Kelsey says: "[If] your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what's going on. And I don't have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. " Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder that the transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available at the time of the publication on the website at a11yrules.com. I want to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. And they do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Kelsey Byers. Hey, Kelsey, how are you? Kelsey Doing pretty well, thanks, Nic. How about yourself? Nic I'm doing good. I'm glad we connect. We've been speaking on Slack mostly for for a number of years. And we get to connect and I get to grill you with my with my usual questions. Kelsey Yeah. Nic So let's let's ask you what's your disability or your impairment? Kelsey For sure. So I'm actually multiplate disabled. That's the words that I use to describe my disability. Most of them come from Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a genetic condition that makes my joints loose and wobbly and causes pain. I've also got ADHD and I'm also autistic. And there's a variety of other stuff in the background. Nic What's the interaction between all these is there? Is there anything that you know, when I don't know if you have a joints getting particularly more loose? Is that going to have an impact on how ADHD is playing with you? Or is it pretty much each in their own silos? Kelsey That's actually a really great question. So there is a lot of research that shows that people with ADHD are more likely to be hyper mobile. Some of them to the extent that they are diagnosed with Ehlers dauntless. And also autism is more common in Ehlers Danlos. So we think they're definitely related. But I don't think people have built figured out like the biological mechanisms behind that. Nic Fair enough. So what what impairment, what condition has the most impact for you on your use of the web? Kelsey That's a that's a really good question. Actually. It's one that I didn't mention, which is auditory processing disorder. So or APD. So this is a condition where, like, I can hear and my peripheral hearing is okay. But my ability to process audio in my brain is a little bit strange. So like, I have trouble processing sound with background noise. It's a cocktail party problem. And so anytime I'm listening to recordings, or seminars, if there's not, for example, the ability to see the person at the same time and do a little bit of lip reading a how have a lot of trouble. Nic Would you say that's your biggest pet peeve or a barrier on the web, the inability to process audio? Kelsey Yeah, definitely. It is it is one of the two biggest barriers I have, I would say. So I was recently attending a course that had recorded lectures. And the lectures are great, but I couldn't see the lecture. And so I had a lot of trouble following the lectures, which was frustrating. And in person, this wouldn't be an issue. Obviously, I wouldn't be able to attend the course in person, but it was frustrating to not be able to understand very well. Nic We're in year three of a worldwide pandemic right now. We have discovered that providing the ability of working from home or doing remote learning is critical. And yet, we're still providing courses where we're not doing everything we can to make things accessible. And the issue you're describing to me seems like while it's pretty critical for students doing high school or even college that are actually paying to attend to be able to access information. You work in academia, I believe. How would you say this translates into your into your job rather than you as someone attending courses? Kelsey Yeah, that's a great question. So I don't teach and therefore I don't normally process how I would interact with students in an accessible fashion because I'm not normally teaching. But for example, when I give seminars I tried to do audio description of what people might be seeing on the slides that I'm giving. So, if the slide contains an image, I'll try to describe what the image is showing so that people can process it in different ways. Or, for example, someone with visual impairment could process the image and understand the slides. But certainly, in academia, we have courtesy the pandemic, we've gotten a lot of online seminars, which is great, but specialist language means that captioning tools often don't work if they're auto captions. And auto caption quality, as we all know, is not what it could be. Nic Certainly would not. If you had one message to pass on to designers or developers about accessibility, what what would that be? Kelsey I would say for me, transcripts are actually the biggest thing every time I go online, and I look at someone recommends me a podcast, for example. And I look online, and I see the podcast, I don't do audio input only very well. And so I don't tend to listen to podcasts. But for example, your podcast has transcripts. So I can go through and actually read the podcast, I can get the content, I can understand what's going on. And I don't have to try to concentrate really hard to try to understand the podcast. So anytime I see something that has transcripts or where someone's put a video on YouTube, and they've also added subtitles or even just enabled auto subtitling or community subtitling and like, Thank you, this is not that big of an ask, but it is so helpful. Nic I'm glad my transcripts are helping you consume the show. I I think and one of these podcasts host a rare bird that actually does not listen to podcasts because I actually need transcripts to process that information as well. So it's one of the reasons why I care about having transcript from my show. Anyway, Kelsey, thank you for sharing some of your experiences with us and we'll see you around on the web. Kelsey Thanks so much, Nic. It's been great

Meagan says: "Sometimes a disability or an impairment is temporary. It's situational. Most of the time I don't have issues. But when I do, I really have them. So try to keep things as simple and easy to use as possible." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts, where disabled people explain their impairment and what barrier they encounter on the web. Quick reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication on the website. At A one one, why are you l es.com? This is the time to thank our sponsor fable. Fable is an accessibility platform a leader in the field powered by disabled people, I think that's important because nothing about us without us. Anyway, fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Megan eller. Hey, Megan, how are you? Meagan Hi, I'm alright. Nic We haven't really spoken we I think we hang around in the web accessibility slack a little bit. And we may have exchanged a few words, but I don't know you. So this is going to be fun to get to know you a little bit. My first question is typically what's your disability or your impairment, but when we were talking about having you on as a guest, you were a little bit concerned that you don't have a disability, you said, but you do have a condition that is an impairment. Tell us a little bit about that. Meagan So I have an autoimmune hypothyroidism Hashimotos disease. And basically, I have an underactive thyroid, because my immune system attacks my thyroid and your thyroid and the hormones it produces are involved with a lot of body systems. So it can affect a lot of things when the levels aren't, you know, when you're not producing enough hormone from the thyroid. It's very easily treatable with medication. But because it's auto immune, it's not stable. So sometimes medication level isn't... Right. I ran into actually last winter, with our overwhelmed health system, having the delay in getting a correct dosage. And so that was when I had messaged you about being on the podcast, that was the kind of what I was thinking about. Where I really was for a couple of weeks, feeling very I guess. I don't find it disabling but I was definitely feeling very impaired by trying to do things. Nic That's an interesting thing to consider is that you can have a condition that is 90% of the time fine and controlled with medication or, you know, any other kind of fixes. I say fixes in quote marks, but when things get off the rails and even though you're not necessarily longterm, disabled, you still encounter barriers, right? Meagan Absolutely. Yep. It was, I actually went and looked back at apt notes from at that time, because I had mentioned to you that I have a really great boss, that when I told him what was going on, he was very willing to work with me, but you know, explaining that, you know, I was having these difficulties and, and a big one I had mentioned to you was just the fatigue and kind of that brain fog, having trouble concentrating. It's like, I know, I can feel my brain being slow. And I know I'm not you know, doing as much work and maybe not as succinctly as I usually do, you know, in writing, things like that. Nic So how does that translate as a barrier on using the web what what kind of thing really jumped out at you and were problematic? Meagan So the, with the just being tired and having trouble concentrating. That was making it difficult. I was rereading things I found myself every so often I'll use reader mode for articles, especially when there's a lot of motion and videos and stuff, I find that distracting normally, but I really needed that to be able to concentrate. Because I needed the simplified, maybe make the text bigger just to make it easier to concentrate. So long paragraphs of text are much more difficult. In when you're you're having to reread something to really understand it. A nice bullet pointed list is really nice, a wall of text, a lot of paragraphs, were just a lot more effort. I was also running into it wasn't cognitive, but it was the winter. So you know, dry skin normally. But that's another thing that low thyroid can affect is things like dry skin, joint pain and stiffness. So I was and dry skin you might not think about but then when say your knuckles start to crack and bleed. Which is probably more vivid than people necessarily need. But it made it hard to type or, you know, using a mouse I was trying to use smaller movements just because moving my hands was painful. So yeah, things that were continuous scroll can be difficult. Luckily, because I work in an accessibility space doing you know, I sometimes do accessibility reviews, I am familiar with using voice control, I can use a keyboard. So I was using some of the things that I use for testing, like, instead of having to scroll my mouse, that down arrow key was was a lot easier. Nic Yeah, it's I think in many ways, those of us who work in accessibility can kind of cheat. Because we know the resources. We know the tools. When I broke both my wrist, I ended up going to Dragon and it was steep learning curve, because I had never relied on Dragon as much. But yeah, at least I was familiar with the concepts. Now of course, I use it all the time for testing. Because, folks, we had a technical glitch, we had to stop the recording and restart it again. So Meagan, wait, you were telling us about how how you were able to use some assistive technologies because you're familiar with it. And that was a lifesaver to your ability to function on the web. Meagan So yeah, I was just explaining how because I'm familiar with using the keyboard using voice control or speech recognition, a little bit for testing, those were some things that I was able to use. So instead of having to continually scroll my mouse, I could use my down arrow key for some things. I could turn on the speech recognition feature on my device and just use that instead of having to use my hands, which were sometimes painful. Nic Yeah. If you had one message for designers or developers around web accessibility, what would you like them to, to know or remember or pay particular attention to? Meagan The big thing for me is just remembering that people are in different situations and designing you know, accessibility isn't just a blind screen reader user. That is that's an attitude that I seem to run into a lot when talking to people who aren't as familiar. And there are a lot of other audiences and sometimes a disability or an impairment is temporary. It's situational. Sometimes, you know, most of the time I don't have issues, but when I do I really have them. So just trying to keep things as simple and easy to use as possible. I think that actually helps in a lot of a lot of situations, if you're not making your interface super complicated, it's just easier when things fail to, you know, even if it's, it's as simple as a poor internet connection. So. So things are slow. If if it's not as complicated, it will fail much more gracefully. And that applies to in situations where someone is maybe using a technology they're not as familiar with, or they're having difficulty. Because they're not is they're not used to doing things a certain way or just like their their body or their brain is not functioning as well as it normally does. Nic Yeah. Yeah, I think that's that's certainly something that I've seen as well is this idea that, at least in the digital world, accessibility is about blind screenreader users, and in the physical world that accessibility is about wheelchair users, but I'm a wheelchair user, I and I will be the first to say, Well, no, actually, accessibility in the real world is about everybody. Meagan Yeah, I, I've run in the in the physical world, there is a particular intersection, that it's a busy intersection and has, you know, the pedestrian signal. And it is completely unintuitive to me, where they've placed those signals, which one is for which direction? So even things as simple is as that it's Nic Yeah, makes no sense sometimes. And maybe maybe that's the conclusion we have to reach is that sometimes things make no sense. And accessibility is about making sense of these things that make no sense. Meagan Yeah. Yes. Nic Meagan Eller, thank you for being a guest on the show. That was actually a great convo. I'll see you around probably on Slack. Meagan Yes, thank you. Cheers.

Justin says: "Error messages: Make them clear, make them understandable. Don't write a paragraph if you can write a sentence." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Justin Yarborough again. Hey, Justin, how are you? Justin I'm doing good. How about you? Nic I'm doing good. I'm glad that the first encounter with me for the podcast didn't turn you off completely and that you wanted to bring up a new topic. Before we dive into that, let me ask you, for those people that didn't listen to the other episode, what's your impairment or your disability? Justin I'm blind, I basically have zero vision. Nic Okay, and that means I assume you're using a screen reader? Justin Yep. Nic Cool. So, blind screen reader user, and you said you wanted to talk about form validation? I guess that's a current pet peeve of yours. Tell me about what's the issue around form validation? How's it an impact for you? Justin It's, I think it's I mean, it's, it's definitely a valuable one, especially, you know, for someone who's blind, but it's something that definitely one of those areas that definitely can benefit a, you know, benefits a whole host of people. It the the reason I think of it, it's an it's an it's an area that kind of just interests me, you know, as in my work day to day, working in accessibility myself, is just thinking through, like how a form is built, and how you, you know, let people know, maybe there are mistakes in it, or, and how to fix it, and stuff like that. And when I, when I emailed you, actually, or sent you a message to talk about this topic, I was actually working on a project working with this was one of the clients I work with, and was why it was fresh in the mind. You know, I think the the really important thing with form validation is just to, you know, if someone, you know, fills out that form, and like, hit submit, and maybe they have no idea what happened, you know, why is it not moving through, especially if like, you're, you're someone like me, who can't, you know, you're not seeing the screen, you hit that submit button, and it just doesn't do anything, you're just, I'm probably just going to just assume something's broken and move on. So you know, looking at a good like, form validation pattern where someone can understand what's going on, what the problems are, in, you know, be given some guidance on how to fix it is, I think, just usually important. One of the pattern that is most used with the client I work with, and one I'm a huge fan of, is when you hit that submit button, if not everything validates I love those forms where they'll automatically throw focus up to the first field with an error and have that, you know, error message programmatically associated with the form because it tells it tells me immediately, okay, hey, there's something wrong here. You know, it, it takes him to the field, it tells me there's something wrong, it gives me a description, basically, you know, of what's wrong, what, what I need to fix, and lets me know that and then, you know, since it's that that first one, if you've got, you know, say multiple fields with errors, I can just go tab, you know, tabbing through it through all the forms, see what does, you know, if there's anything else with an error and then go to resubmit? I just, it's a I, I'm a real big fan of that pattern. Just because I think just from a usability factor of anything you're doing, that's just, I think it's just the easiest way to go about it for a screener two years and have that and I feel like that kind of a pattern is going to have a benefit. For a lot more people than just screen nerd are used to, Nic How'd you feel about disabling the submit button until all the fields are actually validating? Justin I hate it. I hate it with the fire of 1000 suns. Nic Why? Justin Because Especially like, as a screen or user, even maybe if you don't have if you don't have it set up, right, or potentially, even if you I guess I should say, if you don't have it says like, there's some sort of like an announcement, hey, this field is not valid, you know, when you like, tap out of one and move to the next. Part of the problem that creates is, you know, someone's moving through what using the tab key that submit, but that submit button is not in the tab order. So I as far as I would know, that submit button doesn't exist. And I could rightfully assume, okay, well, something with this form is broken, it doesn't have a submit button, what the heck is going on here? Why do I not understand it? I it's just, you know, it just feels like a really clunky and, you know, uncomfortable pattern to me. And it's, you know, a, I think it's something that really, really should be avoided. And, you know, like, like, we were talking about, like what, you know, the benefits of like, being someone outside of a screen reader user, I can see plenty of other users, like, you know, maybe they go look at that button, even if it is grayed out in your own, you know, problems with, you know, disabled buttons, and often not meeting color contrast, even though I know they don't need to Don't, don't get me started on that. But, you know, they're not, they might go look at it. And if especially if you're not getting given good messaging, you know, as to what's going on, they might just assume something's wrong here with the formula, it kind of puts everyone in the same. The same, what the heck's going on here, boat? Yeah. It's just, you know, I like, I remember, like this when I was taking a JavaScript class, you know, just to learn JavaScript at my previous job. One of the projects we had actually in that class was to build a form and disable the submit button until it's valid. It's a great, it's a great exercise. I feel like maybe for learning, you know, when you're trying to learn how to do JavaScript, but in the real world, gosh, I hate it as a pattern, and it is just really not. I just think it's really confusing. Nic Yeah. Here's another question for you around form validation. And I have my own thoughts. And I've not been shy on sharing those thoughts. But I'd love to hear what you think of it. And this is inline validation, where each time you type a character, it validates and it tells you this is not correct until it is. And they often use ARIA live assertive on that error message. How do you feel about that? Justin Oh, my gosh, that's I'm just, I'm just hearing, assertive, and I'm cringing. I mean, I cringe anytime I'm hearing Aria, you know, assertive ARIA live, that's, that's odd automatically cringe worthy. This is this, I am I'm having flashbacks to like the, the, the the text area inputs that might be have a character limit. And they'll put an aria live on the you have, you know, the 132 characters remaining. And every time you're typing, it's just immediately saying again, and it's just going to keep throwing that in your ear it, that kind of thing just could be really, really annoying, and could really throw off someone, especially a screen reader and a screen reader user. I don't have a problem with I mean, I can understand like some, to a point at least like the valid, you know, why someone might want to do a validation like that, although, I mean, if you want to do like a validation of each field, I would feel like using doing it on blur would be a much better way to go about it. Nic Thank you this, this is what they actually recommend. It's wonderful to hear an actual screen reader user say this is better. So thank you. Justin Yeah, do it on Blur, or I mean, even if you're going to do like an aria live something while someone's typing it, at least, you know, set it up in a way so that you're not getting an announcement till maybe the person hasn't typed for a second or two. Yeah, you know, that would at least make it a little less painful if you want to go with that pattern. But yeah, do it on or why. Why not? Nic Why not? Yeah. We're talking about validation, which is really, in some way a very A dev specific kind of implementation, but I guess designers also have their, their say in, in what things should look like. But if you had one message for designers and developers around for validation, what would it be? Justin The biggest thing and this would fall into if you're going to talk in like designers or you know, in this, like a content writer type role. The big, the biggest emphasis, I would say, is just, you know, when you provide those error messages, make them clear, make them make them understandable. And, you know, don't, you know, don't write a paragraph when you could write a sentence. Be basically, yeah, be succinct. Make it clear, make it understandable. So someone can go, okay. Hey, I know what I did wrong here and how I can fix it. But you know, like, it's like I said, don't write a don't write a book or a paragraph. Give it to me in a sentence. Nic Justin, thank you very much for sharing that. I'm loving this discussion. And maybe you'll think about another topic to bring up at some time in the future. But in the meantime, let's call it a wrap. Thank you, Justin. Justin I thank you for having me again.

Brennan says "people who create and teach and have disabilities actually use this stuff. We're out in the world creating things while using the products that you're making. It can't just be the first layer of the system that you're making meet bare level of accessibility." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript   Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Brennan Roy. Hey, Brennan, how are you? Brennan Alright, how are you? Nic I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad that we are finally connecting. We've been juggling our sheduled for a little bit. And it's been fun. So here we are. Let me ask you the very first question I ask just about everybody else is what's your disability or your impairment? Brennan I have a number of them. I'm.. I have disabilities that impact my mobility, my vision, my cognition, a number of things I think the most impactful are vision and mobility and yeah... Cognition. I have like a current concussion I have a damage to my optic nerve from intracranial hypertension. I have Chiari that impacts my brain pressure kind of all the time. And Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which impacts my joints and pain levels. Yeah, those are the big ones. Nic So you you really one of the trifecta of disabilities right there. What... What conditions of these one or two are the ones that impact your web use the most? Brennan I think they all do in different ways. Nic Okay Brennan As I'm looking at my computer setup, right now I have like an adapted... Well, I have an external keyboard with a trackpad in front of it. Because a typical keyboard is hard to use. I have bigger monitors with a number of software adaptations on them and resolution changes so that I can see them. So it's both vision and mobility, I would say that are the biggest ones. My CCTV beside me here that allows me to read printed text. Nic Cool. We don't see those very often in individuals' places. It's typically at the library for reading microfilms, isn't it? Brennan Yeah, I was really lucky. In Ontario, there's a program through the University of Waterloo, where you can get used from individuals who have had them funded through the assistive devices program. So when they finished with them, if you want one that's been used, you can buy it from the University of Waterloo who have refurbished them for $250. Nic Wow, that's, that's a good, good scheme. So we're looking at mobility and visions are probably where you're having the most problem on the web. Tell us a little bit about maybe your biggest two barriers or pet peeves that you encounter related to your disability when you use the web. Brennan I think like, for me, one of the some of the biggest things are like that things are difficult to navigate physically like it requires a lot of like mouse navigation. And it's not like obvious where you need to go. So that's one and so I find that I'm doing a lot with my hands to get to where I need to be. And if I try and tab through it doesn't sensically follow. Nic Yes. Brennan And another one is that If I try and do something in dark mode, most of my computer's in dark mode, pop ups, the text is invisible, like the text won't follow the dark mode. Like if I have to pick a pet peeve, that's probably one of the biggest ones. Or if I'll switch of like a program using one of my dark mode overlays, the whole text just disappears, especially with Google Docs. That's a really bad one for it. Nic That's, that's interesting. It's not, it's not an experience I've had. I'm not a dark mode user. So I hadn't heard that as being something to consider. But that's really, yeah, that's good. So what message would you like designers or developers to remember about accessibility? Brennan I think like that, people who create and teach and have disabilities actually use this stuff. And we're out in the world creating things while using the products that they're making. So it can't just be like the first layer of the system that they're making. Meet the, the, like, their level of accessibility. Like, I work with programs like Audacity and iMovie, and things like that to create videos. And, like, I'll get three or four layers into more complicated action, and suddenly, the access thing doesn't work. Or like, I'll have my screen zoomed in, and I can't see half the program because it won't resize to my screen. And I'm like, why can't I resize this window? So I'm just really frustrated at the things that they don't expect disabled people to be doing with their programming. Yeah. Or like an Audacity? How, like, half of the hover text will work for their symbols, but the other half won't. It's just really annoying. Nic Yeah, I, I used to use Audacity all the time. And I had some blind friends that use Audacity and they said, it's the most accessible free audio editing software out there. I have since switched to Adobe Audition. So I don't know where audacity is gone now. But I do find it frustrating as well, when you start getting comfortable with an application and it feels like hey, this is actually comfortable and accessible. And then suddenly, when you start digging in, it's like, oh, what's just happened there? Brennan like, okay, so I have half of it. I guess I will squint. get really, really close to my screen. Yes, that's okay. Kind of, Nic Kind of. Yep. I actually think that this conclusion for for the show. It's okay. Kind of is fantastic. So, Brennan, thank you for being a guest on the show, and I'll see you on Slack or on the web somewhere. Thanks for being a guest. Brennan Thanks for having me.

Nash says, not quite jokingly, that the entire internet is unusable for him without ad blockers! Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barrier they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, that transcript for this episode and all other episodes are available on the website at the time of publication. You can find them at https://a11yrules.com. I want to thank fable for sponsoring this episode. Without Fable the show would not be possible. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Nash Van Gool. Hey, Nash, how are you? Nash Hi, Nic. I'm doing good. How are you? Nic I'm good. I'm glad to see you. This is our third go at recording this show. The first time I forgot to press record the second time we had a gremlin that dropped us. So let's make sure that this works this time. Nash Third time's the charm. Nic So we we have been talking a lot on enough primary through slack and Twitter. And you told me a lot of really interesting things about your disability. So for our audience, what's your disability or your impairment? Nash I have ADHD predominantly inattentive, which means I don't so much have the typical ADHD hyperactivity and impulsivity. I do have that to some degree. But my problems are more with attention span and motivation. So yeah, I don't have an attention span to speak of really? Nic How does that translate itself? When you use the web, then what what would you be say your barrier is or your, your pet peeve is around? Nash Well, I can't really, yeah, I can't really keep my attention on, on whatever I'm doing for very long most of the time. So anything that requires an attention span, to speak of is very difficult to do. And also I'm extremely distractible by things like moving images and sounds and whatnot. So that that gets in the way of staying on track as well. Nic What concrete example, could you give us a website or platform that is particularly difficult for you to use? Nash Well, the entire internet without an ad blocker is fairly unusable. It's, it's horrible by anybody's standards, of course. But when when most of the content is obscured by moving images and things that make noise and things that move around, things that pop up, it becomes impossible to get anything done. I don't know if any concrete sites specifically that do anything that gets in the way without an ad blocker there, there are platforms that are centered around keeping you distracted and keeping your attention on on everything things like tick tock and YouTube lately with the shorts or you get lost in there for hours. But otherwise, some bloggers like to use animated GIFs and things like that, that really gets in the way of reading which is a struggle anyway because sometimes my brain just stops Nic alright, I have to say I really liked this this answer the entire internet is broken for disabled people, which actually is true. But that's that's a different topic altogether. I think we could talk about for a while. If you one message for designers or developers around making the web more usable to you considering that they may not have control over ads and stuff what what would you tell them Nash Account for people not having the attention span to perform whatever task you want them to perform in one go. So that means things like not having a session timeout for instance, because f I need some external thing to use what I'm using, and that could be a password manager or an external website or anything, I may well get distracted while doing that. And I could be back in five minutes, or I could be back in weeks. That's not an exaggeration that has actually happened. So if my session times out, and I've lost all my work in that, in that time, that makes it that much harder for me to use whatever, whatever project you have. But also things like, video instructions are absolutely horrible. It takes me an hour to watch a two minute video. So if all I have is a video showing me how to use your product, chances are I won't be able to use your product other than just messing around and finding out what button works. Nic That's, that's fascinating. Actually, I never considered that. For someone with ADHD, a two minute video could take an hour to watch, because I hate video-only instructions, I can read a five minute video in 30 seconds, I can jump straight to the point where I want to see it. And sure video is good for some people. But I I do like the idea of giving both. But this argument that you just made, you know, I'll get distracted, I will not be able to process your information. That's really powerful. Nash Yeah, and it's it's, you make a good point also with with processing information, because it's not always getting distracted, I'll sometimes find myself watching a video and just having completely missed the past few minutes. Because I've zoned out. And I just don't know what you've said in your video for the past few minutes. And then I find myself having to backtrack to where I where I lost my attention. Chances are I'll lose my attention while backtracking. So that really makes it makes it hard to hard to follow along. Transcripts are a lifesaver for that, by the way, because then I can just skim back to what I missed and find out where I where it was so awesome. That does help. Nic Cool. Nash. Thank you for being candid and and sharing your experiences and we'll see you around on the web. Nash Definitely. It was good to be here. Nice to have you. Cheers. Thanks for having me.

Guy says that "Everyone is different. Everyone has different needs and preferences. It's very hard to build a one-size-fits-all design." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder, I have transcripts available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. This is the time to thank Fable, our sponsor for the show. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. They move organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. And they do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Guy Kisel. Hey, Guy, how are ya? Guy Hi, I'm pretty doing pretty well. Nic Good. We've been talking a lot in the background about all kinds of stuff that's super fascinating. But obviously, this is my soundbite. So we're not going to be able to cover everything all the things. Let's start with what's your disability or your impairment that you want to talk about today? Guy Oh, good question. Yeah, I have some RSI issues in my hands. Basically, just from overuse over the years of playing a lot of video games and spending a lot of time on the computer and so on. Largely like tendinitis in my wrist and my hands and and then yeah, the sensory issues, I've always been extremely sensitive, and had issues with, like sensory processing. And that includes, you know, being extremely sensitive to smells, and getting easily overwhelmed and sounds and like feelings and textures and all these things. And yeah, it does sometimes, you know, cause issues with technology or with gaming or stuff like that. On that note, to be clear, I work in the games industry, but I'm only here to represent myself and my own, like perspectives and opinions and not have any sort of official representative Nic that that's totally fair. Now, being very sensitive to smells, I guess, is not a big problem using computers games, we haven't yet gotten to smell-o-vision. And I think I'm happy about that. But how does does this sensory overload? How does that translate in either gaming or using the web or working digitally? Guy Yeah, good question. I'm also very grateful that we have not yet invented smell-o-vision. Even you know, virtual reality doesn't seem to have that yet. And for me, at least, I'm thankful for that. It doesn't always actually have an effect. You know, in a lot of cases, Everything's just fine. But the sort of things that can happen are, it's often like, related to hearing things. So I'm not, I'm not deaf or hearing impaired in any way that I'm aware of. I'm actually very sensitive to sounds. But what that can result in is that I have trouble filtering out... sounds. So like, as an example, if I'm in a crowded room, and there's a lot of conversations going on, it can be really hard to pick out the conversation I'm trying to participate in. And so what can happen in, you know, online situations, is, if you're in a call with people, and there's a lot of background noise coming through their microphone, it can be like nearly impossible to understand them, which I know everybody, or a lot of people probably experienced this as frustrating or difficult. But it can be get, like, especially bad. Or if there's high pitched sounds like feedback, or especially for whatever reason, I'm super sensitive to like whistling. But, you know, if you suddenly have headphones on, you suddenly hear somebody whistling. It's almost like it's being projected directly into your brain. It can be kind of difficult to cope with. Nic So you're not talking about just a bit of a frustration or annoyance. You really are talking about these kinds of sounds, wreck your brain in some way. Guy Yeah, it can lead to just all like thinking or processing or anything. You know, trying to actually be a person just stops and for as long as as you know, whistling are there. high pitched noises are going on. I'm just desperately trying to survive it or get past it. And then you know, if that goes away, then try to resume a normal train of thought or conversation or something. It takes a while to like, collect myself. Of course, you know, this varies, it's like, if I'm really tired, this can be a lot worse than if I'm like, in good spirits or so on. Nic Yeah, but isn't that the thing about accessibility, though that situation vary, situations vary for individual depending on time of day, day of week or period of the year. But that doesn't mean that because it's not always the same. It's any less important, does it? Guy Oh, yeah, for sure. I agree. I'm definitely not like an expert on accessibility or anything. I'm just, from this point of view, survive, as a normal user, try my best to get through the day and do the things I want to do. But yeah, I agree with you that it shouldn't, it shouldn't matter that much. I guess I just add that for like, context or color. Nic Fair enough! Guy, if you had a message for designers, or developers around web accessibility, or digital accessibility or, or things like that, what what would you want them to remember about either disability, inclusion, or accessibility? Guy I mean, I think part of it is just that everyone's different. Everyone has different needs, and preferences, and so on. And it's very hard to do like a one size fits all design. So I, I always really appreciate any software tools or websites that have controls and settings basically, like, let me toggle on and off different sound effects, or turn on and off, sound entirely or music entirely. Often I really liked when things default to not having sound and then have you like opt into sound or something like that. Right? I've often experienced websites that you know, you go to a website to read some documentation about a product and a little chat window pops up in the bottom right with like a cloud high pitch, dinging noise, asking if you want to check with Representative and like, I really appreciate the the effort to provide good service and support. But it's also often like very startling. And the first thing I want to do after after one of those things pops up is just like closed the website and never go back. Nic Yeah, so they're trying to be helpful, but in fact, they are pushing customers away. Guy Yeah, it can happen. And you know, it's one of those tricky things because it's clearly well intentioned, but intentions aren't always enough. Yeah, Nic yeah. I like that intentions aren't always enough. Guy. Thank you very much for sharing your your thoughts and experiences with me and we'll see you around on the web. Guy Sounds good. Thanks for having me on. Nic Cheers.

Alex says that "running into the same barriers every time a new platform or app is released is very frustrating. It's realizing some of my students are struggling with the same kind of issues I was struggling with 30 years ago when I was a student." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. As usual, transcripts are available for this episode and all other episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yryules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this show. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible accessible user experience. They do that through product testing, and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Alex Marositz. It's Hey, Alex, how are you? Alex Hi, good morning. Nic Good morning. So you reached out and you said after I asked you said yeah, I'm game to have you ask me some questions. So here's my first question. What is your disability or your impairment, Alex? Alex Well, yeah, I guess I am blind. And I use a screen reader and electronic Braille display to access the computer and the internet. A little bit about me is I spent 12 years teaching assistive technology and access technology and training students to use it in the in the community college system. And then I spent the last three years doing accessibility audits and testing for accessibility and kind of handling the compliance piece. And then about four days ago, I started a new job, which is exactly why I reached out to yo. I was kind of going through a little bit of a switching roles a bit coming back to the community colleges, and I had some some time on my hands and just was participating in the accessibility community overall. So aside from that, I do write for the top tech tidbits flying blind website and participate in some of the other accessibility spaces. I'd say kind of just throughout my career, you're right, kind of the basis of that was having to learn accessible technology, and how to use a screen reader and mix sort of Braille and auditory learning styles. But that's on the computer now. Nic I'm going to get away from my usual questions, because you are the right person to ask this. I'm going to circle back to my other questions. But as someone who has done education and teaching people how to use screen readers for for good portion of time. And as someone who has also worked in the accessibility field, what would you say your top one or two tips for people doing accessibility testing fairly new to it? What would you say the two top tips are for someone looking to learn how to use a screen reader for testing if they are sighted users? Alex You know, that's a good question. And I can only tell you what's kind of helped me, and I feel has kind of set me apart in that space is try to find some time engaging in an activity that you enjoy doing or something like that. Volunteer in some way with an organization that involves disabled people in some way. So I don't know if that means volunteering at an at a youth camp sports camp for persons with disabilities or find something in your area and actually just get to know you know a little bit about the culture and the lives of the people whose work you'll be impacting moving forward. And I just I can't tell you how valuable that is interacting with students every day for 12 or 13 years really gave me sort of a unique perspective and also just kind of oriented the work that I was doing in a better way. You know, knowing what WCAG standards for example are going to impact which folks is a little bit easier to understand when you when you've met them when you when you've met them in a social space for example, like I kind of said rather than just understanding it from from the standards themselves and and why they matter and so forth type documents. Nic I actually love that. I have... Here I am asking for a tech tip and youre really flipping things over the head in a way that I really love is, if I paraphrase you, learning how to use a screen reader is not so much about tech and how you use a screen reader. It's about understanding the culture, and the lives and experiences of people who use screen readers, because I guess you can learn the tech, but unless you understand the people who use the tech, it's not really going to be as useful as it could be, Alex You know, and just an example that comes to mind, and it's not a great one, but we're just talking here, you might work for a company that does simulations of flying cockpits kind of thing, you know, that you might not think that accessibility is very important, right in your work until you maybe join a social group and realize, you know, there are screen reader users who are interested in this field, and, and so forth. And, and just knowing that your work actually matters just as much as in that space, as it does in a banking app, or, or something that we all know that everybody needs to, you know, access. Nic So coming back to the usual shedule of my show, what would you say for you personally, as a screen reader user, what's your biggest barrier, or your biggest pet peeve on the web? Alex You know, okay, I'm glad you use the word pet peeve, a little bit because I kind of flipped the answer around a little bit, from barrier to frustration. And I did that, because I think, you know, we kind of know what some of the barriers are in this space for a screen reader user, right? We know about, you know, using color to identify errors on a form, right? We know about, you know, alternative text on buttons and charts and, and to an extent, images as well, you know, and we kind of do know about what makes what would make if you're a screen reader user, if there's if there's no keyboard access, then that's going to present an absolute barrier, right to your web application. So I think since we kind of already knew that, I think I'm just gonna share kind of what my frustration is. And in that, when on new platform, a line of business application or entertainment website, that sort of video or what have you, ticketing application. Social media is obviously in the news right now quite a bit with new social media platforms out there, running into the same barriers, every time a new platform is released, is the biggest frustration that I think I have on the web. I come from the education space, right. So just kind of the example I had here was just realizing that a student is struggling with some of the same things that I struggled with 30 years ago on a website, right? Nic Yeah. Alex Every time you come up with a new application, you know, we seem to make the same mistakes again. And that kind of leads me into my, the your third question, which is what message would I share moving forward right? Nic Yeah. Alex And that is participate, you know, if you find out something new, really participate in the accessibility space in any way that you can, whether it's coming on a podcast like this, sharing something on Twitter, joining the a11y Slack channel, which is where you and I met, right? Nic Yeah. Alex And just participate and share, take the time to learn, but also just share tips and really just participate and be active in the community. I think that that's the only way we're going to prevent repeats of the same accessibility barriers throughout, you know, new products and things like that. Nic I love that: Participate, get involved. That's a fantastic message to end the show on. Alex, thank you so much for your sharing your experiences and your thoughts, and we'll see you around the web.

Nick Colley says "... in the analytics somewhere, there's a dashboard, and it says when they released shorts, I really started to enjoy Instagram. But actually, if you came in, saw what the impact is, it's like me miserably hooked to this dopamine loop of it is like, is really not enjoyable." Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just a reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences through product testing, and custom courses. Learn more about how Fable can work for your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Nick Colley Hey, Nick, how are you? Nick Hello. Yeah, I'm Nick with a k. Nic Yes! One Nic without K talking to another Nick with a K. So, my first question to you like everybody else is, what's your disability or your impairment? Nick So, I have ADHD. So I guess the, for me, disability side of things is like if, if I am struggling, it tends to be more outside the web too. And it's like in my work life and things like that. And I can end up with depression or anxiety, depending on different situations. So that's kind of like, yeah, how things can manifest. I'm not necessarily disabled, specifically from ADHD. Its often I feel disabled from specific environments. I mean, if it's a Yeah, people aren't like, not used to working with people with ADHD and stuff like that. Nic So it's not the ADHD itself that is disabling for you. It's all the surrounding conditions that derive from it. Nick Yeah, it's not cut and dry. So sometimes, there has been a few things in my personal life where I was, like, if I could just concentrate now, I'd be great. Yeah, a lot of like, the worst things that tend to be being in spaces where I'm not really being supported in the way I'd hoped. And then, yeah, it can lead to feeling really bad about yourself if you can't get stuff done and things like that. Which, yeah, leads to like, longer term issues and stuff like that. Nic Right! So how, how does that translate onto the web? So, you know, my, my typical web question is, what's your greatest barrier, or your greatest pet peeve related to your disability on the web? Nick So, I was thinking about that, because a lot of like, a lot of the stuff that impacts me is not necessarily directly related to the web. But the main, the main thing I've been thinking about is, like, a lot of the high engagement stuff I find, like, I imagine for a lot of people that quite like, it keeps them hooked, but for me, it's like, I can lose like, four hours consuming something, I don't enjoy it. And like it can ruin my day kind of thing. So I think the My biggest like pet peeve in that in that respect is like yeah, a lot of engagement patterns that aren't really thinking about what happens if you're quite suspect susceptible to more like addictive things. So it's a bit like, like an extreme example would be like online gambling and you've got examples of like loot box stuff where you've got this concept of whales kind of people who are relying on people to like spend a lot of money on things. I think that's the main thing that I find bad on the web is like, yeah, I a lot of the like YouTube and Instagram app I delete them. I tried Tic Tok and I was like scrolling for hours and hours. I imagine a lot of people like that. But like, for me, it's like, I can be there for like six hours like yeah, and then YouTube's added it and then I'm not that I'm not there to watch like a Tic Tok on YouTube. I'm there to watch longer form videos and stuff, but I'm still like falling into these design patterns that are designed to engage, but I think they're too engaging. Nic Yeah. So obviously a platform wants to get their audience engaged. But it becomes almost like a dark, dark pattern where you just, you're hooked and you can't get off. Nick Yeah, I just have to delete the whole thing. Yeah, to get rid of Instagram. I like Instagram, because it's take like taking pictures and stuff. But again, I'm not there for the shorts, but then I ended up. So in the analytics somewhere, there's a dashboard, and it says my account like, Oh, um, when they released shorts, I really started to enjoy Instagram. But actually, if you came in, saw what the impact is, it's like me miserably hooked to this dopamine loop of it is like, is really not enjoyable. Nic It hink that's a brilliant point that the analytics data may not actually reflect the reality of your audience. Because, yeah, what you describe is, okay, so just this user is spending four hours, they really must like it. But in fact, it's No, I hate it. Let me off here. Nick Yeah. I don't know how we could get better at I guess it is making sure that you don't focus too much on just quantitative data and have more like quality stuff? So like conversations with people, interviewing people? Yeah, it's the fact that I've got fireworks going off in the background, because it's Halloween. So if that's a problem.. Nic No problem. No problem. We are all dealing with real life. I know some podcasters that, you know, they freak out if a dog is scratching a colar, and there's a jingle in the background, of fireworks, but it's not really interfering at all. So let's let's not worry about it. We are all living in real life. Nick Yeah, if I if I struggled to keep on track, cuz there's currently like bangers going off in the background. Nic So obviously, a message you could have for developers was... Don't use these patterns to keep audiences engaged. But would you have something else to let developers or designers think about accessibility? Nick I think. Yeah. And on that pattern, specifically, I think it's, it's, we do have a responsibility, I guess, as designers to consider like, is that is there such thing as too much engagement? And I think the answer is definitely yes. And you can only really get to that conclusion, if you focus on the people that will be the most impacted. So I think it's about like inviting people that are more susceptible to Addictive patterns and things like that into the design process. Yeah, so trying to do more user research of neurodivergent people and cognitive accessibility is something that people are starting to get into. And I think, if people invest more in that, it's going to make a big impact on how you think about engagement. It's not just like, Oh, someone's really enjoying themselves. Like, it could be someone is ruined out there all day. And now they've had to delete your app. It's like, it's not. It's not like, yeah, trying to get the why behind some of this data and not just assume, Nic Is this something that could be solved through a user preference interface? So you know, hey, I want to see all these shorts or No, please hide them from me? Nick Yeah. Even just like, I think I always talk about is that the difference between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing? They're, they're not exactly the same game. But if you think about that, for anyone, I don't know if you played them, but Nic I am afraid I have not played them. Nick They essentially the game loop. In Stardew Valley, you're a farmer. And each day you farm crops, and then you sell the crops. And there's nothing really stopping you from playing that forever, right? So when I played it, I played it for three days straight. Whereas Animal Crossing is similar kind of vibe, you you kind of do things in the day, but it's based on real time. So when it when it gets to 6pm in your real in real life, the shops close in the game and encourages you to take a break just by the nature of design. So I think I think we can learn a lot from just just that kind of design practice where you're thinking about like, how do you you can still do engagement, but I played Animal Crossing for like many months, maybe like six months, but I was only playing maybe like an hour a day. And that to me, that to me is like healthy engagement. I'm enjoying myself. I'm not burning out. Where Stardew I played for four days straight. I still think it's an excellent game. But I, I cannot go back to it because I just it makes me feel like a burn out for you. So I think trying to, it's not about necessarily straying away from patterns that keep people coming back to whatever you're building. It's more about thinking about how do you do that in a sustainable way. Ultimately, like that is like if you want a catalyst take on it. That is the way to keep your thing successful for the long term because then you've got people, if someone's consuming your thing for an hour, over five years, that's much more impact than four days of straight. Yeah. Four days. Nic Absolutely. Hey, Nick, thank you so much for your insight that was really good and powerful. And I'll see you around on the web. Nick Yeah, look forward to talking to you

Alyssa says "sometimes accessibility is kind of still up in the air and a lot of corporate managers don't really understand that until a big bug happens and you lose customers because of it". Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. I just want to remind you that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do that through product testing and customer courses. You can learn more about how fable can work with you and your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Alyssa Cheeseman. Hey, Alisa, how are you? Alyssa Not too bad? How's it going with you? Nic It's going good. I'm glad we connected. We didn't know each other before this. So it's going to be a fun show to get to know you and your experiences on the web a little bit. Alyssa Yeah, thank you for having me. Nic Let me start by asking you this, what's your disability or your impairment? Alyssa So I am actually considered legally blind. I do have some usable vision. But not of course, not enough to be able to drive. I also have a guide dog named Ruth, who has a yellow yellow Labrador Retriever. And she is amazing and always there. But overall, my condition is legal blindness with some residual vision. Nic Thank you. Service dogs are amazing. And I say this. I say this, as Winston, my mobility assistance dog is sleeping on my feet right now. So it's wonderful. However, we're not here to talk about service dogs, because so far, they haven't managed to help us on the web. Alyssa Yeah! Nic What would you say your greatest barrier or your greatest pet peeve when you're using the web is? Alyssa So my biggest pet peeve is that sometimes I hear about different products that are going to be implemented, especially if they're my company that I work for now. And I haven't even seen it yet. But they say that it's WCAG compliant. And whenever I get to the website, it's actually not. And the biggest fear that I have is when there's a bunch of unlabeled links and buttons, it makes it very challenging for screen reader users to be able to navigate. And I use the JAWS screen reader with a blue refreshable Braille display. And it makes it really hard if there's just a ton of unlabeled things and buttons. Nic So what I'm hearing is twofold, really first is unlabeled elements make it really difficult for you to perceive and understand what's on the page. But the other aspect of that is that these products are coming to you as being supposedly WCAG conformant. But they're not. Alyssa Right, exactly. Like there's some, there was one instance where we had launched a flagship product, and there was just a bunch of unlabeled buttons. And I test, I actually test our products for accessibility. But sometimes it gets to us and I go to test a product and before it gets to the other customer. And I see these bugs, and I'm just like, this is really crazy. Why didn't we see this new design before it even got to the public? Nic Yeah, that's... As an accessibility consultant myself, that is something I've been struggling with, on and off. It's, it seems like there's a big disconnect there. So what would you say your, your message for designers or developers would be? Is it related directly to that? Or is it something sideways? Alyssa Well, it's very similar to that is if you're testing for screen reader accessibility, you can't just hit Tab through the page. That's not just that's not going to get to where you need to be in terms of screen reader testing, you need to tab into the page as well as arrow down the page using arrow keys. That'll make it easier to know where things are located on the screen visually, and making sure that things are in the tab order because if you're just tabing you may not visually see that something isn't in the tab order. So it's really important to actually arrow through the page, as well as have when you're testing for screen reader accessibility. Nic Thank you for that. I was just talking with a QA tester last week who had logged a bug. And he said, I cannot tab through all the cells in a table. And I told them, why do you need to do that these cells are not interactive. And he says, well, screen reader users need to be able to tap to the content in a data table to be able to understand it and... Alyssa No Nic Yeah, nope, is exactly right. Alyssa That's not the case. Nic Nope Alyssa That is not the case. Because yes, there are table shortcut commands. But that's not necessarily tabbing through. Nic Yeah. Alyssa Cheeseman. Thank you very much for being a guest on the show this week. Alyssa Yeah, of course, I'm glad to be able to spread the word about accessibility and the fact that things definitely need to change from the top down because in just major corporations like the one I work in sometimes accessibility is kind of still up in the air and a lot of corporate managers don't really understand that until a big bug happens and you lose customers because of it. Nic That's a fantastic message to end the show on. Thank you, Alyssa. Have a good rest of your week. Alyssa Awesome. Thank you so much.

Negoslav explains how a lack of accessibility on government websites may mean blind screen reader users can't access critical documents. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encountered on the web. Just a reminder that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from my website at http://a11yrules.com. I want to take the time to thank Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform. They are powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do this through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work with your team at http://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Negoslav Sabev. Hi, Negoslav, how are you? Negoslav Hi Nic, I'm fine, thank you. Nic We've been interacting on Twitter on enough for for a while. And finally we connected. So thank you for for willing to come and chat with me about the barriers you experience on the web. Negoslav Thank you for the invitation. Nic You know by now my first question is what's your disability or your impairments? So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Negoslav I'm blind. I was born with glaucoma. And through a series of operations. Finally, I reached here. So since 2001, I'm totally blind. And I'm using computers and other electronic devices since 2003. Nic What's your favorite screen reader? Negoslav Oh, it's it's different experience on different devices. So it's hard to say to tell that on Windows, I mostly use JAWS because I'm doing a lot of text editing. I also use NVDA, for reasons. And on iOS device. So you know that there is only one screen reader and that's quite sober. So I use them. Nic Thank you. What would you say your greatest barrier or your biggest pet peeve is when you're using the internet. Negoslav Sometimes I feel that the developers and teams that are working on websites are trying to hide... trying to hide something from me and try to lock me out. What I mean is that sometimes text that should be heading is not a heading and just a big and bolded text. Sometimes there's a CAPTCHA that I have to solve. And it's not accessible at all. Even it has no alternative. Or the audio that is playing as an alternative is so bad that I can hardly hear it, even though I have very good hearing abilities. And I can give some examples. Last year, I was trying to get documents from the Ministry of Justice that I'm not been I have not been judged. And it I went to the website, I filled the form, I paid the tax to get this document and the document was in electronic format. And I had to open a link to to see it. But when I get got there and open the link, there was a CAPTCHA that had no alternative that even the screen reader couldn't see as a picture. Nic Wow. Negoslav So I was locked out and never saw this document and I was contacting the people that were working there some government agencies but unfortunately, no result and sometimes accessibility work is happening so slowly. That it's so bad. It's so bad. I read today someone who was tweeting. "I want it all, I want it now. But step by step." Nic Yes. And so what you're describing is an experience where it's not just a small barrier, it's not just something that's annoying. It's not that you can't order something on an online shopping platform, it really is that you aren't able to get critical government documents because they're creating barriers for you. Negoslav Yes, unfortunately, there are many other examples, I can give that somehow a content is hidden, I had such an experience, while trying to enter a pin that was presented in a totally inaccessible way no screen reader could see where I should, should press with the mouse or something else. The keyboard wasn't working, or there's something like pressing a button, and content is somewhere on the window. And I have to, to look through it thoroughly to see to see what's there and to interact with it. Nic If you had one message for designers or developers, what would that message be? Negoslav Maybe to be more open minded for different users with different abilities or different needs. Because for some people, reaching to something, reading something or interacting with something that is inaccessible is essential to do. But they cannot enough because they are stupid, not because they are unable to do this not because they are incompetent, just because the technology is preventing them from doing this or not. Not exactly the technology. But the way technologies are implemented Nic I like this. It's not the user who's incompetent. It's the designer and the developer who didn't do the job correctly. Negoslav Yes, and that makes things hard, but they could be much easier. Nic Negoslav Sabev. Thank you for sharing your insight that's been actually really, really powerful for me. So thank you, and we'll see you around on the web. Negoslav Thank you, Nic.

Lē Silveus McNamara says consuming Tech has a stimulant effect on the nervous system and the overconsumption of a stimulant, like technology [is] bad for your health. Thanks to Fable for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. Just to remind you that transcripts are available for all episodes at the time of publication from the website at https://a11yrules.com. I am really grateful to Fable for sponsoring this episode. Fable is a leading accessibility platform powered by disabled people. Fable moves organizations from worrying about compliance to building incredible and accessible user experiences. They do that through product testing and custom courses. You can learn more about how Fable can work with your team at https://makeitfable.com/nic. Today I'm talking with Lē McNamara. Hey, Lē, how are you? Lē Hi, I'm doing well thank you, Nic. Nic It's been a while since we've been in touch on and off on the web. And we worked a little bit together a while back on the Knowbility internet accessibility rally. And that was fun. And finally we get to connect. So let me ask you this, what's your disability or your impairment? Lē So well, I am a multiple neurodivergent. So I and I also live with a chronic illness. So the nuts and bolts are C PTSD, chronic pain condition and autoimmunity with self diagnosed autism, which is kind of a recent discovery that I have made of myself as part of being a part of the accessibility world. And man has that discovery, blown some things up wide open for me. So it's been that's been an exciting adventure the last few years. Nic It can be very exciting to realize you, you have something that has never been diagnosed, but suddenly when you realize it's like all the pieces of puzzle come together. Lē Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Nic So we're talking about barriers on the web, what would you say your your greatest barrier or your biggest pet peeve related to your disabilities and using the web? What what would that be? Lē So I would say the number one is going to be the overuse of high saturation, or what I call emergency colors. So when you are neurodivergent, although many of us see especially high saturation colors differently. So if you imagine, in your mind, a bright red, we might see that as more of a neon. And that same mechanism of you know, when you see when you're online and you see an emergency pop up, for example, and it's in that bright, high saturation red, that same mechanism that makes it so that that red gets your attention is overly stimulating for me. Right. And so when that color, whether it's high saturations reds, yellows, or oranges, when those colors are used, outside of the context of their intention, which is to say, an emergency, we need your attention right now. That hook, right, that hook into the mind can be very problematic. And in fact, when I see a website that uses especially high saturation, red as a branding color, and so you'll see it in blocks all over the side, or see buttons all over the site. It actually causes both high anxiety and nerve pain so that overstimulation can be so severe that it puts the nervous system into overload. And the experience of that internally is anxiety, frustration, sometimes a sense of panic, but also active pain that can last sometimes for a few minutes, but sometimes for several days. Nic Would you say then that companies that have red as a brand color need to change that or what would be a solution there? Lē Yes. So really, what we're looking at is the saturation level. So you can use red, but you want to bring the saturation level down. Right. And actually, if you want to see examples of what I mean by this, I did write a blog post that is currently posted on the TPGi website. It's called Going beyond WCAG losing spoons online. And in that article, I extrapolate some of the various issues that I have found on the internet and one of these, this is one of the issues and I do give visual examples that you can consent into or not for my, my neurodivergent peers, and also hex codes so that you can really see what I mean by high saturation, but your designers will know what you mean. And so you just want to bring the saturation down. So if you're using a warmer read that that's better Right. And then I would just say if you do you know, if you're a company that sort of stuck with a high saturation color that you've invested a lot of time in marketing in, and it's in your logo. Well, if it's just in your logo that might be okay. But take it out of the website in large blocks, right? Take it out as a big block background color, or as button colors, text colors, etc. Nic Thank you. If you had one message for designers or developers, what would it be? Is it along the lines of beware your colors? Or do you have something else for for them to think about? Lē I think it's I think it's broader than that. I think one of the things that, as a culture we are still overlooking when it comes to these new technologies, and how much time we're all spending with them is that at the end of the day, consuming Tech has a stimulant effect on the nervous system. And this is true for everyone, regardless of whether or not they're neuro divergent, but not unlike the consumption of overconsumption of a stimulant, like caffeine, for example, is bad for your health, the overconsumption of a stimulant, like technology, like the screen based technologies that we use, is also bad for your health. And that's just even more so true for those of us with what we call sensory sensitivities who are neurodivergent. Right? So I would encourage designers to educate themselves on the basic neuroscience of that and be thinking about it as they're designing to minimize their does minimize the stimulant nature of their designs, you know, as that as that light comes in through the eyes and affects the brain and affects the nervous system, right. So and that can be that can be a lot of things that can be minimizing motion, minimizing the amount of content on the screen at any one time, so minimizing clutter, you know, not not putting too much information all in one space. Limiting limiting color, color variance, decreasing the saturation of colors across the color spectrum, right. So there are a lot of things that we can think about and imagine to do to say, to say we understand this as a stimulant, naturally. So what can we do to minimize that effect, and that is going to not only help my population, but it's also going to decrease the negative long term effects of technology use on the population at large. Nic Lē, thank you so much for sharing your your experiences and giving some advice to our listeners. So thank you. Yeah, thank you