Speexx Exchange Podcast – Episode 24:
Why Accessibility Is More Than an Add on to Your Content with Michael Osborne

Intro 0:01    

Welcome to the Speexx Exchange podcast with your host Donald Taylor. As a renowned learning and development industry expert and chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute, Donald sits down with experts from around the globe to talk business communication, learning technology, language, digital transformation, and engaging, upskilling, and reskilling your organization. This podcast is to you by Speexx, the first intelligent language learning platform for the digital workplace. Listen in, and you might learn a thing or two.  

Donald Taylor 0:35    

Welcome to this episode of the Speexx Exchange podcast with me, your host, Donald Taylor, and today’s guest, Michael Osborne, who describes himself as a user experience-driven developer focusing on accessibility. Michael, it’s accessibility that we’re here to talk about today. Could you introduce yourself, please?  

Michael Osborne 0:54    

Sure, I’m Mike Osborne. This summer, I have been in the industry for about eight and a half years. I come from a video games background, and I spent the last eight and a half years designing simulations for some of the world’s largest companies. In the next few weeks, I’m starting a new role at a company called UpSkill Digital, where I’ll be a Learning Experience Designer. Their mission is to use digital to further people’s business and careers. So, it’s a role I’ll fit in very nicely, and I’m excited to be joining.   

Donald Taylor 1:29    

Fantastic. Michael, we’re talking today about accessibility, which, unfortunately, has too often seemed like an add-on, something you have to sort of stick on to a project or a bit of content at the end to tick a couple of boxes. Your experience in this field, your knowledge of it shows that isn’t the case. Why is accessibility so important?  

Michael Osborne 1:50    

I think you’ve only got to look at the numbers to realize soon why accessibility is essential. So, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in the region of 15 to 25% of the world’s population, about 1 billion people have a disability. If we take some UK statistics, 14.1 million people or one in five people have a disability. There are 4.2 million people, so about 12.8 of the working population of 32.6 million are working with a disability. With up to 80% of disabilities hidden, it’s likely that those figures are significantly underreported, both through fear of discrimination and not getting the job and other reasons such as disabilities going undiagnosed. They might include dyslexia and ADHD, as an example.  

Donald Taylor 2:39    

Dyslexia, ADHD, you can’t see it, but it’s there; it affects how people interact. A lot of big numbers there. We’re talking millions of people. But of course, when you say 20%, that’s one in five. So, if you are talking to 20 people, that’s four people. If you share some eLearning content with an audience of 1000 people, that is, well, 200 people, it’s a lot. So, we have to take it seriously, as you say. Does that necessarily mean that if we have to make things accessible, it necessarily means that it’s a lesser experience for people who aren’t disabled?  

Michael Osborne 3:17    

Absolutely not. Even if we have that perception, we can do much better than providing a word or a PDF alternative as the assessable alternative. The Web Accessibility Guidelines don’t permit people to use Java scripts and other interactive elements on their websites. All they do require is that there is an accessible alternative should you need to use it.  

Donald Taylor 3:37    

We’ve established, it’s a problem. Hopefully, you can tell us all the brilliant ways to tackle this in the rest of the podcast. What are the quick, easy wins? What are the common challenges that people are facing?  

Michael Osborne 3:52    

Indeed, so I’m going to touch on a few statistics here. Some of the common challenges might include people who experienced dyslexia, which affects between 5 and 10% of the world population, around 700 million people. To address some of those common issues, you can use sensible Sans Serif fonts. When I say sensible fonts, it’s avoiding things like thin fonts or overuse of italics, which disfigures how letters look on the screen. That is a significant win, especially if you pair that with using sensible font sizes. So, as we get older, our eyesight deteriorates, but just for people with any kind of visual impairments, the larger you can make the font on your screen, the easier it will be to read and be perceivable. So, certainly, when it comes to learning, our focus on our choice of fonts should be much more on readability than style and design. At the end of the day, that’s what’s going to support the learning.  

Donald Taylor 4:50    

Absolutely. Now I find as someone who’s in his late 50s, I typically don’t buy Apple products. However, when I do, I immediately have to get my glasses on, sometimes use a magnifying glass because I swear everyone in California is under 30, and all have perfect vision. So, I wouldn’t regard myself as having a disability. Nonetheless, that’s affecting my interaction with the product. So, you said Sans Serif font. Sans Serif font does not have all the curly bits on it; it’s just straightforward letters. You talked about not having thin ones, but sensible ones. Do you have any typefaces that you can name for us?  

Michael Osborne 5:27    

Indeed, many machines, whether you’re on Windows or Mac, have some standard accessible fonts. So, you’re looking at Perdana, Arial, and although it gets a lot of hate, in the L&D industry, Comic Sans has very clear figures, and it is a very accessible font.  

Donald Taylor 5:43    

It’s been found, hasn’t it, that Comic Sans, don’t knock people, is more easily read by people with dyslexia?  

Michael Osborne 5:50    

Absolutely. Once we have addressed all our font issues, we want to look at our color contrast. You always need a high contrast, certainly between the text and the background. That’s not just for people with color blindness. Although to throw some statistics in again, colorblindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women. So, suppose you take just two conditions, colorblindness and dyslexia, as you said earlier, Donald. In that case, if you have a course of 30, you’re highly likely to have somebody on your course that will have a disability and will need some adjustments. Those adjustments don’t have to be necessarily significant. But on any course, you’re looking at roughly one in eight people having a disability. So, that’s about three people in a group of four. The next thing we need to be doing is looking at our text alternatives. Anything that is not text needs an accessible alternative. So, if you’re using images, those images need alt text, and if not alt texts, they need to have captions. If you’re using any multimedia, such as video, you need to ensure that you’re using closed captions, subtitles, and providing transcripts for people. When you have subtitles on the screen, you need to be thinking about the font size, pacing, and even the contrast between the foreground and background. There’s no point in having black subtitles if the screen behind is predominantly black.  

Donald Taylor 7:13    

I like watching a video with subtitles on even though I’m not hearing impaired. It frustrates me immensely when there isn’t blocking behind the text because it often becomes difficult or sometimes impossible to read. So again, that’s an excellent example of what might appear to be an accessibility issue benefiting a vast audience. Generally, of course, I’m guessing that a high contrast helps everybody, not just people who might have difficulty reading.  

Michael Osborne 7:44    

Absolutely, if subtitles are something that you want to get into, which I suggest people do, they should check out the BBC guidelines on how to do subtitles. It’s a fantastic resource that goes into a lot of depth on size, color, pacing, and all sorts. So, there are many resources on the web, and that just happens to be one of them. It’s a fantastic resource worth checking out. I’m sure over the last year, with COVID-19 and the pandemic, more of us than ever have been working at home. In that time, it’s likely if you’re a household of two adults, and maybe like two children, and you’re on video calls, you’ve probably used subtitles in some way at some point.  

Donald Taylor 8:24    

That’s some quick wins that we should all be doing when we create content for learning, shouldn’t we? What’s the next step beyond that? How do we change from simply passively putting things to our audience to a more accessible way? How can we give them more control? What’s the next step beyond that?  

Michael Osborne 8:42    

Well, the more control you can put into your user’s hands, the better. I’ll give you a few examples. So, perhaps at the next level, a more straightforward win would be to give people a choice of how they digest their content. So, many people favor video in eLearning because it’s an interactive way of learning. Suppose you have a transcript as an alternative. In that case, that’s a great way of asking users, “Okay, how do you want to digest this content? Do you want to watch the video? Or do you want to read something?”. Again, that has benefits because if it’s written people can go at their own pace. If they’re watching a video, I have many friends who the speaker’s speed can annoy them. Either it’s too fast, or it’s too slow. If they have a transcript, they can listen in their own time. That’s a great way of digesting the content differently. Then in eLearning, the more customization you can build into your platform, the better. Auto-play is quite a specific example. Netflix is bad at this, so it’s not an eLearning example. But if you have a video that auto plays, that can negatively affect the experience or anybody using a screen reader. The way screen readers work is they read what’s on-screen in a left-to-right fashion. If you have video playing in the background, you have overlapping audio, which is, as you can imagine, going to be quite irritating. If you have a video on your platform, give people the option to turn off autoplay. If you want to make your platform truly accessible, have it off by default, and allow people to opt-in.  

Donald Taylor 10:08    

Most people won’t think about it, but that simple change of allowing people to opt-in will make life an awful lot easier for people relying on screen readers. So, that’s a great option, thank you. By the way, again, the example of transcripts, that’s something which we should all be doing anyway. Because some people prefer to read than to listen, in particular, to videos or even podcasts, dare I say it. Let’s talk about finding out more. Michael, where can you find out more about all this? Because I know that you’re an expert in this field, you’ve only just scratched the surface. What resources can you suggest to people? How can people take this more seriously and do a better job in serving the wider community?  

Michael Osborne 10:54    

Well, first and foremost, I don’t mean to patronize anyone here. The web is your friend. So, use Google and be quite specific. So, if you want to find out how to do subtitles, or why they’re beneficial, or even how screen readers work, Google those terms and be reading up on it. One of the best ways to learn about accessibility is to observe people interacting with the solutions and seeing how they go. I would recommend watching videos on YouTube of people using screen reader technologies because you will find where the pitfalls are. But if you want to get hands-on, I’m a big fan of learning by doing. So, I’d recommend first and foremost using screen readers. If you’re going to try one, the NVDA screen reader is free, and you can get that from nvaccess.org. With that downloaded, you’ll soon experience what screen readers do and how they interact with your content. So, with that installed, try then to navigate your website or eLearning using your keyboard only. Quite often, that would involve significant use of the tab key and the index key. See how tricky it is to navigate your eLearning and website without a mouse.

Can you do it? Then another thing to do, because I’ve used some color contrast examples, there are several great color contrast checkers on the web. You can take a snapshot of your screen or your designs, and you can upload an image, and then it will tell you your contrast. Some sites even go as far as to say, “Does this meet accessibility requirements?”. So, accessibility has different levels. If you want to strive for accessibility, AAA is about as high as you can go. Several contrast checkers can do that. Similar to contrast checkers, if you want to get ahead of the curve, try using websites that come up with some accessible color palettes. Because the two go hand in hand. If you’re being proactive and using accessible color palettes up front, then the checking you have to do later on is pretty significant.  

Donald Taylor 12:55    

That’s a bunch of valuable resources there. To recap, it’s the NVDA, screen reader, and the website is nvaccess.org. Again, we’ll have that in the notes. I love the idea of watching people using screen readers and so on YouTube. That’s an excellent way of getting a vicarious experience to see it without necessarily having to go out and find people to do it. How much is there going to be a contrast between me creating materials and then going through them? Because a. I’m not visually impaired, and b. I know the materials. If I go through it with my keyboard, am I getting a realistic experience of it? Or is it likely that I will be persuading myself, possibly that it’s more accessible than it is?  

Michael Osborne 13:39    

There’s a little bit of both. So, if you want to go almost like hardcore on that test engineer and you want an authentic experience, you can turn off your monitor, which will make that a lot more complicated. The screen reader will still tell you what’s happening in the background. That might be a slightly mind-blowing experience, but you know, the more realistic you can make it, the better you will find it. Also, screen readers are effectively text-to-voice software in many cases. What you’ll discover by actually using screen readers is an excellent proofing tool. One of the things I’ve gotten into the habit of using text-to-voice software is checking my work. If you’re reading your work, and you’re very close to it, quite often, you can have what’s called blind spots. Whereas, if you use text-to-voice software and you’re using a word that isn’t the right word, but it reads correctly for when the spell checker picks it up, you appreciate that those words are wrong when you hear it. It’s a great way of checking your work and improving accessibility.  

Donald Taylor 14:39    

Mike, is enough being done in the field of accessibility? I suspect your answer will be no because you’ve come up with many straightforward, simple things that we can all do, which I know that people typically don’t do. So, I’m guessing the answer is no, but I’ll ask you the question anyway. Are we doing enough?  

Michael Osborne 14:57    

Again, I’m going to give some statistics here—things I find fascinating. So, Level Access recently did a webinar on the latest state of accessibility. In one of the surveys, unsurprisingly, 96% of people think accessibility is essential. So, that is great to see that people believe it is crucial. But then they asked a follow-up question that’s, are you doing anything about it? So, out of 96 people thinking it’s important, only 40% of people are doing something about it and trying to make their content accessible proactively. Now, I don’t believe that was a learning-specific example. But it is quite a significant drop from nearly 100% of people thinking, yes, it’s important and less than half of the people doing something about it. So, I think there is much more that we can do.  

Donald Taylor 15:44    

What’s behind that, Michael? I’m going to ask you to speculate. What’s behind that gap between the feeling it’s essential and acting on it?  

Michael Osborne 15:53    

I think it’s a multitude of things. Quite often, it’s awareness. I’ve spoken to several people, and I’ve done a few sessions for Learning Technologies now, and I’m doing many more this year. People don’t usually deliberately exclude people, it’s often done in ignorance, and people aren’t often aware. The other thing is often time constraints. So, people see it as a costly exercise and an add-on. Whereas, if they can get business buy-in, so the business can train people on accessibility and what needs to be done, and they can invest in templates, they’re going to save a lot of time upfront. It’s true; accessibility is an expensive add-on if you try and do it at the end. Suppose you consider accessibility up front and use templates. In that case, you’re making your life a lot easier, and you’ll save a lot of time in the long run because of those templates, from Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint to eLearning tools like Articulate. They are all set up in an accessible way upfront. So, those little placeholders you have for inserting an image, use those and use the text boxes provided rather than inserting your text boxes, because then you get into additional challenges such as the reading order, being out of focus, and the tab order. I think accessibility overall is an intimidating topic. It’s impossible to know where to start. One of the most common questions I get is, where do I begin with accessibility? I think, as with any L&D intervention you’re doing, the more you can know your audience, the more you can do upfront and find out, okay, who is going to be on my course, back in the days of classroom training. If you’re providing food, you might ask people, do you have any dietary requirements? I think, on those forms, whether it’s verbal or physical, you can be asking people, do you have any accessibility requirements? Then you can start to think about those alternatives. You know, for example, if I have somebody with ADHD or some visual impairment, do I have an option ready to go for them?  

Donald Taylor 17:56    

When you talk about templates just before we wrap up, are these templates that typically come ready-made? Or are these templates that you have to create yourself?  

Michael Osborne 18:06    

They often come ready-made. So, if you open a new PowerPoint and go to a slide master, there’s usually a template of layouts already created. Now, those layouts might not work for you. But what PowerPoint and Articulate just the same do is allow you to insert more placeholder content. For example, it’s a standard layout on your screen, and you think about the individual components. If you can set up your master slide in advance as a template, that’s one of the examples that will make your life easier. If you place your logo on the slide master, for example, and you provide alt text for that, or you mark it as decorative, that’s going to save you a lot of time. As opposed to your logo on a slide without alt text, that slide gets copied 28 times or so. So, then you have 28 examples of one image needing to be fixed. That’s just your logo; that’s before you’ve inserted anything else.  

Donald Taylor 18:56    

It does show, doesn’t it, how much this is a matter of caring about it in the first place, which as the survey you mentioned said, almost everybody does. But then it’s about the details of just doing things, right? As you said very clearly, think about it from the start, because it’ll be smoother and quicker, and it’ll benefit everybody. If you try to add it on at the end, you’re going to face quite possibly quite a lot of reverse engineering, and it will be more complex, perhaps more expensive, and certainly more time-consuming. Any last thoughts? Before we go into our final question that we ask every guest, Michael?  

Michael Osborne 20:10    

Two final thoughts. So one is, if you’re not making your content accessible to everyone, you’re also not getting the most out of your people because all of us have something to contribute. Even if it’s asking people, you know, can you access this? Do you have any challenges? How can we improve? Anytime you ask people if you can improve the experience, you’re refining that process and improving the overall experience for everyone. The other final thought, and I hate to go there; there are legal consequences of not making your content accessible down the compliance route. There’s the Equality Act of 2010 in the UK, and there’s Section 508 in the United States. About ten years or so ago, there were around 25 cases of assessable lawsuits. However, in the last year or so, that’s easily crossed 400 lawsuits. That’s on the increase, and a number of those lawsuits are repeat cases. So, anything you do for the public sector, the NHS, and the councils need to be accessible. You’re breaking the law if you’re not, and you could potentially face some significant fines. Let’s end on a high note, and let’s focus on it is essential for everyone.  

Donald Taylor 21:16    

Carrot and stick, you’re going to get the best out of everybody. If you don’t, it could be costly. There we go. Final questions that we ask everybody. Mike, what do you wish you’d known when you started learning and development?  

Michael Osborne 21:31    

Okay, I’m going to go with a piece of advice I got from a coaching friend working at Profitability. That advice was that it’s okay not to have all the answers. One of the things that held me back from doing facilitation, podcasts like this, is if I’m asked a question, and I don’t know the answer, that’s firstly going to reflect on me, and it’s going to reflect on my company. At the same time, people understand that we’re only human. If you say, okay, I don’t have the answer to that, but I will look into it and get back to you. You know, people are absolutely fine with that. They’ll respect you for being honest, rather than trying to give them false information or fog them off.  

Donald Taylor 22:07    

I 100% agree, and if we did know all the answers, we’d be in a very strange position. After all, we believe in learning. Let’s live the fact that we learn as much as everybody else has to learn. Okay, so that’s what you wish you’d known when you started. What are you curious about right now in learning?  

Michael Osborne 22:25    

One of the things I’m most curious about is what will happen next due to the pandemic. Now, there’s a lot of research going into this, but I think that most of that is purely speculative. So, I’m very curious about what will happen in the next 5 to 10 years. What new technology is going to come about as a result of people working at home? I’ve been working with some large companies recently and seen some of the new technology that they’ve been doing, some of those things that we missed about face-to-face. How can we do that in a live but virtual setting? I’m a techie guy, and anything that evolves something in the tech space has me excited.  

Donald Taylor 23:05    

Sounds brilliant. Michael, your commitment to accessibility is fantastic to see. We’ve all learned from you, too. Going back to your point about you can’t know everything, no, we can’t. But we can, in a positive way, exchange what we do know and help each other get better at it. Thank you for supporting the listeners to this podcast to get better and do what we should all be doing, making what we do accessible more widely so that everyone can benefit. Michael, thank you so much!