 We have a really exciting conversation today. I'm thrilled to have our guest on Eric Asher and I will be sharing, well, here it is, making content more accessible. And that is exactly what our friend Eric Asher, which is the communications associate with respect ability joining us today to dive deeper into this conversation and as we move into how do we consider and how do we move forward to implement some of these strategies to truly make our content more accessible. So more soon from Eric, so glad to have you with us today. And of course we start every episode by saying thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all of our presenting sponsors. Julie and I both have been so extremely grateful for your partnership, your investment, not only here with a nonprofit show but genuinely with the sector at large. So thank you to our presenting sponsors. Please do find them, check them out online because they really exist to help you do more good. Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy of course is here today. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, I shared briefly who Eric is, how he's coming on to us today as a guest. And again, Eric Asher, thank you. Thanks for joining us this morning or afternoon. Thank you very much, it's fantastic to be here. So yeah, I'm very excited to talk about how to make your events more accessible on your website and your social media. Well, you know, we should start with what respectability does because I can witness to everybody already. We, Jarrett and I wanna learn from you, Eric to make the nonprofit show more inclusive and more functional for the different types of viewers that we have. So we're gonna have you kind of give us some consulting I think as we motor through our morning. So talk to us about respectability and the amazing work that your overall organization is doing. So we are a small relatively new nonprofit. I think we were founded in like 2015. And our mission statement is that we fight stigmas and advance opportunities so people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of community. And really there's like free buckets to our work. Basically there's the fighting stigmas part which is our work in Hollywood with entertainment professionals, news media, journalists to ensure that their representations to people with disabilities are both positive and accurate. Advancing opportunities, we have a big policy shop basically and we create some a testimony work with governors across the country and politicians to ensure that people with disabilities have policies working for them. And we also have a talent pipeline portion of our work and inclusive leadership. I actually started with respectability as one of our fellows back in 2018. And so our fellowship program is we train young leaders with disabilities and try to help them find work. So it's a combination of things. We do lots of different things but all of it's very exciting and I'm really excited they got to come to work every morning and make a difference for people with disabilities like myself. You know, it's interesting because if you look on the website the fellows that you have listed for now they're incredibly diverse from different parts of the country, just really amazing talents and backgrounds. And I just enjoyed reading about that. I didn't know you were a fellow. I was, my first couple of months here, yeah. Yeah, that's really, really, I love seeing that. Talk to us now. You're gonna walk us through some strategies and they're gonna cover a lot of different things. And I wanna begin by saying even just for this programming we have never done this for the nonprofit show don't know how to do it and really shamefully haven't even thought about why we should be doing it. So talking about the captioning part, let's start there. Sure. So the reason that, I'll start with the why. So 20% of people in the US are ever deaf or hard of hearing which is about 48 million Americans. And so captions help them understand what's happening. They also help people who have learning disabilities, people whose first language is in English and basically everyone, if you don't want, for a lot of people who are watching videos in a place where they don't want people to know if they're watching the videos. And so captions help with that too. And the good news about this is that YouTube makes it very, very easy to do it. If your video has decent enough audio quality, YouTube will automatically generate captions for it for free. Now granted, they won't be perfect. Speakers won't be identified. There will be several words that will be wrong. There will be no punctuation of any kind. And some people will call them like craptions as a result of these errors. I love that. But I know, I enjoyed that the first time I heard it too. But the good news is it's free to edit the craptions and turn them into fully accurate captions. And there's a great support document on YouTube's website that walks you through it. And auto-generated captions are expanding. Zoom has them now for free for all accounts. And you can just turn them on and automatically get captions on your Zoom videos, on your Zoom webinars and meetings, so. Because you're gonna help us do. Yes, so for those of you watching this live, we do not have the caption. Those of you watching the recording, I hope you are enjoying the caption because Eric has helped us do just that. We are going to add once the recording is done, the captions to this, and we will learn that for future use. And just so adore and appreciate you teaching us and really using this as a platform to help not only inform us, but so many other viewers around our nation to know how we can be more inclusive with our communication elements. And the great thing, as I said, as long as you know how to do it, it doesn't take a lot of time and it makes a huge difference, so yeah. Cool. Well, I love it. And I think you're starting off by that statistic about the impact and the number of Americans that actually are gonna benefit from this little bit of help. It's huge. 20% and I know you had mentioned, Eric, a lot of people like to watch videos with the caption on so they're not known that they're watching a video. And I remember seeing a very phenomenal statistic which I cannot say right now because it didn't log in my memory, but about how many people actually watch videos with the captions on, you know? And that regardless of having auditory issues, do you know it? Are you saying like, yes, I'm saying that I have that one written down because it was a video. Okay, good. So, actually good. I thought I had it, but I don't. I have a similar one which is that 80% of video, 80% of viewers react negatively to videos auto-playing with sound which is why so many of the social media websites don't have the sound on my default. So a lot of people just won't watch the video without the captions, so. Yes, I would agree. And I have been, you know, just as busted where I turn on a video where I thought my sound was off and then it blaringly comes out of your phone and I'm like, oh my God, and then I'm panicking. How do I turn, you know, panicking? How do I turn that off? So video captions are really important. Well, moving into further into the strategies because I think you have five of them for us today. So moving into the next strategy that we have here is tell us about imaging, right? And how there is this need for alternative text or descriptions, where do we find it? What is it? How do we best utilize the strategy? So this one's important for more than one million people in the US who are blind and more than 12 million who have low vision. And those people use technology. So screen readers basically do what the name implies. They read what's on the screen so that people who can't see the screen can still understand what's happening on it. Screen readers aren't magic though, at least they're not yet. They can't figure out what's in an image unless you program it in. And that's what alternative text is all about. When you add alternative text to an image it will tell the screen reader basically what to say to a person using it when they select the image. And so the best practice for writing on text that it should be short and should describe the purpose of the image. And when you're writing it, basically think about what someone who can't see the image would need to know. Like for example, I got the slides at a time. So for image on the left of the slide, for example, I would describe it as four people working at a table and together in a group office setting. So basically a short, simple summary of what's happening on the slide or image. That is so helpful. And just to hear you say four people, I'm gonna be honest, I miss the person at the computer. I see the computer, right? But I miss those hands being there as well. So four people sitting in an office setting, strategizing or working on a project together. And that is very brief yet extremely descriptive. Would you say that to use like the emotion, four people looking concerned, four people looking joyful? If you think it adds to the, if you think it's important for a person to know, yes, if not, no. I think it's, I mean, the thing is all of Texas better when it's shorter to the point because like certain screw meters will cut it off after like a hundred characters. So you wanna keep it short, but obviously you don't want it to be too short so people are missing things. Right, very interesting. Well, I really have seen that. I've seen that choice, but I've never fully appreciated what it led to and what it meant. So I appreciate you totally sharing that and giving us some guidance on that. The strategy number three in the nonprofit sector is really important right now when everybody's starting to go back to event planning, in real life events. So I feel like this is such a great thing to talk about because this could be a time for us to reimagine how we're doing the pro forma of sending out invitations. And you say, ask guests what they need in order to really participate and be fully present. Yep, and I will say this is not just for in-person events. This matters for all types of events, virtual, in-person, hybrid, if some of those events are happening. So the most important thing is on the sign up form for every event, ask registrants if they need any accommodations to effectively participate in the event. And make sure that you provide the contact information for a real person with an email address and a phone number if they can get in touch with if they have any questions. And it's important to note that by inviting people to request accommodations doesn't mean they require you to provide them if they are unreasonable. And you can set a deadline of like 48 hours before the event. And so make sure that it's just a best practice and also make sure that people know that the event is accessible when you're advertising it. Because if they don't, they won't show up. I will add one more thing, which is that ensure that the invitation of this digital one is screen reader accessible, but we discussed this for all texts and images. Make sure right if it's a video or captions on it, et cetera. So it all ties together. Does respectability offer any kind of samples of this? Any kind of language templating or anything like that? We do. And I wanted to share it, but so yeah, basically it's, we can find it all on our website. I'll send it at the end, I'll save the link at the end. So it's in our resource section, we have a virtual event toolkit, which has great draft language that you can use. So. So and I had shared as we were preparing for today's episode, how often times, my clients when I'm speaking at event, maybe a smaller event, be it a board meeting or a team meeting, something where they'll say, do you need any audio visuals? Do we need a microphone? Or sometimes they'll say, we are not going to have this because of budgetary issues. And while I'm a very loud speaker and certainly can project, I have become extremely mindful of individuals with auditory challenges. And as you shared that statistic earlier, all the more reason why microphones really need to be included in every event to really make that auditory sound and the hearing of all of your individuals be so much more received. And that little thing, again, I know for many nonprofits it may be something that you want to cut from your budget, but I think this is a great opportunity to really consider if that cutting of your budget is making your event a little bit inaccessible to some. And again, there are enough people with disabilities in society that you want to include them because if they can feel included, they can contribute. So. Yes, exactly. And asking them, you know, what in what ways could we make this event more inclusive for you to play a participating role? So I know I'm going to be checking out RespectAbilities Resources page. So thank you for that, Eric. It's a great thing to know we can access that because one of the things that you talked about, Eric, which I thought was so interesting is start back up. Start this at the beginning when you're planning because it's so much easier to understand these things before you're like day of or, you know, you're trying to get other things accomplished and you've totally forgotten or left the script behind. That's a tough way to try and make a correction. I sort of put this as sort of a catch-all for lots of the other tips I wanted to give. Good. But yeah, basically think of accessibility from a start because as you've said, it's much easier to make changes at the start of planning than last minute when you then start starting an hour basically. So for a couple of things to keep in mind, if you're booking captions or ASL interpreters, book them early. Two weeks notice is ideal. 48 hours is generally the minimum. In first slide, the best practice is to distribute those in advance and sort of those are accessible. And the best part about that is that PowerPoint literally walks you through how to make your slides accessible and software. There's a button you press in the software and it says, check accessibility and it guides you through making everything accessible. It is the easiest thing in the world to do and it takes about five minutes on average. And for in-person events obviously ensure that your location is accessible and really double-check that because I remember one time we were trying to have an event in New York City and there was a story about we were trying to find a restaurant to house for you then and we called the restaurant and asked them, like, are you accessible? And they said, yeah, we're accessible. And then we asked, are your bathrooms accessible? And they said, yeah, there's just two stairs to get done in the bathroom. And I'm like, so you're not accessible, then are you? And so basically it's, you should really double-check that your locations are accessible, that you're thinking about these types of things in advance before you, when you start, basically, so. When I hear you tell that, share that story, it makes me realize that we hear the word accessible but we don't know what it means. You know, we're not fully educated on what that means and that the myriad of options that we need to be looking at. You know, even in the nonprofit space where we think we're so, you know, much more aware of things, I think that we're not. I think it's getting better, but I think there is in general a lack of awareness among many organizations, yes. And so, but awareness is the first step and the good news is, as I've been trying to emphasize here, I hope I've been doing it effectively, most of these accommodations and things you can do are cheap, easy and free. Cheap or easy and or easy. So it's not like it's difficult to do it. You just have to know what you're supposed to do. And so. And I'm sorry, go ahead, Julia. I would just say it's like a mindset, just to start out to your point. I'm sorry, Jerick, go ahead. Well, I was gonna share when I started my career in fundraising, right? I was working for an organization with developmental disabilities. And even when it comes to event seeding, right? And the hallways, the pathways to get to their table, to get to the seat, all of that is taken into consideration. And I really wanna say because of that, it really created a formative pattern in my brain that now every event, regardless of whether the constituency base was a higher disability constituency base, I always thought of that, right? Like where are the bathrooms? How might these individuals get to the tables? And I think for many of us in the nonprofit space, especially as you continue your stewardship with your donors, knowing what they need at an event, especially many of you, and I'm talking now physical disabilities, but our challenge is maybe I should say, you know like- Oh, no, disability is what we actually put. Disabilities, and getting, thank you, and getting to that event, are knowing like if there's not seating for the event, and that's not what you've planned, you might wanna plan some seating alternatives for those individuals that actually do need to sit. And so there's so many different things, but as Eric said, many of them are, you know, free and easy. Yeah, and things like making sure that the buffet tables are low enough for someone who uses a wheelchair to get to it, to be able to get their food. Things like making sure that if you're having a hybrid event, making sure that the ASL interpreter and or left captioning is visible on the video stream and making sure that the captioner and ASL interpreter is next to the person speaking so that it's easier for someone to use that. Lots of little things that you can, we have all of this information in our toolkit, but. Now, I know we have a fifth and final strategy and as we move to that, I'm going to ask a curiosity question that just popped into my head is, when you do a post-event survey, I have never included anything about how accessible was this event for you and your needs. Is that another resource that Respectability offers? Is that post-event survey in regard to accessibility? We haven't thought of that, honestly, because we've been, but it's a good idea. We've been thinking, I mean, I think it's good to think about that after a fact. I think it's, again, more important that events are accessible in the planning stage, but yes, that could definitely be something to consider. I love that idea, Jared, because I think we're trying to, as a sector, do more of that and you follow up and ask, because we've just, for so many decades, done the exact same thing at all these events, all these events and so to be doing this query and asking your guests, I think is brilliant and I appreciate that you brought that up. Strategy five, and it's that accessibility helps everyone, dig a little deeper on that with us, Eric. So basically, my point of this one is that even if including people with disabilities isn't enough of a reason to be accessible for you, which it should be because we're 20% of the population and a $1 trillion market and so many people know someone with a disability or have a disability themselves. Many of the accessibility tips we've covered over the past 20 minutes help everyone else too. Captions, like I said, help everyone. Greatly ease the cognitive load of a video in your event, allow people to watch it discreetly and adding all text images in your website helps to search engine optimization. Accessible venues are easier for people to attend with kids and strollers. All sorts of things that means that basically, including people with disabilities is not just the right thing to do, it helps everybody and it's good, good for society. So that's the graph I'd like to look at. I love that and I think too, as we deal with in the nonprofit sector, an aging donor population, we disengage from that constituency like that if we're not accessible in some very basic ways, very basic ways, you know. And I think for one, I'm definitely going to start advocating for the post-event surveys to include how accessible was this. I think that will really help my clients that I'm currently working with look towards the future to really begin their event planning with that accessibility in mind, but going back to the audience and asking how accessible, like if you could think about the last gala that you attended are the last, and again, as you said, Eric, it's not just in person, it's virtual and it's hybrid as well. What do you remember from that event? How accessible was it? So as we continue to move forward and plan for our future events, we have that data and that information to make better informed decisions. Julia, I'm going to do a quick plug here, although I know you have it later, I'm sure in the slide is the fundraising events TV. So that's a completely separate channel under the American Nonprofit Academy, kind of a separate show to the nonprofit show, which is all things events. And I think that is really a great opportunity to again plug the inclusivity of variety of accessibility for your audiences. Absolutely, and thank you. Yeah, in fact, I have an editorial meeting with that team in just a little bit. So definitely we're going to be bringing that up. Eric, this is like a bad question, because this is like, which child do you love the most? But I got to ask, if you are looking at your event, and let's say it's an in-person event, and you're trying to determine what limited resources you have, what's the most or like say the top most important things that you really should be doing to make that event accessible? Well, well, say is that I'd say the biggest thing is to ask people what accommodations they need. Okay. Because ASL interpreters and live captioners cost money. Yeah. But if no one requests it, you don't need to have it. Yeah. But if someone requests it, you should be able to make it work. So I'd say giving people the chance to request things can save you money, and it can also tell you things to do that you wouldn't have known to do otherwise. So that's just the best practice for that. Yeah. That's wise. That's great advice, Eric. It goes back to the very beginning. If you don't ask, you don't know which direction to take, and yeah, you can be a lot more successful if you know what you're dealing with. And you can be responsive and honorable in the whole process. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Phenomenal. And I know we have Julia Mayfield put up Eric's slide again, so everyone will know where to access these resources that have been mentioned throughout today's episode. So grateful to have you on Eric Asher Communications Associate with Respectability. And is that respectability.org? Is that the web address? Yep. And our resources page is linked to or from the top or respectability.org slash resources. And plenty of things in there. One of my jobs is actually maintaining that resources page, so I know that it's very, very, very busy. And lots of stuff that you can find to help you out. We again are just so grateful. And for those of you that have watched us live, I know we have many of you here online. This sounds like I need some more coffee this morning. So grateful to have you joining us. Now, you did not experience the captions during this live episode, but all of you that are watching the recording and our archive database, you will be seeing the captions. So Eric has been so generous to help us learn how to include captions for this recording. And just so grateful, again, Eric, to have caught your attention to come on and be a guest on the nonprofit show. Appreciate all that respectability is doing. Again, if you want to check out that resource page or overall respectability, respectability.org is where you can find Eric, all of his great work, as well as their organization's work throughout the nation. So thank you so much, Eric. Great to be here. Thank you. It's been wonderful. I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I've been joined by Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd herself, CEO of Raven Group. We want to make sure that we do thank our sponsors who allow us to have these amazing discussions. Every day is different. Every day we learn something. And that is changing, too, as we move well beyond a year of broadcasting. What we were talking about when we first started is completely different with what we're talking about now. And our presenting sponsors have been part of that journey. Hey, as Jared mentioned, we do have a new show called Fundraising Events TV. And it's all a drill down on how to have events. And we talk about fundraising in barns, in ballrooms, golf events, to black tie gallows. So we talk about a lot of different things. And so check out fundraisingevents.tv. Wow, I really, really love that we started off this week. It's a short week for us because of the holiday on Monday. But some great information, Eric. Thank you so much. Again, my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Hey, Jared, I know you are broadcasting from a different location. You will be back in your home city. So travel safe, my friend. And you've got how many hours ahead of you? 11, an 11-hour drive. Yes, I happen to be in Utah. I've been visiting the Park City community, Salt Lake City community here in Utah, which we've had many guests and many attendees on the show, the nonprofit show. Rob Harder was on. And again, just any time I travel, I make sure to infuse myself and activities into the community. And many times, oftentimes, that is the nonprofit sector. So I've been playing in the Utah space. And it's been a lot of fun. But yes, heading back to my Arizona roots here shortly. So thank you so much. And to all of our guests, many of us are working remotely. And sometimes that does not mean in your home office or your home studio. So it's been a lot of fun and just so grateful for this wonderful life. So thank you. Well, I can't wait to hear what you learned about what's going on in Utah. We really had some interesting guests in the beginning talk about the perilous nature of nonprofits in Utah. And I would say one of our more emotional episodes was with an executive director who kind of broke down and said she didn't know who was going to survive the pandemic and how that was going to impact the entire state and really the region. And so it's going to be powerful to hear from you, Jared, about what you learned and what you're seeing. So thank you. And I remember that episode. And 23%, I believe, is what she said. She was, you know, they had done a survey of the sector across the state. And 23% of the organizations were saying that they did not know or think that they would make it through post-COVID. So it's been interesting. It has been. Well, we are grateful for your time. We're grateful for all of you viewers that are with us. We've learned so much today, Eric. And we are so appreciative. I think we're going to have more questions for you as we march forward. And we are wishing everybody a great start of your week as we end every show. We'd like to remind everyone and ourselves, I think. Stay well so you can do well. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.