Making the web accessible for deaf and blind users - Lily Dedman

Making the web accessible for deaf and blind users - Lily Dedman | E1 transcript

Kieran McNeill

Welcome to the 'Talk too much' podcast by Scaramanga Agency. At Scaramanga, our purpose is to make marketing accessible and inclusive so that brands can positively and effectively communicate with everyone who engages with them.

When we talk about accessibility and inclusivity, there's a lot to learn, which can feel overwhelming when you're starting to look into it and you may just not know where to start. In this podcast, you'll get to hear a conversation that I had with accessibility expert, Lily Dedman, about online accessibility, why it's important, and what should be considered when trying to make your website accessible. Enjoy.

Good afternoon, Lily.

Lily Dedman

Hello.

Kieran McNeill

Hello, so before we jump into the conversation Lily, you've done a lot of talks and presentations on disabilities and digital accessibility. But for anyone listening, why is that so important to you?

Lily Dedman

Well, first of all, I am disabled. I'm deaf and I have some physical health problems as well, all throughout my life, it's always been kind of "Oh, well, you know, it's alright they've done some things" or people don't make things accessible and they deliberately say "Well, this isn't for you, it's for people who can hear or people who can walk around." And I think in this day and age, especially since the pandemic, it's really, really important to be inclusive and to make sure that everything is accessible to everybody.

We've got an ageing population, we've got many many people who are gaining disabilities, and we need to make sure that they can access whatever they need to access and I think it's incredibly important.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, as we're moving into this new approach as an agency, one stat that really stood out to us was that in the top 1 million websites, only 2% of those actually offer full accessibility. Which for 2022 standards, and I'm not sure how you feel about this? But it feels as a world we're moving quite slowly towards something that's actually quite a major issue on this web accessibility journey.

Lily Dedman

Yeah, it was actually only recently that government and council websites had to be accessible according to government rules and I think that's quite poor as well because if you're a council, you're supposed to be catering to all your constituents, I don't know if they're constituents or councils, but, all the people that live in that area, they need to be able to access the websites.

Especially if you're thinking there are people who are incredibly poor, or have never accessed computers before, how are they supposed to be able to navigate an incredibly complex website, and that's not even just a disability issue, that's just a general accessibility issue. So I think as soon as you fix accessibility, everything else follows.

Kieran McNeill

When I was looking into this a bit more, Google, for example, I mean, we know how Google does their specialised days and weeks every now and then on their homepage. But I was looking into it, and a lot of those aren't actually accessible with sometimes with colour, and they use the sounds they use. And that's quite alarming that the front page of essentially the internet isn't even complying with accessibility standards.

Lily Dedman

No, you're right, but have you tried tabbing through Google just doing keyboard only?

Kieran McNeill

Keyboard only? Yeah.

Lily Dedman

Yeah, so if you do that, actually, Google is pretty accessible. They just maybe need to kind of think about it consistently. But I think even with kind of how they've updated their SEO standards, or it usually includes accessibility now, it uses ALT TEXT of images, but not the keyword stuffing for actual image descriptions and that kind of thing. So I do think we are moving towards being more accessible. It's just been a long time coming.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, it's been a long time coming. Well, hopefully, we'll look back in a few years' time and be quite happy with how far we've come. I'm glad you mentioned about like keyboard difference with Google, because in terms of the online space, what are some of the everyday experiences you find that websites tend to forget or don't realise when it comes to making their website accessible?

Lily Dedman

I think people are quite good now with doing, their SEO and making sure that everything is formatted in a similar way, there are generally only a few templates on the internet that you see but I find that one of the biggest problems is that people use external plugins as a replacement for accessibility.

There will be like 'read aloud', or, I don't know what the companies are called. But essentially, they end up covering up your content and the people who need to use things like reading things aloud, already have screen readers, or extensions on their Google or whatever browser they're using, and it ends up just getting in the way and it actually is a data risk because they quite often sell your data that you're inputting. So I find that that's quite frustrating that they think that they don't have to make that kind of general infrastructure accessible, they just add in extra things as an afterthought and go Taa-daa. It's accessible now! but it's not accessible if you've got a screen reader, and you don't have image descriptions, or you've got people who are colourblind, and they're trying to read your page, but actually, you've got a weird grey font on a grey background, and you can't quite see the difference.

Even just really simple things, people quite often use Serif fonts and then forget that there are dyslexic people who can't necessarily read that or your fonts are too small, and you can't zoom in, and you just end up having to scroll across the page, which takes hours and whether now that we're all mobile first and we should be like making everything really easy for people to read.

I'm not saying you have to, have one sentence on your screen, but you've got to think about how people are using it. If I'm on my phone, for instance, I don't have any visual impairment, I should be able to zoom in and not have to like scroll across, I should be able to have it fit the screen and for it to be easy for me to look at or I should be able to just navigate the website easily and understand what every single term means because a lot of people like to use a lot of jargon or kind of industry specific.

I know I've mentioned councils a lot, I've worked on a lot of council websites but they have this tendency to use very council specific terminology that you don't necessarily use outside of that and it gets quite frustrating because unless you work in the council or unless you understand it, you're not going to ever find what it is that you need, and it's supposed to work for the people.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah.

Lily Dedman

But yeah, I think when you get confronted by all of the colours and the lack of contrast and the information and videos automatically start playing, and the lack of captions, and just genuinely it gets quite overwhelming. I think I described it once because I'm autistic as well so sensory input can be quite difficult for me. I once described it as it feels like you've got bees buzzing around your head while you're in the scorching sun on holiday on the beach when you've got sand in between your toes, and in your underwear, and you're deeply uncomfortable and then there's some random old sunburned man, screaming in your face.

That's what it feels like when it's all going on, and you're just like "I don't want to do this anymore." But yeah, it's usually a mixture of everything going wrong all at once. That means that people kind of click off or that's why exit rates are so high and then you end up losing a lot of money because disabled people have a lot of spending power [Both laughs].

Kieran McNeill

That literally brings me on to my next question, because, I was about to ask you, has there been any kind of personal experiences where you've wanted to use a website or service, for whichever reason and their website is so bad, it's not really usable and you don't even bother with them or have to go out your way to find a solution?

Lily Dedman

Yeah, actually. So Amazon is one of the most accessible websites for me, because, it's easy, you can search something and it's right there and it's quite cheap and it comes the next day or whatever. I often try and support local businesses, and try and kind of spend my money in good places, because, you know, I'm a bit of a leftist [laughing] we don't really support Amazon.

The thing is that quite often, I go onto a website that's got leggings, or a stuffed toy that I might want, or some toys for my baby or whatever and then it's kind of impossible to get to the basket [laughing] like "Why have they made it so hard" and then you've got to convert from US currency to UK currency and then you get extra charges and then it's like the complication of the postage on top of that, and then you end up just being really confused and feel like you're getting ripped off.

The thing is, if you have an intellectual disability, that's going to be even harder because you don't know if that's right, or if it's a scam.

How many times have you been told, you got to be really careful on the internet, people are scamming you and you're like, well, I just wanted a pair of leggings because I don't really understand what else is going on [laughing] Why do I have to go through 15 steps, just find some leggings. I think I'll just go on Amazon or go to my local shop or whatever. I found a lot of when I've got to the basket and gone "I just give up, I'm not doing this anymore."

Kieran McNeill

You mentioned as well how disabled people, have a lot of power when it comes to spending and influencing. One of the more recent stats I came across was that over 360,000 people in the UK are registered as blind or partially sighted.

Lily Dedman

Mhm.

Kieran McNeill

That's a lot of potential customers that, if you present that to any business, they would happily welcome you through their doors, but actually, going out of their way to be accessible for it, they're not always the best.

When it comes to visual impairments, what are the main things that businesses should ensure their website comply with, or they should have added to it to help?

Lily Dedman

It depends on the level of visual impairment. I know a couple of blind people, and some of them use magnifiers, which is kind of the same issue that I mentioned earlier about when you're zooming in, and then you end up having to scroll across the page rather than it fitting your page, and you're just going down, so, when they're using magnifiers, often, if you can't do that, then it's very difficult to stay on track of where you're going, or what you're looking at.

I also know that some people have issues where they can see a tiny bit like they can see colour, but then you've got contrasting colours, and then that's overstimulating, and that hurts their eyes and you know, if you have to wear sunglasses to look at somebody's website, you know they've done something wrong.

Then there are other people who use screen readers and so they're often keyboard only because if you're using a screen reader and you can't see the screen, then you're not going to use a mouse because [laughs] you don't know where your mouse is and there's a lot of times where you get into the footer, and you get trapped so you're using the tab button to go to the next button and then it just goes back to the beginning of the footer and not to the top of the page and then you end up kind of in that kind of cycle then you end up having to come off the page because you can't see where else you can go so it's impossible to know what to do.

You find it's SEO basics when you don't put a header, title or number in, so you don't have your h1 or your h2, what a lot of sighted people do is when you're skim reading a page, to see if it has got the information that you want, you can use a screen reader in the same way where you just read the titles, and then you see which action it is that you want to read. But if you've just got it all set up as a paragraph, then you can't skip between the titles so then you end up having to read the whole page.

Nobody has time for that, whether you're blind or not, you just don't have time for that, nobody has the attention span. It's really basic things that should be normal and should be already done because it's already an SEO standard. So it's kind of like you have to invest in your SEO and your accessibility at the same time because they're generally quite interlinked.

Those are the things my blind friends have kind of complained about. But I don't profess to be an expert in blindness.

Kieran McNeill

No, of course not, but, one thing you are an expert in is in terms of hearing impairments.

Lily Dedman

Mmm.

Kieran McNeill

Kind of the same question in terms of what's the biggest things that the modern day website just tends to forget for users with hearing impairments and what can brands do to make their website accessible for people who might be deaf?

Lily Dedman

My biggest pet peeve is those videos you see on Facebook that have subtitles for the first minute, and then none for the rest of the video and I'm like, "Well, I didn't just suddenly gain hearing for a minute of your video, a miracle did not occur" [laughs].

I find that really frustrating because that's the bit where you get invested and then as soon as they take away that access, I don't know if they're saving money or they're just trying to hook people in and make them turn their sounds up, but, at some point, some people can't just turn the sound up and hear it.

That's kind of my biggest pet peeve but people also do have their videos autoplay, and the thing is, I can't always hear that the video is auto playing, and I'll be in public and other people are looking at me and getting angry with me because I'm disturbing their peace. and I'm just there having the time of my life not knowing that a video is playing.

I think that's quite frustrating. I know that it's meant to be in your face but nobody actually watches those and goes "You know what, thank you for disturbing me, I'm going to now buy your products", nobody does that people don't like to have adverts in their face, as a marketing professional as well [laughs]. Just gonna put that out there.

The other thing that annoys me is when deaf people are quite infantilised, so what I mean by that is if they've got captions, they end up putting asterisks in front of the swear words but then they don't bleep it out, for the hearing people. So it's like, deaf people are so offended by swear words. [laughing]

We're all adults, well, not all deaf people are adults, obviously but your target audience is adults if they're swearing in it and if the hearing people get to hear the swearing then it's bleeped out for the deaf people we don't want to sit there kind of trying to work which swear word it is [laughs] we're not going to sit there being like, "Oh my god, I'm disabled and now you've sworn at me." it doesn't work like that but it does get quite frustrating.

You probably have this when things are dubbed and you know that they've said something, but then the subtitles are different and that really annoys me.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, a lot of the time.

Lily Dedman

I'm just there like "Why didn't you just put the words that they actually said there rather than putting some other words, because now I'm confused", because I wear a hearing aid, so I can hear the TV a little bit but I have to have it really loud in order to catch every word, so then I will be reading the subtitles and be like "They didn't say that though" and then have to say to my partner, "What did they really say?" because it can change the whole meaning of what they're saying, can't it?

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, it can.

Lily Dedman

But yeah, there you go, I got off on one.

Kieran McNeill

I'm definitely glad you said that. Because, sometimes when I'm watching YouTube, I do just turn on the captions, because sometimes like, it's sometimes it's not clear to hear them and I see the captions and I'm like "That's not what you've just said but now it's changed the entire meaning of what the sentence was meant to say" so I definitely do relate to that as well. I've definitely seen that. That also brings my next point.

Do you think there's a lot of pressure in this accessibility space for people and brands who attempt to be accessible to have to get it right straight away?

Lily Dedman

No, I think a lot of people are quite understanding. So, I interact quite a lot with disability Twitter and the thing is, is that people are very understanding there could be a disabled person behind the scenes trying to make these things accessible, we're not sitting there going, "Oh, my God, you've got all of this money and all of these resources, you've got to make sure it's 100% accessible every time" but the thing that disabled people quite often expect is, is if we've spent our time and energy, saying it and pointing it out saying, "You know, what, could you put some captions on this stuff, I can't hear" and pointing it out and then gently educating people, quite often we put links in for resources to help them make it easier for them.

We know what it's like to be on the other side where we're trying to make things accessible, but our own disabilities prevent it from being easy. So, quite often people are quite gentle, but then what ends up happening is that the brands either do it for the one video, and then don't continue, or they say, "Oh, it's too much money, we can't be bothered" but they've had a 500,000 pound marketing budget. You know, you could have allocated some of that to accessibility or when it's the larger companies that just flat out ignore you. And that's when it gets frustrating.

I think a lot of people have seen disabled people as quite angry but it's the same with any kind of campaigners, you see a feminist, they're angry women and if you see people who are anti racist, it's like, oh, well, they're just angry black people, or brown people or whatever and you're just like, "the reason we're angry is because we're constantly ignored".

Nobody thinks that people get it right the first time, because the thing is that disabled creators quite often don't get it right the first time, either, or the second or third and I think as long as there's an effort to be made, and as long as there's acknowledgement that you're not going to get it right all the time and as long as you take on board the feedback, and thank the people that are taking time out of their day and their energy, which can be very limited to telling you and care enough about your brand and your company to inform you that you're not reaching your entire audience.

Nobody's going to be like, "Oh, my god you should have done it the first time" I think people are going to be very grateful that you've kind of taken that advice on board and that you're going to improve things going forward. So yeah. I mean, there are some really, really angry, disabled people [laughs] but then most of us are very gentle and kind of educational.

Kieran McNeill

Some businesses, or some websites, may feel quite hesitant to start their accessibility journey because of those very small portions of people who do get very angry and very selective and if you don't get it right, first time, we're going to try and gun you down. But realistically, it's a journey. It's a learning journey, no one's gonna get it right first time and you're not gonna get it right overnight either, for example.

Lily Dedman

No, no, not at all.

Kieran McNeill

My final question that I wanted to ask in terms of a closing thought, if there was a business that was about to start their website, they want to make it accessible, but they were kind of on the fence about doing it. What would you say to them to make them actually go over the line and actually go ahead with making their website accessible?

Lily Dedman

I suppose there are a couple of ways looking at it, I suppose. First of all, retroactively making your site accessible is a hell of a lot more expensive, than making it accessible from the start. So if you're on the fence, you probably should just try and make it accessible.

I think people see it as a ginormous task and I don't think it is personally, it's just trying to understand how different disabilities might impact people. The thing is, no matter how closely you follow the WCAG guidelines or how many disabled people you talk to, it's not going to be accessible for every single person and the aim isn't to make it accessible to every single person, that's impossible.

Your aim is to make it as accessible as you can with the budget and the time that you have. So if you're putting images on your website, just add an alt text into it, if you're doing it from the very beginning, it's a lot easier when you've only got a few pictures than when you're 10 years down the line, and you've got 1000s of pictures, and you're trying to sit there thinking of the image descriptions for them, that is a very daunting task and putting captions on your video.

Most companies are not making that many videos, that it takes a long time to do it. But. if you then wait till you've got 30 videos, that you're doing which are half an hour each, that again, it's gonna be a really daunting task and the thing is, you will eventually have to do it. It's not, "Oh, well, if we just ignore this, it will just go away". more and more people are going to be disabled and more and more money is going to be with disabled people because not to be depressing, but more people are getting COVID and having issues with their health and long term health issues, which are disabilities, we've got an ageing population. So more people are losing their sight, they're hearing their mobility and most people are no longer not on the internet.

My grandparents have an iPad and MacBooks and that kind of thing and they, they have the technology and they want to be involved and that's where they socialise so it's no longer "Oh, well, you know, old people won't go on our website, or disabled people won't go on our website". We do and we notice when things aren't accessible.

The thing is, a lot of it doesn't have to be done by an expert, a lot of it can be done and there are a lot of people on YouTube who will explain how to do it properly and there are a lot of free tools, where you can have a look at your website and see if it's accessible. There are a lot of tools as well, where you can kind of see in "how other people are viewing your website".

There's an ADHD, one, which is brilliant and they put kind of like cartoons in front of the page and very distracting things and it's meant to show the busyness of an ADHD brain and then whether or not your website can be focused on despite all the stuff going on in their brain. You can see it in different colour blindness levels, and all of that kind of things.

It's, it's not that there aren't the resources, you just have to look for them and I think it's, okay to crowdsource the information, if you're on a really, really low budget, you might not be able to afford a disabled person to look at your website, even though that would be the ideal. I know, I'm saying this as a disabled person who does accessibility audits, but there is a lot of resources made by disabled people there are a lot of workshops and webinars that you can go to. There are so many resources out there that it's kind of hard not to make it accessible if that makes sense? If you're making it inaccessible, then feels a bit deliberate at this point.

Kieran McNeill

Thank you that that was a really insightful chat and I hope people who are listening as well, they can now go away from this learning more about the personal experience, of someone who actually does suffer from this. Also, some of the brands out there who may be on the fence can now make up their mind, hopefully, and realise that it's the right thing to do. I think that point that you made about, you're gonna have to do it, eventually, it's just going to become harder and more expensive, the longer you wait to actually do it, I think that's going to be a really important point for a lot of businesses going forward, as well.

If anyone would like to get in contact with you talk to you. How can anyone do that?

Lily Dedman

I'm on LinkedIn, I don't think there are very many Lily Dedman's on LinkedIn but I'm the one with accessibility in my description.

Kieran McNeill

So people should be able to find you relatively easy?

Lily Dedman

Yeah.

Kieran McNeill

Well, thank you for coming on to the podcast. It was a wonderful chat and I hope to see the space of accessibility get healthier and improve over the next few years.

Lily Dedman

Thank you for having me.

Kieran McNeill

Thank you.