Digital Accessibility with Expert James Warnken - Part 1

James Warnken, a digital accessibility expert, joins Mark on this week's episode of the Brand Shorthand podcast to dive into the world of accessibility. Tune in to hear about James's journey to becoming an expert in the field, the company he founded, and how he’s working to make the user experience both usable and accessible. This episode covers the full scope of digital accessibility and why it matters.  

Join Mark and James for 30-ish as they discuss all things marketing, advertising, and of course … positioning! 

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is a very special guest, James Warnken. James, welcome to the podcast.

James Warnken
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here, excited to get into our conversation today.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, this is a wonderful topic. We're actually focusing on it as an agency this month, just in the way that we can get better. And for those that don't know James or maybe don't know a lot about James, James is legally blind and yet a digital accessibility expert. And he's going to share a little bit with us over the course of this podcast about how he came to be that digital accessibility expert, the company he founded and some of the neat things that we're discovering together as two different companies. But James, why don't you tell us real quickly your background on your progression with your particular diagnosis and how you arrived today where you are.

Jame Warnken
Yeah, so my story when it comes to the visual side of life really started at the age of nine. So when I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with what is called Stargardt's. And so I'm 28 now, 19-ish years I've been progressively losing my vision. So the way I describe my vision today is like a blend of being both near and far sighted. So standard print on like your mail, I can't read that. And on my phones and computers, everything is magnified and enlarged. And after about, I would say 10 to 15 feet, the details and the colors and just general vision beyond that point isn't there completely. So I have like a sweet spot where I can see to get around the grocery store in my house without bumping into things very often. It does still happen but fortunate enough to still have remaining vision to this point. Stargardt's progresses from person to person at different rates. I've been lucky to be on the slower side of that progression and through childhood from the ages nine, going through elementary school, middle school, high school, college, internships, finding my first job, starting my company and ultimately where I am now. I've gotten to experience almost the entire spectrum of vision to where I'm currently at, meaning there's been a lot of adaption, there's been a lot of changes, a lot of innovation just to make my life as equal as possible to other people on my own side through all of those different experiences that everyone goes through. So from a career perspective, I started in the world of digital marketing after graduating from Walsh University. But while I was at Walsh, I was actually an intern at Innis Maggiore. So I actually worked underneath of Mark and we did a lot of things related to search engine optimization, digital advertising, automations and email campaigns. I did pretty much a little bit of everything in the digital marketing world before I even discovered the world of digital accessibility. So I, a person with a disability, grew up hearing, that's too dangerous, you shouldn't do that, that's not something that you can do because you can't see. I grew up hearing that and after you hear something so much, you start to believe it. And there was a point in my life where I thought accessibility was something that I had to do for myself. And I learned over the course of my career in the world of marketing, there was actually a lot that we could do as organizations, as businesses to meet our users with disabilities in the middle, to make things significantly easier, more fluid, more seamless, regardless of what technology the user was using. And being a person that's a part of the disability community, that fascinated me. I wanted to understand more than just the general user experience. And so I kind of just dove in head first and never really looked back and have now spent the last four years learning and educating myself to be able to teach and educate and consult with others to implement accessibility, similar to some of the projects that we've had the opportunity to work with Mark and team on at Innis Maggiore. So it's been a very unpredictable ride. I never know what's around the next corner, but that's the way I like it.

Mark Vandegrift 
Good. Well, let's back up a little bit because a lot of times the concept of digital accessibility is unfamiliar with folks. And if I said, you know, is your building accessible or are your facilities accessible? is your bathroom accessible? I think most people get that. But let's give a real tight definition of what you personally would define, how you would define digital accessibility.

James Warnken
Yep, so digital accessibility, I  guess I'll start with the word digital in that. Digital being any form of content that exists on an electronic or communication device. We call them ICT products, so information and communication technology. That could be a document, that could be an email, a website, an app, a social media platform, a software, sometimes including hardware in that conversation. And so from a digital perspective, When we talk about accessibility, it's providing the same experience or as close to the same experience as the general user who is not using what is called assistive technology. Assistive technology are the adaptive strategies that people are using with disabilities to engage with your digital content. For example, going back to the physical space, somebody who has a mobility disability may not be able to walk, so they're in a wheelchair. That would be that an example of an adaptive strategy or an assistive device or assistive technology in the digital world for blind users that's a screen reader for someone like me that's a magnification tool for people with cognitive disabilities it's reading tools to simplify the language there's all different types of technology out there to help users  get to and then engage with your content. And so the word digital accessibility for me is it goes back to that user experience. So when we talk about user experience, we often find ourselves talking about usability and usability and accessibility have a lot of overlap, a lot of gray area. But the very interesting thing about it is something can be usable without being accessible and something can be accessible without being usable. So they can exist and they often do exist separately. And my job and my goal is to make them exist seamlessly where things are usable and they are accessible. I can never turn off the marketing side of my background. So when I see a website that has no SEO on it, that drives me crazy. Just as much as seeing images that don't have alt text for a blind user or seeing a page with poor heading structure, there's all of these different aspects that go into it depending on the user and their ability and the technology they're using. I guess in short, my goal is to just make things as usable and accessible for as many people as possible.

Mark Vandegrift 
That's great. Let's give the audience an example. I won't name the airline, but you did some consulting work for a particular airline. We don't want to get anybody in trouble here. But explain your experience of trying to make a reservation on that airline's website. And then after you consulted with them, how that process went. I think that's a good illustration for people to understand the challenge of digital accessibility.

James Warnken
Yeah, so from a general perspective, whether you're booking a flight or a hotel or an Airbnb or any kind of travel, that's naturally a fairly stressful process. You don't want to book the wrong flight. You don't want to be overcharged with hidden fees. You want a good experience through that whole process. Now, imagine trying to do that, but not being able to pick your seat or not being able to access the form fields to enter your credit card information and having to call a friend or a family member and them having to type it in for you. That's what happens when things aren't accessible. You have to rely on other people that independence is removed or you just don't do it. It's not possible, it's not feasible and with regard to something like booking a flight that could be a transaction that is irreversible. You're just out that money. You're not able to get a refund or book a different flight or change it. So there are large consequences for some of those interactions if they're not done properly. And if you can't be confident in it, whether it's because it's not usable or it's not accessible, there's a lot of variables there to consider whether that be picking the right connecting flights or picking the right dates or there's all of these different things that we have to do to book a flight. And so that specific airline with our project that we ended up doing, we did a full evaluation of their mobile app and their website. Now the interesting thing with that project is they were actually getting ready to transition from legacy to new. And so they were wanting us to help them understand how they have been accessible or inaccessible for all this time. And so that they could learn the fundamentals of accessibility within their new apps and websites that they were currently developing. Now we did all the testing. We also did training on top of that where we came in and worked with their designers and their developers. So they were designing apps and prototypes and wireframes in Figma. They were getting ready to build them natively and within all of their technologies, we came in and educated their entire team on the best practices. Within 16 hours of training, their designers, their developers were telling me what changes they were implementing to improve accessibility. And so when we think about accessibility, it's very overwhelming, a very intimidating topic to dive into because it's a very sensitive topic. It's a very, we don't want to push the wrong buttons or say the wrong thing. So it's kind of like walking on eggshells. But in reality, once you start to dive a little bit deeper beyond the surface of that initial intimidation and overwhelming feeling, accessibility really isn't that hard. It's more about the intentionality behind what you're doing and why you're doing it, rather than the technicalities or the complexities that come with making something like a visual chart of an airplane where you just pick your seats on the plane, making that accessible via a keyboard, via a mouse, via a touch device. We're already doing those things. It's just changing the way in which we're doing them so that more users can be included.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. And what's interesting that I guess opened my eyes quite a bit. Oh goodness. It's been three, four years since we really first engaged on this topic. Almost right after you got your start in this space was that there are things that we don't even think about being an accessibility issue. One that, that I always remember is, we were going through a website. It was for a local. Let's just call it an art organization. And we were looking at it from the blind perspective. We were looking at it from the deaf perspective. But you pointed out with a video that we had produced that that could create seizures. And we would have never ever thought about that. So give our listeners maybe a spectrum of what kind of accessibility you're testing for beyond the visual limitations and the auditory limitations. Give us a sense for how broad that gets.

James Warnken
Yeah, and Unfortunately, because I'm a person with a visual disability, a lot of people just instinctively assume when I'm talking about accessibility that I only am concerned with visual accessibility for blind people, for people with low vision, people who are colorblind. The world of accessibility extends to all categories of disability, whether that's visual, that's auditory with like deaf and hard of hearing, that's mobility, dexterity, fine motor control, use of your limbs, that could be cognitive, attention, focus, retention. There's a lot of things to consider there. Reading with something like dyslexia. We also are now starting to look into audio with speech base because lot of things, technologies are starting to use speech to interact with them. so is there an alternative for that? the one you mentioned with the sensitivity and reactions to content like photosensitive epilepsy or seizures and other types of physical reactions like migraines and headaches and nausea. There's a lot to consider with any kind of motion or flashing content there. One of the ones that has grown and gained a lot of popularity over the last couple of years is that psychiatric or that behavioral side with things like anxiety and depression, PTSD and triggering anything like that within a user. Dead blind users, what happens when you can't see and you can't hear the content? There's a tactile alternative that we use. Braille is now in the technology world with refreshable Braille displays. So there are so many different levels to disability. And that's, I think, the biggest part of the conversation is that, yes, there's categories like blindness and deafness and mobility and speech, but within each of those categories, there is a spectrum in and of itself. And what I mean by that is, What my experience as a person who's losing their vision has been like is going to be completely different from the next person. And this is where that usability sort of side of the conversation comes back in because my personal preference drives my experience. If I prefer to have light mode or dark mode on, that's going to be different from the next person. What degree I magnify to, 200%, 250, 300, 500%, that's going to be different from user to user, which magnification tool I prefer to use, and how I configure and customize those settings. So it's a whole spectrum within each of those categories, not to overwhelm anybody, but just to understand that every user is unique. And we talk about that within the marketing side of things, is no two users are exactly the same. So we develop personas and profiles around, this is our ideal customer base. This person generally likes these things, does these things, we could do a very similar thing within the visual world. Users are typically magnifying to these degrees. We can look at surveys and research. Blind users are using these screen readers. So it's not that we have to test and design and develop with everything in mind all the time, but we can take a sample size or a subset of that, apply it outward, and know the underlying technology behind these assistive technologies is generally working the same. And so when we try to peel back that curtain a little bit, a lot of it is that, yes, there's 30 different screen readers out there, but at the end of the day, they're all taking your digital content, converting it to audio to the user in one way, or form. And if you can make sure that it's accessible with the top three that are on the market in something like JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver, those other 27, you could be pretty darn confident that it's gonna work pretty well with those as well. And so that overwhelming feeling, we try to overcome that as quickly as possible while also opening up that conversation as wide as possible, which I think is one of the biggest challenges in this whole industry is how do you get past that initial, those initial feelings and reactions.

Mark Vandegrift
Certainly. Well, before we get into some technical aspects, because I really do want to dive in deeply enough that folks get an idea of what really digital accessibility can be beyond just, I guess, putting a band-aid on things. First of all, let's dive into your company. So I'm going to give a shout out to Clear Vision, which you founded. Give us a sense for what Clear Vision does and also the certifications that put you in very limited company because we're very fortunate in our area to have a James. They don't exist everywhere and you're kind of a pioneer in this area. You've worked with the Justice Department and other places. So speak now professionally around your business and what it looks like from a structure standpoint of, I'm engaging with certain types of individuals that have certain credentials or certifications that make the accessible modifications in the digital space even possible or discoverable.

James Warnken
Yeah, Clear Vision, I founded it in 2019 as a way to help pay for college. And that was back when I was doing the digital marketing world, running those services, SEO, paid ads, social media, all of those kind of things. As I've transitioned into the accessibility world, Clear Vision has transformed into an accessibility consulting agency. And so at the core, we're full service accessibility, end to end experience, whether you're just starting to plan for a new web build, you're designing your app, you've launched your app and you're going through a redesign, you're making updates to existing live websites, documents and apps, or you just want somebody to come in and do training. We kind of have built Clear Vision at this point to provide those accessibility services to meet the business where they are. And so we're not coming in with a prepackaged solution necessarily everything is tailored to the organization. If you're a small local business, we'll tailor it down to you. If you're a large enterprise, you're a state agency, a federal agency, a Fortune 500, we've worked with everything in between there to provide tailored accessibility services, everything from building tools to delivering training and education, auditing and remediating whatever the organization really needs to become more accessible because for me as a person with a disability and somebody trying to innovate within an industry that has only been around for about 35 years, there's a lot of work to be done. And so for me, it's always more about the impact that we're having not on the business that we're working with, but their customers. So I'm more focused on the business's customers and their experience than anything else and making that impact so that when somebody with a screen reader lands on your website, they're pleasantly surprised. They're not frustrated in having to find somewhere else to go, but they're pleasantly surprised in that the experience has been considered from their perspective, and it's been designed and modified and updated so that they're not getting a separate experience, but they're getting to experience it in the same way that everybody else would, regardless whether or not they can see or hear or use a mouse. It's always going to be the same or as close to the same as possible. And that's one of the biggest things that I've learned in the last couple of years going through this industry and navigating the different conversations is the disability community is so used to being forgotten and ignored and left out from even just conversation, let alone the experience. And I feel that I can relate to that firsthand from my experience. so Clear Vision really is all about that inclusion and that end user experience. The way that we do that, going back to sort of the certification and some of the structure, I'll get to the certifications in a second, but I do the work, my colleague RJ does the work, and both of us either identify with a disability or have first-hand experience with disabilities. But everybody on our team and everybody that comes through the talent pool partner that we are partnered with identifies as a person with a disability. And so you're not getting somebody that went to school to learn how to do their job. You're getting somebody that that is their everyday life inside and outside of work. And that I'm not going to pretend that I made that I came up with that that it was my invention to do it that way. The organization that we partner with to get our talent has been doing accessibility training and consulting professional development with persons with disabilities. I actually teach one of their courses on accessibility and we've just developed a really great relationship in aligned goals of they're trying to close the employment gap I'm trying to make sure that that experience that those employees and those customers are going into is ready for them because we've learned that one of the biggest reason organizations don't hire is because they're afraid that their work environment isn't accessible. One of the reasons they don't engage people with disabilities is because of those those feelings and those predetermined thoughts and assumptions and so that partnership has been instrumental in finding a talent pool where we can get professionals with disabilities employed while also driving that impact simultaneously. So that has been one of the things that I'm the most proud about. When it comes to certifications and being kind of on a short list, there's lots of accessibility companies out there, but not very many of them are focused on the human side necessarily. They're focused on leveraging technology to speed things up, make them more efficient, which is great for the bottom line. But accessibility impacts people at the end of the day. If you're taking people out of that, how can you be sure that it's actually effective? So we're keeping people first, technology, community, all of those things are playing a part together with people kind of at the center of everything certification-wise, myself, RJ, every member of our team holds the IAAP Certified Professional and Accessibility Core Competency Certification. As of today, I think there's somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 globally certified professionals. So when we talk about the billions of people in the world, a pool of 6,000 to 7,000, not very big. I know here in Ohio, there's a handful of them, and most of them I have trained and helped prepare for their certifications. I've helped more than 100 professionals with disabilities in this space get into this industry, get their certifications and go through that process, which is another thing that I'm just beyond proud to say that I'm actually helping other people within this space instead of looking at it from that competitive lens and trying to keep it all for myself because there's just too much work to be done. So those certifications. Clear Vision is also because it's owned and operated by a person with a disability. We do have the EDGE certification here in the state of Ohio. We're set up within the SAM.gov registry to work on at the federal level. So we've gone through and made sure that when those opportunities come up, that if accessibility can have a seat at the table that we already have done all the pre-work to just show up and take that seat at the table. We're not having to go through tape or as little as possible, right, to get accessibility into the conversation. And that's proved to be helpful over the last even just eight months in some of the contracts and projects that we've worked on with the National Gallery of Art, with people at the international level, people at the federal level, people at the state level, and even at the local level now.

Mark Vandegrift 
Hey Brand Shorthand listeners. We had such a good podcast with James Warnken that we decided to break it into two. So, for this first part, we hope you enjoyed it. And as always, we thank you for joining in and we ask that you would subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, and share this with friends. Until next time, have an amazing day.