Speaker 1:
Welcome to Women in WP, a bi-monthly podcast about women who blog, design, develop, and more in the WordPress community.
Amy:
Welcome to Women inWP, I’m Amy Masson.
Tracy:
And I’m Tracy Apps.
Amy:
And our guest today is Rian Rietveld, joining us from the Netherlands. Rian teaches, writes, and advocates for WordPress accessibility. Welcome, Rian.
Tracy:
Yay!
Rian:
Thank you.
Amy:
And we like to start each episode by asking our guests to tell us about their journey into WordPress. How did you get started?
Rian:
Well, way back when I was developing websites, I had my own CMS. People are asking, “I want to change my password. I want to add that functionality. Maybe you can write this.” And I thought, “Why reinvent the wheel for my own CMS? Instead, I should have a larger CMS already there with all the possibilities.”
Rian:
So I went looking for a CMS, and first I tried PHP-Nuke. That is something to avoid because that got hacked twice. It’s also like a [inaudible 00:01:20] solution, and there wasn’t [inaudible 00:01:25]. So I was looking further, and I went looking [inaudible 00:01:29] I don’t know if [inaudible 00:01:32] was around [inaudible 00:01:35] different kinds of CMS, and I looked into WordPress and I liked the way it was set up. It was very [inaudible 00:01:45] themes and plug ins, the core itself, and how easy you can write and add stuff [inaudible 00:01:58] 2008, I think.
Tracy:
Nice, old school.
Rian:
Yeah, very old school. [inaudible 00:02:07]
Tracy:
So you wrote your own CMS. What inspired you to do that? Why did you have a lot of development stuff?
Rian:
It’s like a challenge, and you want to give your customers the opportunity to propose new items, to change the pages, to add images, and I used a C editor, a CK editor for that. That worked very well, and that gives the clients the opportunity to do more themselves. It’s also nice to build. It’s like, yeah, let’s try to do that.
Tracy:
I love it.
Amy:
Yeah. My mind’s just blow here. I’m like, “Oh, I made my own CMS.” What?
Rian:
It’s just, I love to code, and I love a challenge, and I learned PHP, and when my son was in swimming lessons, I had this book, PHP4, and I was reading that and trying stuff out. That’s really for me, I like that. If there’s a question, I like to call that. [crosstalk 00:03:20]
Amy:
What did you call it?
Rian:
[inaudible 00:03:21] get out of work. Sorry?
Amy:
What did you call it?
Rian:
It was nameless.
Amy:
Nameless.
Tracy:
It’s a symbol. It looks like Prince.
Rian:
Yeah, no.
Amy:
So what kind of things could somebody do if they were their customer and they had access to their site through the CMS that you made?
Rian:
I think for each client, I rebuilt with extra functionality what they wanted. I had just the core functionality was just posts and pages and upload images, and then for each customer, I added new functionality, what I wanted. For one customer, he wants to have an API with spreadsheets somewhere, with all the orders that need to get out and in. A list of all the motorcycles they sold. I [inaudible 00:04:17] just custom into that CMS for each client.
Tracy:
That is awesome.
Rian:
Well, no. It’s just fun, and this is where I made my living.
Amy:
Do you still have sites using that CMS?
Rian:
One.
Amy:
That are live?
Rian:
There’s one still live.
Amy:
Awesome.
Rian:
They called me a year ago that the editor didn’t work anymore, and I look it up, and it still works in Firefox. But I think that’s about seven, eight years old now. So maybe older. Some people just never change, or never invest in a new website. So I think one is still running.
Tracy:
That’s hilarious. I love it. I love it. You just add that. That’s ridiculously impressive. So you’re pretty well known in accessibility world. What was that transfer, or when did you kind of really focus on that? Because I know for me, there was this time when I kind of discovered it, and then I started really spending a lot of time into learning about accessibility. So when and what drove that?
Rian:
In the Netherlands, 2010, the legislation changed, and all government sites need to be accessible. I thought, “Well, that’s a huge market.” And I really wanted to learn that. And I followed courses, and I get myself certified with a Dutch Accessibility Association. And then the work came. For a few government sites, but also [inaudible 00:06:00] the Dutch [inaudible 00:06:02].
Rian:
Then I built a website in WordPress for them with the Genesis framework. People who are blind wanted to use the CMS of WordPress, and they asked me, “How can I do that?” I investigate that. How can a blind person use WordPress at the backend, as a CMS? Well, there were some issues. Then I started opening issues, not getting really feedback, and then I said, “Let’s step in myself.”
Rian:
I discovered there was an accessibility team, and I joined that. With the team, we could really make a difference, solve issues, address stuff, and that really helped. So it was [inaudible 00:07:06] people that [inaudible 00:07:08] that really got me into the accessibility team. The weird thing from accessibility is I started as a business opportunity, but then you meet people that actually need accessibility, and then you say, the anger starts. “What? Why can’t I use that, and why aren’t people not more helpful?” So that started me on the journey in accessibility [inaudible 00:07:34] I guess it started and to give talks and to educate.
Tracy:
I love it. Yeah. It is really interesting because I always, when I talk, I say, “Well, we’re all just temporarily abled.” We’re one bad moment away from needing all of the accessibility tools that we kind of just breeze past.
Rian:
[crosstalk 00:08:03] and you think, “I’m getting old and my eyes are seeing worse.” Don’t trust. Then I get really, really angry when you have site that’s light gray with white letters. I just kind of [inaudible 00:08:20] I’m not really having a really serious access of disability, but I’m just getting older, and that happens to all of us. So one day all the young designers really love this, will see their work and say, “Oh, did I do that?”
Tracy:
Yep, pretty much.
Amy:
I was reading your story on Hero Press, and one of the things that really struck me about your work with accessibility is how you learned what works and what doesn’t work when you’re working with developers. Can you talk a little more about that?
Rian:
Yeah. Developers are really trying, but they just don’t know what’s important for accessibility. If you say this wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong, that need to change, they really get angry. Like, “Why were you telling me what to do wrong? I always did this, and why should I do the different?” So if you approach it differently, with explaining why, and this is the most important thing I learned. You have to explain why something is wrong, and give an alternative on how to do it better, so that they are not in a corner, like, “I do everything wrong,” but you help the developer, and I always see developers really want to learn, but they think it’s difficult.
Rian:
It is because you have to look at your code a different way. People don’t use [inaudible 00:09:57] the same as you do. They don’t use a mouse. they don’t use their eyes. they maybe cannot hear very well. So if you explain why and also how to fix it, most of them are very open. That’s a lot of fun, but all the interns I got in our company [inaudible 00:10:18] They don’t know anything about accessibility because it’s not learned in schools in the Netherlands, and then they realize why it’s needed, and then they become advocates, and they make their final assignment about accessibility. They go to the school and talk about accessibility. It’s really fun because then those young people see how important it is and how left out it is from the education and from the normal workflow from developers.
Tracy:
I agree, because I was all self taught on anything accessibility, and I’m now teaching, it’s like a bootcamp for marketers, and UX people, and I even looked in the curriculum, and even though even though it’s much more relevant, they kind of breeze over the accessibility, and so because I am who I am, and I sneak it into everything. But for others, how do you introduce that? How do you teach it? How do you get people on board? What’s your methods of bringing people along in that journey?
Rian:
Well, first, awareness to show different ways people use the web. If you ask developer, how does a blind person look at your website or navigate your website, they have no idea. So if you show them how a screen reader works, for example, then they have a better understanding about what is important. Like make your plain text, or how do you structure like that. So people don’t know. So you have to tell them, “These are different ways people use the websites. Some people use only keyboard.” Then it also becomes a challenge for those developer to really get it right. I think it starts with awareness and explaining how people use the web.
Tracy:
I agree. I actually remember, because I didn’t have any access to any really good screen readers. But I went on the internet, on YouTube, and there were tons of people. I just searched for how do blind people use the web? And people recorded themselves and explained all of these things, and I was like, “This is amazing.” So I told all my students. I was like, “Seriously, go google this. People make these YouTube videos. You can actually watch people use the web.”
Amy:
That’s amazing. I never thought of that.
Rian:
[crosstalk 00:13:16] much they can do. Another part, I think, is writing decent code. HTML is a lost skill. Everything is [inaudible 00:13:27] so you have to explain why it’s important to use semantic HTML, and that’s more difficult, I think. I struggle with that. To really explain why semantic HTML is so important because that’s the language of the web, and that’s the language all the technology uses to understand the website, and that [inaudible 00:13:56] with a lot of JavaScript on it doesn’t work always for every device.
Rian:
We have a beautiful language, HTML5. It’s beautiful. You can do a lot. You can tell complete stories with it, if you have [inaudible 00:14:11] website, it’s flat and meaningless. That’s much harder to explain to them, awareness. [inaudible 00:14:20] to them.
Tracy:
One of the things that luckily, because Google and all of the big names in SEO and that, in marketing, are really starting to reward accessible sites and punish non-accessible sites. I can sell it as, “Okay, we need to do this this way, because this will help with your Google search. Because then Google can see that this is going to be…” Package it in there.
Rian:
Yeah, it’s a bit sneaky like, but it works. Everything you do for accessibility is good for SEO. Because accessibility demands everything is in text, important [inaudible 00:15:09] is available in text, and Google reads text, so yeah.
Tracy:
It’s a win, win.
Rian:
It’s a win, win. Yeah, and people spend a lot on conversion [inaudible 00:15:24] to get all people to the website. If then 20% of the people drops out because they cannot use the website, it’s 20% wasted money. So that’s also a calculation you can make for them.
Tracy:
So true. I like that. Yeah, that’s so true. You’re talking about keeping about accessibility code. Other than the HTML and CSS, and not having everything being a JavaScript, but a site. What kind of methods do use? Because I do like to, even when I do UX work, and I work with engineering teams, I try to give them resources. Okay, this is for a big data application, well, these are some of the things we need to consider for accessibility reasons. What are your go to resources, or how do you keep up with some of the standards, and any new tools or things that are available to the development world?
Rian:
Well, there’s a huge website, LE, it’s A11I-project. I think.
Tracy:
Yes, I love that one.
Rian:
I don’t know, A11I project. The website’s a huge resource. Maybe I could share the links later, and you could put it on.
Amy:
Yes, definitely.
Tracy:
We’ll put it on the show notes, for sure.
Rian:
The A11I project. They are really documenting, giving a lot of resources. They are really expanding at the moment. You can guest write for them if you have good story to tell. [inaudible 00:17:06] magazine has a lot of good resources too. DQ University with the [inaudible 00:17:19] library, I get a lot from Twitter, actually. So I just read Twitter, and a lot of people I follow, like Adrian Roselli, he does excellent research on what works, what doesn’t work. Recent CSS opportunities. His blog is really worth following. Yeah. This is what I use as resource. We recently launched A11I collective, that’s an online platform for accessibility courses, and I teach there. If you want to learn more about accessibility, [inaudible 00:18:02] design contents, I give courses there. That’s the A11I collective.
Tracy:
That’s spectacular. I want to, especially when I’m teaching, giving these resources because getting other people passionate about it, I feel like that’s going to be the best way of getting that awareness out there, and people actually improving sites. Not because they have to, but because they want to.
Rian:
Yep. Most people start like they don’t want to, but if they really get into it, and they see the benefits of it, they really get motivated.
Tracy:
Yeah, and I tell my students, I say, “If you start off,” like I see these corporations that they’re like, “Oh, we don’t have the budget for that.” Well, you don’t have the budget to not do that. By starting off at the beginning with thinking about usability, accessibility, inclusivity, ethical design practices, all of these things, starting off with that, then you don’t have to go and rework it, and spend lots of millions of dollars in either lawsuits or reworks.
Rian:
That’s so true. If you think, like in design. If you think about color, you can use inaccessible colors, but also accessible colors. There’s no difference in work. It’s the same work, just choose different colors. How much more money is that?
Tracy:
Exactly.
Rian:
Sometimes it’s just making choices early on. That is most cost effective if you just include from the beginning.
Tracy:
Perfect.
Amy:
I know when I talk to people, everybody, they think by default, the blind user. When they think of accessibility, they think it’s all blind people. But there’s a whole host of different disabilities that could affect somebody’s ability to use a website. What are some of the ones that are often overlooked that really we should be focusing more on?
Rian:
Cognitive disability. People with attention disorder. If you have a website with all kinds of moving stuff, move around, and things that are really chaotically grouped, for those people, and actually for all people, very hard to actually focus on the content itself as you want to read, and everything is moving around. That’s for people with attention disorder, really hard for read. Actually for everyone.
Rian:
There are people that do not read very well, and then it’s good to have clear language. Not everybody can read well. It’s like we all taught in school we can read perfectly, that’s not true. Some people are dyslexic, or some people just haven’t learned to read. Then clear, simple language. If you want to really get a message, through, it’s really important. Nobody ever said, “Your text is too easy to read.” [crosstalk 00:21:27] so that’s not my quote. It’s from [inaudible 00:21:31] Bishop. But I think that’s really true. Use simple, clear language to get the message through. It doesn’t make you feel dumb, because you can actually understand it. It’s really an art to have a text, simple, and really clear.
Rian:
I wrote recently a blog post, Blind People Don’t Visit my Website. I did research on Twitter and on LinkedIn. I asked, “If you do not have a disability, what are your greatest hurdles on the web?” Then there was [inaudible 00:22:13] sent the distraction, or the models that pop over, fonts that are not readable, and there was a whole list of annoyance for people that do not have a disability. All those issues could be addressed with accessibility guidelines. So people without a disability also benefit from accessibility guidelines because for them also it makes the web way easier. So it’s not one focus on people with a disability, focus on a better experience for everyone, I think.
Tracy:
I agree. I hate the fact that accessibility and usability aren’t really the same word because they are. You can’t have something that’s usable if it’s not accessible.
Rian:
Yeah, it’s a different issue depending on the keyboard or screen, then it has to be accessible for your way of using the web. Then most people think about blind people, but there are also people that are not web savvy, like older people. If you have a very complex form with a lot of choices, people are stranded in choices, and they’re like, “What do I do?” There’s no clear call to action. People really don’t no how to proceed or what to fill out. That’s usability and accessibility too.
Tracy:
One of the things you talk about, blind people, and I always use this thing. Like, okay. I have full visibility. I’m not color blind. But what if I take my laptop outside, and the glare of the sun, I can’t see anything [crosstalk 00:24:09] So it’s like, it’s situational even.
Rian:
It’s even with subtitles. [inaudible 00:24:16] subtitles for blind people. That’s not true. Most people that use subtitles are not deaf. For deaf people. I use them if I cannot follow the English very well. I’m not a native English speaker, so for me, subtitles adds to the understanding of the English, for example. I can follow videos way better if they’re subtitled in the caption.
Rian:
The deaf also [inaudible 00:24:47] on the train you forget your headset. Then it’s also easier to have subtitles. But for people who are not native in the language, it’s also a big help. Or for people who don’t understand it because someone’s talking very fast, then subtitles are also very helpful.
Tracy:
I have subtitles on my TV all the time. I have ADHD, and for me, having both of those, that helps me to pay attention to it. But I see a ton of gen Z, that they all have the captions on always, and they’ll just be on their phone, so they can look up. Almost everyone has captions on now.
Rian:
Super useful.
Tracy:
Super useful, exactly.
Rian:
It’s a lot of work to add them, but when you’ve got specialized people who can do that quickly, and maybe the other caption. They are getting better and better.
Tracy:
Yep, I agree.
Rian:
English, other languages more. But in English, they’re getting better and better. But if you pronounce it well. Google still consistently thinks I’m talking Dutch, even if I’m speaking English, aside the language is in English, and they listen to me, and “Oh, that’s Dutch.” Then it’s just gibberish. So I think my accent is too heavy for Google to understand that I’m speaking in English.
Tracy:
Well, hopefully those will all improve. And you’re right. So Instagram, they have auto captions. Google has auto captions. Even Zoom now I think has auto captions, auto transcripts, and finally TikTok is just releasing their auto captions after all of us complained. There’s a whole group that pretty much just keeps their thumb on TikTok, on accessibility and some of their diversity issues, and their lack of transparency issues.
Rian:
Do you have something against TikTok?
Tracy:
Well, that’s a whole other episode. They’re trying. The problem is that, and I see both sides of this. Being a user experience person and designing products. I understand that they want to be able to have control over the content, and I know that the intention is so that they can keep people safe. However, in practice, like in actual practice, it is a question of the minority and marginalized groups.
Tracy:
So it’s one of those things like Facebook. They’re like, “We’re going to do this real name thing because then it will stop bullying.” And then it posed all these other issues because that.
Rian:
They try.
Tracy:
Exactly. It’s a journey, it’s a process.
Rian:
Can I make one last thing of captions?
Tracy:
Please.
Rian:
Real handwritten captions are still better than auto captions. So it’s really important that someone understands your content, please caption them yourself or by hand or by a specialist.
Tracy:
Do you have any go to programs that you use?
Rian:
For what?
Tracy:
For captioning.
Rian:
I don’t do that myself. I have someone who does that for me.
Tracy:
I found this program called Descript, I think. It gives you a couple hours for free, and it does the auto caption, and then you go in and edit it, and it you can export a file to either upload to YouTube or import into Adobe Premiere Pro to create all the captions. It’s amazing. So there are these tools out there, and they’re getting better. So I agree. I think everything should be captioned.
Amy:
So what do you say to the designer or the client who comes to you, and they want this cutting edge feature that kind of goes against accessibility guidelines. How do you talk them out of those things that they’re seeing other places that they think are so cool that aren’t cool for people with disabilities?
Rian:
I give them the choice. Are you making this for yourself or for your client? You have to focus on your client. Can your client use this? If you like it yourself, that’s okay. But you’re not creating art, you’re creating design that will be used for a purpose, and the purpose is maybe to sell a project or to inform someone. So you have to go from user and not from yourself.
Rian:
That said, it doesn’t always work. If clients really, really, really wants that, and if you really put all your cards on the table. Well, the client pays. But I always say, go from the people who actually use the website. Because that’s what you’re making your money from. Or that’s the people you want to inform.
Tracy:
Yep, I agree.
Rian:
Another argument is, it’s legally not allowed to do that. If it’s a government website, you can say, “Okay, if you want this, that will violate accessibility legislation, so there will be consequences.” In the US, you get sued. In the Netherlands, you get a bad reputation.
Tracy:
So, yeah. So you can basically be like, “Well, then you’re going to lose your funding.”
Rian:
Or you cannot provide government anymore with your software. Yeah, yeah, that’s also. But I always go first for the real reasons like you want people to use your products.
Tracy:
Yeah, I agree. That’s awesome. [crosstalk 00:31:31]
Rian:
[crosstalk 00:31:31] the other stuff.
Tracy:
Pull out all of the stuff.
Amy:
I definitely find it a more difficult conversation when working with the designer than the client. Because if you’ve got a designer that isn’t doing coding or isn’t doing any of the building, and they’re like, “Oh, but I see it here and here, and it looks so great.” It’s a conversation that I have that I would like to get better at.
Rian:
You’re not alone. Designers have strong opinions about their work, and they should because they’re really passionate about their work. Then you have to tell them, “You’re not creating art.” If you’re creating art, you shouldn’t create a website. Websites are used. It’s designed, and it’s used. It’s not art. That’s something they need to understand. That they’re not free in what to do.
Rian:
You see wonderful websites that are unuseful, but with all kinds of effects. Maybe that’s good if you are really emphasizing that you are creating art, but it’s not like you’re creating a website that will be used for a purpose. That’s a difference they need to understand, and I have these conversations too. Not to my [inaudible 00:33:00] but with other companies or [inaudible 00:33:04] I do, and designers are passionate people. They created something they think is very beautiful, and then [inaudible 00:33:14] “You cannot do that.”
Amy:
The designers that are doing design but not development, they are artists, so that’s when it’s hard to separate their art from their work for the client. But I love that, “You’re not creating art.” In their mind, they probably are.
Tracy:
I look at it this way. Because art, a painting on a wall. People be like, “Oh, I get this feeling.” Art, it’s to evoke a feeling. It’ll be a different feeling for each person. You don’t want a stop sign each person that sees it a different feeling. Because that would be dangerous. It’s more like engineering than it is art.
Rian:
Yeah, but it can be beautiful. It doesn’t mean it [inaudible 00:34:11] that’s extra challenge. You have to make something you think is very beautiful, but also accessible.
Tracy:
I like that challenge. I think it’s a fun challenge to be creative.
Rian:
Yeah. You need to think maybe out of the box or maybe more longer about solutions. If you were a designer, I think that’s a challenge, and that should be fun.
Tracy:
I think so.
Rian:
Is it an English translation, applied art? Is that a good word? Applied art? Oh, well. It’s a translation directly from Dutch, but that’s an art.
Tracy:
I think I know what you’re talking about, but I’m also bad with words.
Rian:
What’s the translation?
Amy:
I’m not an artist, so.
Rian:
Me neither. I’m a really hardcore developer. [crosstalk 00:35:13] it’s really awful.
Tracy:
Do you still get to do development?
Rian:
Not as much as I like. So I started a side project in my free time just to get some coding done, because I really, really miss that. Yeah. I really miss just creating stuff in code, and making it work, and learning new stuff. When you’re not developing, you’re also not studying really how to solve things. By solving problems, you learn, and I kind of miss that. So I’m doing a bit of coding in my own time, but the rest is just studying about accessibility and teaching at the moment, and reviewing other people’s work.
Tracy:
Speaking of reviewing other people’s work, how has the WordPress itself been doing when it comes to the accessibility issues of past? In your viewpoint.
Rian:
I actually don’t know very well. I left like 12 years ago the accessibility team. Seems like ages. Yeah. I took a time off from accessibility of WordPress itself, because it was an intense time with the introduction of Gutenberg, and I thought I needed to step down and take care of my own personal health, and I thought, let it go.
Rian:
But now with the full site editor, and all the new blogs being made, I think I need to study what’s going on on the front end. I did a lot of work on the backend, like on Gutenberg, how to make it accessible for the people could use the [inaudible 00:37:18] keyboard and the screen reader, and I leave that alone now. I focus on the backend, or the front end, and I’m going to research that.
Rian:
I think full site editing is really something we need to look into. It’s a really interesting development, and I want to see how that goes and how that will impact the front end. So that’s something I want to look into, but I haven’t done yet.
Tracy:
I agree. I have my get off my lawn rants about some of the things. I see there are definitely improving some of the big kind of low hanging fruit, the easier issues.
Rian:
[crosstalk 00:38:08] something.
Tracy:
So I’m really hoping that things continue to improve. The designer in me is a little scared on full site editing.
Rian:
Well, I’m really curious how they will handle larger sites, when you’re actually not supposed to change anything. But I think it’s just, they throw it in the community now, and then 5.8. So go play with it, go see. I’m really curious what comes out of that. I’m really not sure.
Rian:
Something has improved in the backend. It’s like the color contrast of the thing. It’s more black and white. It’s much more readable, I think. That’s a good improvement.
Amy:
If there was one plugin you would recommend to people to put on the site to help with accessibility, what plugin would that be? I put you on the spot.
Rian:
Okay. Well, if you are creating forms, I would select [Grafty 00:39:21] forms, because that really got an accessibility overhaul lately. But that’s really a good plugin if you want to have forms. So that’s the one plugin I would recommend if you have forms on your website.
Tracy:
So I am currently working just a couple hours a week on doing accessibility audit of a large website. So what are your favorite tools to do that, to check on the accessibility? I’ve used Wave. I’ve got a bunch of these other ones, but I’m sure there’s more out there, or sites that you would recommend to be able to really figure out where the problem pieces are of the websites.
Rian:
The main tool I use is my keyboard. Can I reach everything with the keyboard only? Can I open all the slope models? The keyboard focus, is that logical? And the other one is X deaf tools, and then on a page you can generate a report of accessibility issues, and I really like that tool. It gives you a critical or serious or you need to review this, that’s really good tool. I use headings map to check the heading structure of a website, and I use an add-on called Landmarks that gives landmarks structure of a website, if that makes sense.
Rian:
Mainly, actually, and I read code. I just in [inaudible 00:41:09] I read code. If it’s a link or it’s a button, or did I make [inaudible 00:41:15] is everything [inaudible 00:41:17] does it work with keyboard? So actually keyboard and X, those two are my main go to, and inspector. Yeah.
Tracy:
Nice, nice.
Rian:
Well, X doesn’t get you anything, and the keyboard doesn’t get everything, and the keyboard also is really something you need to test manually. But those two are really get you a lot.
Amy:
Awesome.
Tracy:
I agree. So one of the things. So I’ve got a couple of the different ones, and I try them out, different ones. So some of the things, like in the accessibility guidelines or whatever, they’re very strict. It says, “The label needs to say what the text says.” What is read to the screen reader needs to be the same. So it will absolutely catch anything that is not matching perfectly.
Tracy:
However, what if the site is a large eCommerce site, so they added extra context since you don’t have the whole visual of this is a big dropdown menu, and I can see I’m looking at men’s products, women’s products, sale, deals. So it’s saying, “Shop women’s products. Shop men products.” In the label, so that’s what’s read by the screen reader. So it doesn’t match the men, women, deals on the site.
Rian:
If you use voice recognition software, you can target links by their name. If the audio label is different than actually what you can see, there’s a mix up, because the accessible name, actually what the name is of the link is what’s in the audio label. Then people with voice recognition software cannot target the link because it doesn’t say what they see. That’s the reason why.
Tracy:
I see that.
Rian:
Yeah. But if you start with the same words, like men’s clothes, shop these. Or maybe do it with something with a sentence that actually [inaudible 00:43:48] the words start right. The first one, then they’re easier. Well, something like that.
Tracy:
No, that makes a lot of sense. I’m pretty sure they have that, but I’ll double check now, because I want to make sure. But that makes a lot of sense. I didn’t realize that that’s, it’s good.
Rian:
Start of the sentence. Make that the same. Yeah. And sometimes, well, if you have three reviews, you have five different opinions. Accessibility’s not a hard science sometimes because sometimes people have different opinions about how to solve stuff.
Amy:
Well, it’s been wonderful having you with us today. Before we go, can you let our listeners know where they can find you online?
Rian:
Yeah. The company I work for is Level Level, and the email is level-level.com. The URL, level-level.com. I’m teaching at the A11I collective, that’s A11I-collective.com. You can find the courses. You can find me on Twitter at [inaudible 00:45:05]. That’s just my name, my handle.
Tracy:
Awesome.
Amy:
Great, thank you for being here.
Tracy:
Thank you.
Rian:
Thank you for having me.
Tracy:
Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram or Twitter, or join our Facebook group. We would honored if you subscribe to the show. You can find us on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and iTunes. Finally, if you want to be on the show or know someone who would, visit our website at womeninwp.com. Until next time.
