying to do here?
Exactly.
Let's create some curiosity.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's create curiosity in the people who don't deal with accessibility day in day out.
There's tons of marketers out there, events, people who just, the only time they ever
(22:03):
hear is when someone complains about, you know, I can't read your post.
I can't read your, you know, I'm at one of your events and there's no captioning for
me.
Like, man, if we could just start to have a curiosity, have people be like, what is
a one one why?
Like what is this thing that everyone's talking about?
And that's going to start conversations that'll move this all forward.
It's got to start someplace.
Yeah.
And within the disabled community has to start someplace.
(22:26):
Let's talk about accelerated accessibility.
I'm going to open your website to accelerated accessibility at the top there you are speaking
with the hat, but I want to read something that really I think it tells a lot about you,
Cam.
It says stop the accessibility guesswork.
Are you struggling, create an inclusive and accessible environment for both your users
(22:48):
and your business?
Still trying to figure out accessibility without a plan.
We make disability inclusion easier, faster, less stressful and even fun.
With our clear roadmap to inclusion success, you'll not only transform your business, but
you also delight your users along the way.
Boom.
Plain and simple.
Now, go ahead and talk.
Tell us about your business.
Yeah.
(23:09):
Tell us a little bit about your business and then approach me as if I'm a business owner
or if I'm in one of your seminars.
Sure.
But tell me about it first.
So a lot of companies out there, they're doing this ad hoc trial and error accessibility
way of doing it.
I've been doing program management for accessibility for almost eight years now ever since that
(23:30):
IBM started pulling me out and asking me to go talk to VPs.
And what I've found is that when people start this conversation, they're floundering and
they spend a ton of money.
They spend a ton of money.
Do we do an audit first?
There's a company out there who wants to charge me $10,000 a month?
Do I call someone offshore?
Do I just hire a person with a disability that makes me check a box?
(23:52):
People don't know where to start.
And I know we've been having a lot of talk around the technical aspects here, but sometimes
it's not your website.
Going back to those events, companies that I work with, they will use one template for
every single event to change the colors, but it's generally the same template.
You got an event.
You just need to put information up on there.
Maybe procurement is the best place to start because when you got a leaky faucet for stuff
(24:15):
that's not accessible, it's stopping up on the floor and just fix the procurement process.
And then all of a sudden you're going to bring in other organizations to your team or to
help and they're going to pay attention to accessibility from the get go.
So that's really where I fit in there.
So I have done for you accessibility roadmaps for organizations who are just, they know
(24:38):
it's important and they want to stop the guesswork.
So of course I also do talks and I do a lot of public speaking as well on the same topic
and workshops as well.
So that's what the business is around.
But I'm going to add just one more thing there too because there's also the other side,
which is influential advocacy, which is kind of what we're talking about here, right?
(25:00):
How do we start to have these conversations in a meaningful and lasting way?
So a lot of people in our industry are frustrated that they can't communicate accessibility
properly.
So I try and shake that up a bit too.
Well, all right.
So I'm in the seminar or I bring you in and I'm sitting across a big table with you and
I'm the head honcho and I'm the one that is aware now that, okay, I have a problem.
(25:27):
What are you going to do for me?
Well, first I got to know what the problem is.
So do you want to role play a little bit or is that too deep?
Do you want to?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I think I think we're stuck within our industry is that we're not asking enough
questions because I don't know what the problem even is before when I walk in.
So there's a lot of fact finding that I do first.
Okay.
So it's got to be, you know, what do your employees say about you?
(25:48):
You know, what kind of what's your accommodation policy look like?
Have you ever do you have an accessibility statement on your website?
You know, where do you procure services from?
Who are your developers?
Well, this is really broad.
Deging into a lot of those questions, that's when you start to open the eyes of the people
in front of you and they're saying, I don't know.
I've never thought of that before.
You know, what do I do next?
And then it's through that that I will start to really break down, you know, what the recommendation
(26:14):
is for the next steps.
So we start to bring in people.
When I got it, get into these calls, I said, you'd better have your, you know, your head
HR guy on, on, on speed dial so we can start to have that conversation with them too.
If we need it going deep, going really deep into getting this roadmap outlines a path
for the next six to 18 months.
And that's what I really want people to realize is that they want to come out of a conversation
(26:37):
with me with really clear steps on this is what I got to do next.
This is what I have to be doing in three months.
I don't need to worry about this other part for the next 18 months because, you know,
there's not there's a lot of companies out there who are doing a refresh of their website,
right?
And they're saying, I don't want to tackle my website for the six months.
I say, okay, we'll just be ready.
If ever you are in a situation where somebody comes in, dare I say, suz you, you better
(27:02):
be ready with the reason why it's not done yet.
So that's where I sit.
That's where I sit in those types of conversations as the advisor, as the consultant does the
person outlining their next 10 steps.
So I'm thinking here is I am listening to you, Cam, and I wonder, are you getting people
that are approaching you or are you perusing through companies and noticing that they have
(27:23):
a problem and then you're approaching them?
Which way does it go?
Both.
Okay.
Definitely both.
A lot, I get a lot of inbound, a lot, a lot about speaking inbound.
And then the outbound stuff is all me literally picking up the phone and saying, Hey, I was
on your website and by the way, it's a terrible experience.
Can we have a conversation?
And when you're, when you approach, and I think, you know, you talked about shaking
(27:44):
up the disability community, when you approach with confidence, when you approach an organization
with a solution as well, the reception is a lot different than you guys.
Suck.
And here's all the problems.
And then you walk away, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And we all have that experience when someone comes and says, Hey, I, I hurt you know, you
got a flat tire.
(28:05):
Let me help you is a lot different than, you know, something wrong with your car and then
it's driving away.
You know, it's, it's just a lot, a lot different.
So I would encourage anyone who is struggling in with, with trying to figure out how to
approach companies, go at them with, with an, with an open idea and say, you know, here's
a solution that I have for you.
I would love to talk to you about it.
(28:26):
That's going to open a lot more doors than just sending off an angry email.
And it works.
It works.
I've been called back by companies that I've given, you know, quick tips on, um, got a
shout out.
Can I, can I give a shout out here to it?
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Calindly the, uh, the calendar picking app.
Okay.
I've been back and forth with them a bunch of times just saying, Hey, you know, I found
this bug.
Here's a quick fix on how to do it.
(28:47):
Or here's some information.
I don't tell them the code.
Here's a website on how to fix that.
And then within days, they're like, thanks so much.
We fixed it.
Take a look.
So that, I'm sorry, but that's surprising to me that a company actually gives a rip.
Uh, that must make you very happy.
And but how many times can I shouldn't say specifically, but how often is it in general?
(29:09):
Do you run in and just bash your head against the wall?
Because someone turns you down because they say it costs too much.
I would assume do you run into that all the time?
Daily.
Daily.
That's kind of, that's kind of what advocacy is though.
I don't think, and I think that there's a parallel here.
If you're an advocate, you're also in sales and, Oh, there I say we're in sales, right?
(29:32):
Like that's, that's a huge, you know, no, no, I'm not in sales, right?
But isn't that what we're doing?
We're trying to convince people to think differently, to own, you know, responsibility.
And this happens in our day to day lives with our, you know, kids or our, I'm trying
to convince, you know, my son, please sit down and eat.
Well, I want to do other things instead.
(29:53):
Persuasion is part of life.
And I think anyone who's in an advocacy role, whether you admit it or not, if you want to
try and change someone's mind approaching it with, with your two, you know, two fists
raised and ready to fight, you know, you are immediately going to encounter resistance
right away.
But you got to kind of treat everything as it's not a no forever.
It's just a no for now, right?
(30:14):
Mm hmm.
You know, you never know what's going to happen in a couple of months.
It changes pressure from the, from the industry, they get a lawsuit or, you know, government
regulation comes down.
I know to American audiences that's, you know, get out government, but that happens all the
time.
Right, right.
God.
(30:35):
And, but then then all of a sudden someone, something shifts or they see the benefit of
it, right?
And I lead.
That's why I don't lead with always.
It's the right thing to do.
I lead with, Hey, do you want access to an eight trillion dollar market?
That's a good point.
Do you want your, yeah, yeah.
That is what I am finding as I'm getting deeper into this.
That needs to be used.
Totally.
(30:56):
So much more.
And no one's looking at it, but that's what made me think when I saw the gap kid.
Right.
Right.
And there's money in it.
Well, that's who they realize gap realizes.
When you sit across from a VP of product, right, for an organization with 9,000 employees,
they're bread is, is, is one off this product here, getting the subscribers to pay a hundred
(31:22):
bucks a month.
Okay.
You got a company like that in front of you.
If you start going in there and saying, this is the right thing to do.
It's super important.
You know, you're only going to get so far because you're not speaking their language.
But then you go in there and say, man, don't you want your product to be the most usable
product out there?
Let me, let me show you that one in seven people here are not able to use your product.
(31:45):
In fact, you have 9,000 employees here and one in seven, you may not even know that the
person next to you is dyslexic.
And then that person themselves admits that you have got ADHD and I'd love to talk to
more about this.
That is a winning way to talk and move this industry forward.
That is a way that we need to start like, we need to speak the language of the people
who are in front of us.
(32:06):
But it is only going to come with a revolution.
I've been one to be speaking up the LGBTQ plus community and follow their follow what they
did because hell, that's out there.
Yeah, movies, television.
We see it commercials all over the place.
You've got mixed marriages.
For just for example, you have males kissing males, you know, we're not seeing enough
(32:29):
in the disability community and damn it.
That's what gap is doing.
Exactly.
We've got to keep following up and I'm going to start searching for people like, maybe
I should try to find some of that made that decision a gap.
Maybe that would be a guess down the road about.
Yeah, I've looked for them too as well.
If you find it, you know, just give me a thumbs up from me.
I'd appreciate that.
That'd be cool.
And you know, and different countries actually handle it but differently.
(32:54):
In the UK, they're having people with disabilities like join game shows and stuff like that or
representation.
I've noticed that there's a show.
There's someone in the wheelchair on jeopardy.
Yeah.
I don't even know.
I don't even know.
I don't remember.
I sent in a video to a show that might be defunct now.
I can't remember the name of it.
But my wife and I filmed the video and I said to them, you don't have any disabled people
(33:19):
and I'm interested in coming on your show on their game show.
Never heard bad from them, but I don't see them up again this year.
So maybe they weren't, maybe they weren't bought.
But that needs to happen.
That's a great example.
So I came across a video of you and you ended it with a line of together we can drive the
disability inclusion revolution.
(33:42):
I love that tagline disability inclusion revolution.
What do you mean by that, Cam?
That really is, you know, there is a recent passing of someone who is very popular in
the world of disability inclusion, Judy human.
And when I think of like, what is a revolution?
Let's change the minds of many people.
And it seems like there was the Capitol Hill crawl in the 70s and 80s.
(34:07):
I'm not, I don't remember, but there was, let's climb the steps of Capitol Hill and
let's show everyone that people with disabilities exist.
And there's not much happening after that.
You know, there has not been a large movement of people with disabilities saying, you know,
we exist.
We're here.
We need to be listened to.
And I'm not saying that it has to be, you know, we need to go to every large city in
(34:31):
the world and start to create that big movement.
But a revolution can be in industry.
A revolution can be in schools.
A revolution can be in your community.
And we can start to move this conversation forward by getting together and having real
conversations like what we're having here right now.
I have had people with, with invisible disabilities, you know, share deep secrets, deep emotions,
(34:55):
deep feelings, you know, by meeting them for 15 minutes because all of a sudden it was,
we've created a safe space to talk about this.
And if anyone who is a business owner or leader in organization, if you care about your team,
and I know you do, like, it's very rare that you meet somebody who's in a leadership role
who says, I don't care about my team.
Like, in fact, it's never happened.
Maybe they're not doing it the right way, but that's a different discussion.
(35:18):
If someone is listening is in that role, then you have a, it's your job.
It's your job to care about your team and creating those safe spaces, creating opportunities
for people to share and then doing something about that as part of your job as well.
And I think that's what, what this is all about.
This is all about how do we start to move everyone forward, community forward, culture
(35:40):
forward.
And this is the shift.
You talked about the LGBTQ plus community and the culture shift has happened and we
are having real conversations about that now and it's less, we're able to have a conversation
about that openly in public and that's, it's okay now.
It's acceptable.
I, you know, I'm putting it out there.
(36:03):
I don't represent that community.
I don't want to put my represent.
Yeah, but you're helping it.
But I have friends and we're able to have conversations out there as well.
But people with invisible disabilities do not.
And we cannot share that we have ADHD or dyslexia or neuro diversity or bipolar or things like
that is it is shameful to admit that in workplaces or in schools and that needs to change.
(36:27):
That's the revolution.
And that's, that's what we've got to be doing.
But again, you are helping it.
So it's, it's greatly appreciated what you're doing, Cam.
So we're going to, we're going to move to this point.
And it's time to wrap up the show with the road trip roundup.
We've got five questions for you, Cam, related to you and road trips.
(36:48):
All right.
Let's do it.
One, number one, when road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Fast food.
What do you, where's your go to?
What's your Wendy's spicy chicken?
Yeah.
Oh, and he says that with great conviction, folks.
All right.
I didn't need to say anything more than that.
In your eyes.
David, I've been doing it.
All right.
(37:09):
What's your dream car for road trip, Cam?
Could be something you grew up with, something you've got now or something that maybe you
would rent to go on a road trip.
Oh, man.
I've never done it in RV.
I would love to try and rent an RV and do a total North America trip.
That's the dream.
I have to tell you, I think we're getting, we're at least in the 40% range of my guests
that have mentioned RV.
(37:31):
Oh, yeah.
That's, that's really wild.
That's cool.
That's cool.
Yeah, I like that.
People want to get out and advance.
How many people do sports girls?
That's the big thing.
I've got a lot of road trips on.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Hey, all right.
Last cassette or CD that played while you're on a road trip.
Oh, geez.
Gotcha.
CD, it's going to be a mixed CD background.
I was burning them, but since I've changed to Bluetooth, it's like non-existent.
(37:56):
So yeah, some of these.
Yeah, some of these.
Oh, let me tell you, I'll turn it off.
That's it.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
I wish they would bring back CD players in cars.
We actually bought one because my wife just misses the hell out of CD player because she
has some mixed and we went through Amazon and ended up returning two of those things
because they kept starting to track three or they stop and someone please be out there,
(38:19):
create something that's accessible to everyone so we can play CDs, please.
All right.
Number four, Coca Pepsi, straight out, Coca Pepsi.
Coke, boom.
All right.
You're an easy guy.
Here's the next one.
Favorite road trip memory?
So I drove across Canada twice, once when I was 10, once when I was 29, something like
(38:43):
that.
I went to Saskatchewan, but then what was cool is I drove down my mums in New Mexico.
So I went from Saskatchewan, which, I mean, about in the middle of the country, right?
And what was neat though is driving south from there, you start to see all types of landscapes.
And so it went from plains to rolling hills to mountains, right?
(39:06):
And when you start to hear in Montana, stuff like that.
And then you get the raised plains of New Mexico and Arizona.
It was just so cool.
It was just super cool to see the landscape change over a two day.
Yeah, I drove 12 hours a day to get down to Saskatchewan to New Mexico, Clovis, New Mexico.
You had to do fast food then.
Oh, I mean, yeah, when you see it, it stops or fast food, that's all you get.
(39:30):
But that was cool.
That was really, really neat seeing these like every single landscape that could possibly
be.
I like it.
I like it.
Hey, we're going to wrap it up right now, but stay on so we can pick each other's brains
for a second.
Okay.
And I'm just going to sign out with Chow and she likes everybody and keep listening to
Life's a Road Trip.
(39:51):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website
at lifestroadtrip.podbean.com for more information on this week's guest.
This is your host Scott Martin reminding you that Life's a Road Trip.
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio for this road trip is Cam Bodewain.
Using his experience in sales, software development, technical consulting, Cam brings a unique
perspective on how teams can tackle digital accessibility within their organization.
Many appreciate his hands-on knowledge of planning, executing and delivering accessible
solutions with practical real-world examples.
(01:19):
Yes, simple techniques do exist to help teams simplify accessibility backlogs, gain empathy
and integrate sustainability, sustainable workflows.
Cam's down-to-earth style, engages groups for the moment he meets them and leaves them
with a cool confidence in their ability to handle the ambiguous world of digital accessibility.
Audiences often appreciate that he could speak the same language as their technical teams
(01:43):
or business leads.
Hi, Cam.
Scott, how's it going today?
Not too shabby.
Hey, I'm in central Wisconsin and we are actually looking at crack in 50 and seeing some snow
melt.
Yay.
Oh, my God.
Us too.
I'm not being Toronto, but we don't call it 50.
We call it 8 degrees.
So.
Oh, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
(02:04):
I got to get this stuff out of here because I have a...
I coach a state select soccer team and we're supposed to start training in less than two
weeks.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Soccer ball versus a snowball.
There's a bit of a difference.
A little bit.
A little bit.
Hey, on March 17, you hosted an online seminar titled Activism and Advocacy Progress Enables
Collaboration with Dylan Raffany.
(02:26):
I dropped in and found you include a sign language interpreter and of course he's going
to do that.
So tell me about how to go.
That was so great.
You know what?
There's such a difference between advocacy and activism.
When I think about activism, let me get up on this on the soapbox and let me shout and
let me really try and push people into it, into a change of mind.
(02:50):
There's advocacy I see much more as let's all get together and change the world.
So I think it's a much better way of pushing something forward and especially around the
ideas of disability inclusion.
And you know, in this world of tech, we tend to put a lot of effort into how do I make
my website accessible and how do I do this?
And there are so many more things and so many more ways that we can push disability
(03:13):
inclusion forward.
And it can be something as simple as, you know, did we add a policy to accommodations
in our organization that we work for or have I, you know, influenced people in my community
as well to help out people with disabilities?
You know, there's so many avenues and we tend to take this really hard-nosed approach
whereas to me it's more, it's all about the collaboration.
(03:34):
There should be more simplicity on it, but as I read about you, it seems like that's
the route that you're taking.
Talk about simplicity and spring things on.
This is what got me to contact you is we're both on LinkedIn and we tend to cross
paths quite a bit.
We have a lot of the same people that are within our groups.
And God, I don't know how long ago it was, but it popped up.
(03:57):
I call it the gap kid.
And there's going to be a link to the photo of this folks is going to be on the Life's
of Road Trip website so you can see it.
But here's how the post read.
This is what grabbed me, well, aside from the photograph.
Mom, dad, he looks like me.
I've never seen someone who looks like you ever, admittedly, I've never felt that before,
(04:20):
but I do know people who showed shared stories like this.
I don't know how much, I don't know much about Gap, Inc., their hiring practices or
the company towards people with disabilities.
What I do know just from seeing that is someone in the marketing department somewhere decided
to hire a photographer to take a photograph of a boy wearing prosthetic legs while wearing
Gap Kids clothing.
And I think it's pretty cool.
(04:42):
Talk about that.
Yeah, representation really does matter.
And I think that that's where there are so many gaps in our society.
I think that a lot of parents out there don't know how to speak about people with disabilities.
A lot of educators, grade school, high school teachers don't know how to talk about disabilities.
I think a lot of HR departments out there don't know how to speak about disabilities, even
(05:05):
internally within the organizations that they work for, which is kind of unfortunate because
man, especially in invisible disabilities, we just don't know, we just don't know who's
next to us.
We don't know who is sitting next to us in class or sitting next to us or virtually next
to us at work either.
And I think that this whole idea of, so that actually I took that picture myself at tomorrow.
(05:28):
Gee, you really?
Yeah, yeah, I just had a picture.
I saw it in the front of Gap and I said, you know, that's a cool picture.
I said this.
And if you imagine a retail store, they've got doors in the middle of their storefront,
right?
And they've got two large bay areas where they've just, they're displaying clothing or what
have you.
And this picture occupied an entire bay like in front.
(05:51):
So half the store before you walk in, you're seeing this image of this kid.
And I'm like, that's pretty cool.
Because what's going to happen is there's going to be people who walk by who have a
child with a disability, who have a child who has, who's amputee.
And they're going to see that picture and say, hey, that's cool.
You know, or people on the other side who have never seen that before, who aren't exposed
to people with disabilities, they're going to see that as well.
(06:13):
And they're going to say, what's that?
And I think that question of what's that is really what's missing.
It's, I've have friends who've said, you know, even as far back as the most read book in
the world, the Bible, the Bible says that people with disabilities should be thrown
rocks at them because they do not, they do not deserve.
And if that's the idea, if that's where we're starting from, we've got a lot of work to
(06:36):
do, right?
We've got a lot of work to do to bring that to the forefront.
So whenever I see these types of, this type of media, these types of imagery, it's like
that's something to be celebrated.
And yeah, what's interesting is in those comments, I saw people who said GAC doesn't do enough
or these other companies don't do enough.
But I'm like, it's something.
It's something.
It's something more than it was yesterday, the day before.
So I thought it was pretty cool.
Well, that thing has over, last check, it was, it was over 13,000 comments and, you know,
(07:02):
thumbs up and clamps and everything on just on LinkedIn.
And I have to tell you, Cam, that seeing that was what totally changed my direction for this
show, because it made me think, I don't want to be doing this just to present information
and different people that happen to have disabilities, damn it, I want to get into taking the disability
(07:28):
drive forward that I found the disability community to be quiet and I want to stir it
up.
And that's why I'm digging into and contacting and having guests on the show like you that
did that.
So that photograph did a lot for me.
And I have to thank you for taking that and posting it.
Because it's spurring me on it, it's getting the raw raw on me.
(07:50):
Now I also read something about you.
And I thought this was pretty interesting as I dig into my guests.
I like to find little kernels and see where they go and find threads.
And I heard an interview with you, you were talking about your startup and you were working
with a little company called IBM.
A company.
Yeah, just no one's ever heard of it.
So don't worry.
We can say what we want about them.
Yeah.
(08:11):
I'm not going to come back at us.
So if that was your base, what did you go into IBM with?
What credentials?
What was your experience going into IBM?
And what did you carry out from IBM?
And we're not talking about physical things that you stole in your briefcase.
So I still got that thumb drive.
(08:32):
Yeah.
IBM brought me on as a junior developer.
I've actually only had seven months experience as a front end developer at the time.
And yet I did something in that interview and here's to anyone who's listening who wants
to get into tech.
The people who are interviewing you, they want to hear honesty and I went in there.
And I think I said, I don't know, to about 50% of the questions that were asked for the
(08:54):
technical interview.
And I went up and said, hey, I don't know the answers.
But what happened the next day is I emailed the answer to every single question I could
remember that I didn't know the answer to.
Okay, cool.
And I emailed the hiring manager and I said, hey, here's the answer.
I do know how to Google and that got me the job.
But I didn't know.
I didn't know at the time that they were looking for somebody who could help out with
(09:17):
the technical parts of accessibility.
And there was a backlog of about 3000 issues that was just sitting in an in a queue somewhere
waiting to be fixed.
So I was told, hey, we're waiting six weeks for logins.
Well, we want you to learn everything you can about accessibility.
Here's something called the WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines.
Go learn it and you're going to be the guy.
(09:39):
I loved it.
I thought it was so cool because we always try and differentiate ourselves at organizations
we work at, you know, how do we become essential?
How do we become important to the team?
And that was my thing.
And in Canada here, we have something called AODA, accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities
Act, which stipulates that if you do business in the province of Ontario, you must be accessible.
(10:01):
And that a lot of companies that are regulated, so insurance and banking and transportation
and telecommunications, they were all scrambling to become accessible by 2021.
So what ended up happening was you never get fired for hiring IBM.
So I started to get pulled into these projects of accessibility and hey, how would you fix
(10:23):
this?
How would you do this?
And there I was as a developer, right?
I'd wear my hoodie into meetings where everyone else was stakeholders at banks and they're
all wearing three-piece suit.
And I was told, I was told, Cam, I think you need to go get a jacket.
So I did.
And it got me invited to more conversations, these really high-level conversations.
(10:44):
And by the way, I fixed that backlog of 3,000 issues.
And to switch gears a little bit here, I'd never actually met somebody who is on the other
side of those fixes.
So I'd never met anyone who had any kind of vision impairment, never met anyone who
had, who was deaf or hard of hearing.
And there was a traveling accessibility coach who was at IBM and he would go around to all
(11:07):
the offices and he was blind himself.
And it was funny because my boss at the time, he was like that ex-sales guy.
You're a met someone like that who's like, you know, popped collar, walks around like
I was going to be a deal, right?
He walks up to my friend Tom and he says, hey, Tom, my name's Jim and he sticks his hand
in his face.
And I met someone who's blind, they're not going to know there's a hand.
They're not going to know in the face.
(11:28):
And my boss who is like staring him down saying, you know, like, who's going to flinch first?
Because my hands out and your hands not there.
I died of embarrassment.
I ran back to YouTube.
I typed in how to shake a blind person's hand and learned that really all you need to
do is just say, can I shake your hand?
Right?
That little cue is enough to demonstrate that, you know, he stuck his hand on a shick's
(11:51):
hand.
That's what kind of led everything.
It's not about the tech.
It's about people.
How can I start to talk about people in every conversation about disability inclusion?
I can have every civil conversation about accessibility has got to be surrounded around people.
So that's where I got started speaking.
And I left I left IBM talk as much more of like a coach and speaker and consultant than
(12:12):
a technical developer.
So that's where I took away from IBM.
So you came into this and you got involved because you don't mind roll up your sleeves.
You want to go solve problems.
So you got that your problems over.
They put you in the right place.
You landed in the right place.
And you just grab that those rains and you just went with it.
But then by meeting, for example, a blind person and finding out more about it.
(12:38):
Was that a pivot point in the direction of you were going to how where you were going
to go with this next?
I mean, not a specific pivot point, but it sounds like within while you're at IBM, you
came up with an idea for where you actually are now.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when I started going out and started talking about accessibility to all these different
(13:01):
little teams, I started getting invited to to more conversations inside IBM.
So absolutely turning point.
It's funny because we don't realize those turning points are happening when you're in
the middle of it, right?
And all of a sudden when everyone starts to call you for that same reason, say we really
need your help doing this.
I think that we have to make decisions at those points.
(13:23):
Do I want to keep that conversation kind of where it is now?
And I could have continued talking about technical aspects or like, this is how you add labels
to buttons.
And I still do have those conversations.
But there was a very conscious decision with intent at some point.
When I started speaking for IBM at conferences like CSUN, which is the big accessibility conference
(13:44):
in California.
I started being really, you know, intentful and saying, you know, where can this conversation
go?
How far can we, can we start to educate more people earlier on about accessibility?
And that was, that was where the real conversation started to happen.
Well, it just blows me away with the more I talk with guests, the more it seems like
(14:06):
there's commonality between everyone because they have a drive inside of them that something
happens to spur that on and it pops out of them.
Let's talk about accessibility within Canada.
Funny money.
Tell us about, we've got, I think 85% of our listeners in the United States are going to
have no idea what you're talking about.
(14:27):
But when you're done with this, they're going to say, why the hell don't we do that?
So, go ahead.
Tell us about the Canadian dollars.
Yeah, back in 20 and 2000 or 2001, the Bank of Canada decided we're going to put Braille-like
features on our money, on our cash.
And so people with sight loss can actually identify their bills through a tactile method.
(14:48):
So usually in my talks, what I do is I'll actually hold up a Canadian bill and I'll say, you
know, where did you know that our bills have tactile features?
Because what I heard is that many people with, with vision loss or, you know, who are blind
in the US have to fold their bills in a certain way and tuck it into their wallets like that
so they can identify it later.
And all the Bank of Canada needed to do was change the plates.
(15:11):
Now mind you, it costs money to change those plates, right?
And this parallels the large organizations who are like, well, we don't want to make
change, it costs too much money and all this kind of stuff.
And all they need to do is change the plates in their printing process to say we want to
add these dots on here.
And all of a sudden now all bills in Canada for the past 23 years are accessible.
(15:34):
And what is more accessible than our money?
And this is, I bring this into conversations with large, you know, banking or financial
institutions too.
I mean, how frustrating would it be to get paid and you don't even know how much money
is in your bank account, right?
And that's the reality.
That's the reality of what it is.
If you don't make your technology usable by people with any ability.
And so I bring a lot of parallels into what I talk about, but that is something that,
(15:57):
you know, what strikes deeper than, you know, do you even know how much money is in your
wallet, right?
Like what is, what is more fundamental to everything than that?
Can you, can you pay for it?
Do you know how much money you have?
And if you didn't, man, how frustrating would that be?
Yeah.
When I, when I came across that, it just, it makes sense.
So why not?
But I do understand you ask, Oh, it costs money.
(16:19):
Well, come on.
Let's, let's get things done right so we can move forward.
Another thing I came across when I was researching you and sometimes I get into a guest then,
and I'm not, I'm starting to look at them, but something I stumble over carries me over
in another direction.
And, and through you, I came up with global accessibility awareness day, which is coming
(16:43):
up on May 18th.
And then I came across some statistics and I'll mention this for folks and let you talk
about it, Cam.
According to this group causes for most, most common accessibility failures, which are percentages
of home pages, there, I'll list a few of them, low contrast text, which is 86.3% missing
(17:07):
image alt text empty links.
Now those are statistics, but what all of them come together with is 98.1% of all home
pages with at least one of these six that are a failure and 60.9 is the average number
of errors per home page.
(17:31):
Okay, you know, for most people we don't notice that, but you're talking about accessibility
for disabled and other people.
So go into it, will you please?
Yeah, sure.
And what I think is the most important thing to remember here is that these are really
easy issues to fix.
These are really, really simple things to correct.
And we're not talking about rewriting entire pages or there's another one that's, you
(17:56):
know, reflow, which says that you can expand or reduce the size of a browser window or,
you know, mobile device, whatever, and it'll match up with that.
Those are hard to fix.
Those are like redesigns and rebuild in some situations.
But the most common issues on most websites are fixable, you know, in an afternoon, right?
And that's where most of these problems lie.
(18:18):
So non-text contrast.
So there's not enough contrast between the text on the screen and the background behind
it.
And if anyone, if anyone, unless things have been driving, you see a billboard on the
side of the road and they've got like, you know, dark red on the block background and
you're like, yes, what?
Who's the marketer that approved that?
Like, you know, we're driving at, you know, 60 miles an hour.
(18:40):
You got three seconds to convince someone and you can't even read the text on the billboard.
It's like, come on.
That's non-text contrast.
And it's fixable really easily on a website.
You can see the link links that don't describe where they're going, click here, click here,
you know, things like that.
If you have more than one click here, you know, you should be describing where the link
goes.
(19:01):
Buttons as well that aren't labeled properly.
Images of buttons are another big one too.
You know, you have a submit button and you took a graphic of the button, submit, you
paste it on there.
It doesn't happen too much anymore.
But, you know, these, these website crawlers prove that a lot of big companies out there,
they're not updating their websites nearly as much as we think they do, right?
So they've still got legacy code back from, who knows, the 2000s where they've got some
(19:24):
images of buttons and things like this, which are really just old, old pieces of data, which
just need to be updated.
And, you know, putting proper text on the submit button, I want to know if I'm going
to transfer my money to, you know, going back to a banking example, if a button's not labeled
properly, I want to know if I'm transferring my money to, you know, the government or my
(19:46):
friend, you know, if I need to do an e-trans
(20:15):
right now, we're just doing audio folks, but cams weren't right now.
It hasn't, it's a, the number 11 Y on it.
That's a numeronym, like 911 is for help in 24 seven work 24 seven.
What is that?
Could you define us what that is, please?
Yeah, a one one Y stands for accessibility.
(20:36):
We use it pretty often in the world of development to everyone's trying to short form everything.
Another one is internationalization, I 18 N is the other one that's used quite frequently
in the world of development.
But so I try and bring it around like this, because it fits really nicely on swag on
that stuff like that.
Even behind me for viewers, I've got my podcast studio here as well.
(20:57):
I've got hashtag A11Y pro tips or accessibility pro tips, because this is really what, what
it's all about, accessibility is a long word here.
You got two C's, two S's in there.
It's hard to start to start.
So a lot of people trip up on it, so a one one Y is a really easy way to talk about it.
Now a screen reader will actually read it as A11Y.
(21:18):
So now we understand that that's accessibility, but it's a great conversation starter.
It's a great way to enter a conversation.
I wear it to conferences and people now know me by this, by this hat.
So in fact, if I want to go invisible, I just take the hat off and that's probably the
easiest way to know it because you're not wearing that.
Well it had me going into Google.
I went and I went and Googled.
What the heck is that?
(21:39):
Oh, okay.
I mean, if we're only 10 letters, it'd be a super lingo word on the game show.
Yeah.
But hey, can I just say, you said what the heck is that?
Right?
Isn't that what we're trying to do here?
Exactly.
Let's create some curiosity.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's create curiosity in the people who don't deal with accessibility day in day out.
There's tons of marketers out there, events, people who just, the only time they ever
(22:03):
hear is when someone complains about, you know, I can't read your post.
I can't read your, you know, I'm at one of your events and there's no captioning for
me.
Like, man, if we could just start to have a curiosity, have people be like, what is
a one one why?
Like what is this thing that everyone's talking about?
And that's going to start conversations that'll move this all forward.
It's got to start someplace.
Yeah.
And within the disabled community has to start someplace.
(22:26):
Let's talk about accelerated accessibility.
I'm going to open your website to accelerated accessibility at the top there you are speaking
with the hat, but I want to read something that really I think it tells a lot about you,
Cam.
It says stop the accessibility guesswork.
Are you struggling, create an inclusive and accessible environment for both your users
(22:48):
and your business?
Still trying to figure out accessibility without a plan.
We make disability inclusion easier, faster, less stressful and even fun.
With our clear roadmap to inclusion success, you'll not only transform your business, but
you also delight your users along the way.
Boom.
Plain and simple.
Now, go ahead and talk.
Tell us about your business.
Yeah.
(23:09):
Tell us a little bit about your business and then approach me as if I'm a business owner
or if I'm in one of your seminars.
Sure.
But tell me about it first.
So a lot of companies out there, they're doing this ad hoc trial and error accessibility
way of doing it.
I've been doing program management for accessibility for almost eight years now ever since that
(23:30):
IBM started pulling me out and asking me to go talk to VPs.
And what I've found is that when people start this conversation, they're floundering and
they spend a ton of money.
They spend a ton of money.
Do we do an audit first?
There's a company out there who wants to charge me $10,000 a month?
Do I call someone offshore?
Do I just hire a person with a disability that makes me check a box?
(23:52):
People don't know where to start.
And I know we've been having a lot of talk around the technical aspects here, but sometimes
it's not your website.
Going back to those events, companies that I work with, they will use one template for
every single event to change the colors, but it's generally the same template.
You got an event.
You just need to put information up on there.
Maybe procurement is the best place to start because when you got a leaky faucet for stuff
(24:15):
that's not accessible, it's stopping up on the floor and just fix the procurement process.
And then all of a sudden you're going to bring in other organizations to your team or to
help and they're going to pay attention to accessibility from the get go.
So that's really where I fit in there.
So I have done for you accessibility roadmaps for organizations who are just, they know
(24:38):
it's important and they want to stop the guesswork.
So of course I also do talks and I do a lot of public speaking as well on the same topic
and workshops as well.
So that's what the business is around.
But I'm going to add just one more thing there too because there's also the other side,
which is influential advocacy, which is kind of what we're talking about here, right?
(25:00):
How do we start to have these conversations in a meaningful and lasting way?
So a lot of people in our industry are frustrated that they can't communicate accessibility
properly.
So I try and shake that up a bit too.
Well, all right.
So I'm in the seminar or I bring you in and I'm sitting across a big table with you and
I'm the head honcho and I'm the one that is aware now that, okay, I have a problem.
(25:27):
What are you going to do for me?
Well, first I got to know what the problem is.
So do you want to role play a little bit or is that too deep?
Do you want to?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I think I think we're stuck within our industry is that we're not asking enough
questions because I don't know what the problem even is before when I walk in.
So there's a lot of fact finding that I do first.
Okay.
So it's got to be, you know, what do your employees say about you?
(25:48):
You know, what kind of what's your accommodation policy look like?
Have you ever do you have an accessibility statement on your website?
You know, where do you procure services from?
Who are your developers?
Well, this is really broad.
Deging into a lot of those questions, that's when you start to open the eyes of the people
in front of you and they're saying, I don't know.
I've never thought of that before.
You know, what do I do next?
And then it's through that that I will start to really break down, you know, what the recommendation
(26:14):
is for the next steps.
So we start to bring in people.
When I got it, get into these calls, I said, you'd better have your, you know, your head
HR guy on, on, on speed dial so we can start to have that conversation with them too.
If we need it going deep, going really deep into getting this roadmap outlines a path
for the next six to 18 months.
And that's what I really want people to realize is that they want to come out of a conversation
(26:37):
with me with really clear steps on this is what I got to do next.
This is what I have to be doing in three months.
I don't need to worry about this other part for the next 18 months because, you know,
there's not there's a lot of companies out there who are doing a refresh of their website,
right?
And they're saying, I don't want to tackle my website for the six months.
I say, okay, we'll just be ready.
If ever you are in a situation where somebody comes in, dare I say, suz you, you better
(27:02):
be ready with the reason why it's not done yet.
So that's where I sit.
That's where I sit in those types of conversations as the advisor, as the consultant does the
person outlining their next 10 steps.
So I'm thinking here is I am listening to you, Cam, and I wonder, are you getting people
that are approaching you or are you perusing through companies and noticing that they have
(27:23):
a problem and then you're approaching them?
Which way does it go?
Both.
Okay.
Definitely both.
A lot, I get a lot of inbound, a lot, a lot about speaking inbound.
And then the outbound stuff is all me literally picking up the phone and saying, Hey, I was
on your website and by the way, it's a terrible experience.
Can we have a conversation?
And when you're, when you approach, and I think, you know, you talked about shaking
(27:44):
up the disability community, when you approach with confidence, when you approach an organization
with a solution as well, the reception is a lot different than you guys.
Suck.
And here's all the problems.
And then you walk away, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And we all have that experience when someone comes and says, Hey, I, I hurt you know, you
got a flat tire.
(28:05):
Let me help you is a lot different than, you know, something wrong with your car and then
it's driving away.
You know, it's, it's just a lot, a lot different.
So I would encourage anyone who is struggling in with, with trying to figure out how to
approach companies, go at them with, with an, with an open idea and say, you know, here's
a solution that I have for you.
I would love to talk to you about it.
(28:26):
That's going to open a lot more doors than just sending off an angry email.
And it works.
It works.
I've been called back by companies that I've given, you know, quick tips on, um, got a
shout out.
Can I, can I give a shout out here to it?
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Calindly the, uh, the calendar picking app.
Okay.
I've been back and forth with them a bunch of times just saying, Hey, you know, I found
this bug.
Here's a quick fix on how to do it.
(28:47):
Or here's some information.
I don't tell them the code.
Here's a website on how to fix that.
And then within days, they're like, thanks so much.
We fixed it.
Take a look.
So that, I'm sorry, but that's surprising to me that a company actually gives a rip.
Uh, that must make you very happy.
And but how many times can I shouldn't say specifically, but how often is it in general?
(29:09):
Do you run in and just bash your head against the wall?
Because someone turns you down because they say it costs too much.
I would assume do you run into that all the time?
Daily.
Daily.
That's kind of, that's kind of what advocacy is though.
I don't think, and I think that there's a parallel here.
If you're an advocate, you're also in sales and, Oh, there I say we're in sales, right?
(29:32):
Like that's, that's a huge, you know, no, no, I'm not in sales, right?
But isn't that what we're doing?
We're trying to convince people to think differently, to own, you know, responsibility.
And this happens in our day to day lives with our, you know, kids or our, I'm trying
to convince, you know, my son, please sit down and eat.
Well, I want to do other things instead.
(29:53):
Persuasion is part of life.
And I think anyone who's in an advocacy role, whether you admit it or not, if you want to
try and change someone's mind approaching it with, with your two, you know, two fists
raised and ready to fight, you know, you are immediately going to encounter resistance
right away.
But you got to kind of treat everything as it's not a no forever.
It's just a no for now, right?
(30:14):
Mm hmm.
You know, you never know what's going to happen in a couple of months.
It changes pressure from the, from the industry, they get a lawsuit or, you know, government
regulation comes down.
I know to American audiences that's, you know, get out government, but that happens all the
time.
Right, right.
God.
(30:35):
And, but then then all of a sudden someone, something shifts or they see the benefit of
it, right?
And I lead.
That's why I don't lead with always.
It's the right thing to do.
I lead with, Hey, do you want access to an eight trillion dollar market?
That's a good point.
Do you want your, yeah, yeah.
That is what I am finding as I'm getting deeper into this.
That needs to be used.
Totally.
(30:56):
So much more.
And no one's looking at it, but that's what made me think when I saw the gap kid.
Right.
Right.
And there's money in it.
Well, that's who they realize gap realizes.
When you sit across from a VP of product, right, for an organization with 9,000 employees,
they're bread is, is, is one off this product here, getting the subscribers to pay a hundred
(31:22):
bucks a month.
Okay.
You got a company like that in front of you.
If you start going in there and saying, this is the right thing to do.
It's super important.
You know, you're only going to get so far because you're not speaking their language.
But then you go in there and say, man, don't you want your product to be the most usable
product out there?
Let me, let me show you that one in seven people here are not able to use your product.
(31:45):
In fact, you have 9,000 employees here and one in seven, you may not even know that the
person next to you is dyslexic.
And then that person themselves admits that you have got ADHD and I'd love to talk to
more about this.
That is a winning way to talk and move this industry forward.
That is a way that we need to start like, we need to speak the language of the people
who are in front of us.
(32:06):
But it is only going to come with a revolution.
I've been one to be speaking up the LGBTQ plus community and follow their follow what they
did because hell, that's out there.
Yeah, movies, television.
We see it commercials all over the place.
You've got mixed marriages.
For just for example, you have males kissing males, you know, we're not seeing enough
(32:29):
in the disability community and damn it.
That's what gap is doing.
Exactly.
We've got to keep following up and I'm going to start searching for people like, maybe
I should try to find some of that made that decision a gap.
Maybe that would be a guess down the road about.
Yeah, I've looked for them too as well.
If you find it, you know, just give me a thumbs up from me.
I'd appreciate that.
That'd be cool.
And you know, and different countries actually handle it but differently.
(32:54):
In the UK, they're having people with disabilities like join game shows and stuff like that or
representation.
I've noticed that there's a show.
There's someone in the wheelchair on jeopardy.
Yeah.
I don't even know.
I don't even know.
I don't remember.
I sent in a video to a show that might be defunct now.
I can't remember the name of it.
But my wife and I filmed the video and I said to them, you don't have any disabled people
(33:19):
and I'm interested in coming on your show on their game show.
Never heard bad from them, but I don't see them up again this year.
So maybe they weren't, maybe they weren't bought.
But that needs to happen.
That's a great example.
So I came across a video of you and you ended it with a line of together we can drive the
disability inclusion revolution.
(33:42):
I love that tagline disability inclusion revolution.
What do you mean by that, Cam?
That really is, you know, there is a recent passing of someone who is very popular in
the world of disability inclusion, Judy human.
And when I think of like, what is a revolution?
Let's change the minds of many people.
And it seems like there was the Capitol Hill crawl in the 70s and 80s.
(34:07):
I'm not, I don't remember, but there was, let's climb the steps of Capitol Hill and
let's show everyone that people with disabilities exist.
And there's not much happening after that.
You know, there has not been a large movement of people with disabilities saying, you know,
we exist.
We're here.
We need to be listened to.
And I'm not saying that it has to be, you know, we need to go to every large city in
(34:31):
the world and start to create that big movement.
But a revolution can be in industry.
A revolution can be in schools.
A revolution can be in your community.
And we can start to move this conversation forward by getting together and having real
conversations like what we're having here right now.
I have had people with, with invisible disabilities, you know, share deep secrets, deep emotions,
(34:55):
deep feelings, you know, by meeting them for 15 minutes because all of a sudden it was,
we've created a safe space to talk about this.
And if anyone who is a business owner or leader in organization, if you care about your team,
and I know you do, like, it's very rare that you meet somebody who's in a leadership role
who says, I don't care about my team.
Like, in fact, it's never happened.
Maybe they're not doing it the right way, but that's a different discussion.
(35:18):
If someone is listening is in that role, then you have a, it's your job.
It's your job to care about your team and creating those safe spaces, creating opportunities
for people to share and then doing something about that as part of your job as well.
And I think that's what, what this is all about.
This is all about how do we start to move everyone forward, community forward, culture
(35:40):
forward.
And this is the shift.
You talked about the LGBTQ plus community and the culture shift has happened and we
are having real conversations about that now and it's less, we're able to have a conversation
about that openly in public and that's, it's okay now.
It's acceptable.
I, you know, I'm putting it out there.
(36:03):
I don't represent that community.
I don't want to put my represent.
Yeah, but you're helping it.
But I have friends and we're able to have conversations out there as well.
But people with invisible disabilities do not.
And we cannot share that we have ADHD or dyslexia or neuro diversity or bipolar or things like
that is it is shameful to admit that in workplaces or in schools and that needs to change.
(36:27):
That's the revolution.
And that's, that's what we've got to be doing.
But again, you are helping it.
So it's, it's greatly appreciated what you're doing, Cam.
So we're going to, we're going to move to this point.
And it's time to wrap up the show with the road trip roundup.
We've got five questions for you, Cam, related to you and road trips.
(36:48):
All right.
Let's do it.
One, number one, when road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Fast food.
What do you, where's your go to?
What's your Wendy's spicy chicken?
Yeah.
Oh, and he says that with great conviction, folks.
All right.
I didn't need to say anything more than that.
In your eyes.
David, I've been doing it.
All right.
(37:09):
What's your dream car for road trip, Cam?
Could be something you grew up with, something you've got now or something that maybe you
would rent to go on a road trip.
Oh, man.
I've never done it in RV.
I would love to try and rent an RV and do a total North America trip.
That's the dream.
I have to tell you, I think we're getting, we're at least in the 40% range of my guests
that have mentioned RV.
(37:31):
Oh, yeah.
That's, that's really wild.
That's cool.
That's cool.
Yeah, I like that.
People want to get out and advance.
How many people do sports girls?
That's the big thing.
I've got a lot of road trips on.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Hey, all right.
Last cassette or CD that played while you're on a road trip.
Oh, geez.
Gotcha.
CD, it's going to be a mixed CD background.
I was burning them, but since I've changed to Bluetooth, it's like non-existent.
(37:56):
So yeah, some of these.
Yeah, some of these.
Oh, let me tell you, I'll turn it off.
That's it.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
I wish they would bring back CD players in cars.
We actually bought one because my wife just misses the hell out of CD player because she
has some mixed and we went through Amazon and ended up returning two of those things
because they kept starting to track three or they stop and someone please be out there,
(38:19):
create something that's accessible to everyone so we can play CDs, please.
All right.
Number four, Coca Pepsi, straight out, Coca Pepsi.
Coke, boom.
All right.
You're an easy guy.
Here's the next one.
Favorite road trip memory?
So I drove across Canada twice, once when I was 10, once when I was 29, something like
(38:43):
that.
I went to Saskatchewan, but then what was cool is I drove down my mums in New Mexico.
So I went from Saskatchewan, which, I mean, about in the middle of the country, right?
And what was neat though is driving south from there, you start to see all types of landscapes.
And so it went from plains to rolling hills to mountains, right?
(39:06):
And when you start to hear in Montana, stuff like that.
And then you get the raised plains of New Mexico and Arizona.
It was just so cool.
It was just super cool to see the landscape change over a two day.
Yeah, I drove 12 hours a day to get down to Saskatchewan to New Mexico, Clovis, New Mexico.
You had to do fast food then.
Oh, I mean, yeah, when you see it, it stops or fast food, that's all you get.
(39:30):
But that was cool.
That was really, really neat seeing these like every single landscape that could possibly
be.
I like it.
I like it.
Hey, we're going to wrap it up right now, but stay on so we can pick each other's brains
for a second.
Okay.
And I'm just going to sign out with Chow and she likes everybody and keep listening to
Life's a Road Trip.
(39:51):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website
at lifestroadtrip.podbean.com for more information on this week's guest.
This is your host Scott Martin reminding you that Life's a Road Trip.
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