Marketing with an Accessibility Mindset
Article 19 explores how marketers and creators manage accessibility
Join members of Tamman’s marketing team as we explore how we manage digital accessibility as marketers, designers, content creators, and communicators. We focus on the machinations and the nuance that goes into crafting our external image as a company as an organization that deeply, deeply cares about digital accessibility.
This episode is part of a three-part series focused on marketing and digital design with accessibility in mind. Check out the other episodes:
- Article 19’s episode on Using Emojis with Accessibility in Mind
- Article 19’s episode on Digital Design and Accessibility
Listen to more Article 19 Podcast Episodes
Full Transcript
Produced Introduction with music bed
Narrator: Expression is one of the most powerful tools we have. A voice, a pen, a keyboard. The real change which must give to people throughout the world their human rights must come about in the hearts of people. We must want our fellow human beings to have rights and freedoms which give them dignity. Article 19 is the voice in the room.
Marty:
Hello and welcome to Article 19. My name is Marty Molloy, President of Tamman, and we have a wonderful podcast here for you today. An all Tamman cast, which are becoming my favorite. I love getting a chance to hang out and talk with my colleagues. Today we’re going to be talking about how we manage digital accessibility as marketers. And that can be particularly challenging, but we wanted to sort of pull back the curtain a little bit, and let you know all—talk a little bit about the machinations, the nuance that goes into crafting our external image as a company and an organization that deeply, deeply cares about digital accessibility. So hopefully folks who are in similar positions, and maybe you’ve got a role in your company or organization where you are a champion or responsible for digital accessibility, you found Article 19, and you want to learn a little bit, so hopefully we’ll give you a couple of good tips and tricks here at the end, too, and just some things that we do. So, with me are two people that I work with every day, and on today’s podcast, you both know, we’re just gonna be talking like we ordinarily would. This isn’t gonna be super structured. It’s like our listeners get to be a part of the conference room as we’re going through some stuff. So, first and foremost is my very, very good friend of many, many years, and colleague, Sloan Miller. He is our VP of Partnership Operations and Strategy, and just all around brilliant polymath. He just knows a little bit about everything, so who knows where this conversation is gonna go? And also, he’s been a voice on Article 19 a couple of time, you’ve heard him mostly coming from the background, but today we’re pulling him upfront, and that’s Harper Yatvin, who is our Marketing Specialist, but also Associate Producer of Article 19. Harper, Sloan, hello.
Harper:
Howdy.
Sloan:
Hello. Glad to be here.
Marty:
Yeah, it’s gonna be super, super fun.
Harper:
First time caller, longtime listener.
Marty:
Yeah [Laughter]That’s right. So, I introduced this topic with both of you talking about sort of the idea of walking the walk. You know, we’re not just about telling other companies and clients and partners how they need to think about digital accessibility, but the content, the different angles of marketing, the social media, this podcast itself, we really need to walk the walk, too, and that takes intention and that takes effort, and so that’s where I wanted to start with it. As we were thinking about this topic—let me start with you, Sloan—what’s something that—or how do you come to this topic today?
Sloan:
Well, just as a little bit of a background, you know I’ve been in digital marketing for close to 20 years, worked with a number of startups, worked with a number of agencies, been in a lot of creative and tech spaces, without being the most creative or technical person; generally adding a lot of strategy when it comes to marketing, business development, outreach and engagement. And simply, when I think about accessibility, it reminds me of what it was like in the early 2000s, where people were starting to do mobile websites or mobile marketing. Right? Where you started to adopt kind of a mobile-first approach to the way you were designing, you were developing, you were marketing, you were talking about what you were doing. And for those individuals who had not had a 15- or 20-year career in digital technology and creative services, or even in the tech space. Right? Mobile is just now something you do automatically. Right? It’s part of the process. And I think that’s where we are in the maturity of accessibility, and especially in accessibility when it comes to marketing and engagement, is that we have to make it part of the process. It has to be from the beginning, thinking about our audience, thinking about who—
Marty:
Shift left, right? That’s what we keep hearing, is shift left, make it as early as possible.
Sloan:
Right. And that really does apply when you’re talking about the project workflow, but when you’re thinking about from a marketing perspective and an engagement perspective like we used to think mobile first. We should be thinking accessibility first. Because approaching it from an accessibility-first angle means you’re being as inclusive as possible, and makes the overall engagement, overall product, overall message you’re trying to send, better all around.
Marty:
So, before I get Harper in here, similarly, in your experience, it seems like—and maybe it’s just bad memory—but it seems like designers and developers and others who were involved in that mobile-first movement, it seems like that took root a whole lot faster than accessibility. One, would you agree with that? And if so, why is it taking accessibility so long to catch on, do you think?
Sloan:
Honestly, I agree with you. I think mobile first was a lot quicker on the uptake. Probably in general because we all have smartphones in our pockets. Right? Designers and developers experience it daily. Right? When your first sets of iPhones and Androids came out, and Google devices, right? Like people were opinionated on which technology they used, but they used it on a daily basis, and now it’s become you know more prevalent than probably using a laptop or a desktop. And I think the same thing happened when the first tablets were introduced in the I think 2010ish range. I can’t remember exactly. So then we started talking about mobile breakpoints where we had screen sizes for your iPhones and your Android devices, and then your tablets and then your laptops, and then your desktops and you know your large monitors. So it was the exposure that I think accelerated the path for mobile first to become ingrained in how designers and developers think. And unfortunately, you know when it comes to accessibility, you have to seek that exposure or you have to have personal experience, or you have to really be empathetic and understand the experience that someone who has some kind of accessibility issue, or lack of access issue, has. You have to go looking for that, rather than experience it yourself. And there are stories on the other side. Right? Like individuals I know who have had mobility issues or strokes, or an experience that really jarred them into having to you know use a keyboard instead of a mouse every day. Or having to adjust the designs or the way that they’re working with designs, based on encountering clients or individuals who are colorblind. And that’s an eye-opening experience. Unfortunately, not every designer or developer experience it the way that they did experience, or as rapidly as they did, mobile and tablet usage.
Marty:
So, Harper, you know we brought you into Tamman really fairly recently, and you are a marketing professional, but you are not a designer, you’re not a developer by training or anything else like that. What were some of the things that you remember coming into Tamman and needing to think about when it came to accessibility from a marketing perspective?
Harper:
So, I’ve been in marketing for several years, and the education I got within Tamman just in the first few weeks, let alone months, was an entirely new experience full of knowledge. Things like how to position your social media posts. The steps you need to take to make sure your message can reach thousands of people who may not be able to see what is happening in a GIF, or be able to understand what is being said in a photo, or what message is trying to communicate visually. Something like that—
Marty:
So you’re talking about alt-text was one of those first things that grabbed you? Like you’re adding alt-text to an image. As an example on social media, right?
Harper:
Yes, absolutely. Alt-text is such a huge part of working in social media and making it accessible. Things like that. Making sure that hashtags are prioritized properly; they’re put in the right place, they’re formatted properly with just—do we want to get into the hashtags a little bit now, or just save them for later?
Marty:
Yeah, man, let’s get into it.
Sloan:
Yeah, case sensitivity, absolutely.
Marty:
And by the way, we’re not cutting that out. Man let’s get into it. This is how we talk about it, so let’s just go for it. So yeah, I want to know. I mean, these are the things that are important to you, that you’re experiencing every day, and I think that there are people who are listening who are feeling the same way, you know? Like, let’s talk about hashtags.
Harper:
Hashtags are a really interesting part about social media, because they’re really ubiquitous. Everyone understands them—if you’re able to understand them, but for certain hashtags, if you’re a low vision user, if you’re a blind user, it can be very difficult to work with them. A best practice for hashtags is for each word that you have, capitalize that first letter of each word. So if it’s #DayOfThanks, make sure that you have “Of” capitalized. Make sure that you have “And” capitalized in your hashtags. It may seem annoying or unnecessary, it may look odd at first glance, but you’re able to connect to more people with the information you want. I mean, why would you—I don’t want to say alienate, but why would you ostracize thousands of users from your product? It’s just bad business. With a little bit of extra effort, with so much more payoff.
Marty:
I think that is huge. That connects back to exactly what Sloan was talking about in terms of awareness and exposure. I think so many people, they obviously are not meaning to have a hashtag that is a little bit inaccessible. I think even accessibility professionals out there, people that are part of it, don’t think about hashtags as part of digital—it’s all part of digital accessibility. And if you’re not aware that you’re excluding someone, becoming more aware is a way that you can make things easier for someone to consume. I love, love, love that example of hashtags, because we think about it as the big stuff, right? “Oh, I need captions on my videos.” Yeah, you know, for sure you do, but there’s all of these little micro interactions that we’re having every day on social media, and in our work, that we’re not thinking about how we can make things just easier for everybody. I mean, I used to do, before I was at Tamman and way before I was exposed to anything in terms of digital accessibility, I loved those hashtags from a comedic standpoint that are full sentences. The hashtag, #ThisIsTheDayOfTheElephantWhoRanThroughTheForest. I think that’s hilarious, but it’s completely inaccessible, and honestly unnecessary.
Sloan:
Again, I think it comes back to you know keeping it as simple as possible and understanding your audience. Where they are, and meeting them where they are, and engaging them with what your desired outcome is, but understanding that your audience and them accessing the information that you’re trying to provide, is the most important thing.
Marty:
Can you talk a little bit more, though—and Harper, too, if you have thoughts—but this idea of keeping it simple. I think that is something that is,[laughter] I know for you and me, Sloan, is not always the easiest to do. We have so much information we want to convey. What do you do when you’re thinking to yourself, or you’re creating something, or you’re holding a designer to account on something, and you’re trying to get them to keep it simple? What are some strategies, what are some thoughts that you have rolling through your head?
Sloan:
As you’ve indicated, right, we tend to be verbose. We are very big fans of language and complex sentences. And marketing, the entire activity of marketing, is to simplify your message. Right? Use the least amount of words, the simplest amount of words, to convey your message. That’s, you know, why I’m such a huge fan of taglines or short five, six-word impactful statements. For us personally, we use apps like Hemingway to kind of lower the reading level. We double-check what we’re writing. We simplify sentences. We take compound natures out of our descriptive words. And then obviously working with a designer to either lay out some collateral, or email, or website copy, the first thing we do when we look at is, “Oh, there’s too much text there. The text is too complicated. Let’s simplify. Keep simplifying, keep simplifying.” Hemingway brings in the topic on design—and obviously we can talk about this later, bring on some of our excellent Tamman designers with accessibility focus to talk about balancing that design aesthetic with the message that you’re trying to achieve. But you know white space, alt-text, and you know making sure that you’re balancing the visuals with the content is really where we focus.
Marty:
Yeah, for sure. I’m struck by the tool of Hemingway. It’s free. It’s totally free. And it doesn’t just check your reading level, which that’s one of the ways that I like to use it, because I tend to be all over the map in terms of complex sentences and reading levels. But it also just really helps from a pure grammar standpoint. And like it gives me a double-check of, “Do you really wanna use that adverb?” Most of the time I do. I’m a big fan of the L-Y. But it at least is a nice check, and that’s something that we’ll put in the show notes in terms of something that somebody can take away and start using right away. Harper, whether it’s social media or not, because you do a lot more than social media. Are there any tools that jump to your mind in terms of things that you’re just using every day to help you in marketing and messaging and content?
Harper:
There are quite a few tools that I use. So, along with Hemingway, which is useful for editing and revising work across the company while I’m collaborating with people. That is such a huge tool. Honestly, I enjoy Grammarly. Not primarily for the grammar checks, but it has the ability to shorten sentences for you. When you use it with Hemingway, it’s so helpful to really shorten some sentences up and cut away 10, 15% of the writing. I also, if I’m writing something for, let’s say, Twitter, honestly a character counter is really helpful for social media. Just being able to know, OK, so I have a link that’s this many characters, I need these hashtags, the message needs to be this long, then.” That’s really helpful. And I read this about writing years ago, and it still sticks with me. “Clarity over cleverness.” And it hurts me. I love being clever in my writing. I love using fun words. Like, they exist in the dictionary for a reason. And then on the other side of it, I keep coming back to, if people don’t use them, people don’t know them.
Marty:
We should all get that tattooed, because that applies to all three of us. At least on this podcast. Because I’m with you 100%, even though clarity means that the Oxford comma is more accessible, and I have given up the fight, it drives me nuts. And to this day, even though I’ve given in, I’ve given in, I add the Oxford comma now, so please don’t comment or social media on the internet. Still I hate it. I feel like it’s lazy. I feel like, oh, just make the reader think a little bit. But that’s obviously completely antithetical to what accessibility is all about. Right? It’s supposed to be you know something that as many folks as possible can consume. Harper, you—
Sloan:
For those listeners out there, you know that Oxford comma debate was four years in the making, Marty.
Marty:
Oh! So, from high school on I’ve been fighting with my friends at The New York Times against the Oxford comma. But, I ultimately acquiesced, because it isn’t as accessible when we’re talking about clarity over cleverness.
Sloan:
And for the record, I’ve always been a fan of the Oxford comma.
Marty:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you and—
Harper:
I do want to note—
Sloan:
Again, it’s the engineering background, right? Like, it’s about clarity, it’s about not making mistakes when transferring information and written word.
Harper:
I want to note that if you guys go onto Marty’s Twitter account, you will see in his bio it says, “I was wrong about the Oxford comma.” So this debate has really had some legs. And I believe if you go to one of our earliest podcast episodes, I believe there was a conversation about the Oxford comma.
Marty:
There was. It was my apology to Michael Mangos. Who was the person I was mostly debating about with all of this. Harper, you’re gifted in a lot of things. Before we com—not that we’re gonna necessarily completely leave social media, but I wanna bring in Instagram. Because we’ve been talking a little bit about characters and language in some ways, but you have some thoughts about Instagram in terms of how to make that as accessible as possible. Right? And I’d say that’s still the most popular platform for most people. Right? Right now?
Harper:
Yes. Absolutely. It’s extremely popular. It’s only getting more popular as cameras and AI get more and more advanced, and things are more visual. And there are some best practices and maybe pitfalls that I keep in mind whenever I’m making an Instagram post, that I want other marketers to have. So, put alt-text in every photo is a great thing that we should do. And we do it in all photos. But at Tamman, what we do is we create an image ID and put it in the post, in the caption of that photo. And for an example, please take a look at our @tammaninc Instagram. That’s the handle, @tammaninc, and you’ll be able to see on any post what our image ID is like. It’s gonna be at the bottom of the page. So that is incredibly useful. And even though—going back to hashtags again. Even though it’s really tempting to have a longer caption that has the hashtags in it, it’s not the best practice. It’s more accessible with Instagram’s algorithm to make the post, have it go fully online, and then comment to have the hashtags in a comment.
Marty:
That’s awesome. That’s absolutely awesome. And I think one of the things that works for you, Harper—and Sloan, I think this has been a mantra for your career, you know and whenever we’re talking, frankly, over the years—is that it’s not about perfection, but it’s about knowing who your audience is and knowing that you wanna reach as wide an audience as possible when it comes to accessibility. And I know through all the conversations that we have, Sloan, we’re always talking about, “all right, well, who’s this for? What are we doing? And we wanna make sure that we’re including people who have visible, invisible disabilities, and everyone else in between.” Can you talk a little bit about like knowing your audience?
Sloan:
Again, it’s a really interesting exercise, whether you’re doing it formally through personas, or informally through casual conversations with people who you’re engaging with on a marketing front, trying to work with, have worked with in the past, and you’re collecting that anecdotal information. It takes a little bit of effort, of mindset shift, and I think we’ve all encountered marketing professionals or brands who, when they’re talking about themselves, they’re talking about themselves and the things that they like, rather than what their audience likes. So it’s just a little bit of a shift of perspective, and making sure that you, again, meet your audience where they are. And obviously the exercise of personas is a little bit about making generalizations and assumptions based on the facts and the research that you have. And then turning into a process where you adjust marketing towards the goals and outcomes you want. But, geared to the audience that you’re trying to engage with.
Marty:
And I think that there are some—what you’ve, I think, always encouraged us to do as a company, is to systematize things. And, you know, that you don’t have to repeat the process over and over and over again for each individual thing that you wanna do. And that makes me think about when Mike Mangos, our co-founder and Solutions Architect at Tamman. When he talks to groups about accessibility for the first time, I think they are surprised to learn that where he wants to start is on structure and headings. And not necessarily some of the “sexier” stuff of color contrast and audio descriptions. And, if you’re organizing your content and prioritizing your content, you’re gonna make a lot of headway in accessibility just by thinking about how to make it as clear and organized and prioritized as possible.
Sloan:
Absolutely, and I think, you know, anyone who uses Google Docs or Microsoft Word, the styles within the word processing tools are readily available. You know, instead of going in and adjusting the font size and tweaking it each time, if you just use that style drop-down panel—and it’s very easy now to customize, or build it into a template or set that up at the start of a document, using titles, subtitles, headings; you know heading one, two, three—for that order of information provided to a user. It’s really fascinating that Google Documents and Word Documents are very accessible. Right? Those technology teams have gone out of their way to make the right adjustments and accommodations. You know unfortunately when you take a document and PDF it, they haven’t put as much care yet into making sure that those accessible features that exist in the source document are translated into the PDF side of things. Which, you know, should be another long podcast about PDF document accessibility. But generally speaking, Google Docs and Microsoft Word have made it very easy to be as accessible as possible.
Marty:
Yeah. Use the tools at your disposal. I don’t think there’s anybody who would write something in Word and not spellcheck it. Just click that little Accessibility checker. It won’t capture everything. It won’t catch everything. Right? But it will at least guide you to some things that are really potentially absent or egregious, and where it goes. And those are things that we do internally at Tamman. Like, we’ve set up our documents. We have templates. We use headings. We do some of these things for everybody so that even if you’re new to accessibility, we’ve got a style, we’ve got a font that we want you to use—it’s not always the most exciting font. We tend to focus on Verdana, but it’s because it’s accessible. But then that’s already laid out for folks. And you don’t have people kind of going rogue, and you’ve got, you know, 22 different ways of doing something. Or they have something that’s never using an H1 or never using an H2. And make it really, really difficult. And so much of our communication, Harper, internally, we use Slack a lot. And I’d say Slack, from an accessibility standpoint, has gotten to be so so much better than even just a few years ago when we were using it. Did you find when you started—because we immerse people in Slack, especially; I mean, it’s where a lot of our climate and culture is when we’re remote and have people all over the country. Did you find that Slack was difficult to use from an accessibility standpoint, or have you picked up any tricks within Slack that you use?
Harper:
So, I really wanna dive into this topic. But, I feel like both of you, Marty and Sloan, you were giving such great information about websites and H1s and H2s. But I feel like we haven’t really addressed that core topic of what is it and why it’s important. And, what happens if that information is not structured properly. Could we spend a few minutes just diving into that topic?
Marty:
Yeah, man, absolutely. This is a home run heaven for us, and God, when Mangos listens to this he’s gonna be super jealous, because this is, like, his happy place. Sloan, do you wanna go first?
Sloan:
No, uh, you can go first, for sure.
Marty:
No, no, no, I insist, really. No, let me get my thoughts together. No, I’m just kidding. [Laughter] You know, Harper, usability is accessibility. You don’t have to know every guideline of the WCAG, the W-C-A-G, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. You don’t have to be completely immersed and be a CPAC or a WAS certified from the international—you don’t have to have all of those things. If you think about usability and if you think about how you can be clear and not necessarily clever. First, I’m gonna keep using that, Harper. I love that so much. That’s why we use headings, and that’s why we create good structure. That’s why we use bullet points. That’s why we are thoughtful in the way that we present our information to our own employees, as well as to the public. That anybody, regardless of whether they are using a screen reader or not, because that’s, you know, from a pure accessibility standpoint, if you’re using a screen reader and you don’t have headings and you don’t have a thoughtful structured layout, it could be all over the place and you’re not gonna get your point across. But that is true, just from a usability standpoint, for anyone using that information. And that’s, I think, the big selling point for us; is that by thinking about, OK, this is a section, what do I want to convey in that section? How do I present this information knowing that someone does not wanna read a long-form, 4-page, 10-page, diatribe or policy? How can we present information in a simple and clear way as possible? And using headings and using bullets to express things concisely will help someone digest that information, regardless of whether they are using an assisted technology device, or need it necessarily. And as we always say, it’s necessary for some, but useful for all.
Sloan:
And, you know, those clear headings, right, clearly telling the reader or the person engaging with your material what you can expect in each section, goes a long way. Right? You know, descriptive titles. There was a trend to shorten titles in the past to, you know, make them punchy. And I think that works if you’re doing a presentation like a Google slide deck or a PowerPoint presentation, keeping some titles shorter. But when we’re talking about digestible documents, you wanna be simple, clear, concise, but also descriptive.
Marty:
Yeah, naming conventions on files. Same thing. It’s a form of title, right? And to be really thoughtful about, if you’re working within Google Docs and you’re not using a structured folder format, I mean, just making sure you’re naming things in a way that makes sense, so someone else can find it. That kind of stuff, too.
Sloan:
Absolutely.
Harper:
Fantastic. I really like that answer. I like it a lot.
Marty:
I hope other people do, too.
Harper:
Something that I wanted to circle back to a little bit is towards the start of the episode, we had discussed how having an experience, a usability or accessibility experience with a mobile phone, it translates easily. You’re able to understand it a lot more. I think because if someone has never used a mobile phone before, you’re able to pull them aside and sit them down and say, “Hey, here’s this new device. It’s called a mobile phone. Here, take a picture of me.” And if there are any issues, that other person can experience it easily; it’s easily translatable. But for someone who has a disability, that experience is not easily translatable. And for someone who maybe using a program like Slack, or maybe using really any digital program or device. If you have a disability, it’s very difficult to translate that experience for someone who doesn’t have a disability, who does not need to interact with that disability. Does that make sense? I’m not phrasing this—
Marty:
I’m not sure. Yeah, that’s OK. I mean, are you thinking—like, so we have colleagues at Tamman who are blind and are using Slack and engaging with us. But if they have a trouble with it, it can be difficult to remotely help them troubleshoot. Is that kind of where you’re going? I’ll bring her in, even though she’s not here, but our producer Markus Goldman, helps get everybody sounding just right and working with my usual co-host Kristen Witucki, who is a blind woman. Even on her sound setup and getting all that, you know, together, can be difficult. Is that kind of what you mean?
Harper:
I was trying to combine two concepts and circle it back to Slack. Basically, I wanna say that it’s easy to communicate the value of making something usable for a mobile phone, but everyone can experience that. If you have a group of people who don’t have a disability, right now the people who don’t have a disability and who are using a lot of technology are younger people who were born in the digital age. That means they’re young, and making things accessible is not as high of a priority, because not everyone understands how necessary that is. But as they get older—
Marty:
So AI or facial recognition. Because the people that created that were predominantly white men, and the early facial recognition had to be re-calibrated because they had trouble finding the faces for African Americans and people of color and things like that. Is that kind of what you mean?
Harper:
A little bit. A little bit. It’s—
Marty:
Where are we going with this, Harper?
Sloan:
Yeah, here, so let’s—let’s kind of, like, summarize, right? Again, I think you’re circling around something I think that’s pretty interesting, that we can kind of re-frame. So, if I’m hearing correctly. Right? It comes down to, like, the spectrum of ability. Right? Like, a person who has no apparent disabilities. Right? Their optimum performance, you know, we’re all born with a disability, right? We’re all born with the inability to speak, right? A baby grows into the process of understanding and communicating language. And then as we age, you know, we have motor control issues, sometimes speech issues, sometimes vision issues, sometimes audible issues. Certainly cognitive issues.
Marty:
Yeah.
Sloan:
Absolutely.
Marty:
Dementia, things like that. Memory, yeah.
Sloan:
There’s a peak performance of optimum accessibility. So people without who are able, there’s a peak performance where they go from not able, to learning about where their limits and ability are, to peak ability, to then diminished ability, to losing ability. Right? So, if we’re talking about that structure designing for those who are not able. Designing for embedding, engaging, marketing with people who are not able or people with diminished abilities, means that you’re encompassing both and all audiences. Right? The earlier side of things who are not yet cognitively or auditory or motor control function to where they need to be. And those as they age who are starting to experience the diminished side of things. I think you can see those in some modern technologies where, you know, back in the day, your accessible font was, you know, those three sizes of the letter A on, like, New York Times. So it would be, like, normal text, slightly a larger text, and big text. And right now we know that that’s not an acceptable solution for people with low vision. I have dear friends and family members who are incredibly dyslexic. And there are a lot of you know speech recognition, auditory tools that, like, help read websites. There’s Chrome plugins that adjust the font. We’re not talking overlays, but adjust the font, adjust the kerning, adjust the line spacing to allow someone who is dyslexic to better digest the content out there. So these are tools that are being built in, and I think awareness is the largest thing. Right? People need to know that they’re there, need to have the communities or individuals who bring it to your attention. And then there needs to be the empathy and sympathy side of those designing, developing, creating this content need to know that it is more inclusive, and that we reach a wider audience when they are producing content and material for people with the entire spectrum of abilities.
Marty:
Yeah, I totally agree. And we can’t assume the designers and developers who haven’t become aware or haven’t been exposed to accessibility, because unfortunately, most folks coming into the field right now are not. And it’s partly because they don’t have colleagues, they are professors in their institutions. The people that are creating the learning modules and pathways to be a designer and to be a developer, aren’t thinking and prioritizing accessibility, either. It just hasn’t reached that tipping point yet. So most people come into Tamman not having that experience, and we coach and we guide and we, you know, help them understand it, but it’s incumbent upon the leadership or the champions. And a lot of times that ends up being a program manager or PO, or somebody responsible on the team that wants to see this level of accessibility happen. To bring that awareness. And even if you’re not the expert, you don’t have to be the technical expert. There’s so much information online now that you just need to be willing to be curious. Be willing to be an explorer, to go out and say, “Hey, I think we can do this better.” And to what your point is, Sloan, is that if we think about it from a philosophical standpoint of design at the edges; first to try to capture as many people on that spectrum as possible—and again, you don’t have to be an accessibility expert to say, “Yeah, that just makes logical sense; I’m gonna design at the edges.” Then I think you can make a lot of headway on the accessibility front. All right, well, this has been a good conversation. Sloan or Harper, was there anything that you just wanted to mention before we wrap up?
Sloan:
I’d just like to continue a little bit of the conversation with a comment on some of the aesthetic choices that we make. Right?
Marty:
The sacrifices. We have to sacrifice aesthetics.
Sloan:
They’re not necessarily sacrifices. It’s more like intentionality. Right? So, it comes to the point where we think about what the desired outcome is in marketing material and engagement, and whether this is a simple email, a newsletter, collateral website, social media post. Right? That we want to make sure that we’re on brand. That we are appealing to our audience, and that we are using the design and marketing language that we feel is most appropriate, that reflects our brand and how we like to engage in the audience. And unfortunately, as we’ve encountered in a number of our client works and client projects, is not everyone’s brand is accessible. Even Tamman’s own brand, right? Like, in the early days, we had a very bright, seafoam kind of green, and a very bright orange, and when we talk about color contrast, our own color palette back in the day was not accessible.
Marty:
No.
Sloan:
And over time we have recognized that and adjusted. And we still have accent colors of orange and yellow and green, but blue is our primary color. And we’ve spent a lot of time understanding the color contrast when it comes to white text overlay. Using design features and design elements, and a little bit of that design flair in some of the elements that we’re producing for marketing. But it took a conscious recognition that, although we loved our original brand colors, that they don’t match in a modern world where we’re focused on being as inclusive as possible.
Marty:
Yeah, for sure, and having visceral reactions to brands, good or bad or otherwise, it does take intentionality. Harper, you were showing me one before we hopped on. What’s the name of it again?
Harper:
Yes, so there is a media company that I have loved for many years names Rooster Teeth. And they create a lot of interesting internet content. And one of their primary, their first big property was called Red Versus Blue, and they are having their big 20th anniversary, and they have unveiled—or it’s really leaked—that they have a new logo. I’m just looking at it on my own time, and I can see how inaccessible it is. It is a red background with blue writing in a very non-accessible font for many reasons. But it’s just painful to look at.
Marty:
It is painful to look at. That is exactly what I said when you showed it to me. I was like, ooh. And you knew right away, you were like, “I don’t even need a color contrast checker for this one. There’s no way—” even though we did have fun and we went and used a color contrast checker to just see, like, “Well, how far off are they?” and they were not close. This is not good.
Harper:
They were far off. It was in the one four to ones for a contrast checker, when a passing grade is—the minimum is four plus to one.
Marty:
Yeah, 4.5, and seven if it’s in certain things. So regardless, a good example if you wanna see what not to do. We were talking about it because that brand, there’s an emotional connection. You’ve been sort of a loyal follower of that brand for years. And then now that you’ve been exposed to the accessibility, you’re like, “Now I’m gonna go advocate. I gotta tell them, ‘Hey guys, if you’re really gonna release this, please don’t. Could you fix these things?’” You know, and we have articles on our website where you can advocate to companies. Companies will listen. Again, it’s about awareness and exposure and a willingness to be curious. I think most designers and developers are not actively trying to exclude. They just, they haven’t been exposed yet. And there’s no one holding them accountable to have their brand, their information, their content—whether it’s internal or external—be accessible. And so we’re gonna gently, nicely reach out to Rooster Teeth and say, “Hey, can you please be a little bit more inclusive with your brand? There’s still time. You can still change it. We’ve evolved. You can evolve, too.”
Harper:
Absolutely, absolutely. There’s always time to do the right thing and to do the thing that makes the most sense from a business and moral standpoint.
Marty:
All right, so when you came on several months ago, Harper, you posed a new question at the end of our podcasts. And so I would love for you to do the honor. You have to answer it yourself, too, but why don’t you ask your final question for Article 19’s episode today?
Harper:
Absolutely, I love this question. It is, “if you could put a message on a billboard in New York Times Square for one day, what would it say. And ideally, why?”
Marty:
When I worked with young people for the first portion of my career, I would give them an orientation and introduction speech, and I would tell them that I have the secret to life. Do you both wanna know the secret to life?
Sloan:
Is it the number 42?
Marty:
It is not. Not the number 42. Such a—
Harper:
Is it the five senses?
Marty:
No. The secret to life—and I would make them lean in. I’d be like, “Lean in, lean in. You’ve gotta listen, you gotta be engaged with this.” I’d say, “The secret to life is two words. Show up.” Show up. So much in our lives happened because we showed up and we were there. Now, in fairness, this organization had a lot to do with attendance, and so I’d go into the whole attendance thing, but it applies still to this day, that the secret to life is showing up. You have to be present and you have to see where it’s gonna be. You know, this podcast is an example of that. We try very hard to make sure that we are putting out consistent podcasts so that we can drive awareness and be a part of the conversation. We’re showing up, and we hope that our listeners show up, too. So I would say on the—it would just say “Show up. Marty Molloy.” That’s it. That’s all it would say. How about you, Sloan? What would you say?
Sloan:
Show up. Great. Just, you know, just show up. It’s an interesting question, right? Like, I lean two ways. The simple answer, similar to you, Marty, is, you know, “Be human, be kind.” Right? That that is—kindness and gratitude and being grateful, and understanding and empathizing with another individual is a really hard thing to do. The other side of me is more along the lines of, you know, when we were crafting Tamman’s core values and the way that we approach things, we took a page from the Quaker meeting style. Where, you know, some thoughts are just for yourself, and you should only share those thoughts if they’re to the benefit of other people. And I think we take that to heart at Tamman. We take that to heart when we are designing and building marketing, is that, you know, we’ve now spent half an hour or an hour challenging each other, having conversations about how best to do it. But those conversations and that message might not be appropriate for the audience. So you have to kind of, as Hemingway said, “Edit sober.”
Marty:
I feel like there might be another part to that.
Sloan:
Yes. [Laughter] We’ll let the people Google that version.
Marty:
Yeah, that’s great. All right, there, Harper. So if you are in charge of a billboard in Times Square for one day, and you can put up a message and it can say anything you want, what would it say?
Harper:
It would probably say something to the tune of, “Be empathetic, walk a mile in someone’s shoes, and listen.” You can always talk. You can always get more information. You can always open your mouth afterwards. But looking at it from someone else’s perspective and listening to what they have to say; sometimes they’re just handing out free knowledge like it’s candy. It’s great.
Marty:
I love it. Well said. Well, thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate you spending a little bit of time with me today on Article 19. Even though, frankly, you’re always spending time with me, regardless of whether we’re recording or not. For our listeners, if you like what you heard today, you want to explore more about digital accessibility, technology, our company culture, and more. You can schedule a time to meet with us. We’d love to hear from you. Reach out. You can find the whole Tamman team at tammaninc.com. That’s T-A-M-M-A-N-I-N-C dot com. You can also sign up for our newsletter there so you never miss what we have going on; whether it’s an event or an insight or anything else. We’d love to have you join that mailing list. We promise we don’t send too much, only once a month or so. Be sure to rate Article 19 on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you happen to be listening to us right now. It really helps our podcast grow and reach new audiences. Also make sure to follow us and hit that little bell icon, so you never miss an episode. And if social media is your style for engagement, you can follow us @tammaninc on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can share our podcast on your favorite platform there, too. Thanks for being a part of Article 19 and our community. Take care.
Show notes:
- Article 19’s episode on Using Emojis with Accessibility in Mind
- Article 19’s episode on Digital Design and Accessibility
- Hemingway Writing Software
- LOI – Letter of Intent
- Grammarly Writing Software
- Tamman Inc Instagram
- Tamman Podcast on PDF Document Accessibility
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG
- Rooster Teeth
- Red vs Blue
- Rooster Teeth’s new highly inaccessible logo
- Rooster Teeth’s since updated, more accessible text logo
- WMMR Bike-a-Thon Information Page
- WMMR Bike-a-Thon Donation Page
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Using Emojis with Accessibility in Mind
