 Can you hear me in the back? Is it okay? Is it on? Hello. All right, so thanks for showing up. This photo is from DrupalCon Munich, when we just started our small company. And ever since, we like to be a little bit ahead of the herd. And to prove, well, this is me and my colleagues. I'm the one with the belt. So, and this is DrupalCon Prague 2013. We were in this green church, and I think you can see us. And it became our mission to hijack group photos with our t-shirts. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail a little bit, like this year. We're too far in the back, but we thought we had a perfect spot. All grouped together and then we failed. Anyway, this is part of our team. And although we are a web agency, we still find business cards of great value because they're easy to exchange. They last a while when you hand them out. And it gives you something to talk about. And you give them to someone else. Take this subtle brow on the back, for example. It reads Limón Groen. This is our business name. It's Dutch for lime green. But it's enough for officially disabled person to Google our name and then find our contact information. But mainly it's a good way to start a conversation about accessibility and why we find it important. So I bought a stack with me on this table. Feel free to grab one after my talk. Hello. This place. Everywhere. So Limón Groen. We are a Drupal expert based in Amsterdam. Three-minute walk from the central station. And we focus on building, delivering websites that last. Like the website that we build should last at least five years. But they should also be used by everyone, regardless of disability, the files, place, or location. So in my talk, I will talk about why we chose a specific niche, a specific goal, like our tagline sustainable websites. So my name is Baris Wanskes. I have a few heads on, but I'm also the chair of the Dutch Drupal Foundation. I co-own Limón Groen, I'm the founder. But originally I'm a front-end developer. And I write Drupal code, Drupal code now and then. So I wrote some, I think I maintained some 15 or 20 modules. I've written some Drupal core patches. Mainly accessibility-related issues. So for example, if you are familiar with the Bartek team in Drupal 8, the Bartek team, every link in Bartek has an underline. That's one of the patches I worked on. Or the button you can see in the CK editor was released in 8.2. And it gives you an option to select a piece of text and then mark the piece as text in another language. So if you quote like a French poem, the screen reader will pronounce the piece of text in French instead of English. So we started the company in 2011, five years ago. And when I started Limón Groen, I was thinking about a name. Like I needed a name that stood out from all the competitors that we had. And I wanted a name that people can remember. It was a bit catchy. So I started by looking at competitors. And at the time we had the Drupal.nl website. It lists like all the Drupal agencies or companies in the Netherlands and Belgium. We had like 103 companies on this list. So I started looking at the names, but also at the taglines, like what are they doing? And if you look at the taglines, you see examples like we are a full service internet bureau. We do internet solutions. We do online media. We have built functional websites or Drupal web development, Drupal engineers. I see five times the words Drupal specialists. And then the company names, really technical, like Latin, Nish, Intracto, Indicia, Ocho. Difficult names to remember for a client. And I was thinking like okay, which are the company names that you can easily remember or are fun or nice. So I was thinking about names like I liked, Apple for example, or as a company in England, Bright Lemon, catchy name. There's a design agency in Amsterdam with a German name, Achtung, and it's written in capital, so it's like Achtung, and I like the name. So I started thinking, so how can I distinguish myself from competitors? And I started looking for a name that contains like a fruit, like Apple does, or do something with green, making sustainable websites is what we do. And then I came up with Limon Groen, and the alliteration is nice, it's like Limon Groen, it sounds good. And people can remember. But I also like businesses who spoke out about one thing that they were great at, like working in a specific niche, or saying like we are the best in this type of question that you have. So I have some examples. For example, Four Kitchens is a company that makes big websites. They're very bold at it, like it's just their tagline, we make big websites. But if a client like needs a solution provider to create their huge company website, they might approach Four Kitchens because they tell their experience with making big websites. Or e-commerce solutions, commerce guys, because they are saying like we are the e-commerce provider in the world. That's basically what they're saying. Someone who wants to do Drupal project in e-commerce probably will go to commerce guys. There's companies focusing on performance and optimization. Two Bits is one of them. For performance problems, tuning, you probably might want to give two Bits a call since it's the only thing they do. So they should probably know what it is. There's companies focusing on Drupal data migration. It's a small company this. It's Migrate Rocks. It's run by Chicks. Some of you might know him, Drupal developer. Oh, you're laughing. But he's a migration expert. He's done a lot for Drupal 8 Core regarding migration. And he started the company doing Drupal data migration. It's the only thing they do. So, but apart from doing these type of technical things that you focus on, you could also pick like a niche of a market. So, for example, Mr. Seed Media, they focus on building websites for churches and ministries. And that's, if you go to the website, it's the only thing basically they do. And they have a lot of examples and portfolios for websites from ministries for churches. There's a company in Canada, Origin Design. They focus on websites for ski resorts. And it sounds like a very small niche, but in Canada there's a lot of ski resorts and sports agencies. And they have a huge list of client names and a very known one as well. So it might be useful to pick a niche to excel in. And then you could, of course, start a company or rebrand a company to do one niche or one technique. But there are also examples of companies that do like a split off. I'm not sure if that's the English word, but they decide, okay, it would be too much of a hassle to do and this niche plus the usual project projects that we do. So, for example, GoGorilla, a Dutch company, they do a lot of Drupal projects in different markets, and then they want to excel in a social internet. So they launched OpenSocial as a specific company. It's their own offers, their own branding, their own marketing budgets. It's just like basically two companies. Taco, one of the owners once told me like GoGorilla still uses Skype for communication and OpenSocial, which is basically the same team members, but they use Slack for communication. And both companies have their own ways of communicating, setting up their processes. And that can be a way to... So, before I started my own company, 2011, I worked at the Capgemini Group, which is, it's called in Holland, they have two brands, Capgemini and Sogety. But Sogety is part of the Capgemini Group, and you probably know that name. And it's a huge organization, and we created mainly websites for governments. And there at the job, I learned a lot about accessibility. At the time, we built a website called Webgegleinen.nl, and Webgegleinen is WAS, basically the Dutch version of the WCHC, WKACH. So it needs to contain like all the information regarding accessibility and all the rules and how you can apply... How you can validate your website? Frank, a little bit? Anyway, so all the rules and regulations around accessibility in the Netherlands, you can find the information on that website. So that website should, of course, be fully accessible. And for this project, I learned a lot about accessibility. So then when I started, when I left Sogety, Capgemini, and started my own company, I thought, well, since we know a lot about accessibility, it wouldn't be wise to excel in this and focus on accessible websites. So, yeah, Limon Groen was born. Green for sustainability in line because I wanted to put it in the name. Oh, yeah. This is the office opening half a year ago. So third office in five years' times. We are with 14 people now and a lot of friends. It's not our full team. Sorry, but let's get back to the topic. It's choosing a niche to focus on and, in our case, sustainability, accessibility. Hey, Don. You're from Bright Lemon? Yeah. Wow. That's nice. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Yeah, we need to throw the table chair, table, table, what's it called, ping-pong table? We have to throw it away since we're out of place now. It's the last spot where we can move some desks in. So we found that a lot of websites are fully rebuilt, like every two or three years, companies decide that they need a new website. And then they find out that the current website that we have is not good enough to build upon. So we have to, you know, the development agency will say, well, we have to do a new website. We can use maybe a new version of Drupal or maybe another system. Then we have to do content migration. And it basically happens every two to three years. And that's, I think, a waste of time and energy. And the way we use this is we pitch, at a pitch we tell clients, like, you know, a website is basically like, it's a bit cheesy, but when a baby is born, you know, it's just the start of something nice. And you have to give it love and attention for years and it's never finished. So going live with a website is just a moment in time and it needs continuous love and care and improving. So we always have, like, an SLA with the website and we have some few hours per week, few hours per month to keep updating the website and make it easier and better because the company, the client grows and the website should be able to grow with the client. So we focus on making the website easy to extend, easy to maintain by asking questions during the development process, like, okay, they're a client. You ask me to integrate this system in such and such a way. But what happens if, like, you're going to change to another system in two years' time? Shouldn't we, like, make it a little bit more, I don't know, we can develop it in another way, it takes a little bit more time now, but it makes it easier to connect to another system in two years' time? Or, dear client, you're asking us to do the website in Dutch only. But, you know, we would love to do it good knowing that you might want to expand in a few years' time. So let us just build a website in English translated to Dutch for Drupal 7. So we are able to switch to English after two French or two whatever language in a few years' time. Because everything that we develop, we're asking these but questions like, what happens in two years' time, what happens in three years' time. But then we also want that all the websites that we build are accessible by default. It's just not something that a client has to ask for or that we have to sell as an add-on, like, hey, there's SEO improvements, hey, there's accessibility improvements, no. Just the websites that we build should be accessible, should be able, everyone should be able to use it. People who are blind, people who aren't able to use a mouse, for example, because it's a funny thing, if you go to, I think, maybe 50% of the websites and ignore your mouse or your pointing device and try just using the website file or tap your keyboard, most websites fail miserably. You have these very nice big drop-down menus that only expand when you hover with your mouse over the links. But if you use your tap because you are not able to use a mouse that just don't expand, you never can get to those links. That's an example. So every drop-down menu that we build should be tested using keyboard, for example. So, you know, it sounds good, right? But why should a client want this? Why should they pay for this? Because we are not the cheapest development agency in the Netherlands. They can choose another one who's cheaper. And I try to sell this in a way by comparing accessibility with responsive design. So it's a way to reach a wider audience. You know, when you support desktop and mobile. No, sorry. I'm skipping a slide now. All right. So the accessibility as added value is a way to tell clients, like, you know, there is a huge audience that have a handicap, a form of a handicap. There's a number on the screen. 25% of all people have a handicap. And it sounds ridiculous, but this is a result of a report done by Microsoft in the Netherlands, stating that there's 25% of us having, like, visually disabled, blind, literacy, color blind. People have trouble reading difficult languages, difficult texts. And if you sum this all up, it's 25%. It's like 4 million Dutch people having trouble using the Internet on a daily basis. So if you make your website accessible, you can reach a wider audience and sell your products easier, make it better for them to buy tickets or to buy whatever you do on your website. Give your information to a wider range of audience. And by building websites in an accessible way, it's also a way to score much better on Google. Like, Google is basically a screen reader. It's a blind user. It cannot see your image. It cannot see your video. But if you have, like, an alternative text on an image, it's a very simple example. That's a requirement for accessibility. A screen reader can explain to a blind person, hey, this is an image of Minister X shaking hands with, I don't know, President I. By explaining in an alternative text for the screen reader what the image is about, Google can index the text as well. So someone who's looking on Google for President X shaking hands with Minister I will find your website because you improved the accessibility of the website. So it's just the right thing to do, I would say. So I then compare it with responsive design. It's basically, a few years ago, it was perfectly fine to say, and I can remember this, like, coming at a client, well, you know, we know our clients and they will never use a mobile device on our website. So make a desktop only. Or why would people even buy plane tickets or buy a car on a mobile device? That's ridiculous. Our website doesn't need a responsive version. And then you had, like, a period of few years times where we say, yes, but, you know, the homepage would be nice, we have responsive, but maybe this part of the website, the forum, it's fine if it's desktop only, and that happens. I think that we, as development agencies or as clients, should not decide whether to hide certain parts of the website. I have had work and projects where the homepage had, like, a huge, I don't know, slideshow with all the information on it. And then people decide, oh, for a mobile device, we can just display none of the slideshow because we don't have space for it. And then I would say, yeah, well, you are deciding that your mobile visitors should not have access to this information. It's ridiculous. And you don't want to do that for screen readers as well. Or you can just turn the question the other way around. Like, if it's okay to hide this information for mobile users, why would you bother sharing this information with your desk abusers? Throw it away anyway. If you start implementing accessibility from the start of a project, it's not even that much more work. It's quite easy to do. And that goes the same for responsive design. If you start responsive design from the start, it's pretty easy to make every page like work on every screen size. But if you have to do responsive design after a website, the project is done. It's very expensive, very difficult. And the same goes for accessibility. If you start on your last sprint, start working on accessibility, it will take a lot of energy and time. So with just a little bit more effort, you gain a lot of profit. And making the website accessible and responsive from the start makes it easier to update, makes it easier to grow in the future, lowering the total cost of ownership. So, yeah, we try to excel in a niche for accessibility, for sustainability. My belief is that if you want to... If you want your clients to find you for a thing, make sure that there is a niche that you want to excel in. And by just being another Drupal specialist, it won't win you extra clients. That's what I would say. So build websites that last, can be used by everyone. Everyone will love you for that. Take a card if you want. And before we leave... Yeah, it's very subtle. Yeah, let's do some questions if you have some time. No? Hello. Hi. I wonder if you've had a lot of public sector clients approach you about the new EU directive and making their sites either retrospectively compliant or new ones that should be. Too little. I was hoping to have more clients approaching me, but it doesn't really happen so far. I think it's... They still don't feel the pain or the need to adhere to these regulations. I think it's... Because it's down to the individual member states to apply it, I don't think many people actually know where they stand at the moment. From my sort of public sector side, I'm less concerned about my Drupal site's accessibility and more about the legacy systems because of the need to actually put on our sites if we don't comply and where. But it'd be interesting to see what happens. Yeah, we've had regulations in the Netherlands stating that government websites must be accessible since 2006, I believe, looking at Frank now. But there's never been any charges if you don't. It's like, you should. But if someone doesn't do it, it's like, okay. Basically, I think with the new EU directive, I think we're basically waiting for a couple of really high-profile cases through the courts, a couple of nice big fines for companies. And only then I think it will become imperative for companies internally to say, you know, we have to comply. We have to be accessible. But thankfully, it's becoming law. So we can actually have these cases in court. I wonder how are you actually approaching a client when they say they want to go in accessibility and they're interested in. But I mean, if you look at all the accessibility guidelines, I mean, sometimes it feels like it could go forever to improve a site to make it more accessible and to get the highest rating and highest points. But, you know, it's like when a client wants to start on it, how do you actually offer that? I mean, do you have different scenarios, like a basic package or something? You know, it's like, how do you structure it? That's a good question. So what we basically do, there's a lot of rules and tests to implement. We do the quick wins during the project. So our websites are not like 100% accessible, I dare to say. But we know what's needed to do so. So most of the websites that we build are just pretty accessible. You know, they have the proper heading structure. They can be used by a keyboard. Once in a while, we even test with real screen reader software or have a blind person coming over and test the websites that we build. But if a website really needs to be fully accessible and tested, we charge extra days for it because it just takes more time. And it's roughly about two days that we calculate for making, getting those standards. So basically everything that you can include, you know, like in the process that you do and everything on top would be... Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it depends, of course, on the functionality and the features that they require. There are some red flags, obviously. If they want video, it's a red flag. There are so many of these things that we show up. They are client. You want to apply it to standards. And you're talking about one video on your website. Can we think of another solution? It makes it much easier. Good. Thanks. Excuse me. I didn't quite grasp how you lowered the total cost of ownership. If you can go back to that. Sure. The question was how would accessibility lower the total cost of ownership? And I would say the same goes there for responsive design. If you have a proper website that is accessible and responsive, it's much easier to apply updates in the future. And you don't have to... Every new feature have to redo all the work that you've done before. That's a good question. Yeah, I'm not sure how to answer that question. Let's discuss after the session. Yeah. Good one. I guess we can all agree that it's the right thing to do. But if you had someone who wanted more heart statistics about, I don't know, reaching more conversions or less calls to customer servers and something like that, do you have any cases on that? I don't. No. No, but... I don't. Which one? Which one? Yeah. Perfect. I think the same goes for... One more thing to say about this is that Google started... What's it called? Websites that are not responsive. They will get a lower ranking in Google since a year or so. And yesterday I was told that Google will start doing the same for accessible, inaccessible websites. If your website is not accessible, I'm not sure how they test it automatically. But you will get a lower ranking than websites that are accessible. So it's not an incentive to make your website accessible. I think I want to conclude with pointing you at the sprints on Friday. If you haven't been to one, you don't have to be a developer. We need people to test documents to discuss about accessibility. There is an accessibility sprint table. The Drupal 8 core lead is there as well, Andrew. So please join. Please come over to the table and ask what you can do for the community. There will be mentors helping you if you've never tested like a patch before or you have no idea how to do that. Please come over. It's really fun to attend. And I'm always looking for feedback. So if you want to tell me and tell the Drupal Association how I did, please rank my session. Thank you very much. It's so funny that you were here.