Mike tells us about automating accessibility: “as a blind consumer, of content, information, whatever, I don’t care where I get it, as long as I get it. Information is what I need.”
Thanks to Tenon 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 podcast where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcripts for this episode, Tenon provides accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. My guest today is Mike Calvo. Hey, Mike, how are you?
Mike
Good. How are you?
Nic
I’m doing pretty good. Really happy to get to talk to you today.
Mike
As am I.
Nic
So let’s jump right in and ask you what’s your disability or impairment?
Mike
I am totally blind since birth. Well, actually, I had some light perception as a child and lost the rest of it when I was about 18. So I saw enough to get in trouble. Not enough to be usable.
Nic
Right! What would you be your greatest barrier on the web?
Mike
I think it’s the lack of adherence to web standards and accessibility practices. And when I say accessibility, I don’t just mean following WCAG compliance rules and standards. I also mean, usable, make sure that you’re taking as many varied types of disabilities into account when you’re making your website not only accessible, but usable. The user experience is as important as the user interface.
Nic
Would you say accessibility is a subset of usability?
Mike
I would say that they’re that they’re pretty right there hand in hand, because to suggest that one is a subset of another means that you need that you could possibly have one without the other. And I don’t think so i think that I think that they’re both one is as important as the other. You can’t have a usable website, if it’s not accessible. And accessibility starts and making a website as usable as possible.
Nic
I find no argument which which what you’re saying is spot on. If you had a message for designers and developers, what would that be?
Mike
I think that accessibility is a best business practice. Bolting on accessibility is always going to be more expensive than being as inclusive with your user base. And understanding that we aren’t disabled in the way that we can’t do stuff. We as disabled users of the web, do things differently. Therefore, if you want to have our patronage, our support, our buying of your products, then you need to adjust your website to facilitate the way that we do things. Whether that be captioning for folks that are deaf, whether that be putting all tags, alternative text tags, on graphics, whatever it takes, but get to know your user. And then you can create an inclusive experience instead of so much focus on accessibility. Let’s try and give everybody a chance to play in this great big web of ours.
Nic
I like that. Let me play devil’s advocate here. You said, If businesses want our patronage, do they want our patronage?
Mike
Well, as a unapologetic capitalists, I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, billions of dollars, billions of discretionary dollars, from basically almost 1/3 of the Earth’s people that identify as having some form of disability. I mean, how do you know how do you know which disability is more important? Or another? Should we justify Oh, well, that’s just a, there’s only a small group that have that disability? No, let’s just try and make things work for everybody. And if we just come outside of our little boxes, our comfort zones and talk to one another, and share and say I really love what you’re doing. And it would make it so much easier for me as a person with a visual impairment to be able to use your product or service if you could only do this or do that. And I think that by partnering together, we can build a more inclusive web experience.
Nic
I really like the idea of working together for it. It’s not It’s not our jobs as disabled users to always be complaining and saying, Hey, your product is not accessible and all that. At the same time. We can partner with people to get to teach about our experience. If and when we’re able to do that, and they can learn from us. And if we work in collaboration, then we’ll get much further.
Mike
Well, that’s, that’s where one where we, as a company at Pneuma solutions are also trying to look at making sure that we can use augmented remediation, which means computer assisted or artificial intelligence to do these very tedious jobs. Accessibility is not difficult, Nicolas, it’s tedious. And there’s a huge attention to detail. And you know, who does that really good, that computer? Does it really good. And it doesn’t take a rest, it doesn’t go to sleep, it doesn’t quit because it’s tired. And you know, what, as a blind consumer, of content, information, whatever, I don’t care where I get it, as long as I get it. Information is what I need. And if accessibility compliance by humans is standing in my way, then by golly, let’s let the machines do it. And and maybe we’ll have a much more accessible world.
Nic
Let me ask you this in terms of automating accessibility. When we’re talking about automated accessibility testing, we can identify about 35 to 40% of accessibility issues automatically. Can we really rely on automated accessibility fixing for 100% of making this site accessible?
Mike
Not yet. But that’s the key, can we depend totally on, on autonomous driving cars? No, but they do a really good job. And you know what, the more you use them, the better they get. And that’s the same thing here, by accepting the fact that there is the distinct, very strong possibility that computer assisted. Accessibility is possible, not only possible, but it’s being done already, as you said, 40%, when it comes to website accessibility 95% when it comes to document accessibility. So you’re talking a market and a technology that’s growing every day, and it’s not just little, little Pneuma solutions is doing this is something that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, these are all dealing with computer vision, when it comes to augmented media remediation of whatever kind.
Nic
If you were to look into your crystal ball, when do you think we can reach 100% of automation for accessibility? On the web?
Mike
It is a cloudy ball indeed. But no, I think that I mean, I think it’s fair to say that within five years of 2021, so in 2025/2026, there abouts, what we’re going to find is we’re going to find that technology is a whole lot closer to that 100%. The reality is that not even humans are 100%. In our research, of dealing with 20 different remediators on one document, everybody does it different. And they still are WCAG compliant. So does that mean that they’re wrong? No, it just means that you say tomato, I say tomato. And I don’t care, as long as I can understand what the word means is sometimes you’re gonna pay a little bit better when you remediate it, and the other person, maybe the other person over there’s got trouble at home, they needed to go to the office, they missed a heading or two, and oops. But you know, I think that we need to give augmented media remediation a try. And the website stuff it’ll come with, there’s no such thing as a silver bullet, things like AccessiBe. And those types of products are just not where they they should be. And, you know, I like the spirit of it. I like the idea of it. You know, the only reason that we need to have people do it is because it can’t be automated. But the moment it can be automated, why should people have to worry about it? I mean, do you expect somebody to draw you a map every time you want to go to the grocery store? Now you just turn on your GPS, and it takes you there? You know, there used to be a time where if you were a blind person and you needed and you need a mobility instruction to get to the grocery store, they’d give you a tactile map. don’t need that anymore. Does that makes sense?
Nic
That makes perfect sense. Hey, Mike, thank you for your insights. This was fascinating
Mike
Thank you for having me.
Nic
I think the the audience is going to find this interesting. I’ll see you around on the web and LinkedIn and keep in touch.
Mike
Thank you.
Nic
Cheers.