The One About Overlays
A firsthand look at website accessibility overlays in action
Want to know the truth about website accessibility overlays? Join Marty and Kristen, our Tamman teammates, as they dive into the pros and cons of these popular tools. While they can seem like a quick fix, there are some serious downsides to consider such as their ineffectiveness and potential legal risks. Hear them explore best practices for designing inclusive websites for true digital accessibility.
Listen to more Article 19 Podcast Episodes
This knowledge sharing podcast is one part of a series of content we have produced on overlays. In addition to this resource podcast, we also offer:
- Website Accessibility Overlays – In this video, we explain what an overlay is and give you a sneak peak of our team members, Marty Molloy and Kristen Witucki, diving into the usability and effectiveness of web accessibility overlays.
- Accessibility Overlays: A Lived Experience – In this video, Tamman teammate Kristen Witucki, a woman who is blind, guides us through her everyday experience using website accessibility overlays. Watch to see if they deliver as promised.
- The Myth of Accessibility Overlays – Overlays are often touted as a quick fix for digital accessibility. However, they’re not a silver bullet. In this blog post, we’ll debunk the myths surrounding overlays and explore why they fall short in achieving true accessibility.
- Ditch Overlays, Embrace the Real Fix – In this blog post, we explore why overlays, often marketed as quick fixes, are actually harmful digital band-aids that do more harm than good for both businesses and users.
- Overlay Overconfidence – Our team member Kristen brings her lived experience as a blind woman to address how overlays, a tempting shortcut for businesses, often fail to deliver on their promises and why it’s necessary to prioritize users in building true accessibility.
Full Transcript
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. I’m the president of Tamman and one of our co-hosts for today’s conversation about overlays. This is an exciting conversation. I am joined today by my friend, colleague, and ether co-host Kristen Witucki. Hey Kristen. How you doing today?
Kristen:
I’m doing all right. It’s crazy windy out there today. The winds of March are roaring through and I think March is gonna be a crazy month.
Marty:
I agree with you. And this is why as we were talking before we started recording that I think as it’s this weird like warm temperature, cold temperature. This is what draws little field mice into our homes.
Kristen:
That’s right. That was the drama yesterday. My seven-year-old came tearing up the stairs saying there’s mouse, there’s a mouse. So that really bonds our family in a weird way because the 12-year-old runs for the no-kill traps and fills them up. And then my husband like makes fun of us by squeaking this squeaky toy at us and scaring us.
Marty:
I love it.
Kristen:
Yeah, it’s hilarious. And then, this morning, my son got to go release the mouse back into the wild.
Marty:
Oh great. He’s just gonna- she’s just gonna turn right back around.
Kristen:
Yeah, I know, I know.
Marty:
Ever since we got cats, we haven’t had as many issues. My two little buddies, they are my mousers. I love ’em. They are not as gentle as your no-kill, but we let nature take its course.
Kristen:
That’s right, that’s right. I mean, I’m not noble enough to do no-kill. The only reason I allow it is cuz he takes care of the whole thing.
Marty:
Well, this Kristen is a conversation that we’ve obviously been having at Tamman for a long time. We have some articles already written about it on our website. This was a conversation for us that started in our editorial meetings and you and I had kind of gone back and forth about possibly doing something in writing about this. But when we looked out in the world and for any listeners today, there is a lot of really good quality information about overlays out in the world from some really good sources. We will put some of those in our show notes for folks to go and check out cuz we’re using some of those sources candidly as part of this discussion and getting us started. But we wanted to do something a little bit more detailed.
Kristen:
Less formal, actually.
Marty:
Less formal. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And again, for those listeners where this might be the first time they’re hearing the term overlay, I wanna level set with everyone just to make sure they know what it is that we’re talking about. So overlays can take many forms and there are many service providers that are putting and marketing these overlays out there in the internet.
But most often they are a bit of code, usually JavaScript that sits on top of a website where a user can make adjustments to some of the front end of that website. They usually come in the form of a widget or a plugin that is added after the site has been built. And that’s really key because these sites have not been designed with accessibility or even an inclusive mindset at the forefront. So some do a little bit more than others.
Some have AI-generated alt text, alternative text, and we have some podcasts. If you’re unfamiliar with what alt text is. Some are fairly limited. Maybe they’re just changing font size or color contrast and little bits and pieces here. But across the board, none of them make for an inclusive web experience. Now just about every overlay service provider promises these just absolutely bonkers. You know, one click of the button, one line of code and we will fix all of your issues.
And like the snake oil salesman of old, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. And this is really important for those entrepreneurs out there, for those companies that might be listening. Overlays are not accessibility. Companies who may be driven by really good intentions, maybe they’ve recently learned about accessibility and the importance of it, maybe they’ve gotten a demand letter and they’re thinking about it from a legal or a risk compliance side of things, they can get hooked by these unbelievably aggressive marketing tactics by these overlay companies.
It’s cheaper than doing it the right way, it’s faster than doing it the right way and ultimately it will not solve the underlying digital accessibility problems that a site might have. And it may even put you in more legal jeopardy if you have one of these overlays because it says you knew enough to know better. So that’s something interesting to continue to watch in Case Law.
So for those of you who have listened to Article 19 for a long time now and you follow our work, you know that Tamman encourages learning and exploring and debating and trying to be very, very open and bringing people along wherever they are in the process. But the truth is there is no good use case, almost no good use case for overlays. There is one I think, and we’re gonna get to it later in the episode, but for anyone who cares about digital accessibility, Tamman would state firmly that overlays are a shortcut that won’t get your company where you want it to be.
Good solid common sense UX design with usability at the forefront, well-crafted clean semantic code that is clear and carries meaning with it, human choices, common sense manual input in the design, development, and QA processes combined with quality automated testing, that’s how you get to an inclusive website. That’s how you build in digital accessibility. It’s not flashy, it takes work, it takes some money, but in the long run, it produces a better inclusive website and reduces any legal risk you might have too. That was a lot Kristen, but I really wanted to take some time to level set with anyone. Did all that make sense to you?
Kristen:
I’m sitting here smiling very broadly, so yes I did.
Marty:
Awesome. So you’re co-hosting, we’re always doing this, but this might be the first time that someone’s listening to Article 19. For those listeners who have not had a chance to know who you are, can you take a minute and tell us a little bit about you?
Kristen:
Sure. I am a blind author of a couple of books of fiction and some non-fiction articles. My day job is a combination of writing and helping Tamman with the podcast and bringing disability literature to the Tamman work culture and teaching students who are blind or have low vision in central and North Jersey. So I cobble my identities altogether and here I am.
Marty:
Well, I certainly count myself as one of your students as well because you teach me and all of us at Tamman a little bit more every time we talk, whether it’s about accessibility or not.
Kristen:
So from a technology standpoint, I am totally blind, which is actually a minority in the blindness community. Most people have some usable or maybe slightly non-usable vision. I have no vision, no light perception. And so I learned to read braille as a young child and I use braille display sometimes and other times I use a regular computer with a screen reader.
Marty:
And just for, I mean to really get into the weeds here, for those techies who are listening, what screen reader do you use?
Kristen:
I have a Windows computer and JAWS for Windows and I keep wanting to learn Mac, but no one has paid me to do that yet. And I don’t have time so, but I think Mac is probably better, but I started with Windows and I’m still on Windows. I don’t know. I love that Mac has the voiceover built right into it. I think that’s a powerful statement.
Marty:
Do you use an iPhone?
Kristen:
I do. I do. I’m a traitor. Yes. It’s for everyone.
Marty:
No, no, you run the gamut, which is the way it’s, yeah. And do you find that the accessibility features for your iPhone as you’re surfing in the web mobilely, do you find that they’re adequate from an Apple standpoint?
Kristen:
So I never learned to type quickly on the iPhone. And sometimes if I have a large task, I still prefer to use a computer, but the iPhone will help if I am out or if I know that the task isn’t too high stakes, things like that. But I think there are many people who are really iPhone power users who would say, you know, that’s all you need. That’s it.
Marty:
I think those people are called young people because I’m right there with you where if I have anything of substance I have to do, I’m doing it on my computer like I’m doing on my phone.
Kristen:
Like Nimit, you know, Nimits probably.
Marty:
Yes. Nimit would be on the phone.
Kristen:
Nimit is a power user on everything.
Marty:
And then just same thing. So a while ago you were talking about getting a new braille. What are you using now for [crosstalk 00:08:40]?
Kristen:
My gosh, I have a BrailleNote Apex. It’s made by HumanWare’s. If you tried to look it up, you won’t be able to find it. They’ve stopped supporting it, but mine hasn’t died yet and these things are four to $6,000 apart. So I am not eager to replace it. And so I’m using it with the knowledge that any day it will die. But I think I got it in 2012. It still works for now, knock on wood, maybe after the show it won’t work anymore.
Marty:
No, no.
Kristen:
And there are actually braille displays. The big problem with braille displays is the expense because of the supply and demand issue. And there are companies out there working to make cheaper models, so
Marty:
That’s great. So that kind of gives us a sense of some of the assistive tech and the tools you use in your day-to-day, but also for our listeners, and you and I have talked about this many times in the past, but like can you just briefly from your own experience talk about before we get into overlays heavily, like your experience with a website that is terrible or your choice, co-host choice, an experience with a site that you’re like, they got it right and I go there every single time because I know I’m gonna be able to do what I need to do.
Kristen:
To be honest, I think about the accessibility website a little bit less than the task that I have to do. You know, so if I have to go to this company to get this thing, then I’m just gonna go and figure it out. I don’t think that there’s any one right way to do accessibility and, you know, kind of the more we get into this, the more different ways it can be fine. But I love websites with just; I think this is not that common actually. Like with really clear heading structures because I can jump around and figure out, OK, well this is the most important topic on this page, here are the subheadings.
I realize not all pages work like that and there may be reasons for it, but I love that just for navigation. I think I’m really getting old now because I love when the search field is always apparent. You know, now there are ways to kind of bury it in a menu and open it up. They do work, I can use them, but I love it when it’s right out there. So JAWS has a lot of different ways to jump around a website you can jump by heading checkboxes, radio buttons, form fields, depending on what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish. And I guess websites that have a lot of those very clearly identified are really nice for me.
Marty:
Well, you just made many people listening to this podcast very, very happy by starting with really good headings because usability and accessibility go hand in hand. It starts with being organized and creating a structure that someone can follow, whether they can see it or listen to it or, you know, just be able to follow it in a way that makes a lot of sense on the keyboard, that it has a flow to it. So that’s one of those like basic 101 level kind of accessibility things is being thoughtful with your headings. And that’s not just for websites, that’s for documents too and making sure that you’re organizing your information, it’s good for everybody.
Kristen:
And alt text that has some effort behind it. Not just like, yeah maybe a picture, a picture of some people like great.
Marty:
Well, let’s get into that because that’s one of the biggest complaints that you hear about these overlays, these AI-generated alt text or, you know, not having a person there. We’ve done a number of podcasts and written about alternative texts for a while now. It’s really, really important. It’s being used by people not only who may have vision issues, but other people as well are now getting into the alt text game and it’s important. Like how do you tell if you are shopping for a shirt, Kristen, if it just says shirt.
Kristen:
Right. Well, the answer is I don’t. I mean, I get help. Like that’s one thing that I just get help with because clothing just drives me crazy. I think one of the most telling signs that any company has used AI and one of the most insulting is the phrase or the set of words at the beginning may be a picture of- oh and really it’s just that, you know, I think what they want people to think is OK, we don’t know for sure so we’re just going to give it our best guess using AI and therefore we’re not locking ourselves in.
But really it’s just a huge insult to people who depend on the description because usually the description that follows it is something very vague and not helpful. Like maybe a picture of three people child standing or like maybe a tree, you know, or one of my favorites, this is really silly, but like one was like maybe a sunset and the person wrote that it was a sunrise. So it’s just like you can’t even get any of these, right? So why are you trying say that you do it?
Marty:
It is so just to say that you do it.
Kristen:
That’s it. That’s the reason for me.
Marty:
And that’s the reason. And that really leads us into overlays because I think that’s the key, right? Is that folks are trying to find their little cheat code and to say, oh we’re compliant, we’re good and you’re not. And this is a terrible experience both in terms of the spirit of an inclusive web but also the actual experience of an inclusive web. It’s very, very frustrating.
So let’s get into it Kristen because we started this conversation a while ago and for full transparency we looked at some websites in the wild, right? Just for your experience, right? This is very like, hey, let’s make this very personal for folks to understand because as I said, there’s a lot of really good solid technical writing out there. Some really good examples. And again, we will post a number of them in our show notes because they’re worth a deeper read.
But we wanted something that was just sort of like, hey this is, we’re talking about real people here and Kristen, you get to be one of our real people. To be open and transparent, we looked at some of the biggest overlays out there on the market, some of the ones that aggressively market themselves accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye, and EqualWeb. And we went to a couple of websites, we sort of just bounced around into their accessibility statements. We wanted to see what some of this was not just from their marketing language, but what was really happening on a couple of these sites. So beyond that, Kristen, can we talk a little bit about like what was your approach anecdotally as you were starting to get into testing and I’m actually using the word testing very, very loosely as you were going through some experiences. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Kristen:
Yeah, yeah. I actually was a little nervous to test a lot of it unless I absolutely had to. And I had read the overlay fact sheet, which we will put into the show notes and I think this fact sheet is hilarious, honestly. There’s a hilarious element to it. It’s very serious. But some of the headings on it are like strengths and weaknesses of overlays and there are no strengths. I mean like, you know, so you read this fact sheet, they’re like maybe you need to change your titles a little bit.
So basically comes out very firmly against overlays for a whole variety of reasons from the technical to the personal user experience level. It’s a great website. And one of them kind of scared me honestly because it talked about the privacy of information. So one thing that I was not initially aware of until I read this fact sheet was that overlay services will track your activity from website to website that they are embedded into.
The stated reason for that is sort of benign, paternalistic maybe of like, oh we’re just trying to help. So when you get to the next website where we are affiliated, you’ll just remember that you need us and here we are, boom. But really what that’s doing is tracking a person’s disability in the AI world, which as we’re hearing a lot lately over the last couple months, there’s this murky, creepy aspect to AI. But one thing people don’t really think about too much is that a disability is confidential, even a visible disability. And it’s one thing to kind of let any human know that sees you, but it’s another thing to have it embedded into programs.
Marty:
Absolutely. Very well said. We’ve talked in the past about privacy, feeling a bit of like a myth, but there are more and more browsers like DuckDuckGo and Firefox has a whole bunch of things that you can do where you can really limit what’s tracking you. Brave is another browser that does a good job of showing you like, hey, here’s what was trying to track you and where [crosstalk 00:17:00] but it gives you a lot more control and I think that’s what Europeans are a lot further along this front on the privacy front than the US.
I think we’re still kind of leading the pack when it comes to the American Disabilities Act broadly speaking, but I think Europe is starting to catch up with us. So was there any though that you went to where you felt like it, just aside from the privacy side of things where you’re just like, this is not working with my screen reader, this is not a good feeling. Like did you have that experience where you were just on a site and just it was impossible to use from your perspective?
Kristen:
So weirdly, when I didn’t turn overlays on, sometimes the websites were fine and they worked just fine. And I almost wondered, I mean, I think maybe the screen reading software is getting more and more adept at navigating websites, but I also think people just don’t always know what’s actually a problem. So they just put the code in there so that they can say they’ve covered everything but they have no idea what’s accessible, what’s not accessible.
And sometimes they’re better off than they realize with no code. But there was a really interesting, when I went on some websites that were using EqualWeb and I tried to activate the overlay, the widget to make it work, it would say something like, click here to use this website with a screen reader, you know, a screen reader-friendly mode. One time I was playing with a company that had elected to use EqualWeb and I use a screen reader. So there’s a little widget at the top of the page that says click here to go into accessibility mode.
And I did and EqualWeb said something like, oh sorry, this company has not paid to use all of our features. And it took me by surprise because, you know, this is claiming to make this website fully accessible but suddenly the company has claimed that they only paid for some features like maybe color contrast or I’m not sure what the basic package is versus the premium package. But basically, they just used what they could use for free and that was it. So they literally didn’t even pay for anything or very little.
Marty:
Kristen, I don’t know how anybody listening to you right now cannot get absolutely furious by this example that you’ve given us because as companies can elect not to make a site accessible or work with EqualWeb to make it all at least all the way that they’re able to go, you can’t elect not to use a screen reader.
Kristen:
Right. I mean, I can’t take a day off from using the screen reader.
Marty:
And despite the fact that my mom is probably listening to this, that was one of my listeners that won’t be upset with me. That is some bullshit. That is some bullshit, that is so frustrating to me. And again, it comes down to trying to do it the cheap way, trying to do it just to try to cut corners in every way. And you know what? We’re gonna do this and it’s only gonna affect certain people so that doesn’t really matter.
Kristen:
Yeah, it’s very ironic that it’s called EqualWeb. It’s like the opposite of EqualWeb. Hey, Marty, can you tell us about that wonderfully awful aggressive email marketing that we got from accessiBe a few days ago?
Marty:
Yes. I’m so glad that you brought it up because one of the reasons we chose some of the overlay companies that we did was because of their aggressive tactics, they will go on and you can even see it in our show notes, they will go on pretending to be someone else not associated with the company and like, oh, I’m just a random user and I love this da da da and it’s, ooh, it’s so smarmy.
Kristen:
Oh it’s gross. I mean, the email was from Jane and the article was by Joe. I was like, huh.
Marty:
They’re not even trying sometimes. And so I got a random email that anytime somebody emails Tamman, so any listeners, if you email Tamman, it will be read. And we appreciate folks who engage with us. And at first, I was like, oh I like what is this email? And this is basically what a random person had written to me and said, “Hey, you know, we saw that you wrote this article on your web and oh by the way, hey we really loved it, but have you ever thought of checking out this, my colleague said that this was really, really useful. Maybe you want to promote this too.”
And I was very intrigued because it seemed like just a normal human-generated kind of email and things like that. Maybe it was, I don’t know. So I go to the link, be careful when you’re opening links and email, but I go to the link and I’m looking at this article and very quickly it is an article espousing accessiBe and the merits of accessiBe. But it’s wrapped in all of this really, you know, not totally wrong technical jargon, but it keeps bringing the reader back to Accessible.
And I was like, ooh, this is devious. And as I said in the show notes with one of the links that we have where a very good article is written by a gentleman walking folks through a very even-handed approach, like really thinking like, hey listen, I’m not trying to demonize here, I’m just trying to provide some facts. And then in the comments, there it is again, you know, somebody coming in pretending to be just a normal person and they are marketing one of these overlay companies and it is so insidious. You know, if you’re just new to accessibility and you’re just trying to figure things out, the aggressiveness of the marketing behind these companies is really powerful. And I’ve been trying to think all day as we were thinking about recording here of a good example, right?
Is there something where like the marketing so far outpaces the reality? Now you’ve got all of these experienced professionals who are saying just do it right? And I keep coming back to nutrition, I keep coming back to sort of like the weight loss game, right? Where people are really genuinely trying to be as healthy as they can be and trying to get real factual information and they go online and all of a sudden they’re bombarded with all of these messages that are not accurate about what you need to do to be your most healthy self.
And it’s very confusing and very difficult and that’s why the message really needs to be out there. It’s not fun. It takes time, it takes some effort, and resources, but you can make a site whether it’s built already and you need remediation or you’re thinking about putting a website or a digital property out there. You just need to think about doing it the right way. And don’t cut corners, don’t take those shortcuts. Maybe we change the title to like just the soapbox episode cuz I feel like I’ve been on my soapbox for a while, but-
Well, no, I mean when you sent that email to me, I read it and what struck me was there were all kinds of mistakes. Like there was alt texts that had code thrown into it. There was language about people with disabilities suffering or tending to- that drives me nuts. Even when it’s true, I’m like nobody tends to do anything just because they have a disability. It’s just, you know, maybe there are some general associations you can make between people, but we’re all individuals. We’re not this big lump of people. So yeah, it was crazy. Crazy from a disability perspective, not just an aggressive marketing perspective. I went through and wrote all the errors out just because I was having way too much fun honestly.
Marty:
You did. And as I’m looking at it now, you had 15 errors or things that were just like, again, clearly, this was written if possibly not by a person, but if it was, it was just sort of like I’m gonna couch this and just make it look like, you know, I’m going to do the bare minimum of what we need to put in here. Things like, well you talked about scraped graphics, but you have in very simple terms because English is a second language but not because they can’t understand complex directions. It’s just, come on if you’re gonna do something and this was not a short piece, this was not.
Kristen:
It went on and on.
Marty:
And on and on and on. And again I think they’re trying to find these ways to sort of suck people in through these different rabbit holes. So Kristen, one of the things that when we were doing our research previously, I had kind of been thinking about like, OK, how do we find some balance here? Like are there any good uses of overlays? And I have one and I wanna run it past you.
So, you know, one of the things that my friend and colleague Mike Mangos, co-founder and solution architect at Tamman has talked about is the fact that overlays are good when you’ve done everything else right. You know, yeah, OK, you wanna add overlays? There might be a reason for that. Giving people some control is not a bad thing and making some of that control really obvious for people who might not know how to go into their settings in the backend and change color contrast or go into dark mode or do other things that might be really helpful or, you know, change the size of their text, they might not know the keyboard shortcuts or the menu or what have you.
And so there could be some really good things that these widgets and these plugins do from an overlay perspective, but only after you’ve built a quality site to begin right with all the things that you and I have already talked about, you know, headings and good alternative texts and thoughtful semantic and clean code. But as we were talking about it, I was thinking about the AARP.
So the AARP website uses an overlay and not to call out AARP. I actually think it’s appropriate in this particular instance. So because with the AARP you might have people who are unfamiliar with using assistive tech, right? Perhaps they’ve been an otherwise pretty healthy adult without any vision or motor function skills up to this point but not [inaudible 00:26:10].
Kristen:
Up to now, they were temporarily able-bodied, right?
Marty:
They were temporarily able it, this is great, but all of a sudden like my eyes with reading glasses and things like that where it’s all a sudden like why can’t I read that? Oh, I need to put on some glasses or something else in my case. And so they might be trying to work with a website for the first time and they don’t know that they need some of these changes and don’t necessarily have the technical background to do it for themselves.
Kristen:
Yeah. Either they don’t realize that the computer may have some of these settings already embedded or their mobile device or, you know, just need some direction of where to start to either hear the text or see it in a different way or just interact with it in a little bit easier way. So yes, I agree. People who are new to disability, maybe older people who are relatively new to technology or just new to interacting with it in a new way as an older person or you know anyone with who’s just new to it or for whom the disability may be temporary could really benefit from overlays.
And honestly, when I was working for a larger company a few years ago they were using ADP for their pay system and at the time ADP interacted with AudioEye. And I will say that when you are trying to get paid you will feel a little bit more generously toward an overlay because if you don’t use it you’re not getting paid. But with that huge disclaimer, AudioEye was pretty tactful in its use and it didn’t really bombard my computer and, you know, I could control what it essentially heard and saw outside of ADP and it was certainly a little bit unintuitive when I thought about how I used my screen reader to interact with most websites versus how I used it to interact with a gigantic pay table of times and dates and things like that. But it also wasn’t the worst. They had a human to sort of help us figure it out and, you know, I appreciated that.
Marty:
And I need to stand correct because even as we’re like this is live on the podcast, they had an overlay, AARP no longer has an overlay. So I’m gonna correct myself and I’m just kind of giving it the once over here, the old Tamman a quick once over, they’ve done a great job with their site. You know, I’m not doing a full accessibility audit on it but it looks really strong now. It’s possible.
Kristen:
Nice, maybe there just need the overlay as a bridge until they could get things more settled.
Kristen:
There you go. That’s exact. There’s another good use as one of the authors who talks about this talks about overlays as being a bandage. It’s not meant to be permanent, you know, it’s because it doesn’t address the source code. And I think that this might be a good example of that. So Rock on AARP. Well done. You’ve got [crosstalk 00:28:49].
Kristen:
Thank you for not using overlays anymore.
Marty:
Exactly. And I gotta say like they have some really nice things on their website so again my apologies, but great stuff there. If you want to go check out what a good pretty decent little website looks like, go check out those guys because I think that their membership, it needs accessibility. I mean, like you said, temporarily abled, we’re all going to have some aspects, whether it’s loss of motor control, cognitive issues as we get older and older and people are living longer, you are having issues whether they’re episodic, situational or temporary or permanent disabilities where you’re gonna need accessible websites. So this is great Kristen, so I’ve been doing a lot of talking, I wanna give you the last word in terms of overlays. What do you wanna say to the audience here before we wrap up?
Kristen:
So I’d like to end with a story that has nothing and everything to do with overlays and which will hopefully help us to segue into a part two if we decide to do one. And my husband James, before he retired, worked as a customer service representative for an audiobook company that basically lent out books to people who were blind or low vision, or had learning disabilities. And he’s also totally blind and he’s doing this customer service work and he answers the phone one day, most likely before closing time cause that’s when the weirdest calls come in.
And he said that the guy said he wanted a book about how to tape his ribs back together and James said, I think you don’t need a book. I think you need medical attention. And the guy said, oh no, I don’t wanna go to a doctor. I don’t wanna get my friend beat me up. I don’t wanna get him in trouble anyway. You know, James was like that dude, there’s no anatomy and physiology book that’s going to help you go to the freaking hospital and I hope the guy did.
But I think about that story so many, many times just in general and the limits of what certain very small fixes can do, and books can do a lot more than overlays. But essentially what I’m trying to get at is you can use a bandaid for a cut but you can’t use it when you need stitches or blood transfusions. So if your website is really in trouble, you know, or even if you don’t know whether it’s accessible or not, because it could be fine or better than you think, you need an actual human or group of humans to check that out. Ideally, some of them should have the disabilities that you’re hoping to help.
Marty:
AI can only get you so far. I totally agree. And in full disclosure with AI, you know, as connected to some of these overlays, I often have been using ChatGPT for questions recently. Couldn’t do it on this one no matter what I try to do. I was like, this is [crosstalk 00:31:28].
Kristen:
That’s funny.
Marty:
It is funny.
Kristen:
That shows that ChatGPT is on their side. That’s what I think.
Marty:
Awesome. Kristen, great to talk with you today. I’m glad we can bring some of this to light. Thank you for sharing your personal stories and anecdotes with this. Much more to come, I think on overlays in general as we continue to sort of beat the drum of, you know, doing things the right way, taking the time to do them the right way is really important and worth it in the end.
Kristen:
Thanks, Marty.
Marty:
So thank you to our listeners. I appreciate you spending a little time with us today. We want to hear from you so we can kind of keep this conversation going. If you like what you heard today or if you disagreed with something you heard, let us know. You can find us across all social media at Tamman Inc. And especially on our website Tammaninc.com. That’s T-A-M-M-A-N I-N-C.com. There you’ll find all of our thought leadership on things that are related to digital accessibility or company culture and more. You can also sign up for our newsletter so you never miss a beat with us. Also, please rate Article 19 five stars and leave us positive review wherever you’re listening to this podcast now.
Kristen:
However, if you are an AI accessiBe bot, please do not bother to come.
Marty:
Just pass it on by.
Kristen:
Yeah, you already did that. We got it.
Marty:
We got it. We want to extend this conversation far and wide. We need to help building the inclusive web as a community across. So please share it with friends, share it with your colleagues. If there’s a topic that you’re curious about, a situation you wanna know more about or perspective that you might be looking for, send us a question on social media. We want to hear from you. We may end up using that question, upcoming episode or maybe frame the whole episode or invite you on. We’d love to have you. So thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. And until next time, take care.
