On Demand: Building and Remediating Accessible Websites

[System]: Now has started accessibility.com overview Google chrome. This meeting is being recorded. This meeting is being recorded. Webinar is now streaming, live to zoom. This meeting is being recorded.

[Clyde Valentine] Hey? Good morning and afternoon. Everyone. Hope everybody is doing well here.

Think we'll just give this a couple of minutes for people to file in once it. Once it starts slowing down, we'll we'll get going here. Yeah, I think we're think we're about there. This is a recorded webinar. So this will be available after for anyone that does miss it. So we'll be available asynchronously. But yeah, thank you. Everyone for jumping in looking forward to this conversation just as a quick overview and reminder. My name is Clyde Valentine. I head growth for quality logic. We're also joined by Paul Morris, our director of engineering and at quality logic. One of our focuses is accessibility, testing, remediation, training and consulting so tend to tend to do a fair amount of this, and excited to dive into looking at some of the accessibility fixes that we recommend that you start with exploring some of those issues real time. The thing that we thought would be particularly valuable for this conversation was to demonstrate that from an end user perspective. And so that's exactly what we're going to do here.  Got about 20 min budgeted to cover some of those issues, and then we'll have live. QA. At the end. So feel free to send questions. We've got a chat open. We've got QA. If you have any questions, just shoot those in, and if we don't get to them we can absolutely follow up after the fact and distribute those answers for everyone's benefit. But okay, I think, I think, let's go ahead and get started here. So, Paul, I will turn things over to you.

[Paul Morris] Thanks, Clyde. Okay, so I have my screen, reader, active. And I am on the alarmingly popular chat. Gpt, we use this because it's topical, right? Everybody's got AI on their mind whether they want it or not. So we thought, let's see how accessible this is, and what people might have to do to fix it. So I'm gonna start just by going from the very, very top. And we'll look at the title of this web page accessibility.com overview Google chrome.

Well, it didn't take long to find the 1st issue. So accessibility.com overview. Obviously this relates to the search. But I did or other. The query I put into Chat Gpt.

This in no way serves as a good title for a web page. So this is one of the easiest fixes we have here. The bottom line is, we need to edit that title so that we're including at least the company name, so that when people have 25 tabs opening chrome, like most of us, do a lot of the time.

we know exactly which company we're on as well as what the topic is for this particular page.

So that's the 1st one. I thought I'd go over the next one, and we may cover more than 5, because some of these are fast accessibility. I'm gonna bounce around by headings, real fast leaving table accessibility, virtual piece wrapping to top chat history projects, heading level 2 today. Heading level 3, you said, heading level 5, wrapping to top chat history. Okay, so just bounced around through the headings really quickly. One of the notable things there. There's no heading level one.

That is obviously something which I was expecting to find. And then the other thing that we noticed, was heading level 3 today, heading level 3 today for heading level 3, you said heading Level 5, I said, as a heading level 5, wrapping to top chat history. And that's the end of the story. Now, what's interesting is model by model. They have different accessibility. So one of the key things I would do here for remediation is I designate a heading level one.and then I would use headings level 2 and 3, and then, if I want my chat to be.

[Clyde Valentine] We'll jump in briefly. Is it possible to to zoom in on the web page? We've got a request for that, just to make it more visible.

[Paul Morris] Well, let's give it a go, Sean.

[Clyde Valentine] 110% zoom, 100.

[Paul Morris] That any better.

[Clyde Valentine] I believe so. Yes, that's that's definitely zoomed in if we do need anyone to, you know, if we do need to make this larger. Just send me a Q&A or a chat again. But yeah, that looks better. Thanks, Paul.

[Paul Morris] Sure. So naturally, I would wanna go through this and remediate it by introducing headings that make sense. And obviously the big one that is missing on this particular version, which is 0 point 1 is, there's no heading on what the chat responded to right it. There's a 1 with what I said, but nothing for what it said back.

And what's interesting is 4 point. Oh, it does have that unless it does not so those ones again. Easy remediations. And now I'm going to go ahead and just go down and catch another hitting. Chat, close sidebar button control K. Button. Here's a button, but is labeled Control K, so it's it's been, we've been informed. But there's a a Hotkey command for this button.but what it actually is who knows? Right? I have to actually activate that button to find out what it does.

Now, there's various remediations you can do on this particular button number one is, you question whether or not it's needed. If it does close, which might be because it's associated with text before it. Close sidebar button close sidebar as a button. It's possible this control K is related to that.  But naturally, as it's a button, it should have meaningful text which actually describes the purpose of the button ways we could do that is, we could label it using aria for general edification. The 1st rule of aria is to not use aria whenever possible. We could put in the semantic text into a button, which is the preferred. but sometimes we also then have to add in other text approaches. If we want to give it more of a description, so that somebody that is using a screen reader can get more detail right? So that's when we have to fall back to Aria. New chat Button visited Link graphic chat, gpt, chat. Here's an interesting one. You've visited Link graphic chat Gpt chat. Gpt. we've got a visited link graphic for Chat Gpt. We've also the double speak of the text visited Link Chat Gpt, and then it's immediately followed by another link for Chat Gpt. This is just poorly written. HTML, and ironically, a lot of defects or of a you know, success. Criteria violations are caused by people that don't build good semantic HTML! And what's astonishing in this day and age is that we're not building clean  and good. Html! So this can be rectified simply by following the standards. Now this is likely the company logo, so keeping it with chat gpt as an alt text in there is fine but again, we just need to expectation set where this is gonna go. So if we're gonna go to the the home page or away from this, which is likely, we need to just go ahead and give it a meaningful alt text where the person that is seeing this logo is going to go ahead and go to the place where they need to be. That one's pretty straightforward. Immediately after that I've got a graphic that says Sora. Now, obviously, I've clicked on that. I know where it goes. But for a lot of people who don't know what Sora is, this link text is. it's another violation. Right? So in many ways, the solution to this is giving it more

and telling the user what they should expect when they click on that link, perhaps even telling them what Sora is, so that they know what they're going to get when they click on it at the moment. It's just a graphic, and it isn't very meaningful. You know, this is where we can get into what's helpful for assistive tech users. But also it's useful for anybody if they don't know what this particular graphic relates to. So keep that in mind when you're doing your remediations. Always consider your audience of who you're trying to serve and then make sure that you're using link text that really is meaningful. These are all really easy edits. So I'm going to bounce down to find another couple of issues contains text. So after the edit field editable section end unlabel 0 button menu collapsed dialog. I've got an unlabeled 0 button menu, which is collapsed. Now, if I click on that menu connect to Google, drive, connect to Microsoft, onedrive submenu collapsed, connect to Google drives, leaving menus main reachescape virtual upload files and more button. And then, after that is an upload files and more button. So we've got some interesting stuff here and that there's 2 controls. Let's click on that. As well  connect to Google drive one of 3, which does it? Exactly. So we actually have 2 buttons, one unlabeled and one labeled. which do exactly the same thing. So you have to ask the question about the code here. Why do we have that? This could easily just be artifacts which could be cleaned up. If it's essential for your functionality to have this, then you could introduce an aria hidden on one of these controls to make it go away. But ideally.  you're only gonna have the one artifact which actually cleans this up. and we consolidate it into one single control.

So to my next one. Upload files and more button, search toggle, button, unavailable dialog.

[Clyde Valentine] By the way. yes, we have a few comments that it's a little bit difficult to see where the clicking is occurring. I do see that jaws is set to have the cursor follow that around so a little bit easier when menus are opened, or things of that nature. But if there's anything that you can do to describe some of that that might be useful. But.

[Paul Morris] So I can do my best to Orient. You guys. Obviously for me, I'm I'm navigating purely by sound here. So to give you the visual reference of where I am at the moment I'm below the edit field, and there's a series of buttons. The one that I'm referring to is a search button. I believe it's grayed out on the Ui.

Now my experience tells me that this search button actually indicates whether somebody's going to be searching on the web for something. This is not available in this model, so they've grayed out. But as you've got no reference to why, it's grayed out unless you happen to just know that that's not very helpful to the end user. So we've got more solutions where we can take with this one for an assistive tech user. We could just hide it from a screen. Reader, again with an aria hidden. But the real question is, why do we have that button there at all. Why don't we hide it completely if nobody can use it? Which seems more pragmatic? We could do that with Css. If we want to leave it in the code where we've just got it hidden. or we could, of course, programmatically extract it right when it is disabled. Or you know it's not available. Then, if we can programmatically check for that, then we can programmatically exclude it from the Doc.

My preference is to exclude it from Dom. Let's not have it there at all. Why, why take up time loading and control that you can't use. But everyone has to find their own strategy. The big deal here, though, is having a button which exists but has no clear purpose, and with it being disabled. it really isn't very meaningful to the end user. So I think those are the ones. Yup, that's the bottom of the ui There are some good things that are in here such as you. If you do a query, it will update a live region and talk to you. I wanted to just highlight that real quick, because one of the key factors is making that aria live region polite optionally rather than assertive. So those regions they do have various levels in there where they're going to inform the user, and they'll control how aggressively they'll they'll put out the text. So polite is definitely one of those things where, if the screen reader is not currently talking, it will not try to prioritize anything so definitely, something to look at. But again I wanted to go right back to the core of that is, if you can get away without using aria and unfortunately live regions is one which you do need to use. If you've got dynamic stuff happening. Preferably, we're going to use no aria to fix any of these things. We're going to use semantic HTML. So from there. I I'm guessing we've got some questions. Come in. Want to leave lots of time for Q. And a. So Clyde, you have questions for me.

[Clyde Valentine] Don't currently, although people you know definitely feel free to to jump in. If you have questions either about accessibility or, you know, remediation specifically could be either. We're happy to happy to take any of those. It might be worth, all spending a little bit of time talking about? you know, I think about website, hygiene things like having an accessibility statement or how to support users or things of that nature. Because I think that's also important. In addition to just, you know, making sure the website is as accessible as you can get it.

[Paul Morris] Yeah, for sure. So it is good practice to have an accessibility statement on any web property. And I've got some general advice for that because that does touch into legal areas. So obviously, you should always have legal counsel, review any accessibility statement that you put up. It is the public statement to the world. So one of the things that I would state is always be as honest as is feasible in your accessibility statement. So give a real picture of where your accessibility is at the current time. The other component which I want to start seeing really heavily come into accessibility statement is an absolute declaration of a roadmap of where you are going now. The important factor of where you're going. Your roadmap to accessibility is providing expectations around timeline. How quickly you're going to remediate issues. And obviously, if you don't know when you've got your audit scheduled for, you're basically going to try to lay out to your end user what your plans are and what your roadmap is. And then the the second part of that is ensuring you keep that roadmap updated. Stay honest to it. And you know, really show publicly that you're taking it seriously. I have seen companies that posted an accessibility statement, you know, 6, 7 years ago with a timeline that essentially said, We're going to have this done by this time, and they never have updated that statement. And it's woefully out of date, and therefore you don't believe in it when you're an end user. More key components in that accessibility statement is giving your users a path to report issues. A lot of testing with, this is subjective. Right? We've got humans who are heavily opinionated doing testing. We've got the success criteria in the Wcag. Those are great. but at the end of the day we do make calls on what is or is not, an issue that can, of course, lead to certain things being excluded. The end user likely knows very little about the Wcag. They've got to have a way to report issues. There has to be a way to for them to get reassurance that it's going to be addressed. And again, this goes back to keeping yourselves accountable to what you're going to claim in your statement. Last thing I mentioned in there is, of course, a link to an acr. That's a very valuable asset having an accessibility. Compliance report is my view a must have in today's day and age. That is, of course, your detailed report on how accessible you are listing. All of the criteria tested, all of the templates tested, and making certain that people have a really good ability to check what you've done. That's a living document. So it's also entirely viable to keep a history of all of the Vpat updates you've done in your acr, and you know, giving a true history of everything that you've actually worked through. So I think that's what I have for commentary on the accessibility statement.

[Clyde Valentine] Excellent. No, I think that's perfect. Thank you, Paul.  We do have a question that has come in. That is, how would you use semantic HTML in Wordpress?

[Paul Morris] Oh, boy, that is a real problem. So when you're talking about Wordpress, you have some issues. and the very platform itself is limiting. Obviously you can edit templates directly, and we have done that and it is painful. So I'll give you an example. The Mega menu is a popular Plugin for Wordpress websites, and it often has terrible accessibility. It may have improved right, it may definitely have improved since the last time I touched it. We ended up forking the code and adapting our own Mega menu from that original code so that we could remediate it directly in our website to make it accessible. The problem there is. You don't get the benefit of security updates. You have to maintain it separately. It is not trivial. Unfortunately, with Wordpress right? The the whole goal of wordpress is to enable people. but potentially don't have a lot of code skills to come in and build a website quickly, effectively, and have it present, but then you are tied to all of the templates and the plugins. That Wordpress serves up  so you can remediate at the source, as in in the source code of any plugin or in a template. Obviously, you can create your own templates and have those. But then you're very much responsible for owning your own templates and using off the shelf ones. You just have to be aware that if you edit those templates, a security update to wordpress may blow up all of your changes out of the blue. So it's really important to know what you're doing when you're trying to go and remediate that at the lowest level. Right? It's all code. But just be aware that that is one of the big challenges of using any Cms. And this applies to drupal and all the others right. It's not just wordpress. They maintain their own security, which means you don't have as much autonomy. So I hope that answered the question.

[Clyde Valentine] Perfect. There is a follow up question to this as well. Same same person also on the topic of Wordpress. Do you have a place where you go for accessible plugins and themes, and then also, are there any content management systems in particular that you recommend.

[Paul Morris] It's a good question. Unfortunately, I don't know of any single source repository. I think you have to actually assess each Plugin as an individual entity. It's possible that Wordpress is allowing filtering to try to find those. But you also have to bear in mind you're dealing in a world of trust. At that point. You're hoping that the person who built the Plugins has been accurate with their reporting of how accessible any given Plugin is. and I've seen a lot of things being reported as accessible which frankly aren't right. So you have to be fairly careful with it, and you have to be. You have to take the ownership of getting the testing done to ensure that you are compliant. Ultimately, you're responsible for what you introduce to your website. So just keep in mind a lot of Cms is come with the same problems as I mentioned. So I'm not gonna recommend one over the other. If you ask me what I like working with. I'm a raw HTML Guy, frankly, I'd rather hand code everything, but if I'm forced into a Cms. I would likely I don't know. I feel like drupal might be a little bit more oriented towards business. Is the best way I can describe that, so I probably go into the drupal space myself.  But really there's an element of personal choice and familiarity. You can make either system accessible, but they each carry their own burden of work.

[Clyde Valentine] Super. Okay, from Mara Waldraft to all panelists. What do you say to businesses that think their accessibility problems will be solved by a Plugin or Widget.

[Paul Morris] Well, you've heard that one directly. So yep, I did. I think I'm going to be a little careful here. I think that with the knowledge that even an automated scanner. your your hopeful number is 40 to 50% of accessibility issues identified so that you can manually remediate them.I question whether or not plug-in system.if that's the best the automated scanners can do. And we're talking about made by companies that invest millions upon millions of dollars into these tools. If that's the best the tool manufacturers can produce, why would we believe that any importable plugin could exceed that level?  I'm going to go off on a slight tangent with that, too. A lot of the Plugin systems also have people that use assistive technology enable or click on options to enable an accessibility mode.and I think that all of us, that it is not particularly pleasant to be told that you are different, and that you have to do something that nobody else has to do just to enjoy a website like everybody else does. I feel that that's kind of right creating lanes. And I don't want to be in a different lane. I want to be in the same lane as everybody else, and being told that I have to use a certain mode or be forced down a certain path.I'm a stubborn guy, frankly, and I don't want to be forced down the path. So when I encounter one of these particular widgets, I will absolutely not enable it just out of share, you know. Determination to not be forced to use these plugins.

[Clyde Valentine] Perfect. Thank you. I'll I'll add on to that as well. I mean, there's some good resources I'll drop those in the chat about. You know the the quality or lack thereof of of overlay tools. There are a lot of marketing claims that these get you fully accessible. They don't I think those resources are very helpful to share with organizations that are viewing things from that lens. And then also, there are numerous lawsuits against these organizations as well. So I'd exercise extreme caution and probably cite those. But I can put some of those in chat as well. So okay.we've got another question here, which I think is a really interesting one. Well, frankly, we've had a lot of interesting questions. So thank you. Everyone for that. But Here's another. So how would you incorporate things like alt text into a dynamic site which is loaded from something like a Mysql or Mariadb database where the table rows and columns may remain the same, but the contents of the table cells change.

[Paul Morris] Well in many ways right? If it's loading content. consider the dom as an entity. How content is introduced into that. Dom is somewhat irrelevant right? A lot of a modern website.

 front ends, be it react, be it view, be it angular or be it something, you know, completely baked out of Php, whatever you you happen to do. If you're bringing content in from a database, it doesn't change any of the rules, right? So we're introducing content if we're doing it dynamically. you have to code it so that the assistive technology is informed that something dynamic has happened. That's again comes back to that aria live region that I mentioned earlier. We need to inform people that something has happened if the page is not going to refresh right. So if I navigate on the page. I've got an expectation that the content will change. If a content is being loaded dynamically. then I need to know it's being loaded dynamically and ideally. I need to know why, if I'm performing an action, let's say that I've got a table and I'm clicking on a dropdown to filter on certain things, and it does a thing. Well, I would expect that to actually work. I'm already initiating the action I expected to filter. I've got an understanding of that happening. If, however, I'm on something completely different, and it just updates dynamically, I know one of the things that is often used in this example is a stock ticker. You have to be really careful with that type of thing to not disorient the user, grab their focus, redirect them somewhere else. That's where that potential politeness comes across for the the aria live region being polite. But you also then have to question, is is this something which I need to intrude on the user, or are they just inevitably going to get there by their own means? So, old text, specifically, let's say that you've got a table from Clyde Valentine to everyone. Great. If those graphics are introduced dynamically, then you know your database table right? Which is, you're retrieving the graphic form should also have a column for the relevant Alt text. And you should be importing that, too. If you're bringing stuff in dynamically, and then you're tying the 2 things together. So that that's where it's coming from. If you've got the Graphic and you're importing it directly, then you should also have a stored old text that you can import equally dynamically, and assign into the appropriate variable in the overall image tag. I hope that answered the question.

[Clyde Valentine] If not, we shall have a follow up. No, that's perfect. Thank you, Paul. I will also take a moment to be slightly self promotional. But just because I think it's useful. For anyone that's looking to learn more about digital accessibility or stay up to date with what's going on in the industry. We do put out a monthly newsletter. It's entirely free. You can read copies of that on our website or sign up going to put a link into the chat for that. But just for reference, we cover changes in laws, technologies, things of that nature. So I'll pop that in. But we've got another question here. So that question is, oh, one second here. So there was a comment that it's difficult to follow where we are. There's no table. All that is being shown is chat gpt. It might be worth stopping the screen share for the question that came in around that we have since stopped that presentation per se, and are just really going through live Q. And a right now, so hopefully that clarifies that, yes, no worries. Okay. So another question that came in is there currently a tool for displaying the synchronized text of slides in a screen? Readable way during webcasts.

[Paul Morris] Oh, gosh! I don't. I don't know the answer to that question. because it's kind of out of scope on remediation. But So let me understand. So if let's say that we're in teams and we're doing a slide presentation is the question whether or not there's something that can synchronously display text associated to those slide contents is, is that what it is.

[Clyde Valentine] I believe so, but I'll let them. Yep, they said. Yes, that's it. That's the question.

[Paul Morris] Okay. To be honest, I don't think so. And if you think about the nature of a slide presentation we are talking about a concept where you're trying to communicate with an end user base. The question you must ask yourself is, if my slide needs text to try to explain what it's about or why it's about. Then I need to prepare my slides. Better. So it has headings, and you know bold call outs for what it is, if you've got graphics and things in in your slides, right? You need to have talking points to those, anyway. Now, one of the things that you should be doing is, of course, ideally marking up your slides to ensure that they are also, gonna you know, if there are graphics and charts in your slides that you've got good old text, explaining what the charts are are having, so that if you then distribute your presentation post doing that live Walkthrough, that people can, you know, fire it up and start reading it. I will tell you that if I get a slide presentation in Powerpoint, I will put it into slide presenter mode. And then, as I go through it myself, you know, space activates each slide. After I get to the slide, I can then use the screen, reader, to read the content of that presentation. That's actually the fastest way to read a presentation with a screen, reader. But again, it's highly dependent on. Did somebody do a good job  of decorating all of the artifacts? And you know, making certain that the decorative ones are hidden, making certain that the you know, the the ones which are relevant have very strong description, so that I can get the context by reading it. Using my screen, reader.hopefully. That answers the question, but for doing it live, I think that's very much on the present. To  call out now one of the things that is a bit anomalous is if you have video in your slide deck at that point, if you've got video, you need to likely have burned in closed captions onto that video so that people that maybe have hearing issues can go ahead and follow along for any video content you might display. But you will need to burn that into the raw video. Content is my current understanding.

[Clyde Valentine] Super. Thank you. We are coming up at time here. One other thing that I will say I'm going to put my email in chat for everyone. If anyone has questions related to accessibility or need support there, we love doing this. We love helping, always feel welcome to reach out. We've been also doing a thing lately where we do what we call a lunch and learn for organizations, where. you know, we come in kind of demo what it's like to interact with their websites with a screen. Reader, real time, similar to what we did here, or actually exactly what we did here. Just as a general. You know, opportunity to educate about end user experience and then have some general Q&A around accessibility. So if that's useful, if that's interesting to anyone feel welcome to reach out. We love to do those. But yeah, any last questions before we wrap up this breakout session. Thanks also everyone for being here. It's been quite fun doing this. There's a question here which is, I'd love to know how to quote burn captions into a video. I think that might be a deeper topic. But I'll throw that to you, Paul.

[Paul Morris] Well, I'm a blind guy, so I'm not the right one to answer that question. But you know there are various video editors, and I think that is where it would have to be done frame by frame, probably inserting it that way. There may also be there are plenty of services out there that I believe can caption on the fly right? So you can actually give them a video, and I believe they can run it. Return it to you captioned. So that's something to do. And it might also be something that certain AI engines might be able to do. I can't give you an example. But it seems likely. I certainly know that certain platforms you can just overcome this by you know, making certain that you're using a platform which will try to give you options to close caption videos. So example, Youtube, right? You can always close caption your videos on Youtube. That might be something to explore. But there are definitely paid services who will happily caption your videos.

[Clyde Valentine] Absolutely. Somebody also recommended adobe premiere, which does that in an automated way. So thank you for throwing that in. I love that pardon. There was another question here, and then I think we'll close it out. Are people still recommending overlays? I saw that chat link above. We've shut down that conversation where I work. I mean, personally, we don't. They're not effective. They create, you know. Frankly, I'll just speak for myself. They offer a terrible experience. And so I, yeah, we're we're pretty as an organization against them.there have been there's been new legislation lately around 88 title 2 and compliance requirements that are driving people who weren't previously thinking about accessibility into the conversation. They're now asking these sorts of questions. And so for a while, you know. It seems like a lot of people were very much in the state of. We understand that overlays are not the way to go. And we're we're encountering a whole new audience of people that are getting into accessibility for the 1st time. And so I I think that conversation is reemerging a little bit. But but yeah, I don't recommend them. I put a link up there that that provides some facts and information on it, and that's probably useful for those conversations. But but okay.

[Paul Morris] I'll just add on.

[Clyde Valentine] Oh, yeah.

[Paul Morris] I just one quick thing as an end user. I react so badly to them frequently. But I'll I will choose not to do business with the company if I see that they're using an overlay doesn't matter which overlay. But if I see that that is there, and I have an alternative way to get what I need. I will literally just not do business with them.

[Clyde Valentine] Fantastic alright. Well, I think that is our time. We've gone over by 2 min. But thank you. Everyone for diving in. It's been a pleasure doing this presentation. Again, if you have questions or need help with anything accessibility, wise, feel free to reach out to us, you can definitely reach out to my email directly as well and otherwise, good luck on your accessibility journeys. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Everyone.

[Paul Morris] Thanks, all.

[Clyde Valentine] All right. Have a great day. Take care, bye.

Kyle Koch:

Alright. Well, Hello, everyone! My name is Kyle Koch, and thrilled to be here with you today. I am a sales manager here at Acquia. And I started working in digital accessibility back in 2018.

Since then I have helped and worked with hundreds of organizations to help them achieve and maintain accessibility on their websites, have a very important discussion ahead about the evolving regulatory landscape for digital accessibility and what organizations need to do in order to stay compliant. So before we dive in quick note about Acquia, we were founded in 2,007 and built around the world's largest open source Cms, which is the drupal platform. Many of you may be aware, or even use drupal today. And fast forward to 2024. We are now a leader in the digital experience space. And we work with more than 25% of the fortune 100.

We, you know, empower organizations to create exceptional digital experiences in general, but we also empower them to create exceptional accessible digital experiences. So through our optimized web governance platform we help businesses and public entities align with regulatory compliance. Excuse me, regulatory requirements improve usability and drive inclusivity.

So just to jump into a quick agenda. Here's what we're going to be covering today, I'll start out with a brief introduction to digital accessibility. We'll talk about why accessibility is so critical and important. We'll dive into kind of the current regulations and then do a deeper dive into 2 of the major regulations. And that's going to be the European Accessibility Act and the Us. Department of Justice's final rule on Title 2.

We'll talk about, you know, just an overview of what these you know. Regulations are. Who they impact. What happens if you don't comply and kind of what the implications are, if you don't comply and then we'll wrap up with some key resources and ways to get started as far as helping you navigate accessibility and compliance.

So just a quick intro to digital accessibility in general digital accessibility ensures that people with disabilities can use websites. They can use web apps, any digital tool really without any type of barrier. And so this includes individuals with visual auditory motor and cognitive impairments and accessible design isn't solely focused around or solely about compliance. It's about inclusivity and good user experience and good design for everybody. And so one of the great things about accessibility is that when you create a more accessible or fully accessible digital experience, or a website, for example, right? You're also helping out folks that don't necessarily have any type of disability. It's not like you need to pick one or the other. Oftentimes I feel like folks that are newer to the topic, thinks that they need to make sacrifices when it comes to accessibility, and it's simply not the case.

Good accessibility. It's good design at the end of the day, so you can be confident and sure that you don't need to make any sacrifice in that regard. And so you know, kind of going over the brief introduction here, you might be thinking, okay, got it. You know, we understand digital accessibility. How exactly does this all work as far as my website is concerned.And so to help paint the picture, I like to bring up the concept of physical accessibility, which we're all, you know, very familiar with, and specifically some familiar examples within physical accessibility.

So you know, we have wheelchairs. We have wheelchair ramps right? There's a special perking or different parking spaces that are closer to the front entrance of a building or an organization or a restaurant right? There's additional railings and bathroom stalls, and so on, and so forth, and again, all things that we're very, very familiar with, and we see every single day, and I'll just use the example of wheelchair to help paint the picture of how digital accessibility works. Kind of what the difference is between these things that we're very familiar with with  physical world and the you know, digital side of the the conversation here, or the topic here.

And so when we think about a wheelchair. A wheelchair is a piece of assistive technology, right? It's a tool used by somebody to complete a task.

When they have some type of disability, you know, in the case of a wheelchair, if you're not able to use your legs, you need that wheelchair to get around, and in the case of a wheelchair ramp, or when we're looking at a wheelchair ramp.

That ramp is an accessible feature that is built in order to allow the person using the wheelchair to get up or down, you know a set of stairs right to go up or down a level essentially right? So the wheelchair again is the piece of assistive technology. The wheelchair ramp is what makes that accessible to folks that need to navigate up and down right? And so with digital accessibility. It works the same exact way. And I won't use the example of a wheelchair. But we'll use the example now of somebody with a significant visual impairment or a blind individual. As an example, they are also going to use assistive technology specifically, as it relates to, you know, computers and and just the website in general.

They're going to use special assistive technology. And they're actually gonna use. Or that piece of technology, I should say, is called a screen reader and a screen reader helps them navigate their laptop their desktop computer, but it also helps them navigate the web.

And so, in order for their screener reader, which, again, is their piece of assistive technology to work the code or the back end of your website needs to be built with digital wheelchair ramps. Basically, right? So again, going back to the wheelchair example, get the wheelchair. That's the piece of assistive technology. Same thing. We have the screen reader here right in order for that screen, reader, to work with the website.

You gotta have those wheelchair ramps in place. And without these digital wheelchair ramps screen. Reader can't navigate on a page, can't go up and down. It can't follow the customer checkout flow as an example. Right? It can't go from viewing products to going to the shopping part to then checking out right? It can't read back information or provide descriptions of images. Just as another example to these visually impaired individuals that use the assistive technology and use the screen reader specifically, right? So again, need to build out these digital wheelchair ramps for these folks that use assistive technology. And that's just one example.

There are all types of disabilities and all types of assistive technology. Now, why is accessibility so important.

And I think it really comes down to 3 key reasons why this should be a priority for your organization. And the 1st has to do with compliance. Governments worldwide are enforcing stricter regulations, organizations that fail to meet accessibility. Requirements could face legal consequences, and these can include food fines, lawsuits, loss of contracts just to name a few examples, and so ensuring compliance with regulations such as the European Union, or Sorry, the European Accessibility Act and the Us. Department of Justice. Final rule and title tool, too, is essential for avoiding and mitigating this type of risk. 

The second reason why this is so important has to do with business growth. Creating accessible digital experiences, broadens your potential audience and it can broaden it by as much as 20%. In certain casesthere are millions and millions of individuals with disabilities here in the Us. And globally as well. And I think here in the Us. The numbers around 20 to 25% of people that self identify as having some type of disability. And I think globally, the World Health Organization puts it in the 15 to 18 percentage range. I think maybe 16 or 17, to be exact.

So tons of people can. Now, you know, work with you and work with your organization, purchase your products, whatever the case may be. If you create accessible digital experiences, then, and the good thing about accessibility, like I was saying early on in the presentation is that accessible websites and digital experiences also enhance the usability for everyone. So it's, you know, it impacts all users. It doesn't just make things better for folks with disabilities. And so in general, it's gonna lead to improved customer satisfaction, retention and overall engagement.

Another thing on the business growth side has to do with search engine rankings, accessible websites. At the end of the day they perform better in search engine rankings, and so you know, if you are making your website accessible or increasing the accessibility. You're also increasing the overall SEO performance, and that is ultimately going to provide your brand with more visibility at the end of the day. So addressing accessibility is a win win, no matter how you look at it. As far as business growth and driving more revenue is concerned.

Lastly. accessibility is important because it's the right thing to do, and a lot of times we get caught up in this whole, you know, risk, mitigation, conversation and compliance conversation. Those are definitely important things, right? There's no need to beat around the bush there. Normally. organizations are addressing this topic because it is a compliance kind of checkbox or compliance concern. That they're they're dealing with. But at the end of the day it's the right thing to do. Inclusivity in general is more than just a legal requirement. It's a moral and ethical commitment and providing accessible digital experiences, aligns with corporate social responsibility initiatives and demonstrates a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, so organizations that prioritize accessibility, they foster goodwill. They build trust with the customers, and they contribute to a more inclusive digital world in general. 

Now. talking a little bit about or getting into, I should say the current regulations today, governments worldwide recognize digital accessibility as a necessity.

And in recent years we've seen increasing enforcement of accessibility laws. And so today, we'll specifically focus on 2 major developments. The 1st is the European Accessibility Act, or Eaa. For short, the second is the Us. Department of Justice's final rule on Title 2.

So we'll start out with the European accessibility act

All right, quick overview here. What is this? What are we talking about? Who's involved? So on and so forth. So in general, just looking at some of the data around 80 million people in the EU are affected by disability in some degree accessibility is a precondition to ensure their full and equal participation in society. And so the European Accessibility Act. Or, again, EAA aims to improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services by removing barriers created by divergent legislation. So they're trying to kind of standardize, or they are standardizing how accessibility works across the entire European Union. And this is a relatively new concept for them in general. And so this act is a significant step toward ensuring digital accessibility across the entire EU. Like we've mentioned, it establishes consistent accessibility requirements for various products and services. And ultimately it's making digital experiences more inclusive for these individuals that have disabilities.

The act aims to remove barriers that prevent full participation in society, and ensure equal access to essential services. And probably the most important thing to note here is that compliance is required by June 28th of this year, 2025.

This has been around for several years.

But businesses are now running out of time to ensure they're meeting this deadline. Right? We only have a matter of months before compliance is due, basically for the Eaa.

So you might be thinking to yourself or wondering, Kyle, we are. Our organization is a Us. Entity. Why are we talking about the European Accessibility Act? Well, the Ea applies to any business that sells products or offers digital services within the EU, regardless of their country of origin.

So if you do business in the EU, you need to comply with these accessibility standards, and

if you don't comply, enforcement ultimately varies by country. But organizations that fail to meet requirements may face fines. They may face lawsuits, or potentially the loss of government contracts.

And specifically, I think, the one that you know most people are are concerned with are these fines.

So when we look at the Ea fines can cost your business anywhere from 5 to $20,000 per violation. The actual fine depends on several factors, such as the severity of the breach in the type and size of the organization, for example, really small organizations, you know, if you have, I think it's less than 10 employees, less than 10 employees and do less than 2 million a year in annual revenue. You don't need to comply with this, but as the organization gets larger and the number of employees get larger, the fines get bigger essentially.

And also, if noncompliance is ongoing, penalties can accrue on a daily schedule where fines can be as high as a thousand dollars per day. So it's very, very important that you get going on this right away in the example, or, you know, just to kind of give you an example of like the daily penalty. If you incurred daily penalty of $500. For example, on July first, st you're going to pay 15,000 in penalties by the end of the month. Right? So these things just keep on growing can get out of hand very quickly, and you know, imposing daily fines is a tactic at the end of the day by the European Union to help encourage individuals and organizations, and you know any business essentially to remedy accessibility issues quickly. I don't think anyone's doing it here to make a buck. It's just sometimes what needs to be done in order to get folks to to comply with these regulations and such alrighty.

So on to the United States and the Doj's final rule on Title 2. Let's shift our focus over to that one provided A or to provide an overview. Here, in general, the new rule clarifies how the Americans, with Disabilities Act or Ada, applies to state and local government websites and digital services.

It establishes clear accessibility standards based on what's known as the web content accessibility guidelines. And there's different levels and versions of these Wcag guidelines as they're often referred to. And for this standard you all need to meet 2.1 level Aa, if you are, you know, an organization that needs to comply with this and exactly who needs to comply with this? This applies to all state and local government agencies. So this includes a public school and university. It's gonna include any city or county website things like public health portals, state run online services. And so on and so forth. So basically, if you're any type of public entity, or you receive public funding, you need to comply with that Wcag, 2.1 double a standard, and currently compliance is required by April 24th of 2026.

The final rule for this was actually established last year on April 24, th 2024, and the Doj is giving organizations 2 years to meet these compliance requirements. So now is a really great time to get started. You do have some time, but accessibility is not necessarily something that you achieve overnight, something that you need to continually chip away at over time and really integrate into your overall. You know, web development, just content development, just just website process in general. So really great time to get a little bit of a head start on this now getting into the implications. If you don't comply so, things are a little bit different in the Us. Compared to the Eaa.

But there are several implications for noncompliance. You can see several of those listed here. We're not talking about a fine structure, though, so you know, Doj has ultimately the authority to investigate complaints and take legal action against noncompliant public entities, individuals with disabilities or advocacy groups may file lawsuits against noncompliant entities.

And while title 2 doesn't permit monetary damages, so no fines but doesn't permit monetary damages against state and local governments and private lawsuits.

Courts can issue injunctions requiring organizations to make their web content or mobile apps accessible. So they're going to be kind of running the show, telling you how to get this done, which is why it's really important and a good good reason to, you know. Get out ahead of this on your own.

If the Doj initiates legal action. Civil penalties and damages can be imposed, especially in cases of repeat or intentional violations.

Now, noncompliant entities may be required to implement accessibility fixes within a set timeframe and public entities, receiving Federal funding like a public university or a transit agency, just as an example they can risk losing grants or Federal support in general, if they're found in violation of any of these Ada web accessibility requirements.

And lastly, noncompliance can result in negative media attention, public outcry, just general loss of trust from constituents who rely on accessible government services. So very, very important, again, that you get out ahead of this, and you focus on compliance which brings us to our next slide. How do I get started? Right? If you're brand new to this topic it may seem kind of overwhelming. But luckily there's a lot of great resources in place to get started and kind of create a plan as far as accessibility is concerned. So in general, I think there's really 3 main ways that you can take action toward these compliance regulations. And these are things that you can do today. And the 1st is to scan your website. There are a ton of resources available for this, and a scan of your website is going to provide you with a baseline understanding of how accessible or inaccessible your website currently is. And the content currently is so that you can develop an action plan. Accordingly.

I've been doing this for several years now, and I would say, most folks that are getting started with accessibility are about 65 to maybe 75% of the way there. So a lot of people are scoring like a C minus or a D plus and accessibility. It's not terrible. It's not like their websites are just completely failing. But that's normally where they get started. And that's a lot of work to do, you know, to bring that score up to 100

The other thing, or the next thing that you're gonna want to do is to inform and educate executive stakeholders to ensure that they're all aware of these regulations. You gotta start the accessibility conversation internally. I can almost guarantee that a lot of these individuals probably know nothing about it. So it's up to you to educate. Let people know. Let them know how important it is.

And you know hopefully that can help develop your your action plan. And that's going to be the last thing, right?

You need to create some type of action plan to ensure success in the long run. You know many of the organizations that I've worked over the with over the years. They create an accessibility committee at the organization, and they can have folks from, you know, marketing, from communications from it, from their digital teams, and so on and so forth.

Really, any, you know, web stakeholder or kind of like a key individual. From all the different groups that contribute to the website to be part of this accessibility committee committee and not just make sure that everyone is being held accountable, and it ensures timely compliance when you have more folks contributing to the conversation and contributing to ensuring that you get this done?

And lastly, I will wrap up with this resources slide. We obviously here at Acquia have several resources that can help you on your accessibility journey including a free scan option which by far best place to get started. So more than happy to sit down with you and review the status of the website and help you build an action plan for compliance. Moving forward. Outside of the scan. We also have a link here to our web accessibility handbook. It's another place, great, great place to get started. And also can be a really great internal resource to share across the different web teams, and so on and so forth. So with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up. Really appreciate all of your time. Hopefully, you learned something new today, and please do not hesitate to reach out to us here at Acquia. If you have any questions as they relate to accessibility, thanks.