 Welcome to the nonprofit show we are so glad you're here and I'm glad to be back because speaking about a digital I've had my own digital challenges the last couple of days with some tech connection but thrilled to have today as a nonprofit tech talk so this conversation dedicated to technology so grateful to have one of my dear friends and colleagues joining us today Ellen Owens Carse joining us from the Carse consulting group to talk to us about is your nonprofit digitally inclusive so Ellen has a lot to share about this and has so much experience and insight so we're going to dive deep with her in just a moment but before we do we want to remind you who we are if we haven't met you quite yet so hello to you Julia Patrick Julia is the CEO at the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jared Ransom your nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven group really honored to be alongside Julia day in and day out unless I have tech issues but thrilled to have today's nonprofit tech talk sponsored you know by our amazing presenting partners so thank you to our friends at Bloomerang American nonprofit academy fundraising academy at national university nonprofit thought leader your part time controller nonprofit nerd as well as staffing boutique these companies most of them have been with us in this four-year journey 900 plus episodes and if you missed any of them they've helped us capture them you can find them on our archives which are an app platform so speaking of all things tech this is where you can find us on technology you can download the app you can find us on broadcast and you can also find us on podcast form so wherever you like to binge watch listen you know to your entertainment we invite you to find us on these platforms and again Ellen we are thrilled to have you with us today for those of you watching and listening we have Ellen Owens Carsey joining us today Ellen serves as the owner as well as esteemed advisor at Carsey Consulting Group welcome to you Ellen thank you Jared thank you Julia for having me on yeah you know this is such an interesting conversation because Jared and I from the get-go when we first started the nonprofit show it was so apparent to us that if nonprofits were going to survive the pandemic and all of the other things that came with the pandemic they were going to have to embrace technology and the nonprofit sector was kind of we're not known for leaning in and being innovative and now we're we hadn't even at that point discussed the accessibility we hadn't even thought of it frankly and so to have you come on and talk to us and actually add another lens I think is absolutely fascinating and this is for all nonprofits not just for a specific type of nonprofit so let's get into it and and I want to start out by asking you how do people with disabilities use tech yeah and first of all I want to acknowledge what you said Julia at the beginning is that when we talk about digital accessibility and digital inclusion you're right so many organizations had to respond very quickly during the pandemic they had to spin up technologies they weren't familiar with they had to do what they had to do and it wasn't probably the primary conversation of digital accessibility so now now is the time to go back and look at your digital assets and reassess where you're at so individuals with all types of disabilities access technologies in different ways there's some really exciting emerging technologies but digital accessibility could be as low tech as understanding these colors on a screen or on a display the lighting the font size but more prominent for individuals with a visual disability are screen readers screen magnifiers special glasses and then for individuals who have physical disabilities whether they're switch controls whether it is actually devices like a specialized mouse or keyboard to access technology but the what makes those devices and those pieces work are how your websites your apps your digitally processed attachments in an email are coded or have the right coding behind it to be able to be accessible by those technologies so they have to match so that that's kind of a high level okay that that's frightening because I I've never thought about this like you know I'll be honest this is like not been on my radar until we were talking in the green room until like the last week Jared what do you think about that well I was going to say it's fascinating and I shared in the green room chatter when I started my fundraising career it was for an organization with developmental disabilities and that was 1517 years ago right and to see the advancement not only in technology but this digital inclusion and accessibility right along with Julia I'm still learning right there is so much to learn and I think it's because you know we we haven't and I I should speak to myself I haven't you know thought of it in this manner and so bringing light to this for so many organizations is really important especially as we elevate you know inclusivity and access right along with diversity equity you know into our conversation so so grateful that you're here to talk to us about this Ellen um let's move into the levels of concern because I want to ask you when it comes to this like what are some of these concerns that show up when it comes to digital access what are you seeing in this space yeah there's there's three primary buckets that we like to talk about these and then that's the business case the legal case and the brand equity case and so from a business case obviously the more people who can access your website if you're doing business or communicating via a website or an application a mobile app the more people that can access that the better the more people that can get the information the better I've experienced where I've had colleagues and friends who have to use assistive technology to access a website say I'm not going to do business with that organization or I cannot purchase make a purchase because I can't access the information so people will make decisions based on that even if they don't have a disability if they are taking the stance of saying I believe in making sure that organizations are inclusive and accessible from a legal perspective there are regulations the ADA compliance and what's called the we call it the WCAG uh compliances and I'll get to that a little bit later too uh around digital accessibility there are now organizations getting letters uh from uh saying you need to address this issue recently the federal anybody who's a federal contractor or linked to the federal government so if you're receiving a federal grant you have to comply with their digital accessibility guidelines and so it now comes to whether or not it could impact your ability to win those contracts so we see this in the same vein as what they call GDPR which is the data privacy acts these will probably expand in a similar way uh as there's more attention given to it so there is a legal compliance perspective so it is in your best interest to start addressing it and we'll talk about those ways later on about how to start and then brand equity so you want your brand to be one known for being equitable and inclusive uh so Jerry you mentioned the the you know greater emphasis on diversity equity and inclusion and that speaks to that so being able to say uh that you're addressing it that you have an inclusive website is very very important for brands wow I had no idea Ellen about the federal side of this and the requirement um is that like in the fine print uh you know because I wonder I really wonder how many people are aware of that never heard yeah yeah yeah and some you know and this speaks to probably the number one staff and I don't want to jump too far ahead but awareness and so it's probably not in the fine print but it's certainly something that if it's not on your radar or you're signed up for those listservs to get information about that you may have missed it and you know I I'm no different than either one of you this is a journey this is a process of learning and so I'm fortunate to have a great partnership with the American Foundation for Blind to help me on this journey and they are really the ones that are advising and guiding me in terms of the details fine as I consider myself a great advocate and an understander of technology and how to bring the two together and understanding the business scenes from a technology side as well as a process side and then bringing the experts um in from American Foundation for Blind well let's talk about that then a little bit because you're set you're telling us things that I've never a um and I'll be honest I've never considered um b didn't even know don't know about um so then if you think about that how do we even determine if we're we're accessible um how do we go about not only making the pledge to do better but how how can we do better I guess maybe that's the question before we get that letter you know yeah we don't want a letter well I gotta say this isn't like a quick fix right when I when I was talking about this I'm thinking holy moly we're in the middle of a redesign for our website it's really arduous what do we do right yeah how do we determine this Ellen that's a great scenario so you're getting ready to do a refresh on your website I would say one of the top things to do is to ask your website designer if you're using an outside firm what is their experience in ensuring that your website content is accessible and inclusive so that's number one you can ask them what their experience is and I think some key things that you would want to hear from those firms are something like we understand or we comply with the way can compliance requirements of 2.0 something you know something a little more specific than yeah we got it so um and and what is the language that you can put on that but I think if you don't know or you're a do-it-yourselfer website designer um either the platforms what are the platforms has included into the website development platform that makes sure that it's inclusive does it have an accessibility checker but if if all else nothing else there are tools that you can put your website url in and it will do a scan now I have a very big caution around that as I have learned is that that is a scan and there is no way to determine how accessible your website truly is without a manual check on top of it so to get a scan to get an idea if you're saying oh my website's accessible run it through one of those checkers you might be surprised wow okay I'm like I'm I'm just I'm like it is a head shaker today you know I love that's why this is why we're doing non-profit tech talk because we like I said Jared and I have talked about this um you know this is where we need to be thinking and and so wow Ellen amazing talk to us about the steps that we can take because now that you've educated us to even be thinking about this you know how do we really formally say okay we're gonna we're gonna make this commitment I love the idea of the scanning and engaging some folks on you know on your platform but how do we do this and maybe maybe the question is how do we phase it or break it into something that we can we can achieve yeah so if you take a step back from a planning let's let's think about your planning a redesign or a refresh of your website it is really about bringing all of the players to the table and ensuring that they understand that this is top of mind not only in this one project but throughout all of your processes your business process so bringing it to a conversation of not only maybe cybersecurity compliance but let's talk about making sure that it's compliant with the WCAG guidelines and ADA guidelines so bringing it into your day-to-day business process is number one and the way to do that first is to educate yourself you don't have to be an expert but once you start to educate yourself around some of the top things around digital accessibility you will be more aware so then you can know to ask the questions and engage the expert so education awareness and bringing it into your day-to-day business process the next thing is when you're ready it is easier to integrate digital accessibility into the design phase than rather than remediation but we understand that you know it is a reality that many people have sites put up that they do need remediation and it is can be very complex or there can be some very easy steps to resolve some issues and so what's what's very helpful is to engage an expert in this area to be able to identify the ones there's levels of compliancy within WCAG so what are high risk high levels of non-compliance versus low levels what are the easy fixes and then start that journey and then you there's not a certification per se but there's attestation to say that we are in the process or we are compliant with WCAG guidelines 2.1 or 2.2 okay will you will you we know ADA Americans with disabilities act talk give us the that it's way tag can you help me understand that yeah it's WACG if you google search WACG you will find those yeah guidelines and I I can't rattle off the acronym off the top of my head the other resource would be the American Foundation for Blind website they have a several links out there the other piece of information that's out there under the WACG when you research that and I think it's WACG.org there is a list of personas to consider when developing your website which I think are very helpful you don't have to come up with those personas but it's someone who may have a developmental disability someone who has a physical disability and gives you some scenarios to consider about how a person with a specific type or multiple disabilities would access technology or what they might use so that that is very very helpful in terms of not only your typical user persona and that's how let's face it websites are typically designed is to say we want to address the majority of our target audience versus universal design to say let's capture a broader group and ensure as many people as possible can access I have lots of questions yeah me too my head is like spinning I'm gonna start with I love that you mentioned you know here's some steps we can take and so going through this scan for our website is a great I'm gonna say cursory right start and then you mentioned a manual scan so my question and it's there's a lot in here but how I mean obviously we don't you know snap our fingers and overnight we are now you know digitally inclusive what is the timeline to implement this and specifically the manual scan what is the timeline of that and then what can you help us understand if we're like okay we're taking the pledge we want to do better because we know better what does that timeline look like yeah it depends yeah on how many how many our gaps are found in the assessment phase the the process though typically looks like when you engage a firm that does include a manual process so American Foundation for Blind has what's called talent lab they have certified individuals who are users of the technology and you can become certified as a a tester there's ways to do that but they they not only do that but these are users of these different technologies on a day-to-day basis that will go through and do a scan of your website to ensure that all of the pieces are are accessible by those technologies okay so it ranges depending on how deep you want to go how many pages are in your website if you are looking at offshoots of the website if you're looking at mobile applications there's a lot to consider in terms of the size and so the way that or to give you an example of one of the things that's important to look at from a manual scan buttons when you click on a button for example there is a link usually that takes you somewhere or there's a picture and making sure that your pictures are alt tagged that say a description well in some cases those tags may be there but it is not a description of the picture it may be a link to a coupon code in some cases because that's how they design your website so the the right way is to create an alt text tag for the picture describing what's happening in the picture not to link it off to something else so that would be caught by a digital scanning mechanism to say yes your pictures are all tagged but it's not all tagged correctly right so that's why the manual scan is so important it may scan it say yes there's something there but it's not the right context or information so that's why it's important the process is to really look at the flows and use cases for your website how do people typically go through your website what do you want them to do what do you want them to find what is expected outcome i was looking at a website that had it was a it was it was let's just say that it was a public website public facing website that many many people would probably need to access general public and it kept leading to multiple pages with multiple offshoots of links so it went almost 10 pages deep so to think about that journey and to have to navigate as a user who's cited sometimes that's frustrating for me i can't imagine having to listen to a screen reader read all these URLs www.http.com and reading all of this to you as you hover over those URLs and just keep linking down into pages so when you feel frustrated with a user experience just think about every detail being read back to you by a very fast voice yeah okay let me ask you this question before we move on who's leading this in the federal government is this the ADA you know that whole piece or where are we getting our leadership from so that we can all start kind of marching in the same direction because you know foundation for the blind is an amazing organization but at the end of the day they're a non-profit they're an organization they have a huge voice in our country but is there some sort of government or statutory agency that's kind of setting some of these parameters yeah there are and then i would say that probably the other organization that is really big and advocating for ADA compliance is the National Council for Independent Living that is one of their primary focuses is to advocate for disability rights and justice and equity and then there's other organizations that advocate for this so obviously there is a level of compliance at a federal level ensuring those those statutes and those compliances under the ADA guidelines which is kind of the umbrella are held that people are held accountable to this is the direction that things are moving is to ensure that people are being held accountable to accessibility and so you see this a lot in transportation uh in other technologies we go down a rabbit hole around wayfinding autonomous vehicles a lot of different other areas that are exciting it's very exciting and it it helps uh yourselves myself as an individual consumer but also very very important for an individual who has a disability yeah yeah i see more and more autonomous driving vehicles in my neighborhood in my community and i have to say they are better drivers than a lot of actual drivers i'm like wow they actually use their blinker and it's interesting well this is truly fascinating ellen um do you work with organizations across the nation do you have a specific region that you work with talk to us because i can only imagine our viewers and listeners are going okay she totally you know like shocked me today we clearly have some work to do what does that look like for you yeah great question i'll i work across the country i'll work outside of the country yeah internationally um this is all something that we can do wherever you're at and i would also say too that there is an investment to get it right but we still can work with any size organization to get that process started so um you know if there's full-on deep dives that um you know do have a high price point but at the same time we can get started with a smaller scale understanding of where you're at to build out a plan to help you get there um for any budget because working with nonprofits i get it i understand uh budget constraints and sometimes it's a process over time you have to build out so that was another another question and i know we're we're wrapping up um is there funding for this because i can imagine as we submit for proposals or we ask you know foundations and even individuals for funding uh to really speak to this from that dea lens diversity equity inclusion and access lens is there funding out there for this specific kind of work question good question that is a good question and i would say yes although i believe that a lot of time it's a secondary thought to be honest yeah for example organizations that have uh requests for contracts or grants out for dea i work that accessibility piece and really spending the money on what needs to happen for digital accessibility or even physical accessibility um it's usually not the priority in there in terms of the budget uh so i would say the more people who start to ask for this and funding proposals the more awareness it's all about awareness okay yeah you know jared i love that you asked that question because to kind of reframe it as ellen's um talking about this i can imagine that there are funders that have never thought of this but but when they are introduced to the concept oh yeah like yeah we should be marching in that direction because these are the people we're trying to serve right so well and and along with the federal funding right like is that also something we can put in kind of rhetorical right is that something we can put into our our proposals to say and we want five percent to be allocated towards digital inclusion and accessibility i would think if they are they federal are mandating you know that we stay compliant that they hopefully are also helping to financially support this so there's a lot to think about yeah a lot to think about but ellen thank you for uh elevating this and conversation coming on to be a non-profit tech talk guest and thought leader in this space again for those watching and listening today ellen owens karsey has joined us from the karsey consulting group and you can find her online karseygroup.com that's k-a-r-c-s-a-y group.com check her out check her group out they've got a lot of great insight in this space uh so privileged that you said yes to join us to talk about this thank you thank you very much oh my gosh i have learned so much you know jared i say this all the time every day i learned something new and every day i kind of have that hair and fire moment and i'm shocked and your jaw drops and yeah and i'm like what you know but this was really cool because i feel like this links a lot of things that we talk about but that we've been missing right and so i'm so thrilled to have had you on and this is something that we need to really keep looking at and discussing because um yeah we we need to be doing it for for so many reasons again i'm julia patrick ceo of the american nonprofit academy been joined by the nonprofit nerd herself jared our ransom ceo of the raven group and again we are here having yet again another amazing conversation um and this really is is brought to you and and a lot we're allowed to do this because we have these amazing supporters they include bloomering american nonprofit academy your part-time controller nonprofit thought leader fundraising academy at national new university nonprofit nerd and staffing boutique these are the folks that join us day in and day out to have these discussions you know yesterday we had a conversation about mental health and our nonprofit staffs the day before that we were talking about fundraising mindset and how to get yourself going when it's tough i mean we have so many different types of conversations um on a on a day-to-day basis and it it really reflects jared i think the complexity of of of our sector there's definitely so much going on that we have to think about before we even actually work in service right um so again that's my pitch because i'm i'm always amazed by it ellen wow okay i'm going to look at things a lot differently now having met you and having had this discussion uh which is super powerful and that's what the nonprofit show is all about to our listeners and our viewers to our guests and even to my wonderful co-host we like to end every day with this message and it goes like this to stay well so you can do well we'll see you back here tomorrow everyone