 Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. Normally I go on and on about how thrilled I am to be around all of you again, but we're short on time, so let's get into it. So step one, with anything involving accessibility, I cannot thank everyone enough to always assume positive intent, especially now where more and more people are remote. A lot of people who aren't necessarily used to being remote are remote. Just always start off with positive intent. Assume that everybody is doing their best, and if you need something, if I say something incorrectly, if someone else does or produces something, just roll with it. We're all going to get there together. So with that, who am I? I am Donna Brungard. I am a senior project manager. I have a whole bunch of alphabets after my name, because I love to learn. The one relevant here is that certified professional of accessibility core competencies. So some people think, and obviously by the overall theme of the deck, I probably have been home a lot this year. But where do I work? I work over at Canopy, and we have the recipe for some incredible websites, web experiences. We work with amazing people, both on the client side and internally. So if you want to get in the kitchen with us, come on in. We love to talk to you. So where are we left off? We left off with the fact that there are challenges, and different people experience different challenges different ways. We have the disability term, which is what people self-identify as in terms of ambulatory, audio, cognitive, or visual challenges. And then we also have situational challenges that people need to address. And that can be anything from a temporary injury to just a really crowded train that's really loud. Well, probably not right now. How about a really crowded room? Well, many of us are homeschooling and or to have a rooming or maybe the people next door are just really loud. There's always a challenge that can be faced and accessibility. Having an accessible visual presence helps them all. So with that, our friends at the W3C have come up with these beautiful guidelines. Version 2.1 is the most current and pretty much internationally is the guideline we go with, the version of the guideline we go with. Technically, the American with Disabilities Act section 508 was refreshed prior to 2.1 being released. So it requires 2.0. But if you want to talk to anybody else in the world or just give the best user experience, just go with 2.1. There is a small, medium, and large, essentially. A, A, A, A, AAA. The more A's, the more criteria. So everybody industry-wide feels that AAA is casting the widest net. This is what a lot of our legal issues or guidelines go by. So there we have it. You've already done it. So let's get into the meat of this. Baking and accessibility. I always say people should just bake it in. And then I keep thinking about the district reference of just fold it in. If you are not familiar with it, it's a beautiful thing between these amazing actors who are saying, well, just fold it in. But, but how do I fold it in? Just fold it in. Neither of these characters had any, you know, been in a kitchen, ever been in a kitchen for ten years. And, you know, just fold it in. So here we have these beautifully wonderful, positive intent here. Marketing teams trying to just fold it in. And they're told, make sure your colors are right. Make sure your words are right. You know, are you being represented? Are you using great representation? But how do you do that? Where are the pixels? This is what people need to know. They don't know always how to fold it in. So if I know, I really think they'll definitely show up more in in in presentation. I just love the picture. It's a little horrifying. I love it. But if you've ever looked through a 1950s censor scroll, cookbooks, you see a lot of this. So that couldn't resist. But anyway, back to our story. If you're looking for color contrast, logos, now there's some, you know, there's some leeway around logos of being compliant or not. But go ahead, look at it anyway. It's a great elect. But check your header. Is your, you have this beautiful, you know, serial banner with this lovely image behind it. And then your header text is kind of blurred and having low contrast. That's a big problem. Great, Charles. That's awesome that you made accessible color combinations a part of your branding. Eyebrows. I don't know the official terms. I've always called them eyebrows. You know, those little things that are you have your inside and then you have that little thing on top that, you know, might be well, it's like an eyebrow. They're usually these nice light gray, not that well, the breadcrumbs too. I'll try to find an example and I can tell you after things. But yeah, so we'll talk breadcrumbs too. But any of those little text that's usually small and grayed out, it's hard. And then the link or the link hover state. A lot of people make sure their link is great and their link hover state is great. But you know what, they don't differentiate those two colors very much. So they don't do as much as much as you think. And then, you know, footer and legal links are notoriously, you know, smaller and faded back. So those are all things that that could impact your user experience there. In words, don't use acronyms or numerums unless you've identified them. I'm so guilty of this. I use Allie all the time. Allie is a numeral for accessibility because there's 11 letters in between the A and the Y. Don't do it unless you explain it or else you're really excluding people. You want to avoid the slang and pop culture references. Sometimes people don't get it. It's also the big one for this to be a diverse audience. It's not only accessibility. You know, you feel like a Red Shirt for Star Trek fans means that you know that other than Scotty, anybody in the original series who's wearing a Red Shirt is going to be dead by the end of the episode. It just happens. But not everyone understands it or making somebody make that connection on the fly isn't always comfortable. So really, for usability, whether it's because of challenges that might be cognitive or just distractions, you definitely want to just aim for that ninth grade reading level unless you have reason to go a little harder. If you are a scientific site that are speaking to people directly in that field, it's a niche market. There's going to be play. Clarity and consistency. Your this is your tone is going to change between things between mediums, but your voice can't use your word. This goes back to your words. Use words your audience is going to understand and do that. Make yourself a content style guide and bake the accessibility, all this stuff right on in. And then to really be inclusive as well as as well as accessible. Definitely add that image is in the alt text and all of these beautiful things, but also make sure you have representation and you pay honor to your entire audience that way. And an easy way to do this to bake it in here is build these things into your personas. And now I'm not saying we need a disability persona. We need a disabled persona. We need a no, no. This is Howard. He happens to be older. Married to a man named Jeffrey. And he loves playing wheelchair tennis. You know a lot about this gentleman. You have a feeling of some of the ambulatory challenges you like. You do not need to have this tokenism, but you can get this in. And the Cornell University has a disability statistic school based on U.S. CDC data that helps you identify, okay, if this person needs demographics as collected by the CDC, then that person is likely to experience this type of talent. So it's a great way to make it a natural process. And I don't actually want to skip that right now. All right. Getting quick asking. So I touched on content strategy. I'm a content strategist at heart. So I've already touched a little bit about this, but let's talk a little bit about an accessible story. You know, story branding is a powerful tool. It's basically the official way of saying every presentation I talk about, I talk about, make sure your users are the hero of their own story. Now, this doesn't matter if this person identifies as disabled or not. Accessibility helps them be a part of that hero of their own story. So you still want to define your conversions and goals. And are the form labels readable by a screen reader? Are they palpable for those who are using alternative things other than a mouse? Are the visuals and audios of the screen reader a match? There's going to be times when you can't make them perfectly match. But when doing screen reader analysis or thinking about it, try to keep in mind that not everyone who uses a screen reader is visually impaired. Sometimes people need more than one way to take in that data. And so to do that, you need to make sure that your conversion points, those goals are making up that strategic level. Make sure that those are accessible throughout or you're personal to never be the hero of the story. And you're never going to be able to guide them to that conversion point. So you have to do that. And part of that representation piece I mentioned before is that empowering the user to feel that they are a part of that story. And if you ignore 25% of the population, that's 25% that are not a part of your story. And then just like with any content strategy, you always give your user the next step. Can they share? Can they click that next blog article at the bottom of a page? Are they able to do what comes next? So for example, a personal pet peeve of mine is that a lot of sites will have the social care at the top and the story underneath. Well, even as a visual user, I would not share something before I read it in most cases. That said, if you have to go backwards with a screen reader or maybe another assistive technology, that's a really poor UX. You have to go back through 2000 words of blog just to get to the share button. So make it something really, give them that user journey. Give everyone that user journey. So three to do is to do while you're in there. Always give context. So if it's alternative text and I talk about this a little bit more in a minute or captions, don't just say what it is. Communicate the value. Do things focus. So if you have a lot of media, allow it to be turned off or paused and never start off with sound. Individuals with cognitive challenges, that's really off-putting. For example, someone with ADHD is taking in all the information all the time. A lot of brilliant people on the spectrum too. These are brilliant, amazing audience members, but they can't necessarily self-filter if you have everything playing at once. It's disorienting. And I've read studies that individuals if you're trying to target an older generation that if there is potentially early onset of dementia where these individuals are still wonderfully active, functional, active members of society, but that instant audio can cause confusion. Make sure you allow the user to focus their own experience and then empower them. If your content, you know, WCAG is based on the poor principle, perceivable, operable, understandable and robust, but just bring it down, boil it down for your teams. If your content is perceivable and usable, they can convert. Your marketing, you want those conversion goals. You want those success metrics. So, to use inclusive media with that alt text, this is what I'm going to talk about in context. Technically, this new pencil is that picture, but thanks for different types of specialists with the value of that image. If you're using videos in transcripts, if it's an auto service, you're going to want to proofread it before you post it on the live stream like this. Real quick, not to conflict with the other captioning going on. Google offers captions, Zoom offers captions. There's lots of options. You can just fill this into everyday practices, especially again, where everyone's going remote. Live captioning services are amazing. I don't know how people keep up with individuals who do this, especially as I do in situations like this, but they provide really more accurate captions or at least we'll get the more of the meaning of what you're saying as opposed to an auto option. Both are completely wonderful and legitimate. Descriptive text goes beyond that audio track to include descriptions and visual attributes, meaning this might be women with big curly hair, red lipstick is flailing her arms around that she's talking. That would be the descriptive text here. Your images, color contrast is important, but also make sure it's pleasant. There are many, many simulators out there, and you can take a look at that and see how your media really can look. I mean, it won't be a fact. There's different levels, there's seconds, there's uniqueness to every individual in their experience. Even non-colorblind individuals will perceive colors differently, so you're never going to have everyone have the same experience to check it. Can you see the content? Can you see the text? Is this all perceivable? Are they going to move it to your conversion point? And then again, representation. In truth, everything here except this young man in the target ad is really targeting that market. Actually, I know that's a lie, but still, please, we're not targeting assistive, whether it be clothing or media. But nonetheless, the representation matters. I stood out to me outside of a, where was I? Olden year or something. I saw a big poster, and they had complete representation from people of different body styles, different identifications, different wheelchairs. There was one individual, young woman in a wheelchair. There was very focused, and it wasn't just one picture where they pushed everybody together. It was a series of pictures that were trying to promote a very inclusive approach, and everyone deserves to feel like they are part of that story. So anyway, three minutes left, and we're almost there. So where do we go from here? Practice empathy. And if there's nothing in this world that can speak empathy more, it's a salmon, sour cream, yellow mold thing. I don't know if that was a sweet experience. You cannot do it. Maybe it was just lovely, but that just stood out to me. No, but build an understanding, build empathy, see things from other people that are maybe experiencing from other people's point of views. There are simulators out there. There are practices out there. There's just a matter of going through in your own site and just using your tab to navigate. There's a lot you can do to build understanding and build that empathy, because that is what's going to help you remember as you continue to grow your marketing practices. And whenever possible, test the system that native users, native users are individuals who use assistive technology every day to get through life, and that this means that they're going to know things that you don't or are likely to when it comes to how to use assistive in real life. But you definitely want to monitor that if you're having testing, because if an individual is unable to perceive it, the word only navigation skips a whole component, well then they're not necessarily going to know if they're perhaps unsighted. And with that, are there any questions other than me calling things breadcrumbs and eyebrows and stuff? All right, I'll be around later too. Coming up next, we are almost to happy hour. You can always pick out the website for more details. There's board games tonight. There's more stuff tomorrow. And I think we are good if you ever need us. We are over here at the Planet Boom, and we'd love to talk to you. And again, I'll do one more family plug that we are hiring. So come on over and I'll give you a good do it.