AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast
Business og økonomiFaktaTeknologiLearn more about Accessibility with Natalie MacLees — a digital professional with over 25 years of experience developing a more accessible internet and owner of AAArdvark, a tool for professional accessibility experts to perform faster website accessibility audits.
Siste episoder av AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast podcast
- Adding Digital Accessibility to Your Web Agency Services Part Two (00:14:07)
Episode 36 of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast explores actionable steps for integrating accessibility into various services offered by web agencies, from web development and SEO to branding, marketing, and website maintenance.
- Adding Digital Accessibility to Your Web Agency Services Part One (00:13:33)
In the 35th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, co-hosts Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees discuss the critical importance of incorporating digital accessibility into web agency offerings. Natalie MacLees, an expert with over 20 years of experience, explains the increasing legal requirements for accessible websites, the risks of non-compliance, and the benefits of accessibility, including improved SEO and expanded market reach.
- Accessibility Meets SEO: Boost rankings and usability with the same fixes?! (00:14:29)
Join co-hosts Natalie Garza and digital accessibility expert Natalie MacLees for episode 34 of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This episode delves into the overlap between accessibility and SEO, highlighting how both can benefit from keyword targeting, content readability, page titles, link purposes, headings, and adaptable content. The hosts discuss various Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) criteria that also enhance SEO and provide practical tips for making your website more accessible and search-engine-friendly. Intro: Accessibility Meets SEO Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 34. I’m one of the co-hosts, Natalie Garza, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: And she is a digital accessibility expert here to walk us through today’s topic, which is the overlap, the handshake between accessibility and SEO. Intro: Accessibility Meets SEO So let’s give the viewers a little refresher. What does SEO even stand for to begin with? Natalie MacLees: Search engine optimization. And it’s just some things that you can do on your website to make sure that search engines are more likely to find it, especially when they’re searching for particular keywords. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and we’re not gonna get into all SEO basics. We just wanna show you guys how much overlap there is between accessibility topics and fixes for your website and SEO improvements. Alt Text and Non-Text Content So, starting off with the concept of keyword targeting. Basically, creating content based on what people search for. So what is the first WCAG success criterion that we’re gonna talk about that overlaps with this? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so 1.1.1, which is called Non-text Content, but this is basically the WCAG rule that says our images need alt text. It says some other things as well, but that’s the main thing that most people take away from that one. So you do wanna make sure that if you have non-decorative images, images that are conveying information of some kind, that they have alternative text. So for somebody who can’t see the image, for whatever reason, they can still get information about what is contained in that image. Search engines can’t see your images, so they also benefit from having alt text. Where you wanna be careful is that your alt text is for people first. So don’t just use your alt text for keyword stuffing for SEO. Make sure it works for people first. Natalie Garza: Exactly. Yeah. Would you be embarrassed if this gets shown to a person, or will this be actually helpful? So alt text is a great way to incorporate keywords. Keep It Simple: Reading Level What’s the next way to incorporate keyword targeting that also overlaps with accessibility? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so your content itself, so we have 3.1.5 Reading Level, we wanna keep things to about an eighth grade reading level. So if you’re not in the US that’s around like junior high, like where you are when you’re 12 or 13 years old. Very friendly, straightforward language, that is going to be helpful for the search engines to ingest that and figure out what your page is about. But it’s also helpfu...
- Keyboard Accessibility 101: Basics You Can’t Ignore (00:12:29)
Join Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees on the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the importance of keyboard accessibility in web design. The episode highlights why some users rely on keyboards instead of mice or touchscreens and provides key insights and practical tips for ensuring websites are fully navigable via keyboard. Topics covered include the importance of using semantic HTML, testing custom components thoroughly, and understanding native keyboard interactions. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. I’m Natalie Garza, I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: and she is a digital accessibility expert here to answer our questions on today’s topic, which is keyboard accessibility 101, the basics you can’t ignore. So we’re gonna talk about why keyboard accessibility is important and some key notes on when you’re testing for keyboard navigation on your website. Why Keyboard Accessibility Matters So why doesn’t everyone just use a mouse or tap on their phones to navigate a website? Why keyboards? Natalie MacLees: Well, not everybody can do that. Not everybody has hands. Not everybody has hands that they can move. So we have lots of different cases where people aren’t able to use a mouse or a touchscreen reliably. So sometimes it’s limited mobility. Sometimes it can be cognitive disorders or fine motor control issues. Like you can move your hand, but you don’t have a lot of control over exactly where it goes. If you have no vision or limited vision, you can’t see where a mouse cursor is on a screen and you can’t tell where to tap on a touch screen so you don’t have any other option other than to use a keyboard to navigate around the screen, and also sometimes just power users don’t wanna move their hand off the keyboard. They’re going too fast. They’re setting their keyboard on fire, just going through too fast. No time to move your hand over to the mouse. Natalie Garza: Yeah. Even everyday users like you use Control-C, Control-V to copy/paste. I’m sure a lot of people do. That’s a form of keyboard navigation too. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, which, you know, you could do that with your mouse. You could right-click with your mouse and say copy and paste, but you could also do it with your keyboard. So anything you can do with a mouse, you can do with a keyboard. Natalie Garza: And a lot of assistive devices, although they don’t look like keyboards, they fall under the same category as keyboards. Natalie MacLees: They get treated as a keyboard by the computer. Yeah. As far as the computer is concerned, it’s a keyboard that’s attached. The computer can’t tell the difference. Natalie Garza: Exactly. Alright, so that’s why keyboard and navigation are so important. Ensuring Keyboard Accessibility on Your Website So how do we translate that into our website? How can we make sure that people using only keyboards can access everything on a site? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, we have to make sure that we’re not building anything that only works with a mouse. And where that usually happens is when we’re building custom components and not using semantic HTML. So the easiest fix is to just always use semantic HTML. Whenever you can, you wanna try to do that, and HTML has gotten to be a lot more robust, a lot more powerf...
- Making Social Media Posts Accessible (00:12:25)
Join Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza in the 32nd episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss how to make social media posts accessible. They cover using emojis, shortened links, adding alt text to images, creating easy-to-read text, avoiding fancy decorative fonts, and ensuring videos have captions and audio descriptions. Learn practical accessibility tips to enhance the inclusivity of your social media content! Social Media Without Barriers Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name’s Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is. Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: And she is a digital accessibility expert here to answer our questions on today’s topic. So in this episode, we’re gonna cover accessibility and social media posts. Even the content you post on social media platforms should aim to be accessible. Emojis in Social Media Posts So, starting with emoji, what about emoji do we have to keep in mind with social media posts? Natalie MacLees: Don’t do posts that are all emojis. Those are terrible. We did our episode last time on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Emojis. So if you want more information about how emojis work, you can check that out. But generally, a social media post, wanna try to limit yourself to one emoji per message. And don’t put it at the beginning. It’s better if it’s at the end of the message, so that way it’s not blocking somebody from getting to the rest of the message. (WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content – Emojis are non-text elements that need a text alternative or must be used in ways that don’t block meaning.) But very quickly, the emoji gets read out to a screen reader. It does not announce that it’s an emoji. It just reads the name of the emoji. So we’ll just say like “slightly smiling face” with no context. No hint that it’s an emoji. So it can be a very odd experience if there’s lots of emojis in a message. Natalie Garza: And also I’ve seen a lot of social media posts using emoji lists to replace the bullet points. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that one is pretty rough for screen reader users, so try not to do that. If you need to do a bulleted list, you can actually use the Unicode bullet character, which just gets read out as “bullet”, and everybody can understand what that means. So if you really need bullets, try to use that one instead. Natalie Garza: Oh, I see. So if you’re gonna use the emoji, let it be the little bullet emoji. Is that what you’re saying? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I think it’s not even technically an emoji. It’s just one of the characters that’s in a font. Natalie Garza: Oh, I see. This is just a copy-paste. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Links vs Shortened Links for Accessibility Natalie Garza: All right. Next on the list, we have links versus shortened links. Natalie MacLees: So most social media platforms don’t let you do what you would do on a website, where you can take a word or a phrase, link that, and have the words that are visible be different from the link, right? It’s like on your website, you could be like,
- The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Emojis and Accessibility (00:13:56)
Join Natalie Garza and digital accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in episode 31 of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This episode talks about the implications of accessible emojis, exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly sides. Learn about specific WCAG success criteria, the role of emojis in aiding comprehension, and the challenges they pose for screen readers. Natalie Garza: Hello, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: And she is a digital accessibility expert here to answer our […]
- Protect Your Website: Accessibility Lawsuit Insights Part 2 (00:12:39)
Join Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 30th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast to explore statistics and dive into state-level compliance with accessibility laws and the prevalence of ADA lawsuits. The hosts discuss specific state requirements in Texas, Illinois, and Minnesota, and elaborate on the differences between Section 508 and WCAG guidelines. They also analyze the statistics of ADA lawsuits targeting WordPress, Shopify, and custom-coded websites, and provide crucial compliance deadlines for the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and ADA Title II. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. I’m Natalie Garza, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees. Natalie Garza: And in this episode, we’re gonna go over some more statistics and dive into them. So first statistic, I’m going to read out: “The key areas of focus for businesses in 2025 include state-level compliance, proactive accessibility measures, and preparation for the EAA, which will begin enforcement in June 2025.” And I looked into the United States. That’s where we live. I actually found, in addition to the ADA, that each state may or may not have its own accessibility requirements. So I wanted to talk about state level accessibility. So, Natalie, I know you talked about California last time and also New York. Do you wanna go over some of the other states? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, Sure. We can go over some of the other states. So we have Texas, which has Administrative Code Section 206 that generally is aligned with Section 508, Section 504, saying that websites are required to meet specific standards. (Texas Administrative Code Chapter 206 is only applicable to state agencies and higher education websites as of 08/2025) Do you know Natalie, if that is just government websites or does it apply to private business websites as well? Natalie Garza: I am gonna have to look into that. But you mentioned that there is a difference, and most states, and most laws apply to government sites, don’t they? Natalie MacLees: In the United States, that’s generally true. Most of our accessibility laws that apply to websites apply only to government websites. There are a few states and, like local governments, that have requirements for private websites, but most of the laws are focused on government websites or websites that are associated with the government in some way, like public universities, public libraries and things like that. So you know, our borders, our political borders that we use as humans, kind of become meaningless on the web, and it gets a little bit sticky about who can apply, which laws where and how. So we could talk about Illinois, which has a law that applies to the state agencies, so any of their state agencies must have accessible websites. So following similar rules to Section 508. (Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act applies to state agencies and universities; however, it does not apply to local governments, school districts, community colleges, or private organizations.) And, Minnesota has a similar law, and that also applies to all of their state websites, and they were one of the earliest states to have a law, an accessibility law that applied to their government websites. (Minnesota Statutes 16E.03, 363A.42, and 363.43 apply to state agencies, continuing education, or professional deve...
- Protect Your Website: Accessibility Lawsuit Insights (00:11:59)
Join Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza for the 29th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. They delve into the significant rise in ADA lawsuits related to digital properties, examining how these lawsuits affect small business websites and government entities. The discussion covers key statistics, including the increase in state-level lawsuits, repeat lawsuits, and the impact of accessibility widgets. They also emphasize the importance of education and proactive efforts in making websites accessible. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name’s Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: and she is a digital accessibility expert here to answer our questions. Talk to us about today’s topic, which is how accessibility lawsuits have affected small business websites and also government websites. So we’re gonna go through some statistics and then dive in. So to get started, first one, we found that “Over 4,000 ADA lawsuits related to digital properties were filed in 2024. With a decline in federal cases and an increase in state level lawsuits, particularly in New York and California.” (UsableNet 2024 Report) Natalie MacLees: I think generally the decline in the federal cases is probably due to the change of the administration at the federal level and the administration demonstrating a different set of priorities around accessibility right now. So we see those cases kind of shifting to the state level. California has a Civil Rights Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, that was passed in 1959. Which does let plaintiffs claim $4,000 per violation, per person, per visit, so that does create an incentive structure for frivolous lawsuits, unfortunately. Not all accessibility lawsuits are frivolous. But there is a problem I think, in the industry with abuse of using the judicial systemfor personal gain. And there are definitely legitimate cases, and I don’t wanna take that away from anybody, but there are also cases where it seems like nobody actually did go try to use the website, and then they file these lawsuits. So unfortunately, there’s that incentive for that to happen, and it’s meant to be an incentive for small businesses and government websites and things like that, it’s meant to be an incentive for them to avoid those fines and fees and make their, you know, the, it’s not just their websites, right? That law applies to physical locations, like having a wheelchair ramp for your restaurant and accessible restrooms, like it applies to all different all different situations, but it does include websites. So it’s meant to be an incentive for businesses and governments to make things accessible. And I think it has accomplished that to a certain degree, but I think it also has this kind of other unfortunate side effect, that we see. And then in New York, there’s not a specific law in New York that’s causing the extra lawsuits there. I think it’s just a friendly court district that happens to be in New York, and I know that there are a lot of family-owned wineries in upstate New York that have been for some reason targeted by these lawsuits. Which is also unfortunate that what’s getting targeted are they small family run businesses. I agree that they should all have accessible websites and accessible premises I think they should be doing everything that they can to make their websites and their shops accessible. But...
- Web Design for Digital Accessibility Part 2 (00:13:56)
Join hosts Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees in episode 28 of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they continue discussing web design for digital accessibility. Topics include the proper use of headings for creating meaningful hierarchy, text spacing and typography principles, consistent navigation design, considerations for limiting motion and animations, and the impact of videos in design. Learn about best practices and resources like WCAG in Plain English and the new AAArdvark Circle community. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 28. I’m Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is. Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to answer all of our questions today. So this episode is the second part of the one we did last week on web design for digital accessibility. We’re gonna pick up where we left off. So starting with the next topic, which is headings. Natalie MacLees: Headings. Yeah. So you wanna make sure that you’re including headings in your design. And before you hand that design off to a developer, you would wanna put some annotations in the design. To let them know which heading levels should be used for each thing, and that way, you can make sure that there is a meaningful hierarchy to those headings. So I think we’ve talked about this before, but just a quick refresher. There should be one H1 on the page, and that H1 should be the main idea of that page. So the main reason that that page exists, it’s probably going to match or be very close to the title of the page. So that’s a good hint on which heading should be the H1 on the page. Then each section of the page should be headed up by an H2, and if you have subsections under those sections, those would be H3 and so on and so forth. You can go all the way down to an H6, although it’s pretty rare to need much past an H3 or an H4. Natalie Garza: Yeah. And remember, headings are not stylistic choices like they’re there for a reason. Natalie MacLees: Yes, they do make text large and bold, but they also say this is a heading for the section of content that follows. So if you just need big, bold texts because you’re putting text over an image for a big banner or something like that, you have to think about whether that makes sense for that to be a heading or not. Like, is it actually heading up a section of content? ’cause if it’s not, it should probably just be a paragraph that’s styled to be big. Natalie Garza: All right, so those are headings next on the list. Text spacing kind of goes hand in hand. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, and I would even maybe call this typography. So there are only a few official WCAG rules that deal with text and typography. Shockingly few, if you ask me, actually, because there’s no rule around minimum font size, for example, which is kind of surprising. And there are no rules around which typefaces you choose. And obviously, a typeface can be pretty difficult to read, for anybody like, let alone somebody who may have a learning disability or a reading disability. But we do have a few rules around line heights. You wanna make sure...
- Web Design for Digital Accessibility Part 1 (00:13:20)
Join hosts Natalie Garza and digital accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 27th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, as they discuss important considerations for designers in creating accessible websites. They cover topics including color contrast, touch targets, responsive design, hover and focus states, and forms. Also, learn about resources like WCAG in Plain English and the AAArdvark Circle community. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 27. I’m Natalie Garza, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to walk us through today’s topic, which is web design for digital accessibility. So a lot of people think that digital accessibility falls only on developers’ plates who are building the websites, but that’s completely untrue. Natalie MacLees: I mean, it does fall on their plates, but it’s not only on their plates. It falls on the plates of everybody who’s involved in making a website. So starting from planning, project management, design, user experience, content, copywriting, marketing, photography, and images. Every part that goes into making the website, everybody has some responsibility for accessibility, but we’re not gonna talk about everybody today. We’re just gonna talk about the designers. Natalie Garza: Yeah, because the designers, a lot of the time, will set the tone for the website project. Natalie MacLees: Yes, the designers tend to come in pretty early in the process, so they have a lot to do with the direction that things go and making sure that things like color schemes and forms and all of those are designed to be accessible from the very beginning. Natalie Garza: ’cause you can’t always expect the developer to know how to implement a lot of stuff. Like the designer, they’re the one there to tell them how you should execute the website, whether it’s like a hover state that you don’t often think about or like the form errors that often get missed, like the designer’s there to say, this is how it’s supposed to look. Natalie MacLees: And to a certain extent, this is how it’s supposed to work. Also, there should be some accessibility annotations in most designs that explain a little bit about how something is expected to function to make sure that it’s accessible. Natalie Garza: Exactly. So in this episode, we’re gonna walk through all the different concepts or things that designers have to keep in mind when designing accessible websites. Starting with contrast. Natalie MacLees: Yes. Probably the most common accessibility failure across the internet is insufficient color contrast between text and whatever background it happens to be on, whether that’s a solid background color, a gradient, a background image, something that changes, something that’s absolutely positioned over some other part of the site. There are so many different ways that color contrast can fail. And there are also some trends in web design that are very inaccessible, like using very light pastel colors as a background with white text. You know, it has a very fresh, fun feel to it, but it is not sufficient contrast, and it is very difficult to read that text. And sometimes people really get carried away with it on very, very light colors with white text, and it’s just too difficult to see. So you wanna make sure to avoid things like...
- Understanding the European Accessibility Act: Important June 2025 Deadline! (00:12:38)
Join Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza for the 26th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they delve into the European Accessibility Act (EAA), discussing why it matters, who needs to comply, and what compliance involves. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. I’m Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: and she is an accessibility expert here to answer all of our questions. And in this episode, we’re going to cover the upcoming European Accessibility Act, or EAA. Natalie MacLees: Yes. Natalie Garza: We will start with a disclaimer. We are not lawyers, but we will try our best to explain it and go over why it matters, what it is, who needs to comply, and what does it actually involve. So to start off the episode, why does the European Accessibility Act matter right now? Natalie MacLees: So the day that this podcast comes out, the second part of the act will actually go into effect. So June 28th, 2025. Any new products, websites, or services have to be compliant with the law. If you already have an existing website, product or service, you have until June 28th, 2030 to make it compliant. But if you’re doing any major updates, redesigns, et cetera, that’s gonna trigger the law and you’re gonna have to make sure that that is accessible. Natalie Garza: Yeah. As far as June 28th, 2025, any new products hitting the market have to comply. Natalie MacLees: That date or after have to comply. Natalie Garza: So super relevant, especially if you’re watching the episode on the day that it comes out and you’re in the European Union. Natalie MacLees: Or you do business in the European Union, we’ll get to it. Natalie Garza: Yes. We’ll get to that here in a second. So why does the EAA matter in general? Natalie MacLees: You are going to start facing legal penalties for having kiosks, digital devices, websites, web apps, et cetera, that are not accessible. So there will be legal consequences to having those on the market. And of course, those are in addition to all the consequences you already have for having something in the market that’s not accessible, which is that you’re damaging your brand trust and your brand. You’re losing out on some competitive advantages and you’re not respecting everybody’s civil and human rights and not being inclusive. Natalie Garza: Yes, ’cause everyone has a right to information online. Natalie MacLees: Yes, they do. Natalie Garza: So, what is the European Accessibility Act specifically? What is it, what does it cover? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so it covers any kind of digital products or services, so mobile phones, gaming consoles, kiosks like where you check in at the airport or at a hotel. Also, any kind of web apps or web services, websites, et cetera. All of those kinds of things are covered, and they all need to be made accessible. Natalie Garza: And every single European country has their own rules Natalie MacLees: Yes, yes. The specifics of what that means differs from country to country, so we won’t be digging into that today. But if you are dealing with a specific country, you need to look up and see how the EAA got implemented in that coun...
- Quick Wins for Web Accessibility (00:11:25)
Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees for the 25th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they dive into quick wins for making websites more accessible using WCAG’s Easy Checks, designed especially for non-developers. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 25, I’m Natalie Garza, and joining me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to answer all of our questions. And in this episode, we’re gonna talk about quick wins for websites in terms of accessibility. So, what do we mean when we say quick wins? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so things that you could fix probably in just a few minutes, or things that you could at least test for very quickly and easily without having to have any kind of special equipment or special software packages or anything like that installed. Natalie Garza: Yeah. And I would even add that quick wins also include, you don’t have to be a developer. You could do this if you’re pretty new to working with websites or new to accessibility. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so our list is based on the WCAG Easy Checks, which are specifically designed for non-developers. Don’t have to be technical. You don’t need any special equipment or any special software. Anybody could check these things and most people could fix most of them. Natalie Garza: Yes, so to get started, let’s kick off the list with page titles. Natalie MacLees: All right, so the page title is what shows up on your tab of your browser when you have a page open, and otherwise, you don’t really see it much. But it is the first thing announced to a screen reader user when they land on a page. So it is important that the page title be an accurate description of what the page is about. Browser window showing tabs for “Aardvark – Wikipedia” and “AAArdvark | The Fastest Way” with the Wikipedia URL in the address bar. So that if somebody lands there, they can immediately understand what this page is all about? And why would, why am I here? Natalie Garza: Yeah, and they have to be unique, because if they go between pages and they’re the exact same, it’s super confusing. Natalie MacLees: That’s a very good point. Yes. You want to be able to tell one page from another, just from the page titles. Natalie Garza: All right, next on the list, image text alternatives. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so this is a huge topic. We could probably do a whole episode just on this, but basically, you wanna make sure that you have alternative texts for all of your images. That gives somebody the reason why the image is on the page, and if there’s any information conveyed by that image, to also convey that information. So your alt text for the exact same image might be different on different pages, just depending on the context that the image gets used in. And generally, you wanna avoid saying things like photo of or image of, because we already know it’s an image or a photo, and you wanna keep your description short and concise. And so cut out all of that filler stuff.
- Disabilities and Digital Accessibility: It’s Not Just Blind People! (00:14:09)
Join hosts Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza for the 24th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they discuss the various types of disabilities that affect web accessibility. They explore common misconceptions, highlight the specific needs and best practices for users with vision, auditory, cognitive, physical/motor, and seizure-related disabilities, and discuss additional considerations for temporary and situational disabilities. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 24. My name is Natalie Garza, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to answer all our questions in digital accessibility. In this episode, we’re gonna talk about all the different types of disabilities that can impact your use of the web, and it’s not just blind people. So, to get started, why does everyone just think digital accessibility affects blind people? Natalie MacLees: I am not really sure exactly where that comes from, but you will have a lot of developers, I think, in particular for some reason, who think that making a website or web application accessible just means making it work with screen readers. So it’s not even just users who are blind, but actually specifically screen reader users. Right. So I’m not exactly sure where that, where that idea comes from, but you do hear it a lot. And then you hear a lot of accessibility professionals say it’s not just screen readers. Natalie Garza: All right, so we’re going to break down the different disability types or groups, starting with the first category of disabilities. Do you wanna talk about that one? Natalie MacLees: A permanent disability. So a disability that once it is acquired, will have for the rest of your life. There are many, many different types of these disabilities. Of course, the first up would be some kind of vision impairment. Which could include being completely blind, but could also include being just low vision. So somebody who has some vision, but not, you know, obviously not 2020 vision, which is a lot of, a lot of people. ‘Cause everybody who wears glasses or contact lenses, right? But there’s a spectrum. There’s a spectrum of, maybe you just need to wear glasses to read. Right, would be kind of at one end, and then all the way at the other end would be you have very little vision in your eyes, and maybe can only distinguish general shapes or lightness from darkness. And anywhere in between. And then we also have other types of disabilities that affect vision, like color blindness. There are many, many different types of colorblindness. The most common one being just red-green colorblindness. So people who cannot distinguish, red colors from green colors. But there are many other types including complete colorblindness where people, just see the world in black and white and cannot perceive color at all. Sometimes, your vision can disappear from the middle outward, and sometimes from outward in, or sometimes you lose your front vision, but still have peripheral vision, or the other way around. There are all kinds of interesting things that can happen to eyes. Natalie Garza: Yeah. So, what do we have to keep in mind for people with vision impairment? Natalie MacLees: Sure. There’s a few different things. For colorblindness, you just wanna make sure that all of your colors have sufficient contrast, tha...
- Celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2025 (00:11:00)
Join hosts Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 23rd episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day. They discuss the day’s origins, its purpose, and current statistics on digital accessibility from WebAIM. Listeners will also learn why accessibility is vital and find practical steps and resources to make digital content more inclusive. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility podcast. My name is Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is: Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert here to bring awareness on this very special episode. What are we celebrating today, Natalie? Natalie MacLees: Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Natalie Garza: Yes, it is a special holiday that the accessibility community brought together, that we do every single year, and this year it happens to fall on May 15th, 2025. Natalie MacLees: Yes. The third Thursday of May. Natalie Garza: Yes. Do you wanna talk about how it was founded, who founded it, and what year it was founded? Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah. So, it all started with a blog post from Joe Devon proposing the idea that we needed an accessibility awareness day to help raise awareness for digital accessibility. He tweeted about it, and another accessibility professional named Jennison Asuncion, saw that tweet and said, “Yep, we need this, I’m on board.” And they co-founded Global Accessibility Awareness Day together. Natalie Garza: Yeah, a new holiday. I don’t know if it’s fair to say it’s a holiday, but I will say it’s a holiday. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah. A celebrated day, an observed day. Natalie Garza: Observational day! What is the whole point of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, if the title doesn’t already explain? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, in case it wasn’t already self-explanatory. We wanna get everybody thinking about digital accessibility. So, people who don’t know anything about it, we wanna try to get the word out to them, get everybody talking about it, thinking about it, learning about it, and committing to making anything that they make online a little bit more accessible. Natalie Garza: Yeah. So spreading awareness to turn into action. Hopefully. Natalie MacLees: Yes. Most people know. They will hopefully understand the importance of digital accessibility and want to take steps. To make their online presence more accessible. Natalie Garza: Yeah, because I think the problem is not that people don’t wanna be accessible or that they don’t think it’s important, I think they’re just not aware. It’s just not common knowledge. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. You find that a lot. I think, you know, we’ve talked about how accessibility isn’t included in a lot of web development education or web design education. It’s just not included, which kind of silently communicates this idea that it’s not actually tha...
- What to Expect in WCAG 3.0 (00:13:50)
Join Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 22nd episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. In this episode, they delve into the history of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), covering versions 1.0 through 2.2, and offer an in-depth discussion on the structure and objectives of the upcoming WCAG 3.0. They explore the changes in guidelines, requirements, and vocabulary and discuss the draft state of WCAG 3.0. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 22, and my name is Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, the other co-host. Natalie Garza: and she is an accessibility expert here to answer our questions. And in this episode we’re gonna talk about WCAG 3.0. Natalie MacLees: WCAG 3.0. We did our best. Natalie Garza: We did our best to research and investigate. So we’re gonna share our notes with you guys and our thoughts. But, to start off, Natalie, do you wanna give us a quick history on WCAG’s versions? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, sure. So early on, people figured out that we needed guidelines to figure out how to make the web accessible. So WCAG 1.0 was released in 1999 to kind of help address that. It was pretty simple. It was just 14 guidelines, and they had a priority one, two, or three, which kind of roughly became A, AA, and AAA, when 2.0 came out in 2008. And that’s where we got the structure we know now, where we have the POUR principles. Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust, with the success criteria and the guidelines underneath those four principles. The web moved along, new technology came out, and people started buying smartphones left and right. They realized there was some things that didn’t get addressed in 2.0. So we got 2.1, which came out in 2018, which added some more rules around mobile devices and also added some more rules for people with cognitive disabilities and, low vision. Again, the web moved along new technologies and we got WCAG 2.2 pretty recently in October of 2023, which added even more guidelines for people with cognitive disabilities and also with motor impairments. So just addressing some things that got left out and addressing some new technologies and things as the web moved along. Natalie Garza: So do you want to give us a quick introduction to WCAG 3.0. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so when we WCAG 1.0, it was really focused on HTML, ’cause CSS and JavaScript were so new at the time, like nobody was really thinking about them. And when we had 2.0, that’s when they really started thinking about, “Oh, there’s CSS and JavaScript.” And of course, we see a lot of the techniques and things. We’ll reference scripting and CSS. But the web has really kind of moved on. We have really robust, rich applications that can take the place of desktop applications, which we take for granted now, and we forget how revolutionary those were. And 2.0 doesn’t really do a super great job at addressing that. So 3.0 is coming along to help and bette...
- Starting a Career in Digital Accessibility (00:13:58)
Join Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees for the 21st episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they delve into the realm of digital accessibility careers. They clarify the distinction between digital and physical accessibility, explore various roles within digital accessibility, and provide advice on how to start a career in the field. From the absence of formal education paths to the importance of continuous learning and certification, they cover it all. Also, get tips on resources and courses to enhance your knowledge and skills in digital accessibility. Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 21. I’m Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, another co-host. Natalie Garza: and she is actually an accessibility expert here to answer all our burning questions. In this episode, we’re gonna talk about advice and how to start a career in digital accessibility. But before we dive into that, do you wanna make it clear the difference between digital accessibility and physical accessibility jobs? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so we’re gonna talk about only digital accessibility today, but of course, there are lots of ways to work in accessibility, and a lot of people will have jobs working in the physical world. So helping to make buildings accessible, museums accessible, art exhibits, all, different kinds of things where people need to go and be in a physical space, you know, concert venues, things like that. So there is a lot of work to do in the world of accessibility that is not necessarily online and what we’re gonna talk about today, because what, what I specialize in, what I do for a living is digital accessibility and very specifically web accessibility. And even within the digital accessibility space, there’s a lot of different things that that can mean because there’s mobile devices and mobile apps and websites and all different kinds of things like that. Accessible documents, et cetera. So we’re gonna mostly focus on web accessibility today. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and not even to count like the digital accessibility jobs with just like assistive technology devices or tools. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I recently met somebody at an event who had had a job at one point, at a university where it was their job to go around and install assistive technology for the students who needed it, whether that was software or hardware. That was that was their job. They just went around and installed refreshable braille displays and screen reader software and those kinds of things, to support the students at the university. Natalie Garza: Right. Yeah. So all kinds of digital accessibility jobs and just a small subset of the whole accessibility space. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Natalie Garza: What is it like to work in digital accessibility? Natalie MacLees: It can look like a whole bunch of different things. There’s not, it’s not a single kind of monolithic field where everybody’s job looks the same. So that could look like a lot of different things. You could be a developer who’s building websites. You could be a designer who’s designing websites, applications, or user experience. You could be an auditor or a tester who’s testing websites, mobile apps, or any other kind of product for accessibility. You could be a consultant who’s advising people on how to be accessible or how to make their products more accessible. So there are l...
- Launching WCAG in Plain English (00:13:07)
Join co-hosts Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 20th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. They discuss their latest project, WCAG in Plain English, a collection of simplified articles derived from the official WCAG guidelines. The project aims to make WCAG requirements more understandable and accessible to everyone, with clear language, illustrations, and a redesigned organization. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie Garz, and I’m the co-host. And with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, your cohost. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert. And in today’s episode, we’re going to go over this long-time project that we’ve been working on, and we’re ready to announce, launch, and share with everybody. What is it, Natalie? What are we, what are we launching today? Natalie MacLees: We are launching WCAG in Plain English, a collection of dozens of articles that we have translated from the official WCAG guidelines into easy-to-understand language. Natalie Garza: Mm-hmm. Yes, because if anyone has ever visited the WCAG website and WCAG articles, what is the problem? Natalie MacLees: Oh, they’re so hard to understand. They’re very dense. They’re very technical. They also have some bad advice in them. Funnily enough, I think because some of the techniques have been around for, you know, a decade or more, some of the advice is actually not very good. For example, telling you that you can use a title attribute on an image instead of alt text. Which we know doesn’t actually work. So we took out the ones that we know don’t work. And you did some wonderful illustrations. Do you wanna talk about those? Natalie Garza: Yes, so every single article was handwritten. We read through all the understanding docs. We went through every single technique page. If you’re familiar with the WCAG articles, there’s first off a large page explaining what it is. Like who it applies to. Some examples. It links out to resources, and then it links out to techniques, which are their own separate pages showing you how to implement or how to fix that issue. And any given article, like 1.1.1 has like 30 technique pages that you would have to go visit separately, read through, see if it applies to you, and then come back, just keep going back and forth and back and forth. So we went through the trouble of going through all of those for you and translating them into plain language. And on top of that, where it would be helpful, we did illustrations to show you, at a glance, you can see like, “Oh, that’s what the solution would be like, “Oh, like that’s what a caption is. Or like, oh, that’s what it means with contrast.” So we rewrote them. We boiled down the techniques so that you don’t have to go clicking around page to page, to page to page, with clear illustrations. And then Natalie, do you wanna talk about the organization of our new resource? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so we used all the different ways that WCAG itself organizes them. So you can browse by what level, whether it’s A, AA, or AAA, you can browse by
- The Importance of User Testing with People with Disabilities (00:13:59)
Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 19th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. In this episode, they discuss the vital practice of user testing, especially with people with disabilities. From defining user testing to its execution and why it’s indispensable, learn how involving disabled users can uncover specific issues that would otherwise be missed. They also explore how to find and recruit disabled testers, the help available from specialized organizations, and the benefits of conducting tests remotely. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 19. I am Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is. Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, accessibility expert. Natalie Garza: And in today’s episode, she’s going to teach us all about user testing, specifically with people with disabilities. So, to get started, what is user testing in general? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so when you’re building a product or a website, you can do testing with real users, and that can look like a few different things that we’ll talk about today. But basically, you sit down real users in front of your product. And have them try it out. And it is one of the most maddening and frustrating things you will ever do because no matter how carefully you have designed something and you think it’s so beautiful, users will not be able to figure out how to do anything and it will drive you up the wall. But basically, you sit them down and give them a task and say, you know, “Hey, find information about elephants on this website,” or “put a product in a cart and check out.” You give them a task like that to complete, and then you kind of observe as they go through that task. You see where they run into problems, where they run into issues, and where they get confused, and you keep track of how long it takes ’em to complete the task. Natalie Garza: Yeah. As frustrating as it can be, it’s probably one of the most valuable things you can do. Natalie MacLees: Absolutely, you can learn so, so much about your product and you could, you could spend hours looking at a screen of your app, for example, and in two or three user tests get way more information on what should be changed and how it should look, by watching some real users attempt to use it. Natalie Garza: Yeah, it’s a real eye-opener, ’cause you realize not everyone treats technology the same as you. Natalie MacLees: And not everybody is super tech savvy, you will have situations where you have a giant flashing red button in the middle of the screen that says, “click here,” and users will go,” I don’t, I don’t see where to click. I don’t.” And it’s really hard to not just do it for them. Natalie Garza: Yeah, you, you can’t help ’em if they’re just staring blankly. You just have to let them. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. You can kind of step in and kind of gently nudge them if they start to get really frustrated. But yeah, you should generally try not to participate too much. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and I would say user testing usually is targeted towards like the audience of the product that you’re working on, like if it’s a business product, you’re gonna get the business people to come test it. Or if it’s for non-tech-savvy people, you’re gonna get non-tech-savvy users. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, exactly. So you wanna figure out who your user base is, and then that’s who you wanna recruit to come in and do the user test. Natalie Garza: But often disabled users get overlooked, so why should...
- Accessibility Testing Tools: Browser Extensions (00:14:05)
Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees on the 18th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss various browser extensions that aid in digital accessibility testing. They provide a comprehensive overview of popular tools like the Web Developer extension, aXe by Deque, WAVE by WebAIM, and IBM’s Equal Access Accessibility Checker. The episode also introduces AAArdvark’s tool for automated and manual accessibility audits and highlights the importance of combining automated testing with manual audits for effective accessibility compliance. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 18. I’m Natalie Garza, and with us today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees Natalie Garza: and she’s an accessibility expert here to teach us new things about digital accessibility. So, in this episode, we wanted to start the conversation. Not fully go through the whole topic because it’s just so expansive; we wanted to start talking about tools to help with accessibility testing, starting with browser extensions. Natalie MacLees: Yes, browser extensions, which I think is where a lot of people get started. I think a lot of people, a browser extension is their first experience with scanning a webpage for issues and finding out about accessibility testing. Natalie Garza: Yeah. And again, disclaimer: there’s a lot of ways, a lot of methods, a lot of tools to help you with accessibility testing. We’re just gonna start cracking the surface here. Natalie, what should we expect from a browser extension, and what’s out there right now? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so browser extension, you’ll install it in your browser and they, they have accessibility extensions for Chrome, for Firefox, for Edge. So it doesn’t matter which browser you’re using; you install it, and then usually there’s a little button that you click somewhere in the extension to say, scan this page. And it’ll go through the page and find any of the issues that can be identified by an automated checker, which is, it depends on who you talk to, but somewhere between 20 and 30% of the different types of accessibility issues that can be found on a page can be found by a checker. And then, it will show you some kind of interface to show you what those errors are so that you can figure out what’s going on in your site and have an idea of how to get it fixed. Natalie Garza: Yeah, and I also feel like there’s another category of browser extensions where it helps you flag stuff down. Natalie MacLees: Yeah. That’ll help you turn on different things make information that’s normally invisible on the website visible, so it makes testing easier because you can see something that you wouldn’t normally be able to see. Natalie Garza: Right. It’s kind of like an x-ray. Natalie MacLees: Like an X-ray. Sure. An MRI. It’s a CAT scan. Natalie Garza: Yeah. But without the dangers of radiation poisoning. Natalie MacLees: No radiation involved. Well, no, that’s not probably not true. I’m sure that all of our devices are emitting radiation at us all the time. Natalie Garza: True, true, true. EMF. Anyway, do you wanna go over some popular browser extensions and what they do? Natalie MacLees: Sure. Yeah, so if you’ve watched any of our live streams where I go through accessibility testing live, you’ve probably seen me use the
- “I Want My Website to Be Certified as Accessible,” And Why It Can’t Be! (00:13:53)
Join hosts Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza on the 17th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the misconceptions about website accessibility certifications and why they don’t exist. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 17. I’m Natalie G, the host and mic MC. And with me today is Natalie MacLees: Natalie Mac, accessibility expert. Natalie Garza: yes, she is an accessibility expert here to answer all our questions. And in today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about, “I wanna get my website or app certified as accessible.” Why can’t we get our website certified as accessible, Natalie? Natalie MacLees: Yeah, this is something that clients often ask for more often than you might think because they want to have, I think they want two things. I think number one, they wanna have some kind of certification that they can display on the website to say, “Look, my website is accessible.” And then I think the second thing that they’re hoping to get is peace of mind, that nobody is going to be able to sue them or send them a demand letter saying that their website isn’t accessible. And unfortunately there is no like official accessibility certification. We have talked extensively in other episodes of the podcast and I like all over online, if you could look up information on accessibility. You’ll see WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines, referred to over and over again. And those are just a set of guidelines. They’re not a certification scheme in any way, shape or form, and they’re also not comprehensive. So meeting WCAG does not mean that your website is a hundred percent accessible. It’s just a baseline of accessibility. So unfortunately, there is no way to actually certify a website as being accessible. Natalie Garza: No, because accessibility is not a one-and-done kind of procedure. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, that’s definitely one of the challenges because if, for example, there was some kind of website certification, you would have somebody come in, test your site, certify it as accessible, and then as soon as you went in and made one edit, that would be out the window. You would have to start all over again, and it wouldn’t be cheap, right? It would be pretty time-consuming and pretty time-intensive. Websites change all the time, and it makes it really hard to have, you know, any report or anything that you do is just a point in time, right? On the day that this report was finished, here’s what the state of accessibility was on the site, but it is not like a certification of that status, because probably maybe even that later, that same day, something on the website changed, something new was added, something was edited, something was removed, and now those test results are invalid. Natalie Garza: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s like trying to certify a human is healthy, Natalie MacLees: That’s a good analogy. Natalie Garza: The next day, they can catch a cold. That certificate goes out the window. Natalie MacLees: You might cut your finger, you might stub your toe Natalie Garza: A Gator can bite your hand off. Natalie MacLees: My goodness! Natalie Garza: Sorry, Natalie just came back from Louisiana, you guys, Natalie came from Louisiana where she could have gone on the Gator tours, but she decided not to. Natalie MacLees: Have both my hands, though. Natalie Garza: Yes. Natalie MacLees: I did not feed marshmallows...
- Building Accessible Websites From Scratch Part Two for Agencies and Developers (00:20:13)
In the 16th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, hosts Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees discuss the importance of integrating web accessibility from the very start of the development process for developers and agencies. They tackle common misconceptions held by developers, the necessity of educating clients, and the legal implications of inaccessible websites. Natalie G: Hello everybody and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie G. I’m the Mic MC here and with us today is… Natalie M: Natalie M. Accessibility expert. Natalie G: Yes, and in today’s podcast, we are going to do the part two to last week’s episode, where we talk about web accessibility when building websites from scratch. This one is geared towards developers and agencies, basically, anybody who is actually making the website. Natalie M: Professionals who build websites. Natalie G: Professionals who build websites. And so we’re gonna start off with why is it important to build a website to be accessible from scratch? Natalie M: Yeah. So we touched on this a little bit last time, but I think it’s worth doing a quick review. Your favorite metaphor, Natalie, you can’t put the chocolate chips in the cookie after it’s baked. So the best way to end up with an accessible website is to build it to be accessible from the very beginning. It is the most cost-effective option. If you try to come back and make an inaccessible website accessible later, it’s going to be very expensive, very time-consuming, and very difficult, and the end result won’t be as good. And accessible websites are important, of course, because that way, there are no barriers to customers or users to the website. Everybody has equal access to all of the information and services. The user experience of an accessible website is better for everybody who uses the site. You get a little SEO boost. And you can avoid legal risks ’cause people do get sued for having websites that aren’t accessible. And you could look at increasing your audience and potentially your revenue by about 20% if you are inclusive and allow everybody to easily use your website. Natalie G: Yeah, and that means everything on your website, like the checkouts, like the memberships, like the ability To give your website owner money. Natalie M: Make donations to a nonprofit. Yep. All of it should be accessible. Natalie G: Yeah, and there’s a lot of misconceptions that developers have when it comes to making accessible websites. Natalie M: They do, they do. A lot of developers don’t, you know, we talked about in an earlier episode how there’s a real lack of accessibility training in any kind of web development training. If it’s there at all, it’s often just one unit that’s kind of tucked in, in the middle of the class, and it’s not taught holistically throughout the entire curriculum. And because of that, developers often make a lot of assumptions and think, “Oh, it’s really difficult. It’s really time-consuming. It’s expensive. It will constrain what we can do. It will constrain the design. Can’t be fancy and beautiful.” They’ll think, “Oh, we aren’t gonna be able to build certain kinds of functionality. And the website is not gonna be as modern or fun or as exciting if I have to make it accessible.” And so they’re reticent to kind of dive in and figure out how to make that all happen.
- Building Accessible Websites From Scratch Part One for Business Owners (00:16:34)
Join Natalie MacLees and Natalie Garza on the 15th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the importance of web accessibility for website owners. Learn why it’s crucial to consider accessibility from the beginning of a website project, the benefits of an accessible website, and practical tips on choosing the right tools and expertise. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the 15th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie G, and I’m an accessibility novice, and with us today is: Natalie MacLees: Natalie Mac, accessibility expert. (Full name is Natalie MacLees, and her nickname is Natalie Mac!) Natalie Garza: And, in today’s episode, we are going to talk about web accessibility when building websites from scratch. So we ended up making this a two-parter. This one is gonna be geared towards website owners, (Natalie Garza accidentally set off the built-in Apple Confetti reaction.) Natalie MacLees: We are really excited about that. Natalie Garza: Website owners! And the next part is gonna be geared towards developers and agencies. So to kick us off, Natalie, why is it important to build a website to be accessible from scratch? Natalie MacLees: Oh, it’s your favorite metaphor, Natalie, from Lainey Feingold, that you cannot put the chocolate chips on the cookie after it’s baked. So if you try to build your website and then come back and try to make it accessible, it’s gonna be a nightmare. It’s not gonna be fun, and it’s probably going to at least double the cost of your website. Because going back to a website that was built without accessibility in mind and trying to make it accessible is very difficult and very time consuming, and it could double or even triple the cost of having the website built to begin with. If you instead build an accessible website from the very, very beginning, I would say you’re probably looking at maybe about 20% more cost to have an accessible website versus an inaccessible one. Natalie Garza: Yeah, so for one, it’s very cost-effective. But there are other benefits too. Natalie MacLees: There’s benefits to having an accessible website. They’re more SEO friendly and who doesn’t want their site to be found in search engines? I mean, you put it online because you wanted people to find it, presumably. You can avoid legal risks, so you won’t be getting demand letters. Or if you do get a demand letter, you’ll have proof that you have been working on the accessibility of your website and it has been improving. The overall user experience of an accessible website tends to be better. They tend to be more performant. Having an accessible website could also increase your potential audience by up to 20% because there are between one in five and one in four, Americans who are people with disabilities. So you’re gonna capture even more of the market and potentially increase your revenue by up to 20%. So, if your website is accessible, it just means more people can interact with it, more people can understand it, can get to all the parts of your website that you want them to interact with, like your contact forms, your checkout pages, all that good stuff. They can get to all the good stuff and they can get to it no matter what device they happen to be using. If they’re out and about and trying to buy something from your website on their phone, it’s gonna work. If they’re at home on their laptop or their tablet, it’s...
- Accessibility in Web Development Education (00:20:35)
Join accessibility expert Natalie MacLees and novice Natalie G. in the 14th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they discuss the significant gaps in web development courses regarding accessibility training. They also reflect on the current state of web development education and the misconceptions surrounding accessibility and provide recommendations for resources and training to improve developers’ knowledge of web accessibility. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 14th episode. I’m Natalie G, and here with us today is Natalie MacLees: Natalie M. Natalie Garza: And she is an accessibility expert. While I’m an accessibility novice here to learn along with all of our podcast viewers too. So, in this episode, we’re gonna talk about web development courses and their general lack of accessibility training. What is the current state of web development education, Natalie? What would you say? Natalie MacLees: I would say most web development courses at any level, whether that’s online courses, boot camps, college courses, et cetera, have either no training at all about accessibility or will have like one unit on it, you know, out of 20 units that you might do. Will have one little unit introducing accessibility. So, a lot of web developers are coming out of those courses. You know, whatever kind of course it is, with no background, no history, no knowledge of accessibility really at all, or just the tiniest hint that it might be something that they need to pay attention to. Natalie Garza: What is your journey through accessibility? ’cause you started in web development. Natalie MacLees: I started in web development, but I’m old. So, I started in web development before there were any courses. So, I started in web development. When you taught yourself, or you didn’t learn, you just figured it out yourself, or you didn’t learn. So, I got super excited, I got my first, internet enabled computer in 1996 and really quickly realized going on AOL that having your own website was an option that you could do. And I was like, wait, what? You can have your own website. Oh my gosh. And I spent hours, hours and hours and hours, hundreds of hours on this website. And I just got really excited about it. And then a few years later, realized like, wait, this is something people will pay you to do. So I got really excited about it. And then pretty early on in the year 2000, I got a job at Penn State University, building websites. Specifically, I was working in the chemistry department there and building the websites for the courses. Right, so if you were taking Chem 12, which is like the intro to chemistry that freshmen would take, there would be a Chemistry 12 website. That you could go, you could get the notes, you could get the study guides for the exams and all of those kinds of things. And that was my job, was doing all of those, course websites. And I was about two weeks into it when one day my phone at my desk rang and it was the disability services office saying, ” excuse me, what do you think you’re doing on these websites? Students with disabilities can’t use them.” And I was just like, “What? What are you talking about.” And so they provided me, at no cost to me, at their own cost. Tons and tons of training in how to build websites in an accessible way, which was, you know, web development. In the early days, it was the wild, wild west. There was no training, there was no official certifications, there was just nothing. And so I got all of that training and I learned how to build websites to be accessible and then was shocked when I moved on from that job three years...
- Acronyms, Numeronyms, and Keywords in Web Accessibility (00:31:19)
Join Natalie and Natalie in the 13th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they demystify the myriad of acronyms, numeronyms, and keywords you encounter in accessibility. Topics include WCAG, ARIA, live regions, and the importance of semantic HTML. The episode also touches on assistive technologies and accessibility laws like Section 508. Add to your accessibility knowledge with a speed round of common numeronyms and crucial keywords that lay the foundation for accessible web design. Natalie G: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 13th episode, and here with us today is, Natalie M: Natalie MacLees. Natalie G: And she’s an accessibility expert, and I am Natalie G, the other Natalie, an accessibility novice. And in our 13th installment, we are going to talk about acronyms, numeronyms, and keywords in accessibility. Cause if there’s anything you’ll notice once you start learning is that there’s a lot of acronyms and a lot of keywords and a lot of things from like coding backgrounds and you may not understand all of them, but we’re going to cover them all today. Natalie M: All!? That’s ambitious. Natalie G: A lot of them Natalie M: I bet we forget something. Natalie G: Yeah. If we Natalie M: forget anything, There’s just so many. Natalie G: leave a comment in the description below. What? Leave a comment in the comments below. Alright, so do you want to start with the one overwhelming, most commonly used, everywhere you see the accessibility, this is mentioned too, acronym. Natalie M: Yeah, WCAG or WCAG or WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So a set of around 80, I think, total success criteria that basically lay out how to build an accessible website or web application. Natalie G: It covers a lot of different tests, different standards, different rules you should follow for web content. Natalie M: Yes. Natalie G: And it’s everywhere because… Natalie M: It applies to all websites. Natalie G: Yeah. Applies to all websites and it’s the most commonly enforced across laws. Natalie M: Yes, most of the accessibility laws around the world are either directly say to implement WCAG or indirectly have a set of rules based on WCAG. Natalie G: Yeah. And there’s different versions of WCAG too. Natalie M: There are 1.0, which is very old, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and they’re working on 3. Yes. Natalie G: And, there’s different levels of WCAG. Natalie M: Yes, A, AA, AAA. A being the easiest one to achieve, but also the least accommodating, and then AAA being the most accommodating and the most difficult to achieve. Most of the time, people are going to try to comply with AA, so just that sweet spot right in the middle, and most of the laws refer to WCAG AA. Natalie G: And funny enough, the A’s are not actually acronyms. Natalie M: No, they’re not. They’re just letter grades. Natalie G: A, 2A, and 3A. Natalie M: Yes. Natalie G: And they’re not acronyms in AAArdvark either, in the name AAArdvark. Natalie M: No, they’re no...
- WCAGs Cousins – ATAG, UAAG, PDF/UA (00:31:56)
Join Natalie and Natalie in the twelfth episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast as they explore the lesser-known cousins of WCAG: ATAG, UAAG, and PDF/UA. They discuss the importance of these guidelines for authoring tools, user agents, and PDFs and explore how implementing them can significantly enhance web accessibility. The episode also touches on the real-world implications and the responsibilities of tool developers in creating accessible software. Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name is Natalie G, and with me today is, Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees. Natalie Garza: Yes, thank you for joining us today, Natalie. Natalie MacLees: Thanks for having me. Natalie Garza: Yes, this is the twelfth episode, and in this podcast episode, we’re gonna talk about WCAG’s cousins. Let’s talk about cousins. They are ATAG, UAAG, and PDF/UA. Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I’m pretty sure those are the official names. Natalie Garza: Yes, we’re gonna go over each one. Natalie MacLees: The other accessibility guidelines. Natalie Garza: Yes, the not-so-mentioned, often forgotten, but they’re here, and we’re gonna talk about them. Alright, Natalie, what is, what is WCAG? It’s just a refresher for our audience. Natalie MacLees: WCAG, W C A G, stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and it’s what applies to any kind of online content or software, even though the name is web content. So like online web apps and things like that, it also applies. Natalie Garza: Yes, and I feel like if you put any attention into the accessibility space, that’s all you hear. WCAG this, WCAG that. Natalie MacLees: Yes, you do hear it a lot. People talk about WCAG a lot and they don’t talk about its cousins. Natalie Garza: What are the cousins, Natalie? We want to start with ATAG? Natalie MacLees: I usually say A-TAG, but okay, we can call it whatever you want. ATAG, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines. You’ll notice they all end in A G because they’re all accessibility guidelines. And this is a set of guidelines meant for authoring tools. So things like your favorite CMS. Whether that’s Drupal, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, etc. There’s literally hundreds of them at this point and ATAG should be applying to all of these things. Unfortunately, it is not very evenly implemented. And ATAG aims to do two things with an authoring tool. Number one, it aims to try to make sure that people with disabilities can use the tool. And, so in that way, it’s all of the WCAG rules just applied to, you know, the admin editing interface of, you know, WordPress or whatever to make sure that if you’re using a screen reader or your keyboard only, or, you know, whatever kind of assistive technology you’re using, you can go in and write blog posts and add images and all of those kinds of things. The other part of ATAG is to help you, as an author, make sure that your content that you’re creating is accessible. And so it should have little tips and little warnings that show up. If you try to put white text on a pale yellow background, you should see some kind of warning come up that just says, “Oh, hey, you might want to pick a different color here. This isn’t accessible.” It should have little reminders, “oh...