Welcome And The Big Reframe

Michael Hartmann 0:25

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Opscast, brought to you by MarketYOps.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman, Flying Solo again today. Today, uh, we're going to be talking about um something interesting. Most teams think about accessibility as a compliance issue, something that legal owns is in charge of, something that uh we'll deal with later, something that slows you down. But what if that's completely backwards? So, joining me today, talk about that in this episode is Mike Barton, who leads corporate communications and content marketing at AudioI. And we're going to be talking about why accessibility is not just a risk to manage, but a lever for better customer experience, stronger performance, and ultimately growth. So the reason this is important is because one in four people experience some form of disability. And it's not just edge case thinking it's actually mainstream, and the implications for ops are bigger than most people realize. I certainly didn't realize it. So, Mike, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, my pleasure to be here. All right. Well, uh, why don't we start simple? So when we talk about digital accessibility, what is that like what are we actually talking about? What you know, and when and why do you think most teams, uh and most people probably in the op space, including me, underestimate it?

Mike Barton 1:45

Yeah, so digital accessibility, I'd say at its simplest and at its core, is ensuring that any person, regardless of ability or how they access the internet, uh, is able to do so. Right? Sounds super basic, but it's something that you kind of hinted at. A lot of us just don't think about it. It's one of those biases where you uh, and this is a little bit of like kind of uh ableist language, but like you see the world through your own lens. And so I see the world as somebody who has vision, who has hearing, who has full mobility uh in his hands and body. And so I access the internet in a different way than somebody who's blind. And uh they access it differently than somebody who's uh deaf or who has a mobility impairment. And so um I think that's you know, getting into the kind of crux of the question of like, why don't we think about it or um why in ops or marketing or digital uh marketing in general, you know, why isn't something that's more top of mind? And I think it's because we're just not surrounded by it in a lot of our uh normal or everyday lives. And so um that's partly why I liked coming on shows like this, because um I think it's largely an awareness, just uh getting people to kind of think about about it, think uh outside their their lives and their purview. But it's one of those things that once you start to think about it, and once you have that little kind of seed of awareness, very quickly you start to realize, oh yeah, I've got this friend who has this uh cognitive disability, and like any content that's written with jargon or like overly complex, she has a real hard time with, right? Or I've got this other friend, it starts to uh cascade really quickly.

ADA Risk And Digital Doors

Michael Hartmann 3:34

So yeah, and I I mean I'm I probably the like I think it was interesting when we first talked that I hadn't really given it much luck. Probably actually thought, like, oh, this is not a big deal, right? Um or yes, I know I should do it, but right, I I come up with a list of excuses. Um yeah, I and and uh it's interesting to I was just thinking as you were describing it, and we didn't talk about this, but uh so I think about like uh privacy compliance is it kind of falls into a similar maybe a similar one. I think more people are astutely aware of it because it's much uh it doesn't have all the other sort of like biases maybe that we have. But I know that even I think about it as not a one size fits all thing. I think about it like, oh well, if I'm in the US, I'm I'm pretty flexible. Like as long as we're not, you know, ignoring people's pleas not to be followed or to unsubscribe back and think that you know we're good and I'm okay with working with sales teams or whatever to to be a little more aggressive, and on the other hand, in other parts of the world where that's more restrictive, like but this one, like I in some ways I think of it as a similar thing, like oh, it's a night, it feels like, oh, well, yeah, we should comply, but maybe yeah, for yada yada. So um the conversation here.

Mike Barton 4:54

Yeah, that's I mean, very common. I think that's one of the um kind of misconceptions that I hear all the time as well, which is like, I know I should do it, um, it's important, you know, it's a next year priority, we'll get to it and it's the right thing to do. Um, but a lot of people don't realize that in addition to being the right thing to do, um, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was, you know, uh founded 35 plus years ago when the internet didn't exist. So at that time, it was very much about um having spaces for uh people with disabilities, having automatic doors, ways for them to enter your physical premises, essentially making it so the physical world was accessible by everybody. Well, along comes the internet, and people start to wonder hey, does this apply to the digital space as well? And courts uh very quickly started to say, yes, it does. If you have a digital footprint, you need to have your digital doors uh be available to anyone. So uh, from like a compliance perspective, a user who tries to come to your site, tries to navigate, and tries to make a purchase and can't, they've got a legal right to sue that company. And uh we see that happening more and more uh that uh because companies are putting off accessibility or putting off thinking about it, um, or people disappointed are left with no option, but like, all right, I have to sue. Um, but that leads us to this conversation also, which is in addition to like a risk management approach so that you're just not sued, people often find that, hey, I'm making my site better, I'm making it more usable, uh, I'm making it actually easier for all the other people who are coming to the site as well. So not only am I now taking advantage of a population who couldn't utilize my site before, but now also uh it reads better. It's again more usable. So like the rising boat that the rising tide that lifts all boats uh really applies with digital accessibility here.

SEO AEO GEO Upside Of Accessibility

Michael Hartmann 6:56

Yeah, I think that was the thing from our conversation that I didn't expect. I mean, I think a lot of a like we already talked about, right? A lot of this is compliance, risk management. Um, but you would we talk, you framed it more as a like a business issue and where there's a real opportunity to capture more revenue if you you know you address this and you're not ignoring the accessibility issue. How like how do you how do you think about that?

Mike Barton 7:23

Yeah. So there's a few areas. One is um, I'd say discoverability. So uh we recently, or in the past it was all about um SEO. Uh I think this actually starts to be even more applicable in an AI-driven uh world of search with AEO and GEO. And the reality is when you build and code your page with accessible best practices, meaning uh links are clear and descriptive, uh, image descriptions, alt text, again, not complex things. They sound very basic to a degree, but when you're coding quickly and fast, it very easily those are the things that get forgotten. So, like all your links on the page might say, click here, right, to learn more, as opposed to click here to download our best practice guide on da-da-da-da-da. And as you have more and more of that descriptive text throughout your entire site, the engines actually pick that up. It gives you more credibility and it starts to impact impact your findability. And we're finding more and more that LLMs uh are scanning the accessibility tree there uh and using that as a way to understand what's on the site. So an accessible site uh in the you know will be seen more than a site that's not accessible. So that to me is one of the biggest, especially as you know, AI is uh just becoming more and more prevalent, that's the biggest new advantage, I think, uh of building a site accessible. Um and then of course, there's also just the conversion factor that again, if you have an e-commerce site and uh, you know, again, the stat that you share at the top was one in four people have a disability. Obviously, there's a whole range there. Uh, but if there's a subset of people uh who are trying to come to your site, uh blind people use something called a screen reader, which literally literally reads the code kind of in the background to them so they know what's happening with the copy as what those links are. Um if they find a site that that is accessible and that makes it easy for them to purchase, they are a super loyal group of people. Uh, because I finally found a site that makes it easy for me to shop or consume the news, what have you. Oh, which is it?

Michael Hartmann 9:37

I would assume that they are also becoming advocates with other people who have similar disabilities or challenges.

Mike Barton 9:43

Yeah, that's exactly what I was, I was gonna say is not only are they loyal, but they then become great advocates. Um, and their friends and family, not only the ones, like you said, who have disabilities, but their friends and family who don't have disabilities are like, hey, such and such website makes it really easy for you know, this person who I really care for uh or respect. So now I'm gonna shop there as well, even though uh I don't have a uh a disability. So that spending power of uh people with disabilities and their friends and family is 18 trillion with the T. Uh so not a small uh market there. So I like to talk about that. Sorry, global US Global, yes. Global.

Michael Hartmann 10:23

Okay. Still a lot, big number.

Mike Barton 10:26

Yeah, exactly. Uh, but it just shows that like I like this idea of the digital door, which I kind of mentioned a little bit earlier. Yeah. Um, these are people who are often already coming to your site, they're already trying to engage. So you don't have to spend more money on paid channels, you're right. You don't have to spend more to get them. You're essentially just when they come to your site, making it so that door opens and they can actually uh work with you. So it's a bit of an efficiency play as well.

Michael Hartmann 10:54

That's so interesting because I was just thinking to myself, like how frustrated I get when I try to get on my phone onto a website and it's not working for the mobile, like it's just out of what and how annoying that is. And I can't even imagine right now if you come in there and you like that's not even an option, right?

Mike Barton 11:13

Yeah. Yeah, we talk to people at displays all the time, and one of their frustrations is that you know they've grown accustomed to all right, what might take Michael Hartman 10 minutes to do on this uh e-commerce site, I just know it's gonna take me 45 minutes to click around, get where I need to go, figure out a workaround to eventually be able to purchase. And they're like, my life shouldn't be a compromise where I just know that it's gonna take me two, three, four, ten times longer to accomplish something. So yeah, anytime I get mildly frustrated uh with a website not working, I'm like, wow, I'm getting frustrated this for the first time this week. Somebody that I just talked to who has a disability probably dealt with that five times already today.

Loyalty Advocacy And Spending Power

Michael Hartmann 11:58

Yeah, it's um I love this sort of, I don't know if you want to call it empathy sympathy, but I I went like in the real world, I did some consulting work years ago for um a Texas-based uh grocery store in their uh bulk fulfillment pharmacy. And one of the things we did was we went out because you're going back and forth, no, we do it in bulk directly to consumers, but also to the pharmacies in local markets that we went to a few of them just to kind of observe and see what they did. And I remember walking away from that going, I am never gonna be an asshole to a pharmacist ever again, because it is a really hard, high-pressure job. And you get people when they're in their their worst. And it's kind of like I think I think there's something about having thinking if I encourage people who are listening or watching now to think about like when you get frustrated to go with your like what you just did, right? Just imagine what it's like for somebody else. And I think that would be that maybe the biggest benefit we could have out of this conversation, maybe even, but maybe not.

Mike Barton 13:00

No, I completely agree. Like I I have only been in the accessibility space for a couple of years. Um, I and often when I talk to people, I'm like, I wish I could go back and talk to the mic of 10, 15 years ago who worked at you know big companies creating all types of content. And not once did that mic ever ask, is this accessible to a blind person? Is this super cool interactive experience? Could a screen reader actually describe that and make all kind of come to life for somebody else? And yeah, I just didn't have the opportunity, uh, unfortunately, where I kind of quickly developed that empathy and that understanding of uh this is how other people experience it. And probably I've had the same misconception that a lot of people had uh and still have, which is uh it's actually probably a small population, right? There's not a lot of people uh or blind people wouldn't want to experience this interactive experience I made anyway. So it's fine that it's not accessible. I actually hear that quite a bit, or you know, uh people displays don't buy X product of mine. The reality is they might want to. And if they do or could, maybe you've now got a new customer segment that you didn't even know existed, uh, that again is trying to get that uh that product from you. So it really is uh, I think uh a good reminder, not only with uh accessibility, you know, there's other topics as well, where if you just kind of widen your lens and your view of the world, you start to see other marketing and business opportunities and product opportunities.

Empathy As A Practical Skill

Michael Hartmann 14:38

Yeah, I you know, you you mentioned it earlier, this idea that um focusing on this improves the experience for everyone. And I maybe talk about that a little more. I mean, I'm assuming this is one that I harp on a lot. I think a lot of especially B2B websites, the content is full of words that don't have a don't really like it's hard to understand what they mean, right? And and so like I'm a big advocate for like clear, simple language, and um, so this idea, like I get why people want to be seen as thought leaders in quotes, right? But at the same time, right, it's not easy to understand. Are you talking about things like that, like changing the actual language and words you use and the way you talk about your products and services, or is it something more than that?

Mike Barton 15:26

No, I yes and no. There's there is much more to it, but that's one great example, and I love that one also. Um, because yes, people with uh various cognitive disabilities um are gonna have a hard time reading jargon-filled or even long complex sentences, right? Where you're often you're just trying to maybe sound intelligent or sound, yeah, this is the voice of a leader who just knows their stuff when they're algebraic.

Michael Hartmann 15:56

Right.

Mike Barton 15:57

Yeah, yes, exactly, totally. Uh, and so you'll lose people who have different types of um cognitive um disabilities. And we found not only does it just logically make sense, but we've done some tests also at AudioI where we said, hey, let's simplify a page, a product page, uh, for a person with a disability. And um in the past, I used the phrase like, okay, let's dumb down the language, but that's actually not what it is at all. Um, I I think if you can say something concisely and intelligently, in fewer words and in more simple words, you're actually doing it in a more intelligent manner. Um, and it's actually harder to do. Uh right.

Michael Hartmann 16:40

I you're making me think of I think it's I think it's at least my mind is attributed to Mark Twain is the quote, like, I would have written a shorter letter if it if I only had one.

Mike Barton 16:49

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann 16:50

Yeah.

Mike Barton 16:50

Yeah, I was literally about to say that. So uh that's funny that we're uh thinking of the same quote. Um, but yeah, so we saw that test. It was a winner. And again, as we kind of brought that to the other product pages and did other sorts of qualitative interviews, the feedback was the same across all personas, all individuals, people with disabilities, people with uh with no disabilities, uh, that said, yes, I want this page, I understand this page, I know what you're offering much more clearly when it's said simply. And so uh I think that's a great example where uh in doing it for a specific audience, everybody else benefits it from it. And uh it helps you as a business also have to think a little bit more about your product and your offering and what are the values? What are the simple um you know things that I'm providing to uh a prospect? What are the the needs that they have and and and how do I talk about that? So yeah, I think that's a fantastic example.

Clear Language Helps Everyone

Michael Hartmann 17:53

Okay, that's great. Yeah, I so maybe let's shift to gears a little bit and think about our our audience, which is primarily ops people. So yeah, in my experience, like thinking about compliance really has not necessarily fallen on me, even though I've run web stuff where I think about more so where would you like where would you suggest that this idea of accessibility and compliance and you know addressing that audience is sometimes overlooked? Like, where should it, where should it be thinking about you? Should that be in the ops team? Should it be somewhere else in marketing? Should it be like where where do you think it should be and how would it look?

Who Owns It Inside Ops

Mike Barton 18:33

Yeah, it's a good question. And uh this will be a little bit of a cop-out. But I think it depends on the company and uh kind of the organization. Uh, because what we found is you need somebody who is a champion and who is going to kind of push it because when push comes to shove, uh, and we see this in so many of our customers, you'll have initial calls where like, yes, we want to do it. We actually want to own it in-house, right? We want to do it all. But then other priorities come along and uh the economy starts to go down. So it's like dollars become even more important, and efficiency becomes even more important. And so uh accessibility can and does get deprioritized for some of these other things. And so um having a champion who can continually uh reinforce that uh with uh the various teams is super helpful. I mean, this is a bit of a shameless plug, but Audio Eye, the way we um uh have our product is so that it the teams can think about it as little as possible, right? Like they think about how do we implement it, um, how do we get it on our pages, how do we uh how often do we do audits so that people with disabilities are looking and going through our site's experience? Um, but you do have to start thinking about all your digital properties. So it's the website, it's your apps. Um, if you have like a chat bot or something like that, like is that accessible? Um, your emails, any of your communications, social media, um, does your social media person are they thinking about uh you know the right best practices to um with images and carousels uh and and things like that? So it very quickly, I think, begins to, like you said earlier, like be illuminating of like, oh, I was just thinking it was maybe my website, but now I'm realizing any really customer-facing or prospect-facing initiative and said technology sitting underneath it that delivers it needs to have some of those capabilities.

Michael Hartmann 20:32

Yeah, it's it's it's interesting that you said it's easy to deprioritize, and my head went right to us, like it feels like the same conversation we have about data quality. Like everybody knows that data quality is important, um, but it gets deprioritized because uh in my belief, like in my view, the reason it gets deprioritized is because it's not obvious what like you spend money and effort to go clean up data, like there's not a oh, an immediate like, well, we launched this email. Like, what so if we go like, oh, we need to do get more in the marketplace, you see more emails, more ads, more landing pages. Like it's seen. And data is the engine behind it, right? Uh, or at least fuel, maybe it's the fuel behind that. And you know, there's often this sort of hidden cost of dealing with getting around poor quality data that is not obvious because at the end of the day, like people do heroic things, and and it feels like this kind of falls in the same thing where it's like the the the immediate benefit of it is not always seen. Does that sound familiar to you?

Scanners Audits And Surprise Failures

Mike Barton 21:40

Yes, a hundred percent. Um, because it happens in the background. Um, not only is the benefit not uh, you know, kind of seen up, except for that end user who finally does quote unquote see the site through their technology. Um uh, but yeah, it's the problem also is not seen, which is why a lot of us don't didn't think about it until someone brought it to our attention because it lives in the code. So for those of us who visually see the page, it looks fine. It looks accessible. In fact, that's another thing that people are surprised about uh when I talk to them is they say, Oh, our team is pretty uh locked in. Like I'm guessing it's not accessible, but we're probably pretty accessible. And then I say, all right, here's a scanner. Uh audio has a free one. You can go scan your site. It'll give you a little detailed breakdown. There's lots of them out there. Um, go run it and come back to me. And almost every time they come back, what? This can't be right. This is hundreds of issues on one page, not across the site, on one page. And I'm like, yeah. And that's just what the automation found. Like I said, there's a lot that finds about 50% of the issues. Uh, there's a usually higher impact, uh, more like the types of issues that are the ones that will get you sued that people with disabilities find when they're actually auditing and going through your site. So uh, whatever tool you scan your site with uh and get your number, it's actually probably you know exponentially more than that. It's under under reporting, right? Yes, it's under reporting, exactly. And so that's the big surprise even a really well-built site where the team is putting their love and attention into that uh that process, it's just gonna have, by the nature of humans, uh mistakes, and especially when the majority of developers don't go through school or through their self-taught experience and think, all right, let me learn the uh web content accessibility guidelines so that I can build an accessible site. Let me stay up to date on what those are every year. Uh, they just don't have the time or the awareness to do so. And so they're not building uh accessible sites uh naturally.

Michael Hartmann 25:15

Yeah. So when you think about things beyond websites, and I love the idea of having a tool that can help identify where you could get better, but what about things like email and you mentioned social? Like how um for people who are listening, like are there a couple of things they should be thinking about in those different kinds of channels?

Mike Barton 25:35

Yeah. Um, so I would say as you whether it's email or even a website, uh a lot of times some of the most common issues to fix are the most basic. And I think I hinted at this a little bit earlier, but uh every email likely is gonna have at least a header image, maybe some images throughout if you want to kind of break up a newsletter that you might have. Um, do you have the right alt text uh built into that so that again, uh somebody who has a screen reader and that's reading the code is at the HTML is able to understand what that email is. When you've got a few links in your newsletter, are those links descriptive so that I, as somebody who can't see, knows what I'm clicking through and clicking to. Um and it's really the same principles on social media. So building it uh with that in mind uh is probably the most helpful part. And that involves, you know, working it into whatever processes you have internally to have that accessibility check essentially. Uh often on our side, it lies with the content of the design teams as we're building those emails, writing them as our design team is uh creating the great assets. Part of what they do is create a really descriptive set of uh uh alt text that we can build uh into those emails. So again, that one super simple, but it makes it readable. And then if those same principles flow into the website, where there's often hundreds and thousands of site uh images and links um small, but all those thousand of images and links together compound to either a really useful site or a really broken site.

Michael Hartmann 27:12

Yeah. So I'm curious, uh, you've been in kind of marketing roles in other places, and now you're in this one here. And how how has this changed? Maybe how you maybe you hinted at it here a minute ago, but like how does this change to how you work with your ops teams when you're building out content or programs or whatever?

Mike Barton 27:31

Yeah. Um so I'd say the biggest thing is that we're thinking about it and we're talking about it. So like that's step one is right, just um which I kind of alluded to with having a champion, um, is ensuring that somebody on the marketing side and the ops side, um, that there's uh agreement, that there's SLAs in place on the importance of accessibility and keeping it so that it's always one of those priorities that it might get down a little, but it's still not below the we're gonna work on it line. Um, and then I think the other thing that we've tried to do really is put those processes in place, like I mentioned before, where when what when we're creating stuff and handing it off to those teams, um, we're handing off accessible experiences so that it's not on them to go back and, you know, create a lot of that accessibility content. They really just have it in their process to check the boxes, like, okay, this is done. If not, hey, Mike, your team missed something, right? Let's get to it.

Michael Hartmann 28:36

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, are they able to kind of go like, hey, you yeah, you missed something? It sounds like that's that's a part of it too. So it's like a leveling up of everybody, right, to help kind of not only the awareness, but knowing what to look for. That's that makes sense.

Mike Barton 28:50

It's like you said with other programs, right? It's like you you just have to kind of build in new processes and new checks and balances, uh, so that uh it it it goes out the door in a way that it should. And initially it's always a little bit rough as you're figuring it out, but uh get to a point where it's just the norm, and that norm is now making it so that you, in theory, get to 25% more of your audience.

Michael Hartmann 29:15

Right. Like uh on balance, do you think like it has slowed things down for your team to execute, or you know, you're now in a state where you're back kind of back to where you would have been before you had been considering this? Like how does that how does that impact everything like that?

Mike Barton 29:34

Um you know, by taking the time, we'll we'll use the images and the uh link descriptions as as examples. Does it take a few more seconds, 30 seconds maybe to write write a descriptive one compared to a so does that add up? Yeah, it adds up. Um but does that increase in time outweigh the impact it will have with the end user? No, it's it's much more like this, right? So it does take a little bit more time. The other thing that we're starting to find find again, going back to AI, is AI can help speed that up. That there's now uh a lot easier ways to have AI um preview, like, hey, here's how I think all these link descriptions and all these image descriptions should be based on what I'm seeing. And then we're just going in and oh yeah, that's right, or oh no, missed this, or it could be more simple. And then you kind of reteach it. Uh so I think AI will actually further speed up uh and simplify the accessibility process as well uh as you're working with with options.

Michael Hartmann 30:33

Yeah, that's it's interesting. I was like just yesterday, I had gotten a little set of screenshots that was a list of users of a system uh because the person couldn't export it. And so I was able to, with OCR, like pull the this blob of text out, put it in a document, and then run it through an AI thing, they'd like go like uh give me generate a list that I could put into a spreadsheet, which is what I needed. But is it is it because I noticed that some of the the texts are being clipped off, I also told it like give me a score about how confident you are in that you can't you got the right stuff. And it's like that's the kind of thing. Like if you could do that, like give a score on each thing and yeah um sort of a compliance score. Like that's I love that idea.

Email And Social Accessibility Basics

Mike Barton 31:21

Yeah, yeah. Uh and I think that's kind of the wave of future. I'm also a big proponent that there's always got to be that human review that even if you know it gives itself a score of 10 out of 10, there's gonna be some that it just misdiagnoses. The other interesting thing with AI and um accessibility and disability is you know, AI is trained on arguably kind of the norm or you know, what is just out there. And what's out there is largely inaccessible. It's largely uh in some ways ableist, uh meaning it's not built or talked about in a way that includes people with disabilities. And so AI, we found really you got to train it a lot on how to think about it. How to it we do similar scoring, and it took us a little bit of time to get AI that we were using to kind of realize, okay, this is the checklist, this is how I should score it, this is how I should approach it. So even the LLMs uh aren't quite up to snuff in terms of accessibility. They're in the same boat we are, I guess. Uh so that's we have a shared lack of understanding in some ways, uh, in terms of accessibility. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Hartmann 32:31

Well, and I'm in my experience, just in stuff like that I'm doing on a repeated basis, like prepping for these, right? I use AI to help help do some of that. And it I I find it um if I'm not careful, right, and starts to veer off a little bit from what I was doing. My dog agrees, this is important. All right. Um, so let me let me so this can be overwhelming, right? I'm I'm sitting here kind of like uh going, like, there seems like this is a huge thing. So for the audience out there who's listening and going, like, yeah, I'm convinced need to be doing something to this, there's a business case for it, not just a compliance one. Like, where should they start? Like, how do like where like where would you recommend they start on that?

Mike Barton 33:15

Yeah. I mean, I think the first, especially as you're trying to build a business case, if somebody's listening, right, and they're like, I get it. I need to get my boss on board, I need to get the you know, procurement and budget on board. I think step one is doing a scan, uh, like I mentioned earlier, and just putting your site in to see how many errors per page, uh, how much at risk would you be for a lawsuit? And that starts to really, I think, uh, again, kind of be illuminating to people of like, oh, we actually have a significant number of issues there. And then from there, if you're like most companies uh who realize we should do something, but we're not gonna hire more people, uh, we're not gonna expect our developers to all of a sudden become experts in accessibility or even over time be experts in it. I think a lot of companies need to find a partner uh like Audioye or you know, whoever makes sense for them, who will take that, the majority of that work off them, who has the expertise already, who has the understanding of the web content accessibility guidelines, and who has the understanding of for a business in e-commerce or for a SaaS business, um, here are the types of workflows that you got to nail and make sure they're accessible, because those are gonna be the key to uh unlocking conversion, unlocking sales and things like that. And so I think if you find the right partner, like almost any other kind of SaaS product, right, where in a perfect world, yeah, you would build it on your own and you would run it. Uh, but accessibility at the end of the day is probably not one of those. And so uh finding a partner who will work with you, uh, help you understand uh the space, understand the best practices uh for your company and your space. I think that's the unlock uh is is really just finding uh the right partner to help you uh from both an automated perspective and again that human layer of uh performing audits on those really important workflows.

Michael Hartmann 35:15

Maybe this is a pretty tactical question, but the the scanning for websites sounds easy. Is there similar tools for things like email and digital that kind of like display app like that?

Mike Barton 35:27

There are. Um they're typically different from yeah, website offerings. Um so we have found as an example, like at Audio I, um, we have our automation obviously running on our website. Uh our audits then pick up issues, and then we write custom fixes that then deploy through the automation. So even the issues found through humans, the fixes to those issues can be deployed. So the large majority of those issues get fixed there. But it is important for our social team, our email team, our content team to know some of those same best practices so that as we push out the content uh that's pushing to the website, uh, it is accessible. So I think that's where the the learning is important is for that last person, uh, or the first person, I guess, arguably, on the content and design and uh dev team for some of those areas to understand some of those best practices.

Does It Slow Teams Down

Michael Hartmann 36:21

All right. I know you said it depends on like on this, and I'm I want to get see if we can narrow down. So I'm gonna assume that there's some common patterns, right? Low-hanging fruit or things where people I hate to say lazy, but you know, lazy practices that some teams have that affect um accessibility. Like what are what are some of the most common things you're seeing where people could start to have an impact tomorrow, even? Yeah.

Using AI To Speed Compliance

Mike Barton 36:52

Um so I've talked about images and links too much, so I won't go there again. But WebAim uh is a nonprofit that does a yearly scan of the top million websites, and they've been doing it for a number of years. Every year they're finding that of those top million websites, you know, 95% are inaccessible. Next year it's like 94.8. Um, so it's kind of alarming that in today's modern age, less than 5% of the sites, the home pages are completely accessible. And so that's because of images links. The other thing that's a huge unlock, in my opinion, um, is form fields. So you think about a form field, right? Okay, that's how you contact a company if you want to uh talk to a person, book a demo. That's how you sign up for an account. E-commerce, obviously, that's your checkout flow. There's almost no CTA in an industry that doesn't involve a form of some sort, even a simple one. And if I'm using a very complex form and I have an error, um, I can see that, oh, I switched my first name and last name, or I put I started to put my shipping information in the um credit card box. Forms are one of the top three uh issues most common across any industry, any site, that are built wrong. And so a screen reader going through that form might come, you know, I added the uh my yellow t-shirt to cart. I had such visual descriptions. I know what it is, I'm actually excited about this. I get to the form, and the first form says on my screen reader, um, input one, and I tab forward input two, instead of saying right a descriptive first name, last name. Another common form uh is that it has them labeled correctly, but then for some reason there's an error that happens, and that error box is not appropriately uh accessible. And so I know there's an error, I just don't know how to fix it or what it is. And so sometimes I guess around and maybe I'll get it fixed again to your frustration point. How how long am I going to be frustrated before I bounce and go to somebody else? So that to me, if you're looking at like if I do one, if I focus in one area, what's my big unlock? It's make sure your forms uh are accessible. And that will unlock, I think, a lot for uh a company in any industry.

Michael Hartmann 39:26

Well, and I would think that ties directly to the what we talked about early on, which is the business part of the business case for this is you've you make yourself open to people who otherwise might not be able to do business with you because they can't get through the gate or the through a door as you used before. Um that's interesting. Yeah, uh that's funny. I was laughing because not because of the story you're telling, because I was thinking like I was just working with a team who had a um hidden fields on a form and they were custom question one, custom answer one, right? And uh they're not they they were hidden, right? They were meant not to be seen, but at the same time, I can imagine with the way you're talking about, like, as it's going through the code, that may come up, right? So then probably a way to describe like this is something you don't need to worry about. Um yeah, for sure. So so curious, so um I'm curious on two fronts here. Like when I think about this, so for customer-facing stuff, what about like employee-facing stuff? So, like we were just talking before this, right? Adobe Summit just happened, so we've got a lot of people who'll be listening who are Marketo or HubSpot or whatever. Like, are you seeing, and then there's obviously all kinds of like internal tools for HR and you know operations and finance, et cetera? Like, are like is this a kind of thing that also is applying to those kinds of tools that are used for employees? Like, is it employee so like supporting employees with with disabilities a part of this we should be thinking about too?

Where To Start And Build A Case

Mike Barton 40:57

100%. Uh, because uh a good company will also have uh employees who have disabilities uh represented as part of their workforce. We talked earlier about um I don't see the world through my I don't I I tend to see the world through my lens. Well, if you have other people on your team who have different lenses who might have various disabilities, that makes it much easier for your team to think about the world more equally. Um and so we're actually seeing more and more, especially in SaaS, uh, that companies who are getting to like the end of the procurement process, let's say there's two companies who are pretty equal on price, pretty equal on uh capabilities, but one of them has an accessible product. That company is going to choose the one that's accessible because they've got employees who need to use it, or just for various government regulations and even more so in the EU, uh, it's required, especially if you have government funding or work with government entities as well, uh, that those uh products need to be accessible. So one of our big customers is an HR SaaS provider, and we started working with them, and we have a number of people with disabilities, and they quickly found like, hey, this doesn't work, this doesn't work. And it was great to work with them because they were like, we want to make this accessible. And so we worked with them, and now they have a very accessible, compliant product. Uh, and I think more and more companies are gonna start to see that if their products themselves are not accessible and usable by people with various uh disabilities, they're gonna start to lose deals uh more and more in the future.

Michael Hartmann 42:37

Are you are you seeing and hearing um company like procurement teams who are including this as part of their evaluation process too? Yes. Yep.

Mike Barton 42:48

Yeah, we've uh we've seen a number of uh deals that uh and and heard about a number that um I like I said either crash or um end up closing because the the final deciding factor was okay, this is accessible uh and will allow me to hire people with disabilities to use the product, or the people who are currently on my team uh who have disabilities will be able to use it.

The Biggest Quick Win With Forms

Michael Hartmann 43:16

That's yeah, it's fascinating. I hadn't even really thought about that a whole lot. So um so um we touched on a couple of different channels. I just maybe you talked about social a little bit. Uh we haven't really talked about video. I'm kind of curious about video in particular. Like how because both in terms of like I guess it could be animated gifs or actual video kinds of things. Like, how is it how is that um because I know like lots of sites have things that have movement or uh have video that plays uh sometimes without being prompted, right? How does that is that a good thing, bad thing? Like what are the are there things that p companies can do to make that better?

Mike Barton 44:03

Yeah, so I mentioned the web content accessibility guidelines earlier. There's a number of video specific um guidelines there. Uh and some of them address what you just said, uh auto starting. Like that's not a like that's considered not a good thing because a person with disability I don't like I don't like it anyway.

Michael Hartmann 44:21

So exactly.

Mike Barton 44:22

So that's one of those things that if it's built correctly for a person with disability, you're benefited because it doesn't play when you don't want it to, right? Uh that you're able to choose. So that's one. Uh having uh detailed transcriptions associated with it. So again, if somebody with a screen reader can't read it, if there's no transcription or uh see it, uh there's no transcription, uh then they can't uh consume it. Obviously, they can often listen, but some people have both auditory uh and visual disabilities uh close captioned, right? For people who are just having auditory. So some of the things you you see actually uh like government press conferences, I feel like are really good examples where they'll have somebody who's uh live uh signing uh in in real time, they'll then include that as part of the download. And again, like having transcriptions and very clear um uh kind of written content that uh uh goes with the video. Um and again, if you are a video heavy site, that's not a small uh order to do a lot of that. So uh it is very important, um, especially for sites where demos and other types of videos are important to uh moving somebody along in whatever your process is. Uh that's definitely uh an area that uh has a big impact uh that not a lot of people I think initially kind of think about in terms of accessibility either.

Employees Procurement And Video Standards

Scanner Link And Closing

Michael Hartmann 45:50

Yeah. I mean I think one of the one of the things that I is kind of going through the journey of becoming a podcast or starting a podcast is I didn't know anything about a lot of this kind of audio video stuff. And there's some incredible tools, some of which we use, some of which we don't, that are really good at at um doing things like transcription now. And I think they've just gotten better over even in the last year, it feels like you know you add in AI tools as well and they can kind of to prove we just had a guest on who actually uh talked about how he used AI to evaluate audio the audio not just the transcript right so for getting insights about um customer calls and what like what language causes their the pitch of their voices changed things like that. And it seems like hopefully some of that kind of stuff in this realm could be beneficial right where you could help you know with that. So well and going going back to AO and SEO and geo that we talked about earlier uh if you're including detailed descriptions and transcriptions on your page associated with the video you've now got a lot more information that those tools can uh index and that will contribute to you know the page uh interest and you know the page uh uh content yeah I mean that was a big I I this big aha for me today was what you just talked about how the a lot of those um LLMs basically are using the code I think I knew this for search right I kind of inherently knew um although it feels like it biased towards the visual content like what's visible yeah I I hadn't thought about it from an AEO GEO standpoint because it's I don't know like I mean again probably like oh yeah of course it does that because that's what it has access to but kind of combining that with what we just talked about is a really interesting one you know uh been fascinating Mike thank you so much uh hey my pleasure anytime I can join another uh Michael uh and and talk for some time it's uh it's my pleasure yeah yeah well it was a lot it's a lot of fun and I I I know like both from our our initial conversation before this and this one like I've already like I've keep learning uh and it's one that I think I hope I hope our audience out there really takes this to heart and thinks about how can they start to to bring this back to their organization because I I think your point about it you know yes it's not trivial to to do this at the same time there is a business case that can be made which I'm a big fan of right if like if you can do it because I think otherwise the the math for me is uh a risk reward kind of thing right so if the risk is relatively low and the cost of that is going to be relatively low then am I going to invest the money but if the reward is really big that's a different model to think about which is I think that's really the for me the framing has changed from it's just a risk thing and I like do I am I willing to take the risk and the consequences of that or to to now like is there a reward that I can get from this which it sounds like there is yep yep it's the usability it's the customer experience it's the increased uh opportunity for conversion with a group of people who may already be again knocking on that digital door trying to get in and now you're opening the drawers and saying come on in yeah welcome and uh I think that's that's the business case that makes a lot of sense uh to to people like yourself. Yeah I love it. Well Mike it's been a lot of fun I I hope this resonates with our audience. I think it was it's good for them to hear about this. If uh if anyone wants to kind of follow up and learn more or keep up with what's going on with you and uh audio eye what's the best way for them to do that?

Mike Barton 49:48

Yeah I mean uh I'm on LinkedIn so uh I think I'm officially Michael Barton on uh on LinkedIn uh uh with audio eye and uh yeah go audio eye.com uh I've I've mentioned uh a scanner a few times I think that's a great place to start to really just kind of have that first light bulb go off and and and realize how inaccessible uh your site might be.

Michael Hartmann 50:11

Fantastic Mike it was again pleasure appreciate it thanks to everyone out there who's continued to support us and listen and watch now we appreciate that. If you have ideas for topics or guests or you want to be a guest like Mike, uh feel free to reach out to Naomi, Mike Rizzo, or me and we'd be glad to get the ball rolling. Thanks everyone. Bye