Joshua Warren 0:06 I've seen a lot of sites that have focused on web accessibility, when they build it within, they kind of forget about it, and they start adding new features that aren't accessible. And so really, you have to incorporate a desire to have an accessible website into the culture and process of your ecommerce team. And you have to, at least you know, have a check for those level items in your ongoing QA are you at processes? Darin Newbold 0:34 Well, good day, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Commerce today. My name is Darren and I am here as always, with our fantastic host, Josh, to talk about e commerce and what's happening in the world. And our our options today are our topic today is around web accessibility. And I know Josh, you've said many times, I'm not the sharpest stick in the shed. So I'll admit it right here for everyone to hear. But help me out. What is web accessibility? And what's that mean? Yeah, the way people look at it right now and what the big topic around web accessibility is really the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act to retail websites. So basically making sure that people who have different types of disabilities identified by that law are able to interact with and use your website. And that's, that's becoming a bigger and bigger topic simply because the Department of Justice actually released a statement this year stating that, yes, the Americans with Disabilities Act does apply to most retail websites. As a result, we're seeing some interesting things out there in the marketplace, where there's some companies that have cropped up that are really honestly using some scare tactics and going to retailers and saying, Hey, if you don't use our service to make your site accessible, you're gonna get sued. Let us save you from that the good old Fudd process fear, uncertainty and doubt to to create an opportunity there with these websites. Well, that's interesting. That's got to be a pretty big market, how big? How big of an opportunity? Could this be? Or is this to two websites out there? Yeah, you know, there's a lot of different statistics out there, depending on which way you look at it. But there are over 51 million adults in the United States with a disability. So that's quite a few people that if your website's not accessible, you're not necessarily reaching those customers. And that's one of the reasons that I feel like the threat of a lawsuit isn't the right reason to pursue having an accessible website, I think, really the fact that you want to reach those 51 million adults in the US alone with a disability. But also accessibility benefits is all an example. I love this. I've heard other podcasters that talk about iPhones and shows like that. Several of those shows have talked about how there's a lot of features that start out as accessibility features for the iPhone, that everybody ends up using that really benefit everyone. And I think you'll see the same thing with web accessibility, where by making your site easier for people with disabilities to use, you can actually end up improving the entire user experience. That's pretty awesome. Well, I think you mentioned it, as we opened up here a little bit about kind of the there might be some guidelines, but are there? I mean, if the Department of Justice is involved, obviously, there's some released guidelines, rules, regulations, what does that look at? Yeah. So the the actual guidelines are, in some ways, relatively simple. They're lengthy, but simple. They're things like providing text descriptions of your images and other visuals. That way, if a user is blind, they can understand them via a screen reader. That's reading things to them. All of this is actually spelled out in a document called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the WC a G, and that is port forth, we love our acronyms. The WCAG is a product of the W three C, which is the World Wide Web Consortium, a group that sets really all the standards for the web. Joshua Warren 4:03 There is a current version of that document that's version 2.1. They're actually working on a version three, that's going to be a kind of a complete rewrite of it. And that document is rather lengthy, rather dry. But important. I'm sure you've read it. Oh, the whole thing. Oh, yeah, I printed it out or read it every night for bed. No. But I can tell you that it breaks things down into three levels. And the levels are not one, two, and three, the levels are actually a AAA and AAA Level A are essential items that you must provide support for AAES are your ideally supported items. And then those AAA items are specialized support just for very specific, specific audiences. A lot of the laws and lawsuits really focused on those Level A items sometimes the level AAA items, very rarely the AAA items and as always, and as we mentioned before, We're not lawyers, and your mileage may vary. Yep, exactly. So definitely consult your lawyer if you're worried about that. But I would say, you know, most of the recommendations I'm seeing, say stick to those Level A and Level A items. So if you don't want to read the whole document, like I do regularly, you can skim through those A and A items. But if you really don't want to read through it, there's actually a really interesting project out there. And Darren and I, before the show, we're, we're checking and apparently, some people call this the accessibility project. Others call it the ally project. Others call it the a 11, wide project. Turns out there are 11 letters between the A and wine accessibility. And that is why they call it the A 11. Why, but it also kind of spells ally. And what this project is, is it's a community driven effort to try to simplify these things. Among other things, they can point you to different resources. But what I love about their work is they have an accessibility checklist. And it's built on top of the the web content accessibility guidelines we mentioned earlier. But it really helps you focus in on the most important items, it gives you examples. And honestly to be to be blunt, it takes that very dry document very broad technical specification, and makes it into an actionable checklist. Darin Newbold 6:18 Well, and even even there were some YouTube videos that we had mentioned there that that go through this. So that can be a helpful resource to to get this stuff because obviously, yeah, I'd much rather have the Reader's Digest version, if you will, or, or the shortened one, definitely, in this day and age, a YouTube video that can help walk you through that will be helpful. So alright, you've kind of outlined what this web accessibility is kind of some of the key points. But let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming, as you might say, and talk about how does this affect a new e commerce site, and ensuring that it's accessible? Joshua Warren 6:56 Yeah, when you're building a new e commerce site, I think the most important thing to do is really from the start, when you gather all the stakeholders together, even as you're selecting a platform, selecting an implementation partner, include web accessibility is one of your requirements. And really just make it clear from the start, hey, this isn't something we're doing to avoid the threat of a lawsuit, this is something that we are doing, because we want to provide this positive experience for all of our users. And go ahead and from the start, say, okay, you know, for instance, we're going to use the ALM and wise checklist, and we want to make sure we're compliant with all level items, or a, we want to make sure we're compliant with all level AAA items, and just make that very clear upfront. And then also, as everything's been developed and designed, make sure all of the people involved in the project know about the importance of accessibility, sometimes that might be a message that that's communicated kind of at the highest levels. But if it doesn't get down into the people that are actually writing the code, designing the pages, you can end up with a result where you're kind of having to work backwards at the end to make it accessible again. And really, my last suggestion when you're building a new site is just make sure everybody knows that at least those Level A guidelines are going to be part of either your QA process, or user acceptance testing process. So you know, what gets measured gets improved. So you let everyone know, hey, we're gonna be measuring and checking to make sure we're meeting these requirements, you're gonna have a lot more success and making your new site accessible. Darin Newbold 8:25 And that brings up something you you said on the user acceptance testing, and that kind of stuff. Is it important for merchants to to have someone that actually has an accessibility issue or has a disability that could actually test this for real, Joshua Warren 8:41 I mean, you can definitely include that, especially if you're doing kind of some some live user usability testing, you can definitely go and test in that manner. The good news is through things like that a little white checklist, you don't have to do that, like they really do a good job of spelling out. This is what will make it work well for these are the steps. Okay? I will say though, that's a good point. Because it wasn't really until I was researching for this episode, and kind of learning more about this project that I saw, like I had heard of screen readers and I had heard I've seen a photo even once of someone using one of the screen reader type systems that output to Braille. And it was it was super interesting. And I don't think most people working on the web, if you don't have a disability, you haven't used those technologies before. You don't have a picture of what that even looks like what that experience is like and, you know, I'm using the the very clear cut examples of you know, someone that's blind but there's also a lot of different disabilities out there a lot of different disabilities that you don't know just by looking at someone that they have, and they all kind of can manifest in different ways when they're trying to buy and shop on an ecommerce site. So Joshua Warren 9:54 I do think if you have an opportunity to learn from someone who You know, does have one of these conditions does have one of these disabilities, then I think it would be very eye opening. very worthwhile. All right. Well, you talked about working with a new site if you're if you're building it out, all right, I've already got my site I'm already up and running. Am I don't want to be in a situation where I get taken by the, by the people scaring me with the idea to do this. So what do I do with my existing site? Joshua Warren 10:28 Yeah, depending on your, the way your team is set up, and the resources you have, this can actually be relatively easy. If you have the people power available, you can just work through that accessibility checklists provided by the ally project. And you can just have someone go through an audit your site and say, Okay, I'm going to go through all the major pages, and I'm going to run through this checklist, make sure it matches. Honestly, that's something that's fairly easy to do. If however, you're kind of struggling with that, you know, maybe you have someone but they're not really familiar with web accessibility. There's actually a testing accessibility workshop that's sponsored by the ally project that you could put that person through. How long is that worship? Darin Newbold 11:14 Do you know, do you have any ideas on that I Joshua Warren 11:15 actually, I'm not sure I haven't done it, it's it's been on my list, I'm kind of waiting for an opportunity. And for one of the merchants I work with to express an interest in kind of having an audit through that workshop, and definitely want to give that a try. Most important thing, though, is you're just going through that list, and you're marking any requirements that you're missing on. And I would recommend that once you have that list, prioritize it, obviously, by those levels. So start Level A items. The other thing though, is sometimes within those Level A items, you can find some low hanging fruit, for instance, if you have a footer on your site, and it's on every single page of your site, and it's not compliant with one of those Level A items, fix that first. Because by fixing one thing, one item, you got them all, you got them all. So I would definitely start there. And again, this looks a little bit different. And depending on if you're doing all this in house, or if you're working with a partner, that's doing your your development work and that type of thing. But really, it really does just break down to run through that checklist, prioritize the level items, first, prioritize the items that hit the most sections of your site. And that's where one of the reasons I even wanted to do this episode is I don't want people to get taken by some of those companies that are out there selling monthly services for this and things like that, because it doesn't have to be that complicated. Darin Newbold 12:36 Okay, now, is there is there anything special that I need to do to ensure that that new features as they're being brought forward, that those are also accessible? Joshua Warren 12:47 That's a great point, I've seen a lot of sites that have focused on web accessibility when they build it, but then they kind of forget about it, and they start adding new features that aren't accessible. And so really, you have to incorporate a desire to have an accessible website, into the culture and process of your ecommerce team. And you have to, at least, you know, have a check for those Level A items in your ongoing QA or you at processes. And then I would periodically go through if you're checking for the Level A items in that kind of launch process, go to have maybe once a year audit for those level AAA items, just to make sure. Darin Newbold 13:24 You know, is there. Is there anything that the platforms are doing around this that you're aware of say the you know, let's call it the Shopify? Is the Salesforce, Adobe commerce, all those? Are they doing anything around these things, there are Joshua Warren 13:38 some things that they can do and that they have been doing, especially platforms that kind of have a default theme built in, some of them are doing a better job of making sure those themes comply with these items than others. Some of these items, honestly, they're both accessibility and SEO best practices, for instance. So they, they get incorporated through that. Darin Newbold 13:57 Good. So what about kind of the supporting the web accessibility and even on into the future of accessibility? Yeah, I Joshua Warren 14:06 just would encourage everyone, please talk about web accessibility for a long time. I mean, this isn't anything new. But it's not something that a lot of people have talked about, I think, until really this project launch that's kind of promoting the awareness of accessibility issues on the web. And so I think, you know, whether it's, if you're going to a conference, if you're at a industry event, a meet up something like that, talk about it, even requested as a session for a conference that you're attending, and just encourage, you know, all your colleagues and co workers in the space to talk about it. And as far as the future, you know, I am, I'm really interested to see how things evolve with accessibility, especially looking at things like VR and the metaverse. I mean, those are after heart vision based so what is accessibility gonna look like for those and there's even smaller things like there's some people that are just a lot more prone to motion sickness. Though maybe their vision is fine, but they're gonna get motion sick and a VR experience I've already seen, there's video games that are starting to add accommodations for that where you can basically turn off some of the features that are more likely to make you motion sick. And that's where I think things like talking about this at conferences, promoting the ally project is important because as an industry, we're gonna have to set these best practices moving forward. And how does from a merchant standpoint, as we kind of close this up, I just wanted to ask the question, from a merchant standpoint, how do they not look at this as a huge expense? Darin Newbold 15:34 How do they avoid that? Because that's, that's as I'm, as you're sharing all this with me, I'm starting to say okay, well, I just see dollar signs of I'm going to have to do this more investment now. I should be ought to be investing in my E commerce site all the time, and probably are, but this seems like this could could be a pretty significant added expense. Joshua Warren 15:53 Yeah, I think that's where some of the, those vendors that I mentioned, that I don't necessarily agree with, I think that's why they're taking that, you know, Hey, you don't want to get sued angle because that's the easiest way to say, Hey, this is worth investing in because otherwise, you're gonna have legal expenses. I think the way though to look at it, is you're improving usability for everybody, and the more you improve your usability, the more that people have this frictionless commerce experiences with your brand more money, you're gonna make more sales you're gonna make excellent, excellent well Darin Newbold 16:25 guys, and gals, we appreciate you tuning in to Commerce today. We're excited about accessibility and, and everyone's response to that. And we'd really love to have you like our podcast we have here today. And with that, we will close it out and until next time, we'll talk to you soon Transcribed by https://otter.ai