 My name is Takarajga. I own a full-service WordPress agency in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam. And often, when talking about accessibility to our clients, I use the SEO argument. Are you aware of that argument? It basically says, just if Google is blind, and we create a good working, cool, thanks. Google is blind. It's the biggest blind user on Earth, on planet Earth, basically. So if we make our website more accessible and indexable by that, we're basically the profits, both accessibility and SEO. But the more I was using this argument towards clients, I was feeling that I was kind of cheating them, or thinking, is this really the best that we can come up with? Is this argument strong enough to build a case on and make them spend a bit more money, a bit more time on a accessible project? So what is web accessibility, and why is it important? Looking at the different WordCamps and also outside of WordCamps, outside our WordPress ecosystem, you see that awareness around accessibility is growing. There's more people talking about it. There's more talks about it. But what are we really talking about here? According to the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. So we're talking about people with disabilities using the web. What does it mean, then? What does it mean for them to use the web with a disability? How does it impact their experience? How many people are we talking about? In this talk, I'll go into some numbers to illustrate the amount of people that we're talking about and also the potential of this group of people. There's a lot of numbers in here. We're going to do some math together. I put all the resources I used in the last slides. So please just sit back, relax, and let me do my talk. So when looking for a definition of disability, I find it is quite hard to come up with one definition that tells me a bit about the scope. The statistical definition differs, and operational definitions differ. Something I found really interesting to find in this bit of research is the so-called medical theoretical model of accessibility and the social theoretical model of disability. The first one says disability is a restriction of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being. Disabilities are descriptions of disturbances in function of the level of the person. This model basically looks at the disability as the problem that belongs to the disabled person, is not seen as something that concerns society or anybody else than the individual affected. And this is evidenced by the World Health Organization's definition of 1980. The second model, which came after what? After that, the social theoretical model said there's a recognition within the social model that there's a great deal that society can do to reduce and ultimately remove some of these disabling barriers, and that this task is the responsibility of society rather than the disabled person. So basically saying that through designing everything to meet the needs of the average or what is considered normal, the majority of people that are not disabled, we are basically adding barriers to people with a disability. The social model recognizes that there's a lot that society can do to remove these barriers. Fortunately, there's a bit more. W3C is also, there's a web accessibility initiative and there's a whole section on their website that goes a bit further than the definition that we just saw. This was the original definition I came up with, telling that it's about people with disabilities using the web, but it continues and specifies this a bit more. It is about people, accessibility is about people, being able to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web, and even contribute to the web. It continues to mention different types of disabilities that may prevent access to the web or affect it. Disabilities like auditory, cognitive, neurological, speech, physical, or visual, or any combination of those. What's important to note is that we're not just talking about people with these disabilities, it also benefits people without disabilities. Some examples are people using mobile phones or other types of screens and devices. Other people, their needs change due to aging. We all have temporary disabilities, maybe you break an arm, you lose your glasses, something like that. Or what about bright sunlight? You're trying to get some work done and suddenly the sun hits the screen. Or being in a full train commuting to work, you want to watch a video, but it doesn't offer subtitles, so only audio. There's a really cool playlist on web accessibility perspectives, and I was told to shut up while this plays. So there's a full playlist on YouTube on different short videos, like 45 seconds, maybe a minute, where you see sort of the overlap between situational disabilities, medical disabilities, and maybe growing older and just changing needs. This is also shared at the end of the presentation in the references. Okay, so we kind of know who's impacted, who we're doing this for, what we're talking about. That makes me wonder how many people are we talking about? How big is the scope? Are we doing this for the few people that we personally know that maybe are blind, deaf, or in a wheelchair or something? Or is that number a bit bigger than that? Again, because definitions differ, it's hard to come up with just really factual numbers to use. World Bank mentions one billion people worldwide, or about 50% of the global population. European Union comes up with slightly different numbers, a bit higher even. They predict 120 million EU citizens to be impacted by 2020 or having a disability, which is 20% or more than 20% of the EU population. That's 20% of the people I see here in this room now. That's quite a chunk. So this tells us a bit about the why of accessibility. We're not just doing this for those 20%, we're doing this for you and me and maybe our grandparents or parents. So I want to see some hands. Who here in this room agrees with me that web accessibility should be the bare minimum of any web project that we take on? That does a lot more than I expected or than the notes that I had here, but I would say that's about 70, 75% of you here agrees with me. So we can make a deal then. Let's make a deal here and now, you and me, that we are going to teach our clients on the importance of web accessibility, that the next project that we're going to take on is going to be a little bit more accessible than the last one that we did. It doesn't need to be perfect immediately. It's more important to make the steps and get there and keep it in mind when working on a project. So with every project we deliver, we'll try to be better and improve accessibility for all. Agree? Yay. Okay. Some years ago, we started inspired by Rianne, actually, who's sitting here in the front and doing an amazing talk later today, inspired by Rianne on a couple of WordCamps in the past. As an agency, we started telling our clients, we find this is the bare minimum of a web project, like SEO that they're all asking for, like performance, like security. It should be there. It should be part of the foundation of a project. But I also experienced that when talking to clients, and I also mean potential clients then, that just this SEO argument is not always solid enough to hire the number, the more math they're doing and in the back of the room thinking, hey, is this a good deal or is that not a good deal? So I started investigating numbers a bit. Let's try to see if we can convince our future client. What's important to note is that with a business case, this is about either money or risk. So you should be thinking, does it somehow increase income, money coming in? Does something, in this case, accessibility, save us money somehow? Or does it help us mitigate risk? Maybe we can keep away from lawsuits. And what's really important here is that you investigate your client. Try to understand their business and keep asking questions. Don't just deal with the answer they give you, but keep asking questions. Try to interview their audience. Try to get a deep understanding of their business, what their gains are, what their threats are, what opportunities are. Be sure that you're prepared. And I have a little bit of a math, a little case here that we're gonna go through to show you how this can work. Let's say there's a webshop owner that you get in touch with, somehow maybe here in this word camp, and he tells you about his webshop doing 100,000 visitors per month. Sales are, no, okay, they're pretty good. Average order value, 75 euros per order. And after talking a bit, you find out the website is quite old, it could use some changes. And you agree on writing a proposal to redo the whole thing. Design, development, just the whole installation. But of course, this client is gonna ask you, be nice, be gentle. You know, the excuses, maybe another developer already used the budget, or, well, times are tough, and we don't have too much money available, but we do wanna take on this project. So you go home, start writing your proposal, crunching numbers, thinking, okay, let's shave off on the design hours, let's take away some project management. Who needs that anyways? Maybe development can be a little bit more agile than normally. And then you realize we just made a deal here. Every project that we were gonna take on was gonna be more accessible than the one we did before. So accessibility is suddenly part of this proposal as well. So let's say we're gonna add some design hours to this proposal. Make sure that you quote enough design hours to have someone look at color contrast, let someone look at the style guide that your client is providing to you, maybe. Make sure that the design is appealing. It should look good. For anybody that can see this website, it should look good. Development-wise, it kind of depends. If it's all new to you, make sure that you add some hours for investigation, for learning. Add an alley audit, so there's an accessibility audit. Try to get someone in to help you with that, to kind of validate your work. Maybe you have some edge case scenarios that you need help with. Maybe using a plugin of which the output is not really accessible. And this one is often forgotten and that is train the staff, train your client and their users. Train or not their users, sorry, their employees. So whoever is working on content, train them as well. It's not just about the process of going through this webshop and adding products and dealing with orders. It's also about writing content that can be read and understood by anyone. Make sure there's all tags on images. eBay is doing a really cool job with that. They have a call to action in a lot of the product images also. Okay, then you realize, this is not one of those cheap offers that your client was asking for. But we were prepared. We know that this client had 100,000 visitors per month. We also know that the average order value is 75 euros. And a bit of Googling and investigation told me that the average conversion percentage in online retail is about 3%. Okay, it depends on the country, depends on your audience and the product, of course, but an average of 3% is a good one to play with. Now, we also know that 71% of the users with a disability, so 71% of those, 20% basically, will simply leave a website that is not accessible. They will just leave and probably not return to see if you change the website in the meantime. So we had 100,000 visitors, 20,000 of these 100,000 have a disability, and suddenly this audience shrinks to one-third. We only have 29% left, and we're just hoping that we can make some money of them. But what about those 14,200 users that came to your website with the intent to buy something? With an average of 3% conversion rate, this means that 31,950 euros per month is not being spent in your shop. And it's not that these people close the browser and they stop Googling or whatever, and they think, well, no sneakers for me. They just go to your competitor's website, a competitor that has an accessible website. That's a freaking 32,000 euros per month that's just there, and it's not for us, it's for the competitors. And this amazes me. There's so many companies hiring SEO consultants or conversion optimization specialists or somehow clients all know that one second of delay in Amazon costs them $1.6 billion or something like that. But they have no freaking clue about what huge audience is walking away from their website when you're talking about accessibility. This is 384,000 euros per year that you could have had in your pocket, extra revenue. There's two more things to take into consideration to make this even worse. The first one, the majority, 81% of these consumers will pay more in the competitor's web shop that is accessible. And there's something that's called the viral effect of satisfactory online experience, which kind of means that, if you really enjoyed shopping there and we have some really famous examples in the Netherlands where the experience of buying something and the whole, all the steps, it's like someone is dealing with you on a one-on-one basis, like you were in a real physical shop. If that experience is satisfying, you will tell your friends, you will tell it on a birthday, you will share it online somewhere. And especially in this group of people, 20% of your target audience, this is probably happening more than just me or you on a birthday party telling about something you bought online. For a lot of people, it means they don't leave the house and use the internet to shop. That's their main way of interacting with the world. So this is one case that you can use. It's not a case for all. We're not maybe not working all on an e-commerce website, but it is a case that you can, that kind of illustrates that with numbers you can make the case to your client. I'm pretty sure that this client was asking for this cheap web shop or no, be gentle. He's willing to pay for this. There's quite some money going to his competitors. And then there's some other cases that you can find online or can use the World Wildlife Fund in Canada. They had their best fundraising years, year after they launched a accessible website, 21 million dollars just by making the website. It's not just by making the website, but that was the annual revenue of those donations. So that's about getting money from your audience. And the other business case that you can make is about where can you save money? The other example, as an S-Bank in the Netherlands created a accessible website and that meant that the phone calls with questions about their products and services went down 15 to 30%. We don't know the exact number. We do know that they had 70,000 calls per year with people just asking the same stuff over and over and over again. That's saving them 1.7 million euros per year. That's a valid business case, I think. And there's also the risk factor. And the risk factor is basically about mitigating risk. Depending on where you are in the world, there is some form of legislation around accessibility or discrimination. So we're talking about mitigating the risk or the probability of risk, legal risk, or maybe damage to your brand. One of the earliest examples of sort of a lawsuit that had an impact and had effect is the Sydney Olympics in 2000 where a blind person basically went to court and said, well, I'm blind and I feel that this website is not fully accessible to me. And under the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act, this was agreed upon by the judge and the Sydney Olympics got three weeks to just improve the whole website, make it accessible. In the States, there's something called the ADA which is the Americans with Disabilities Act. The amount of lawsuits has been going through the roof in the last couple of years and the fines are hefty. So this is something that you should consider as well and also depending on where your client is, if they're operating in the US, this is something to worry about. I have some examples of ADA lawsuits. Most of them are being settled between parties so we don't know what the outcome was or what really happened. But Walt Disney, for example, the claim, the plaintiff said, okay, these sites were overloaded with video and audio content and for me as a disabled person, a physically impaired person, I cannot switch it off, I cannot deal with this website and this is just horrible. The resolution was, okay, first, fix it. Second, 15,000 euros for the blind person that complained and a total of $1.5 million of legal fees. I don't know but I don't have that in my pocket to settle lawsuits. And then this is just money. We're not even talking about brand image. We're talking now about Walt Disney Company but this example has been in other talks and you can find it on the web. Target, which is some sort of a Walmart in the US was sued with the claim that the website lacks alt text. The resolution, make it work, make it accessible. Oh, and by the way, pay $6 million to a damages fund. And then there's HRB Digital, something I never heard of but apparently it's the largest tax returns company in the US and someone was telling them that the website was incompatible with assistive technologies, screen readers, stuff like that. So again, make it work. Oh, and by the way, pay $45,000 to the two individuals that complained and there was a civil penalty of $55,000. And the other thing is they had to fix it before the next tax term was there, tax filing term. The problem in the States is that this ADA that is being used to sue companies that have inaccessible websites and also it is basically about discrimination. So you can sue for any type of entity as long as you feel discriminated and you have a case that you wanna bring to court. The problem is it doesn't provide a standard. So it's basically up to the company to kind of in fear for lawsuits, just try to be accessible but there's not a set of rules to follow. And it kind of depends on the users. Whoever feels discriminated and can make this as a solid case, bring it to court, then maybe this was not good enough, what you did. That's the big problem in the States with the ADA. In Europe, we have a directive that was agreed upon in 2016 which is called the transnational implementation of accessible web standards. And this directive had to be implemented by national law, so the EU member states needed to make this into national law. Main message being public sector bodies need to have accessible websites by the end of September 2019 this year. And then you see what happens if countries are being able to make this into their own law that is kind of different perspectives in different ways of treating that. Austria, public sector bodies have been legally required to have an accessible website starting 2016. So basically directive became law immediately. In Spain, public sector bodies can be fined for a poor web accessibility. In Italy, the person responsible for this public body website can be sued. I don't want that. Norway, it goes for both public bodies and businesses. And in Switzerland, it's becoming increasingly common for companies to be sued under this law. So to conclude, I gave you some numbers or kind of example how to make the business case for your client if you want to convince them that it's not just about SEO or something. And of course, there is law. But personally, I feel this should not be about money. This should not be just about complying with the law. We're basically talking about you and me. We're talking about our parents, our grandparents, people around us, we are society. So although I mentioned quite some numbers, I feel that the accessibility business case should not be about money. I feel it's just the right thing to do. Three minutes left. By the way, that SEO argument is true. So you can still use it, but you have some more material to use as well. I already mentioned it, 4.30. Rihanna is giving an amazing talk if you want to dive into area. So go see that. It's in Circus, it's down two floors down, I think. And if you want to reach out to me, Twitter, Takerega, or at level level. And the talks are already published on this URL. So feel free to download them. There's some two extra slides with all the resources and links to use wherever you want. That was it. Thank you, Taken. Welcome. We do have a couple of minutes for questions. So raise your hand if you have a question. I can maybe start off with just thinking about the definition maybe of disabilities and use some numbers about percentages and sort of broke that down. Does that, what is the definition of disability? Just as an example, I have hearing problems and I have hearing aid. But I don't know if my hearing problem has so much to do with websites. I'm not really affected too much about that. But so the things that you showed here, is that what's the definition of? Well, it's basically saying that anyone that has a, the medical definition would be that anyone that has a problem, an impairment, which means that some function acts differently than what is considered normal for a human. So even though you maybe don't feel it as a disability, you're completely used to it, I didn't see it, I didn't hear it on the way you spoke to me, I think that goes for most people. So you maybe will not consider yourself to be disabled. And it goes for a lot of people wearing glasses, for example, do you feel disabled? Or is it just something that you put up in the morning and put it down before you go to bed? But so glasses and lenses if you use that, which I also do, but would that also be considered? It would be considered under this definition. Yeah, it would be considered a disability. Yeah, okay, interesting. Do we have other questions? Raise your hand. Question over here. Okay, I just wanted to ask about the font that you used in your presentation, because I know that there are some dyslexia friendly fonts. And I could see that this one has quite a big difference between, for example, the A's and the E's and the numbers, the way they're defined. So I wanted to ask if that was meant to be a dyslexia friendly font. I'm not aware of that, that we used a dyslexia friendly font in our brand guide. Someone's waving at me, hi. Let's get a microphone over there. I'm not aware of this one being specifically... Yeah, there are like two types of fonts, like dyslexia and open dyslexic. But the thing with those fonts, they're not good for every dyslexic type. So for some, they're helpful, but they're not for all dyslexic helpful. So I would recommend if you want to use them, don't use them as the only font, but more use them as a fallback font, because they also can be really distracting for some type of dyslexic people. And for some time, it's easier to read, but it's complicated a little bit. Yeah, I was not going to go into all the details and all the measurements that you can take or all the measures that you can take to make your website accessible. Rian and Maya are a lot better in explaining that, I think. But I'm pretty sure this font is not, because it's in our brand and... Get the microphone, Susser? It's not. Rian just confirmed it's not. Other questions? Please raise your hand. We have a couple of more minutes. Over there? Thanks. I had a question about how do you measure in individual projects how many persons in the target group are having the disabilities, because now you were talking about the person of all people, but what about the target group? Yeah, well, that is something that sometimes clients say, like, ah, but those people, those people are not in my target group or these people don't buy in my shop. You don't know that. And that website owner probably also doesn't know it. Google Analytics doesn't tell you that. Of course, it could be someone with an impairment shopping for Christmas to give it to the person that is considered to be the audience of this web shop. So it's just easier to make it accessible than to try to find, it's probably more costly also, to find out if this actual type is within your audience or I would skip that part. It makes it really difficult, yeah. Just make it accessible. Yeah, but because that's costing money, of course, to do. Yeah, well, that's interesting to note. I only had 30 minutes in my talk, so I had to take out some slides. And one of them is the cost of making a website accessible. And we as an agency see that there's a bit of a startup phase. You need to kind of get some methods in place. But once the whole team is convinced and everybody's working with that, I would not say it's costing extra. We're not adding 10% to our projects just because they're suddenly accessible. So it's really maybe the first ones, but I would say that's good for anyone to go through that phase and learn a bit and then apply for everybody because there's more people profiting from that than that single client that will suffer from a 5% or 10% higher price. Yeah, thanks. Great. OK, a quick question from then. Hi, my name is Daniel from Junium. Just a comment, I think it's even though I don't think that's why we should be making sites accessible, but I think it can be useful to make a client realize that when you're making something more accessible, it will also probably help people who are not disabled or maybe in a situation where a better contrast will help and also make sure that you have a common understanding of what you're talking about. Because I've often noticed that I've been talking about accessibility and then realize that the person I'm talking to is only thinking about maybe... Wheelchairs and blind... Wheelchairs, sometimes it's only blind people or for some people it's just they're thinking about maybe color blindness and then when we're not talking about the same thing, it can be difficult to make a good argument. Yeah, that's why it's key to really explain and show the impact that you can make and that it's not just this 20% that is disabled, but it's about so many more people. It's about you and I in bright sunlight or in a train watching video without subtitles or something like that. Great, thank you, Take. Welcome.