In this episode, Amber and Chris interview special guest Isla Waite about her journey into web accessibility, tips and tricks for learning accessibility deeply, and her recent involvement in consulting on a potentially controversial accessibility law (AB 1757) that is under consideration in the California legislature.
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Mentioned In This Episode
- False Idol Brewing Fenris Park Hefeweizen
- IAAP
- Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC), IAAP
- CPACC and WAS Resources, Princeton
- Accessibility Training Course for IAAP CPACC Certification, Deque
- AB-1757 Accessibility: internet websites
- WP Accessibility Day
Transcript
Chris: Welcome
to the Accessibility Craft Podcast, where we explore the art of creating accessible websites while trying out interesting craft beverages. This podcast is brought to you by the team at Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility company, and the proud creators of the Accessibility Checker plugin. And now, on to the show.
Amber: Hello everybody, it’s Amber, and I am here today with Chris.
Chris: Hey, everybody.
Amber: And we have a special guest, my friend, Isla. Hi, Isla.
Isla: Hey, guys.
Amber: We are so excited to have you on. Do you want to introduce yourself for all of our listeners or watchers?
Isla: My name is Isla Waite. I live in Sacramento, California.
Actually, I moved to Fair Oaks, which is 20 minutes away from Sacramento, recently. I own a company called Simply Accessible Websites, which is fairly new. I I launched that in April last year. I’ve been in accessibility for about five years, and I’ve been in graphic design and UX for probably a decade.
Amber: Great. Well, we are so excited to have you here and you and I know each other, which I know we’ll talk more about this way later from co organizing WordPress Accessibility Day.
Isla: Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: Yeah. Isla is one of the lead organizers. So of course we always start off all of our episodes with a craft beverage.
Chris, do you want to tell what we are talking about, and I’m going to give a quick note before you start doing that for anyone who would like, there are show notes that you can access if you go to AccessibilityCraft.com/082. Chris, what are we drinking?
Today’s Beverage
Chris: So I was pretty excited when we have guests, we usually give them the opportunity to put in a request.
And Isla, when you, when you requested a Hefeweizen I instantly got excited. One, because we haven’t done one on the podcast yet, I don’t think, but also I, I really like ‘Heffies’ and it’s perfect for the summer, so, I did some shopping around and I found one that hopefully you haven’t had or even seen before because this is a, a Texas micro brewing and I’m holding up the can here.
It’s Fenris Park by False Idol Brewing, which is up in North Texas, I think around the DFW area. And we are very excited to try this local beer. Obviously we got managed to get it out to you in the mail all the way to Sacramento. So hopefully it’ll be an interesting experience. Uh, and while we crack these, these open and don’t worry about mics, if you, if you want to get the can crack on the mic, you can So False Idol, Fenris Park says that this is ideal for day drinking, beach drinking, anywhere drinking.
This refreshing Hefeweizen pairs well with life. That is, that is their words. And we will see if we think this pairs well with life and what, what sort of rating we all decide to give it. I’m going to do a little bit of a pour here.
Amber: Yeah. So you also poured yours. I’m going to put mine in a koozie and just drink it out of the can.
Isla: I think it tastes different from the glass.
Amber: You like it better out of a glass beer?
Isla: Yeah, yeah.
Amber: Well, it, like, air, it gives it more air, right? I guess that’s why.
Chris: Yeah, more oxygen contrast. Also, you can smell it more, right? The open top of the glass gives you a better nose. I will say, I’m holding this in front of my face just for the viewing audience, but this is a cloudy beer, which is what you would expect from a Hefeweizen.
Amber: And it’s pretty yellow.
Chris: Can’t see through it at all. Yep. Nice golden color. Let me give mine a sip.
Amber: I don’t understand half of Vizen and what it is. So someone tell me this.
Isla: It’s not IPA.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s how Amber, Steve, and I all feel about IPAs too.
Amber: Wait, so This kind of is Blue Moon-y to me.
Is that a Hefeweizen? It’s like a wheat, like a lighter, but wheat, wheated beer. Yes. Is that what a Hefeweizen is?
Isla: I think Blue Moon is like a weaker version of a real Hefeweizen. That’s my opinion.
Amber: Well, yeah, because it’s not craft. It’s made in a giant factory somewhere.
Isla: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, it’s a wheat, wheat, wheat beer.
Chris: To me, this is like super classic Hefeweizen. The number one thing that I always look for in a, in a Hefeweizen is I want to taste banana. And that’s, that’s exactly the flavor I’m getting. Oh yeah, for sure. It, it, it definitely has a strong banana flavor to me to my palate.
Isla: That’s funny. Cause I just ate a banana, so I guess, I guess I wouldn’t know.
Amber: I don’t, I don’t taste any banana at all. And I think that that is strange.
So here’s what I want to know because we’re recording this at about 1 30 PM Central Time, which is still quite early in the day for Isla there on Pacific. And they said it was good for day drinking. Well, is it good for day drinking, Isla? Is it a good morning beer?
Isla: I might start a new thing. I don’t know if that would be bad. My rule is normally nothing before midday and it’s 11:24 AM here right now.
Chris: Big toe over the line. You’re close enough.
Amber: It is a Friday as we record this. It is a Friday.
Isla: Yeah, I would, I would day drink this beer and I have to say my husband saw this in the fridge and went, ‘Oh, is this for me?’ I said, ‘No.’ And he pointed out, I don’t know if he was talking about Fenris or the picture or what, but he said, Oh yeah, that’s a, that’s a Nordic, something, something. He’s a Nordic geek. And I said, ‘Oh!’
Amber: Oh yeah, so the, the label has like a wolf on it with, Yeah. Fireball? I don’t know.
Chris: Fire, or maybe the sun.
Amber: But it’s, but it’s white, right? Coming out of its mouth, and its eyes are, like, glowing and streaming too.
Isla: Demon like.
Amber: Yeah. You can try to do some Googling, Chris. You didn’t find anything out about what that means?
Chris: When I searched Fenris Park, I was like, maybe this is like a park somewhere or something that they’re referencing. But if I search Fenris Park, False Idol Brewing is what comes up for, for me, at least.
Their logo is a wolf and a lot of their, a lot of their beers, not their entire beer catalog, but quite a few of them have a wolf on the, on the label in some form or another. So I guess they’re just really into wolves.
I’m not really sure. But I’m pretty into this beer. I would drink it again. I think it’s perfect for hot weather.
Isla: I would, it’s nice. It’s nice.
Amber: Yeah. So this is our, our technical scale of thumbs up. Wait, I did it backwards. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle. So where are you, Isla? You’re a, you’re a thumbs up.
Isla: I’m an up. I’m an up.
Amber: All right. I’m an up too.
Isla: Yeah. Yeah.
Amber: So this is False Idol Brewing. We would all recommend their Fenris Park Hefeweizen.
Isla: Whenever I’m in Texas, I’m going to drop by.
Chris: Yeah, they call their tap room the Wolf Den. I learned that from their website today.
Isla: I would go just because it’s called the Wolf Den.
Amber: So, Isla, you have had this experience moving from UX and design into accessibility, and I’m curious if you can share more of your background in that journey and how you got started in like the brand strategy of.
Yeah. And then your first introduction to website accessibility and shifting into that.
Isla: For sure. So I’m lucky, I count myself lucky, that I’ve been with the same company for more than a decade. And I started, I came out of there as a mature student. I came into there as a mature student, graphic designer, after I moved to America.
And that business owner, who is wonderful, took me on as an intern and I stayed. Wonderful. So I was doing, long documents for the state and things like that.
Amber: Like, designing them in InDesign or something?
Isla: In InDesign. Yes, yes, yes. Lots of InDesign work. So I got pretty good at long documents. And through that, because there were state agency clients accessibility had become a thing for them.
And they had a deadline to remediate their PDFs that were online or take them down. And I would say to this date, not all of them have done either of those things, but. Some of them tried hard. And some of those were our clients. So we were like, what’s this PDF remediation thing? So we contacted an expert, found one who actually came to our studio at the time, this is pre COVID when people still visited people and we sat around the conference table and he gave us a demo of a remediated, going through the process and what a remediated PDF looked like.
And I was absolutely fascinated. This was, this was my complete first introduction to anything accessible. And this was probably six years, six years ago, maybe seven. And after that, a number of things happened at once. So we had, so we had that client that we were taking care of and then another one of our clients, who’s a non profit, had heard through the grapevine that this was important and was asking us for help.
And this is, again, this is all, a lot of this is PDF stuff. And then around the same time, I believe, I was in one of our clients websites, and I’m not in them very often, I am not a developer, but I was in there and on the web, on the WordPress news somebody’s meetup popped up. WordPress Accessibility Meetup.
Yes. So I I popped in on that a few times and this whole world opened up. So that was my introduction.
Amber: That’s so cool. I never actually knew that that’s how you first heard about the meetup was from the WordPress dashboard.
Isla: Yep. Yep. And I don’t think I’m the only one.
Amber: You never know how many people actually pay attention to that widget, versus just ignoring it.
Isla: I pay attention. I think my eyes were alert to anything that said accessibility at the time. So I probably glossed over a lot of the stuff that’s in there, but I saw that. I thought, ah, I’m going to take a look at this.
Getting the CPACC Certification from IAAP
Chris: And I I think congratulations are in order for getting a certain certification.
So you are now a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies.
Isla: Yes.
Chris: Maybe for the, the audience, if they’re not familiar, can you just tell us a little bit about what that certification entails and why you decided to get it?
Isla: Yes, so it is awarded by the IAAP, the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, which I’ve been a member of for about three years now.
And I joined that with the sole intention of just learning more about the industry, and, seeing who’s in this community. And through that, I learned, oh, okay, there are some qualifications here. And a couple of people I know have the website specific qualification. And I thought, what is in here for me?
Because I’m not a developer, I wouldn’t be able to do some of the things that that is asking, even though I looked at it, I was like, oh dear, no. So yeah.
Amber: That one asks questions about like more code type HTML or JavaScript, maybe even. Yeah.
Isla: I could probably survive the HTML questions. But as soon as it’s asking about JavaScript, never mind.
So anyway, so I did look at that. But then I came back and looked at what else they were offering. And the core competencies, although I wasn’t originally looking at it, it caught my eye. And in my current role, now I’ve moved to I’m still a brand strategist, but the accessibility plays into it. And now I’m leading with Accessibility Professional.
Because that’s what I want people to be aware of when they’re thinking about their brands. So, I looked at the core competences as a way to have coverage over all kinds of things, accessibility, not just websites.
Amber: Yeah, what, can you tell us a little bit about what the certification process was like?
I think you have to take an exam, so was that terrifying? How did you prepare? Anything that would be helpful to people who are looking at this?
Isla: When was the last time I took an exam? That’s the question. It was slightly frightening because they, they give you a lot of information and they recommend you spend, 10 hours a week for a few months.
Studying for this. So, I took that on board and thought, okay, I’m gonna schedule this out. Yeah.
Amber: Did you actually, okay, wait a minute now. We all were in the courses where we were told we were supposed to do something, and then we just showed up and took the test. So I’m curious, did you actually spend 10 hours a week for months?
Isla: I spent a couple hours a week in the beginning thinking a couple hours a week is going to be fine. And I’d say with about three months to go, I was working on it with my colleague and I’m so happy that we did it together. And that is one of my pieces of advice. Don’t go it alone. So we were studying together.
We were trying to do it on Zoom and we lived at the time we were living close by. And I said, there were so many distractions when we’re here. There’s email and all these things. And I wasn’t focusing. So I suggested we actually met at the local library. Old school, style , which we did. And I would say for, again, for a good number of weeks there, we were staring at each other going, how do you study again?
I don’t know how to study anymore. Like we, we were.
Chris: I mean, in the adult world, right? We, we go very quickly from human beings to human doings, where it’s just like, you don’t, you just start doing, you don’t really spend time studying something.
Isla: We had both printed out the body of knowledge, which is, A lot of like 1,600 pages of information. And again, you made your own textbook.
Yep. I went to Staples and I said, print this and I ring bound it. Like I need, I need to flip through this, even though there are hundreds of links in there and you need to be able to look at these other documents. I was like, Nope, I want this one so I can make my notes. So you can highlight it. Yeah.
Highlight things, stick little stickers everywhere. So we both did that. And again, we’re still staring at each other in the library going, what?
Amber: Can I tell you? I still have bad dreams that I am in High School and I showed up for, like, I’m not even kidding. I literally did this week. I, probably because my daughter, cause I dreamed I went to a chemistry class and I was not prepared for chemistry class.
And then I, and then eventually my brain starts to realize I’m a grownup and I’ll be like, But wait, I’m an adult. I don’t actually have to be prepared for your class. Like in my head, I’ll start telling that to the teacher. I still have these nightmares. So what you’re describing sounds like very stressful to me.
Isla: Really was. And that’s really funny that you have those dreams. Yeah, it w we, we, it started to dawn on both of us at the same time. Like this is a, this is real time, scary stuff. And we really need to figure out how to study really fast because we’ve got two months. At which point we. Split up the body of knowledge, like you take this, I’ll take that, …, and each week, twice a week or something, we’re going to meet for two to three hours and explain to each other what the other, what, what this is talking about.
And that, that actually worked really well.
Chris: I love that.
Isla: Yeah, it was really, really good.
Chris: So you were teaching each other the material.
Isla: As I’ve heard many times, that teaching helps knowledge sink in, right? If you can explain it to somebody else. And that absolutely worked. That really worked.
Amber: So, I know we just made it sound terrifying, but it actually maybe isn’t terrifying if you have a buddy, and you divide up, and then you get to hang out with them.
Maybe you could even meet for lunch or something, right?
Isla: With your Fenris Park.
Amber: Yep, have a beer and study.
Isla: Yep, yep. Remove all other distractions.
Amber: It’ll be just like college.
Isla: Have your beer, but no other distractions. You’ve got to be able to focus, because this stuff is, it’s complicated. You’re learning about different types of disabilities.
You’re learning about laws. You’re learning about design principles. Universal Design Principles. And I loved that part, like, this is great. I’m inherently a designer, this is really interesting. To be able to recall it and answer questions, that was our challenge. Like, I’m like, I can’t remember anything, I’m in my 40s, are you kidding?
Amber: Did you do the Princeton course? Because I know that Princeton has a course that IAAP members can get for free. Did you, did you do that at all? And was that helpful?
Isla: Yep. We both signed up for that and we also both paid for the Deque University, which was about 60 something dollars. And both were interesting because we were the first people to take this exam with a new body of knowledge.
Like they hadn’t changed it since 20. Something 2020, I don’t know, but the 2023 body of knowledge was new. So Deque and Princeton were still catching up with what the new body of knowledge was. But I don’t, it wasn’t critically different, but there was some stuff in there that when we were referred to the body of knowledge, we’re like, well, is that, is that actually reflective?
So we had to, we had to dig into that a bit, but yeah, we didn’t go to those.
Amber: Were, was either one of those better than the other or were they equivalent? Like if someone’s only going to do one, would you tell them to pick one over the other?
Isla: That’s a toughie. I think it depends how you learn. I liked the Deque one personally because I could do it on my tablet nice and easy.
I’d sit on the couch of an evening and it was nice and easy to scroll. And they had included for us visual learners photographs, like that can really help the learning process. It’s not just a wall of text. There’s a photograph in here. And, and I, I liked. That there was more, it felt like there was more meat to that one.
They like padded it out. And actually there was a website, a web focus in more places than you find in the Princeton one. So again, it’s core competencies. So you want the overall, but because I work in websites, it was nice to have that focus from Deque. But yeah, Princeton is a bit more old school. Like, the old white, was it whiteboard style online learning?
It’s much more like that. There’s a little icon for a book, little icon for video. A little icon for this, this, this, this, and you click each one as you’re going along and get a check mark if you’re finished. So yeah, it’s just different. I, we use them both. And honestly, my biggest piece of advice that I didn’t do and wish I had was take a practice test early on.
We took it late and you would expect that that’s what you do. You learn, learn, learn, learn, take the practice test, fill in the holes. If I did it again, I would learn, learn, take the test. See how much I don’t know, which is a lot, and then spend the next two months like filling in those holes. I wouldn’t take the practice test at the end.
Chris: So speaking of learning, and this wasn’t a planned question, but I’m just genuinely curious as you went through this body of knowledge, was there a particular aspect of what you learned that you found fascinating beyond all imagination or something that really captured your attention that you didn’t know before?
Isla: I’d say a lot, a lot of it was, new and interesting to me. Because again, I’ve been in the, in the web world. So learning about different disabilities, learning about different approaches to universal design, that, that was new to me, universal design principles. Whether you’re taking an exam or not, everyone should learn that because it totally relates back to what we do.
And I know that you guys worked in higher ed a bit, so maybe you’ve come across it there. I don’t know, but I find that that. Impacts my work in general, that, that was very beneficial to learn about that. And I could rant a little bit that accessibility is not taught in school, but I won’t go there.
But if it was,
Amber: You’re welcome to rant.
Chris: It’s not, it’s not taught a lot of places and that’s why we’re in this mess.
Amber: What is a podcast if not with at least one five minute rant? But yeah, I’m definitely with you on that. It needs to be taught way more in all of the design and communications and development.
Undergrad and graduate programs that it’s not.
Isla: I’ve been looking for a postgrad, anything, and there’s nothing. There’s one I found in like Sweden or somewhere. I was like, well, great. What?
Amber: Well, you could probably go to Sweden. We can’t. They would be like, no, we don’t want you. You’re from America, but you can probably, are you, do you still have European ability to travel all around?
Isla: Because we left the EU, so I’m a British citizen, and I never got a European, I never got a European passport, but it’s pretty easy to move between countries in Europe. But yeah, there’s nothing there, rent, rent, rent. There is not enough education on accessibility at all, anywhere. And Chris’s point, we are in a mess because of it.
Chris: So speaking of getting up on soapboxes, ranting and advocating for things, you got, you got involved in raising awareness for a possible web accessibility law in your home state of California, which is under the current code AB 1757. Can you share what that bill is, AB 1757, for people who haven’t heard about it?
Amber: Wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m going to make everyone wait for this. Oh, because it’s fun. If you want to hear about this bill, you have to stay tuned, because we’re going to take a little commercial break, and we will be right back.
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Amber: All right, we’re back and I will let you finish your question, Chris.
Proposed California Law AB 1757
Chris: So can you share what AB 1757 in California is for people who have not heard about it?
Isla: Yes. How much background would you like is my question.
Chris: I think we’ve got time.
Amber: Okay. Yeah. Whatever you think is most interesting.
Isla: Oh, so much.
So the, so the bill is called Accessibility: Internet Websites, which I find a redundant expression because we’re else are websites found other than the internet?
Amber: Internet websites.
Isla: There is a, there is a clue here that there were no authors native to what this topic is, which when I started digging into AB 1757 became quite apparent.
Amber: I So it was written by people who don’t really understand the internet.
Isla: No, no.
Amber: So it’s a little bit like when, when Mark Zuckerberg went before Congress and they were like, what is Facebook?
Isla: Yeah!
Amber: How does someone like something?
So that’s what you’re saying. It felt like when you read this.
Isla: I am, but I would say that they think they know what they’re talking about and I’m trying to be kind to you. They think they know what they’re talking about. They think they can relate this to physical accessibility. And you cannot. This is not solved with a ramp. Anywho. So, it’s an internet website. And I, I am, I am not a lawyer as I think we’ve already stated, but I am not a lawyer.
I am just a concerned business owner who wants to understand what the, how this bill is going to impact me. And I started digging in probably six months ago, truly digging in.
Amber: How did you hear about it in the first place?
Isla: I knew it was out there because it’s been about two years, I think. So it had gone back to the author a couple of times and somebody else had told me about it and I was like, I need to go look at this.
So I did. And it was on its, I don’t know how many, how many iterations it had been through already. I was like, this is really interesting. And when I read it, I was, it was, It was slightly concerning, but I, I will say the concern and it, and it basically a bit more history, lots of, lots of restaurants have been sued, right?
Because of inaccessible menus and all of those things. A lot of those restaurants are Mom and Pop. They can’t afford whatever it is this, they’re just going to settle. And that’s what was happening. Lots of lawsuits were happening. And we could say that there were not many lawyers involved, but lots of lawsuits.
How interesting. And those restaurants were upset. Fair enough. I believe that the restaurant association was one of the first, proponents for this bill saying it’s not our fault. We don’t know, we don’t know anything about this. We leave it in the hands of our developers. So what’s so ironic about this bill is they’re trying to stop lawsuits for Mom and Pop restaurants and hotels and all the little businesses by moving them to the web developer.
So the business could still get sued, but all they could, but they turn around and say, it’s their fault.
Amber: And then it’s up to the developer. So it would get moved to the web developer. Whoever actually built the website.
Isla: Correct. And that’s when I started to think, well this is really interesting because we’re not solving any problem here.
We’re making more. We’re causing more, like, it’s increasing. Opportunity for liability. How is that good for the digital revolution? I don’t know. Anyway, I had the opportunity to, sorry, I’m gassing. Tell me, tell me to stop. I had the opportunity to meet with the author. I know a lobbyist who I would now consider a friend.
Who’s been in this, in and around the Capitol for decades. And he was able to secure a meeting with the author. I thought, well, this is going to be really interesting. And it was, at the time I was just fascinated that I was sitting in a chair opposite somebody that writes law. I mean, that doesn’t happen every day.
That doesn’t happen every day. So I had read the bill and I’d seen some of the opposing comments in the, in the summary, the committee summary. And, and this is where I wear two hats because one, I’m an accessibility advocate, two, I’m a business owner. And how do you, how do you bridge that gap when the bill you’re looking at
Amber: Do you feel like that has to be a gap?
Isla: No.
Amber: Like business owners can’t be pro accessibility?
Isla: I, I, no, I don’t, I don’t think that has to be a gap at all, but this, look, this bill was going to cause a gap in my opinion. By, by the part of the fact was I would have to be flinging people under the bus if I got sued. And there was, as there are so many pieces of software involved in a website and I don’t build them, my people build them.
People way smarter than me are building their websites. And pulling.
Amber: Yeah. Then there’s a question in WordPress, right? Like all the third party plugins or things.
Isla: So many different pieces of software and, and the author wasn’t aware of this. And we were weeks away from, the legislative resting for July, legislative resting July.
And then it was going to come back in August and be voted on in the Appropriations Committee and then signed into law in a week’s time. I thought, there’s so much about this that is starting to concern me. Anyway, I said, I said, I was advised by my lobbyist friend, who is not working for me that you should try to make this bill better.
For people like you, because I don’t know that people like you are in the circle of stakeholders. And I said, Oh, that’s interesting. So I went away and emailed her and the author and said, thank you for meeting. I might have some pointers and the author was interested and I went back to my lobbyist friend and he, he said, The reason they are interested is because they don’t have somebody like you in the stakeholder circle.
And I had learned that the people advising and giving their two cents were Amazon, Google, California Chamber, LA Chamber,
Amber: Big, really large, really large businesses.
Possible Implications of AB 1757
Isla: And, and this, this is where my concern started to grow quite a lot. And I spoke to one of my peers who’s been building websites for the last, two decades and has hundreds of websites that he has built or taken care of and, and he read it and was frightened to death and I said, okay, so it’s not just me that has concerns about this.
And he’s like, no, this is horrendous. So we managed to secure another meeting with the author and he joined me. Now that man is far more articulate than me. So I was really glad that he was there cause I can rant really well, but he brought great words to the conversation. And also explained like this bill, there’s an, there’s an ethical issue here.
With the fact that we have to throw each other under the bus. How is, that’s not good for accessibility in the web, web developer community at all. And it’s, what’s so interesting about creating law that I’ve learned is they don’t care so much about that. Their perspective is laws, if they advance the cause at all, then they’re good.
And also they’re going to push through a law that looks like hell, knowing that on the other side, there’ll be some collateral damage. And then because of the collateral damage. people will start to amend the law.
Amber: Because they’re just trying to get it through. Something passed in the beginning.
Isla: Correct.
Chris: Well, that’s fascinating. I didn’t think that legislators would work in like we do in the startup world, like move fast and break stuff. That’s interesting.
Amber: Minimum viable product for a law.
Isla: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That’s absolutely correct. And it frightened me to death. And then because I’ve been recently been studying for the CPACC I was very informed, certainly not an expert, but informed about the European situation and the fact that all of the nation states had come together around an agreement and said, we need just one overarching thing to try and do, because this is messy and the internet is borderless, so let’s, let’s just all get together and figure something out.
So they did, and they spent a lot of years on that years, operative word.
Amber: And they gave people years to comply, not. Law will pass, and now you have to comply next week.
Isla: Correct. Yeah, years. And they created an enormous manual that you can Google and find that is aimed at developers and saying, here’s, here’s how you do this.
And again, you have four years to figure it out. So great. It’s still obviously a burden. I mean, I hate, accessibility is not a burden, but for developers to adopt this, it’s like, I have to figure out how to bring this into my work, my processes, my workflow, but they had time to do that. Here, I’m reading the bill and if it was signed on August 31st, it comes into law on January 1.
So part of what I was pushing for was, hey, can we, can we delay for a year? Just one year? No. So some amendments were made to the author’s credit. They listened about third party stuff and tried to write in there something about, well, rather than saying, I’m going to throw this bill out the window because it’s stupid.
They just said, Oh yeah, you can share the burden. Like,
Chris: You can rope more people into the lawsuit.
Isla: It’s fantastic, right?
Chris: All the lawyers are happy. Yeah.
Amber: I mean, I will say like, as a little bit of a devil’s advocate here on this, because I’ve thought a lot about this bill. I I followed.
Isla: This is making me drink.
Amber: Hey, that is why we have these.
Chris: This is Accessibility Craft. We’re here to drink. It’s all right.
Isla: I’m sorry, Amber.
Chris: Limit one beer.
Amber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so, so what I was, what I’ve been thinking about a little bit as the devil’s advocate is, There are some WordPress plug in companies out there who have literally written in their terms of service that they are not going to make their stuff Web Content Accessibility Guidelines compliant ever.
And, and this is something that our partner Steve talks a lot about and he’s talked about this on some of the other podcasts because he’s a pretty conservative gentleman. He doesn’t love extra laws, but it’s, he’s like, I just wish that we didn’t need the laws, but it, but where he’s landed is it seems like we need them because there are a lot of humans that for whatever reason are not willing to do this.
And so is it an extra learning burden? Oh, 100%. Do you have to change your processes? Yes. Do you have to maybe invest in training that you wouldn’t otherwise or invest in a more expensive software platform that has actually gone through an accessibility audit instead of the really cheap one that’s, built by the seat of the pants without any thought for accessibility?
True, yes, it could increase costs, but it, but if this is the thing that’s going to make the internet better for, what, 25 percent of people in the world, maybe that’s worth it. I don’t, I don’t know. That’s my devil’s advocate thought on this.
Isla: It’s a great point. And it keeps me real because I’ve, I have a tendency to see the good in people and think no one’s trying to screw up on purpose, but when you’ve written into your terms that I’m not going to, no, I’m not going to make this accessible, then yeah, there has to be some repercussion for that.
And I’m not against laws. I just think this particular writing that was iterated about 25 times was it started badly and it got worse. And my lobbyist friend said, well, actually it was my peer developer who said I can’t propose any more improvements to this because it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.
And I took that back to my lobbyist friend and he said, yes, legislation is putting lipstick on a pig. And that’s when I started to learn, yeah, they move fast and break things.
Chris: I’m curious with this potential liability shift in California from the small business to the developer building their web infrastructure or assembling it out of various parts, whatever it is, was any consideration put in the language of the bill to the role that the small business plays in that?
For instance, if the website is handed off to them, and then they’re in there modifying the content. They get to add a bunch of ambiguous links, put headings out of order, forget all text on images. The sky’s the limit. There’s so much you can do in content to damage accessibility.
Isla: Yeah.
Chris: Was there any consideration in the bill for that?
Isla: Nope. And we raised it, but ultimately the bill says it’s still on the developer’s shoulders. Like you as a developer are responsible for ensuring that all third party bits and pieces and third party content is accessible.
Amber: And stays accessible.
Isla: How in the world is a developer controlling somebody uploading whatever PDF to whatever website over there, and it’s inaccessible, and this client is linking to it?
Amber: Is that, in the language of it, was it only while the person was paying the developer? Or could it be for the entire life of the business, even if the developer had no relationship with that customer anymore?
Isla: Yeah, good question. Part of the problem was it wasn’t clear on that stuff. Okay. And we went back and asked like, does this apply to the last two decades of developers building websites?
And the response was, okay, it’s all new websites going forward from January one. And I was like, that’s great that that’s not good. Even though it still doesn’t give people any time to learn. It’s better than, okay, you can sue someone,
Amber: For a website we built 10 years ago.
Isla: Yeah. Yeah. But I would, I would hazard that it doesn’t stop anyone from suing you in the first place.
Making it hard for you, and then you having to settle, because it was written very it’s very convoluted, and it wasn’t clear, so there’s so many, like, somebody I know said, there are so many holes in this bill, you could drive a truck through them, and I
Amber: Because you’re probably, it’s written by someone who doesn’t understand about, like, hosting and that there’s ongoing changes to websites and you don’t just build them one time and they stay the same and all that kind of stuff.
Isla: One of the ways to avoid liability was to do like, there’s a checklist of like 10 things and they’re all very complicated, but basically put up a page on your website that says, these are all the people involved in my website. So naming whoever owns whatever plugin. You have to be aware, you have to be aware of the problems on your website already, a lot of people aren’t.
And you have to call them out and you have to say, this is the date that it will be fixed. And the window was 90 days to fix something. So if you’re talking to a web developer who has no idea what they’re doing, and all day they spend earning their bread with the 20, 30 websites that they take care of, and now they have to scan all of those and manually test it.
Literally said regular manual testing, regular manual testing. And when we, when you talk about changing workflows and processes and it costing more, yes, it does. And helping somebody who, who is an independent navigate that. It’s difficult and it’s going to take time.
Amber: So, so what I think of as an impact of this bill from a agency perspective is that there are going to be a lot of agencies who will decide that they don’t want to build websites for California companies or companies who sell to customers in California, whether or not the company is listed there.
And so like e commerce, right. Yeah. Or if they do, they’re going to see it as a greater risk to them. And then they are going to increase a lot more. And so the impact might be that small business owners are more likely going to have to DIY their website because they won’t be able to afford to have a professional do it for them.
Isla: Yeah.
Amber: Yeah, and then they can’t hand off liability or maybe they hand off liability to Wix. I don’t know. Right?
Isla: That’s a whole other conversation. Yeah. And thereby sending accessibility career and backwards, helping people who are already building websites to get better accessibility and penalizing them rather than educating them, people will stop being web developers. And California is already screwed as far as businesses wanting to stay here. It’s getting harder and harder to run a business in California.
Current Status of AB 1757
Amber: Yeah, it is really interesting. So, what is the current status of the bill?
Isla: From what I’ve been told yesterday, some language I couldn’t read because it’s legislative language, the word failed was used, and then some number I sent that to my, my source, and he said this means it’s dead. He’s like, good spot, because this means, this means it’s dead.
It didn’t meet it’s deadline to get out, out of committee. Dead. I was like, okay. I mean, again, I feel, I feel conflicted. In forums where I’ve spoken up and said, this bill is not good for small businesses. Everyone needs to read this bill, pay attention. And I’ve had people tell me, yeah, but it’s good for accessibility.
So basically wind your neck in. No, I’m not going to, I believe, I believe in standards. I believe we, we like to your point, Amber, yes, laws are, they make sense. For people that are actively avoiding doing the work. But this isn’t, this isn’t a good bill. This isn’t a good, It doesn’t, I don’t think it advances the cause at all.
So dead at last.
Amber: Okay. So anyone who was following it and was worried about it, maybe doesn’t have to be worried about it right now.
Isla: And I think it will come back and that’s okay. We just don’t want the nonsense to come back. Let’s, let’s figure out a way to do this that It’s logical and doesn’t put a bunch of people out of business.
Amber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think bigger picture on all this. It’s interesting, right, because this got you very involved on the legal side of things, following it and actually having a meeting with a Senator in your state multiple times. So, I’m curious. Was that interesting? Was it overwhelming to get involved with that, the, the legal side of things on that?
And is that something that you think you’d recommend to other business owners and accessibility professionals to be watching for in their own states and getting involved with?
Isla: 100%. Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to be a legal person, clearly I’m not, to, to be tracking something and asking questions. Okay. Somebody once told me not even in California, in America, people vote against their own interests because they don’t read.
So they’ll,
Amber: They don’t understand what they’re voting for. You mean?
Isla: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think it goes along with the current climate where we’re so polarized, right? Everyone knows this. You think if something is advocating for something, it must be good. And therefore it’s a yes. But when you get into the nitty gritty of it, is it really, is it really good?
Chris: Yeah. I don’t, I forget where I read this or where I heard this, but I think it’s a good little nugget of wisdom that If you read the fine print, if you read the fine print of the bill, the the title of the bill is actually usually the polar opposite of what the bill actually does.
Isla: That’s really good.
I like that.
Chris: Yeah.
Isla: Think everyone should, obviously it’s time. And I completely respect that smaller businesses for sure. They’re just paying attention to getting, getting people to pay their invoices and producing good work. Right? That’s, that’s what they’re doing. And I, I put myself in that bucket for sure. But I, something about how this process works or doesn’t work got me really sucked in and I will now continue to be. Interested and involved because of what I’ve experienced.
WP Accessibility Day 2024
Chris: So on top of all the other work that you’re doing on this bill and getting your business going and CPACC and all that, you’re also a lead organizer for WordPress Accessibility Day.
Like Amber mentioned at the top of the at the top of the episode that just opened for registration. So we should probably talk about that. Can you give the elevator pitch for WordPress Accessibility Day if no one has heard it?
Isla: I love that you say elevator pitch because I’m absolutely terrible at elevator pitches, but I can give you words.
Chris: Give us the long winded rant on why you should, why you should go to WordPress Accessibility Day.
Isla: Here’s the best part about this, right? This is the best part about all of it. I, it’s not, it’s wonderful. Nothing bad about WordPress Accessibility Day. So yay, I want to talk about it cause it’s total contrast to all the other stuff we just talked about.
So let’s see. WordPress Accessibility Day. Is the best accessibility conference in the world.
And, it’s free, totally free, content for everyone. And you don’t have to understand what accessibility is to attend something. Like the whole, in my opinion, the whole point is these are grassroots people doing real work. They’ve learned things, they’ve polished their own processes and they want to share that like, oh my goodness, people want to share things.
That’s awesome. And that’s why I love this community so much. I see it all the time in, I’m not in Slack that much, but when I am in there, people are asking questions, people are responding, everybody wants to help everybody. That’s why I love this community so much. I’m so glad I got involved. I’m so glad I’m on this team because it’s, it’s just a wonderful effort to move the needle and not just in America, it’s global.
There you go.
Amber: Yeah, yeah, so it’s a 24 hour single track conference on Zoom, and we have live captions and sign language interpretation and, no matter where you are in the world, there’s going to be sessions during your business hours or during your happy hour. We can’t see you, so you can, wear your pajamas and drink a beer and watch accessibility talks.
Your pitch is way more polished than mine.
Isla: But yeah, 24 hours of free.
Chris: I think you had them at pajamas and beer.
Amber: Yeah. Maybe next year, Accessibility Craft should sponsor.
Isla: There you go.
Amber: Yeah.
Isla: And it’s not just for developers. And I, I have found that a lot of these conferences can feel intimidating. It feels like you need to know something to attend, to be able to have a conversation with somebody who’s there. Oh, I need to know stuff already.
And that’s, that’s not the case at all. I think it’s very welcoming to people who are just. Just beginning their journey. And again, that’s the best part about it for me, because I have a tendency to look at these people just trying to do the work and trying to figure out how do I bring this into my life?
And I think WordPress Accessibility Day does a nice job of getting a toe in the water for a lot of people, but there’s a range of, such a range of speakers. There’s something for everyone.
Amber: We’ve tried really hard to do that. Have some really technical talks, and some that are more design focused or even business focused, that kind of thing. So do you, I know we haven’t published the schedule as of recording this. I think it’ll be out by the time this episode releases . Have you looked at it? Do you have any sessions that you’re looking forward to or that you want to tease?
Isla: I have. I have glanced at it and it’s nice to be privy to that.
I. It’s funny because I do sometimes attend the, the intro knowledge stuff, just to make sure I’m not missing anything. Yes, I’ve seen stuff about alt text a number of times, but somebody else has not, and I want to see it. And if I was brand new again, I think all of us in this industry should always revisit the basics, right?
So those but most of all, I like the culture, culture stuff, building a culture of accessibility, anything that touches that. And I know there is one in there about building a developer sort of group mindset about accessibility. And I think that’s because from hungry and that’s what I get most excited about.
I want to hear from people. globally doing this because what, what better, what is better than, having a global approach to, to something that is, that affects people globally. I mean, it shouldn’t be siloed to just one country or one state.
Amber: Yeah. I know one thing that I. I gave high marks to when we were judging all the applications was there’s someone from Africa who’s going to present about African accessibility laws, because I feel like you never hear about that.
You hear about U. S., Canada, and Europe, and that is it. And I, and I was like, I want this talk because I want to learn, like, it’s so interesting to get these other perspectives. So. that should be
Isla: For the CPACC. You know, I studied laws for the CPACC and it’s amazing how many, how many there are that touch on equality and inclusivity and accessibility and, and how they’ve evolved.
I found that really interesting. And the one I really got excited about, which I’d heard of and didn’t really know the details of was the Marrakesh Treaty. That, the written words of books should be available to everybody. And that’s what the Marrakesh Treaty is about. So you should, and you shouldn’t have to pay for that.
So if somebody needs, somebody needs to be able to read this on the screen reader, it should be provided to them
Amber: In their language.
Isla: Yeah. And it can be shared. And so the copyright laws don’t apply to items that are shared under the Marrakesh Treaty. As long as you’re sharing it with somebody that needs it.
I love that.
Amber: That’s really cool. I’d never heard of that before, which on that note, we should probably give a little shout out to Joanie, our translation lead, who started the translation team for WordPress Accessibility Day this year. And what did, what did they say today at, at our organizer meeting?
There’s like 19 different talks or something that are in process or have already been translated. And there’s maybe like 10 different languages going right now where they’re working on translating the captions and the transcripts. And she has been leading that up with volunteers from around the world, which is amazing.
Isla: Phenomenal job. And what was so fun about that was she spent, I don’t know how many hours, hours now, days and days trying to figure out if AI could do it.
Amber: Or get close and then have humans correct it. Yeah.
Isla: So that journey for, for her alone, I think was probably really eyeopening, but we’ve all been following along with her and it’s like, wow, this is incredible and something she should blog about.
But yeah, it’s super exciting to see that stuff in other languages. Good for you, Joni. Yeah.
Amber: We’ll have to tell her. Go listen to that episode. We gave you a shout out.
Chris: So to close things out here, cause we’re getting close to an hour. Isla, how can people get in touch with you if they want to follow up about laws or advocacy or your business or CPACC or any of it?
And feel free to just give the whole thing, website, social platforms, all of it.
Isla: Cool. Well, look, I’m not on many social platforms. I’ll be quite quick. I am on LinkedIn, Isla Waite. I have a website, so that’s SIMACCWeb.com. And we do remediation accessible PDFs and build websites.
And we also train in-house designers. Not to be scared of accessibility. And you can email me Isla at SIMACC Web dot com. If you’re interested in the law in California, we are gonna be monitoring anything else that comes out of the legislature. So you can email me about that too.
Amber: Well, thank you so much. It’s been so fun to hang out with you and share a beer with you virtually.
Isla: One, one day in person. I’m excited to see you in Portland.
Amber: I know. Yes. We will be at WordCamp US and I think we’re going to organize a Accessibility Craft meetup. So if you’re listening and you are going to be at WordCamp US, definitely look that up too.
Isla: Awesome.
Amber: All right.
Isla: Thank you guys. This has been really fun.
Amber: Yep. So we’re going to sign off now and we’ll be back in two weeks with another episode of Accessibility Craft Conversations.
Chris: Bye everybody.
Isla: Bye.
Chris: Thanks for listening to Accessibility Craft. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your podcast app to get notified when future episodes release. You can find Accessibility Craft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. And if building accessibility awareness is important to you, please consider rating Accessibility Craft 5 stars on Apple Podcasts.
Accessibility Craft is produced by Equalize Digital and hosted by Amber Hinds, Chris Hinds, and Steve Jones. Steve Jones composed our theme music. Learn how we help make thousands of WordPress websites more accessible at EqualizeDigital.com.