Sharron Rush: Hi, folks, I'm glad to... Glad to see you're here. Welcome to our restart of our BADA - Be A Digital Ally series. We're really pleased that we can be part of your accessibility journey. Our goal, as you might see there on the screen, is to create inclusive and accessible spaces, be kind, polite, and respectful to one another.
We're a nonprofit. We were founded in 1999. So we turned 25 last year. And in our 26th year. Knowbility is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We're based in Austin, Texas. But we have programs that reach all around the globe.
Our mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities. And we pursue that through a few different programs and services. We provide services to companies and schools and businesses in accessibility testing and auditing. Our focus is definitely in the digital space. So we test and audit and report on digital properties. We do consulting and leadership and strategic consulting.
We're very proud of our training. We do training independently to companies or or institutions, but also we have an annual training conference called AccessU. We... our AccessWorks database is a collection of people who are interested in doing usability, testing people with disabilities of all kinds, and you can contact us if you'd like to include people with disabilities in your... in your own usability testing, or we can design a study for you.
And then we also have an Accessibility HelpDesk that says, you know, I'd just like somebody who knows more about this to be able to answer some questions for me, and we usually run that through Slack or Zoom.
And those are our basic services that we offer. And then we have community programs which are... Be A Digital Ally is one of those things that are ways that we can engage the community, listen to the community, provide the services that people need to build their own accessibility practice.
One of those is the Accessibility Internet Rally, which is an annual web design contest. We design accessible websites for nonprofit organizations.
AccessU is the Training Conference I spoke to you about just a minute ago, where we invite you to come to Austin or connect remotely. (And oh, I forgot to turn on my camera, didn't I?) And it's a training conference. So you come to gain skills and connect to the community. We're coming right up on AccessU in May. And then AccessWorks is the database. We have a K 12 digital accessibility programs. And then, of course, this Be A Digital Ally or BADA, which we try to do every month. We haven't been around for the last couple of months, but we're going to be back on the web with ways to help you get started in accessibility.
And I'm really excited about what we're doing here tonight because we have some dear and established friends, the people that we've known for many, many years, who have helped us develop our own practice at at Knowbility, and to become better practitioners of inclusive design and practice in the digital space.
So to introduce our speakers tonight, I'm going to introduce you to our community programs. Director, Teenya Franklin. So take it away, Teenya.
Teenya Franklin: Hi, everybody! Excuse me.
So 1st of all, thank you for coming tonight. We want to invite you to continue to Be A Digital Ally and follow our monthly series, and there'll be a link provided at the end where you can find all of the information for upcoming events.
Our goals is to cover basic skills and principles behind accessible digital design and various topics across the accessibility landscape to make it accessible to people with disabilities. And therefore everyone at all. Our audience are content creators of any skill levels and those nearer to to accessibility.
So we have some learning objectives here. But 1st I want to go ahead and introduce you to our presenters tonight. There's going to be Jan McSorley and Desiree Simeone. and I'm going to turn it over to Jan so that she can read her objectives and go ahead and flow into her class.
Jan McSorley: Yeah. Hi, everybody. I think I'll just quickly tell you we're going to be covering some basic information about what cognitive and learning disabilities are. So we'll do a bit of defining of those terms.
And then we're going to look at some common design frameworks. What they are again, very high level definitions. And then we're going to spend a little bit of time looking at the W3C's cognitive accessibility task force document called Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities. And then talk a little bit about plain language, and then take some examples from an Ed tech product that I promise you we're really not trying to pick on. We just needed a product that we could use for our presentation. And this seemed to be a really good one to choose.
So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so that I can show my presentation...and bear with me for just one second. Let me know if you can see that, Mark. Can you see the presentation? I'm not on the right slide? Pardon me, great! There, there we go. All right now. We're on the right slide. Sorry about that.
So welcome, all of you, to this session on designing for optimal cognitive function. I am Jan McSorley, and presenting with me tonight is a very dear friend and longtime colleague, Desiree Simeone, and she has some sample videos that she's going to be sharing with you later in the presentation.
Your materials, if you want a copy of the Powerpoint, or a few other materials that we have, those can be found at this tiny URL https://tinyurl.com/a11y4cognitive, and I will show this URL again at the end. So if you don't capture it now, it will be shown again at the end.
So let's start by talking a little bit about cognitive and learning disabilities. These are basically defined as long term, short term or permanent disabilities relating to cognitive functions, such as things like perception, memory, and attention, learning and orientation. Things like, you know, visual, verbal, or numerical thinking. So people with disabilities that are cognitive and learning in nature may have difficulty with those functions.
So there are many, many different types of cognitive disabilities, and depending on where you live in the world definitions may actually vary this slide lists some examples of conditions that often result in difficulties with cognitive function.
In the United States there are different types of learning disabilities, including things like dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia. There are also different levels of cognitive impairment that can range from mild to severe people with more severe cognitive disabilities. In the US are often referred to as people with intellectual disabilities, but in the UK a person with an intellectual disability is more closely aligned with the US Definition of a learning disability.
Some other conditions that are listed on this slide are things like aphasia, nonverbal, and other types of severe speech and language impairments, mild, cognitive impairment and dementia. There's also ADHD, autism, traumatic brain injury, and Tourette's syndrome. But it's really important to note that this is not a comprehensive list. It's just intended to provide a few examples.
So the functional needs that are impacted by cognitive and learning disabilities may include having difficulty with attention, memory, including short term, long term and working memory. You might have trouble with language, issues problems with perception, difficulty with reasoning and decision, making visual, auditory, or sensory processing issues, such as you know, even the processing speed can be impacted.
And then, lastly, executive function can be impacted, resulting in reduced capacity for self-regulation, self-awareness, inhibition, planning and problem solving.
So we're going to touch on 3 common design frameworks today. Again, this is not a comprehensive list. But we're going to look briefly at user-centered design, human-centered design and inclusive design.
We will not go into depth on any of them, and we're certainly not claiming to be experts on any of them. We just wanted to mention them so that you're aware they exist and that they may be used by people when designing digital content. We're just going to provide some basic definitions. And then we're going to point out a few commonalities among these frameworks.
So user-centered design is an iterative process where designers focus on user needs. During each phase of the design process, a variety of research and design techniques are used to involve users throughout the design process with the goal of creating highly usable and accessible products.
Human centered design is going to sound a little bit like user-centered design. But human centered design prioritizes the needs and requirements of users. It is also an iterative design approach. It focuses on creating interactive systems that are both usable and useful. It applies human factors, ergonomics and usability, knowledge and techniques to enhance effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability, while also mitigating potential adverse effects on health safety and performance.
The Inclusive Design Research Center defines inclusive design as a framework that considers the full range of human diversity, including ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference.
In her book, Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design. Kat Holmes states that the way we design user interfaces and content can either lead to exclusion of certain populations or eliminate exclusion and broaden our overall user base.
I'm a big fan of Kat Holmes. Just want to put that out there in her book. She also explains that it may seem counterintuitive, but focusing on excluded communities outlines clear constraints for design teams. These constraints actually help teams build a more profound understanding of how to connect with a wider target audience so stronger constraints actually push designers and engineers to innovate.
There are some commonalities among these 3 frameworks. They all emphasize the importance of using an iterative process to get regular user feedback. This regular user feedback allows designers to gain a deep understanding of the user which is foundational to effective design.
It is also important for designers to think about the different situations that their users might be in. So, for those of you with an assistive technology background, all of this is kind of similar to the set framework of student environment, task and tools. That was the Brainchild of the wonderful Joy Zabala, who was a mentor of mine.
But the set framework talks about how, before you make a decision about an assistive technology tool for a student, you first have to have a deep understanding of the student, the environments that they're going to be in and the tasks that they're expected to complete so very similar to this in concept.
And then, lastly, it's very important to consistently use familiar design conventions, so that designs are clear, intuitive, and easy to use. So throughout the remainder of the presentation, we're going to be kind of pointing back to some of these common design principles.
Now it takes a lot of effort to deeply understand the user, because people are diverse. Each of us sees the world through our own characteristics and our own lived experiences. So to ensure that digital products are useful and usable, designers have to be keen observers of human differences, and they have to learn to recognize when someone is being excluded simply because of their unique set of human characteristics.
So on this slide, there's a sample list of characteristics that people might have - excuse me - including age, language, health issues, disability, socioeconomic status. Where are they located in the world? And do they use assistive technology things like that?
So it's important for product developers and designers to seek out people who are different from themselves and listen to people who have experience in being excluded in terms of cognitive design.
The W3C has developed a robust resource called making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. It provides guidance for designing digital content, so that it is usable by people with cognitive and learning disabilities as well as those who are neurodiverse.
Currently, the making content usable document is organized into 8 different objectives. I say currently because it is under redesign itself.
But when we get into the video examples later in this presentation, we're going to show these objectives again, as we discuss each of the videos, this will give you an opportunity to think about which of the objectives were either followed or not followed in the designs we're going to discuss. So each time I show this slide, I promise you I will not read through the objectives each time, but I would like to read through them right now, just so that we can take a minute to consider what they might mean.
The first objective is: help users understand what things are and how to use them. The second objective is: help users find what they need. Number 3 is: use clear and understandable content. Number 4 is: help users avoid mistakes and know how to correct them. The 5th objective is: help users focus. Number 6 is ensure processes do not rely on memory. Number 7 is: provide help and support. And the 8th objective is to support adaptation and personalization.
Each of these objectives has a set of design patterns that apply to them. So if you go to the website and look at this, then you can see what those design patterns are. But you know, even though content, usable, was written to support people with various types of cognitive disabilities, we're going to demonstrate today how important these recommendations are for everybody.
So the 3rd objective of making content usable is to use clear and understandable content, which is far easier said than done.
One of the most important tools for creating clear and understandable content is plain language. Plain language is a method of presenting information so it is easy for everyone to read and understand. It's also language that is grammatically correct, and that includes complete sentences and accurate word use.
What it is not: It is not unprofessional writing or a method of dumbing down information. It is it simply makes content easier to read and understand, and it benefits everyone.
So we're going to do a before and after exercise with plain language. This slide has the following phrase that we're going to try to simplify it, says the dietary guidelines for Americans recommends a half hour or more of moderate physical activity on most days, preferably every day. The activity can include brisk walking, calisthenics, home care, gardening, moderate sports, exercise, and dancing. So I got tired doing that. I guess I need more exercise. I just got tired reading that.
So does anybody have any suggestions for how this could be simplified? You can come off mute, or you can write something in the chat, and then Mark will read it out to me, because I can't see any of that. Anybody have any suggestions? Let's see.
Teenya Franklin: I am not seeing any.
Jan McSorley: Okay.
Teenya Franklin: Hold on, wait! Oh, yes, the QA is working, and the chat is working, but I am not seeing. A comment from Brenda Whetstone: use bullets to describe the list of activities instead of a comma separated, annotate.
Jan McSorley: Good. That's a good suggestion. Anything else?
Okay, I'm not gonna…I'm not gonna wait and make you wait forever for the answer here, but there's not really one single answer. But this is one possible solution for how to simplify things. So do at least 30 min of exercise like brisk walking most days of the week. So that's one opportunity to do that. Some people have said the word brisk is not really a common, you know, term, so that might not be the best option. But that's an example of how you can simplify and still get the same message across.
So the plain language resource that that I recommend is just to go to https://plainlanguage.gov. It's very robust and well done, and you'll learn a lot there.
So in this next section, we're going to take a look at an educational technology product to see how the design impacts cognitive function.
We're going to look at a common product called Newsela. We're not…again, we're not trying to pick on Newsela. We could have picked any number of products for this demo, but for consistency, we're going to use Newsela for all of our examples. Newsela is a news application that is designed to support reading instruction. So we'll be looking at the teacher interface, which has some unique features that allow teachers to assign articles to students and other tasks related to planning for instruction.
So before we get started, I'm just going to briefly describe the screen for people who may not be able to see it. On the slide is a screenshot of a Newsela page that contains different types of articles. The articles are arranged on what appear to be cards which is a common design technique for chunking content.
Each article has an image heading, a way to bookmark or save the article, and some additional information about each article. There's also a quick link section that's kind of off to the right side that has some icons with an explanation about what those icons are.
And so for those of you who can see the screen, is there anything that stands out to you as either good design or design that might be problematic from an accessibility perspective. Anybody have any thoughts on that. Come off mute or put something.
Card says cards are very busy and small. Print good observation. I like that one, Brenda. And then Jana says, redundant links in the cards. Good catch! We've got a link that looks like a sign. And then another one that says, add to the assignment. So those are redundant. No underline. That's another good call out. All right, good job.
So I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next slide and turn it over to you, Desiree, to talk about the 1st video.
Desiree Simeone: Okay. So my name is Desiree. And I am a totally blind screen reader and Braille user. So when we recorded this video, we wanted to show my first kind of interaction with it, just to demonstrate how the design impacted my ability to understand how the content was structured and how I could do the things that I needed to do.
So we're going to talk about in this first video headings and buttons and screen reader. Users often will navigate by heading just to kind of get an idea of what's on the page and the layout of the page. They can either use their H key and shift-H to go backwards, or they can pull up a list of headings, or even a little more complex…if you know the heading levels that things are, you can use numbers to go to the different level heading level to get to different parts of the page.
So do we want to start the video video. Okay? So I've loaded this page. And it's got some articles on it, I believe. And I'm going to just kind of see how they're structured. So typically, what I do is move by either the arrow keys or my H key for heading. So I'm going to try the H key here status updates heading level 2.
Screen Reader: Who is Pesto, the penguin. And why does everyone love him? Heading level 3. Why did veterans day start heading level 3? Scientists say, mindless scrolling through online videos makes boredom worse heading level 3.
So it's got each of these articles at a heading 3. So now I know if I want to search for an article I can do it with with a headings list and be able to find the article I want, and I'm looking for one that I can view in Spanish, and I was told that there are a couple of them in this area here. So I'm going to just pull up my headings, list to see some other article choices, and then see heading what I need to do to find the articles I want.
?? Who is Pesto the pet? Why did veterans scientists say, mindless scientists build Mini, VR. Goggles for mice to learn more about human brains? 3. 5.
So let's go using this list to this heading here, it turns out that restlessly scrolling through videos on social media can bore you even more. According to a recent study by psychologists.
Okay, so it's giving me some options to do with this article. I'm going to just arrow through here.
Screen Reader: Maturity. 3, rd 12, reading, 500 L. 1380 l. Link assign. Add to assignment button save content. Button link view. Scientists built Mini, VR. Goggles for mice to learn more about human brains.
Desiree Simeone: Okay, that's a different article. But it's still under this heading. I'm going to pull a button list because maybe I can do something with that.
Screen Reader: Select a button dialog list, one list, view toggle, app switcher, menu. Pop up, button, one of 52 to move right? So there are 52 buttons here, toggle toggles of content as add to a site save content button, 8 of content available in Spanish button, 9 of 52.
Desiree Simeone: Well, there's something available in Spanish, but all of these buttons don't have any context around them, so I don't know which articles these are tied to, so I've got. I've got an add to assigned. I do have a content is available in Spanish, but I'm not sure which article that is referring to. Add to assignment button save content button same exact button label, but again, probably tied to a different article. But I'm not sure which one.
So how could the user experience have been improved there? Anybody want to take a stab at it?
Teenya Franklin: We have a wow! With a sad face.
Jan McSorley: In the chat.
Teenya Franklin: too.
Desiree Simeone: That's sad.
Teenya Franklin: Let's see here; unique button names or aria labels.
Desiree Simeone: Yes, definitely button names for sure.
When you know, one of the confusing things, too, was they had a heading or the link to the next article before you get to the heading for that article. So it was really confusing.
So besides, a screen reader user, who else might be impacted by this design?
Teenya Franklin: Feel free to butcher. There we go, poor vision!
Jan McSorley: Right people, you know, with low vision,
Desiree Simeone: Yeah.
Teenya Franklin: Dyslexia. People with ADHD. all good.
Jan McSorley: Okay, Desiree, there's one answer. I think you have one.
Desiree Simeone: Yep, so the keyboard only user. So I am a keyboard only user. However, when you turn the screen reader off, they have a whole different experience. So and there are 52 buttons total here, and they're all you have to tab through as a keyboard only user. They don't have the benefit of kind of pulling up a list. And you know, hurrying through those. So it would definitely impact the keyboard-only user as well.
Jan McSorley: Yep. Okay. Next next slide.
Desiree Simeone: Video. Before… let's see.
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: There's in the chat. If.
Desiree Simeone: Oh!
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: But it's about the plain language. If Mark Thorsen, if I'm saying that right is asking if any AI products recommended for effective plain language variations.
Jan McSorley: Well, I mean, there's a lot of different ones you can use. You know. I think all of them are pretty good at simplifying language, you know, chat GPT, or copilot, or you know there's any number of them. You can just put some text in and ask it to simplify it. And I know that there are a lot of people actually that are using that as a way to, you know, to simplify their language and to be able to understand things. I've seen people with cognitive disabilities ask AI to summarize their emails for them and to tell, you know, are there any emails that I have to return, you know, a response for? And so they can have some preset prompts to help them with things like that. That's a very good question.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah, I actually used it today. I told it, make this Powerpoint a word file with headings and slide numbers. And so I can easily navigate it. Oh, man, it's cool. Yeah. So it's there's a lot of really cool things that that you can do, language wise and other things, but it's not a substitute. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, having a native speaker of that language, make sure that the translation is accurate, and those kind of things, is definitely a must.
Jan McSorley: So we're on the side where you're gonna talk about your experience on it.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. So a way the way a product is designed can actually create a cognitive barriers to everyone. And even if I don't have a cognitive barrier. I'm a person who relies on a screen, reader, and but the design, you know, if this user interface caused a lot of confusion for me, I was not able to understand what the buttons were for, what they were supposed to do, how to use them. I couldn't even find what I needed to, and felt pretty disoriented because of how the content was structured. So the system itself didn't actually provide any help or guidance that I could easily use to complete the task.
So let's watch the next video.
Jan McSorley: Here's them, I'm gonna explain, actually, a little couple of things about the interface before we get to the next video. So on the screen, right now you'll see kind of a marked up screenshot of Newsela's article page. I've identified like 6 items that I wanted to point out to you.
There's a saved document icon that you'll see on the right side under quick links, and you'll see that same icon on each of the articles as well. There is this available in Spanish button that has the letters E S on it, but it's very small. It's not described anywhere else on the page.
The third thing is that there's this other icon for power words, but it's not described anywhere on the page. I actually had to look up what that icon was for on the Internet to just want like, what is this? Because it didn't explain it?
And then the fourth thing that I wanted to point out was the type of article. So you've got like, is this a news article? Is this an information article that was completely invisible to the screen reader / user. Desiree didn't ever encounter that when she was reviewing this page. And so that's not even available to the screen reader user.
The 5th thing is just kind of pointing out that the heading is sort of in the middle of the card. So there's some information above the heading. There's some information below the heading. And then the 6th thing was, somebody already pointed that out earlier, that the that there are things that look similar. You know that there's no differentiation in links and buttons, so the assign word at the bottom of each card is actually a link. But the add to assignment is a button, and they look exactly the same. There's no differentiation. And that's confusing.
So now we're gonna go to the next video, you're gonna explain a little bit about what we're gonna talk about here. Desiree…
Desiree Simeone: I think, did I? Let's see.
Jan McSorley: It's the we're going to be looking at meaningful sequence and reading order. Do you want to go to your meaningful sequence? Slide.
Desiree Simeone: Let's do that. I think I got ahead of you just a little bit. Here.
Jan McSorley: Little bit. Okay.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. So one second here. Part 2. I think I already actually went through it, and I skipped. You might not have shown it. This is the fun part about, I'm in word, and you're in Powerpoint.
Jan McSorley: Yeah.
Desiree Simeone: Do you want me to read this one? Yeah, go ahead and read that one. Okay, so.
Jan McSorley: Basically, on the screen, you you've got like a definition of what meaningful sequence is. So it says that when you know the sequence itself in which the content is presented affects its meaning, then the content is structured so that it can be read in the correct order, including by people who use assistive technology such as screen readers. So be sure to watch for meaningful sequence in this next video. So if I…
Desiree Simeone: Bye move to save, add to content available 1st one here and I to activate presenter list with one item’s content available in Spanish button collapsed to activate presenter. Okay, it's a collapsed button. So perhaps if I press the button it will actually turn this content into Spanish. So I'm going to press Enter here.
Screen Reader: content available in Spanish dialogue, close button to activate presenter content available in Spanish content, available, close but close button content available in Spanish.
Desiree Simeone: Okay. So all I get is a close button and just the message content available in Spanish. But it doesn't actually give me the content or even tell me which content I'm trying to view in Spanish. So I'm going to close that close button.
Screen Reader: main region, scrollable Content Region List with 8 items list with one items content available in Spanish button collapsed to activate presenter list and nesting left heading level 3. Why did veterans Day start?
Desiree Simeone: So I'm wondering if that content available in Spanish refers to this article or the list, and for meme Rose Link View, why did veterans Day start save Content button?
Screen Reader: Add to a site link assign reading for maturity, a baby petting level 3. Who is Pesto the penguin? And why does everyone love him?
Desiree Simeone: Oh, so the heading and link navigation is very confusing, because it tells you kind of above all of the headings gives you some different options for those articles. So it's a little bit backwards. It's kind of confusing to decide. Okay, if I go down from the heading, I don't have all of the options available to me that correspond to that article I have to go above it to. So where the headings are placed is a little bit confusing.
Jan McSorley: Hey!
Desiree Simeone: Yeah.
Jan McSorley: So.
Desiree Simeone: So yep.
Jan McSorley: Yeah, I'll go. I'll take this next slide. So was there anything that surprised any of you in this video? Anything that you thought was, Wow, I didn't understand that.
So what could the designers and developers have done to avoid the user experience Desiree had? So she kind of got a little lost there. So and so Deb says the reading flow is horrendous. Jumps all over. Yes, we agree. 100. Yeah. So.
Teenya Franklin: It. Almost. I have a question. It almost sounded like at some point you were in a keyboard trap.
Jan McSorley: Yeah, no, she wasn't in a keyboard trap. She was just because the heading structure there's information above and below the headings. She was getting confused about which of the buttons was associated with which article. So basically, the designers could have followed the recommendations for meaningful sequence, and put things in order so that she could, you know, understand and orient herself about where she was on the page. That's what they could have done differently.
So, Desiree, you want to talk a little bit about your experience on this.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. So I mean, I think again, you know, it's if it was totally out of order. So I had no idea that I was reading through, and then it was like view this next article, and then there was the heading for the next article. So you know it was a very confusing thing, and I don't know. There were a bunch of buttons assigned to add, you know, even some of the maturity level. I started to question how do those buttons go to the above content, or the stuff that's coming up? So it was definitely a confusing thing. Are you on…
Jan McSorley: I'm on the familiar convention slide where? 29 if that helps you.
Desiree Simeone: Oh, you're on 29, not 26.
Jan McSorley: Yeah, 29. So the familiar conventions I'm just going to describe this page. This is my sort of less than effective attempt, probably at describing what these conventions are. So remember, you know, one of the commonalities from the design frameworks is to use common conventions, so that your design is intuitive and easy to use.
Well, one of those conventions is headings. Headings are typically used to provide structure to the page. So for those people, you know, for people who can see the page, the visual headings sort of divide the content up into sections for people who are using screen reading technology. They rely on those headings actually being marked up to be semantic, which means that the screen reader will actually recognize them and say, Oh, this is like a section of content. So the convention part of this is that when you put a heading in the content below, the heading corresponds to that heading, if you have content above that heading. It's not expected to correspond to that heading. Right? That's not what we saw in this example.
So on this slide, my second heading is about buttons. So I put in, this is another heading.
So what I want to point out about in terms of conventions for buttons is that buttons are supposed to do stuff. They are not substitutes for image labels, which is how they were used here. So they put that button in there, so that when you clicked on it. It just said, this content is available in Spanish. There are a lot of different ways to provide labels for icons or images, but using a button to do that, is not it.
And so then my last example under this button heading is that I just have this random comment in there about headings to just point out that it would make no sense for me to start talking about headings underneath the button heading. So headings are supposed to chunk your content in a way that makes sense. And everything's supposed to correspond to that same topic under that heading.
Okay. And so now we're going to the 3rd video.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. So in this next one, we're going to look at the different, the way that it's confusing with button labels. So if the buttons aren't labeled correctly, or you know, in context, or any kind of effective labeling, it can be very confusing.
Jan McSorley: So we have a comment before I play this. It looks like we have a comment in chat. And, Teenya, are you? Is there anything you want to keep up in chat? It seems like I can't really scroll to it, but seems like Janice says that it seems like keeping the actions per article would be better served while looking at the individual article, instead of trying to place them on the cards on the landing page, becomes easier to see when actions happen with each article. Yes.
Teenya Franklin: I will absolutely keep an eye on your chat. When you're done talking. I'll let you know if someone said something.
Desiree Simeone: Okay, so here's the next video, then. So let's see if I can view the article. Let's go pull links list here…
Screen Reader: Links list dial assign 6 of 54. View is Pesto, the penguin and white at Veterans day start assa view. Scientists say mindless scrolling through online videos makes for the worse. 9 of 54.
Desiree Simeone: Okay, so I'm going to view this article here…
Screen Reader: To activate press, enter. Newzilla, instructional content platform document, scientists say, mindless scrolling through online videos. Mates bore them worse. Scientists say, heading level 2 assignment builder.
Desiree Simeone: Okay, now, how do I get the Spanish here? So I'm going to kind of navigate on this page.
Screen Reader: Here, assignment builder heading level, 2 instructions heading level, 2 activities, heading level, 3 Reading, comprehension heading, right prompt view, button, quiz, checkbox, checked view, button review, student work, button.
Desiree Simeone: There's all kinds of buttons and fields.
Screen Reader: Select a form field dialog list, one list, view, review, student work, button, formative button. 3rd Review. View, button, quiz, check view button. Right? Prompt view. Button 24.
Desiree Simeone: A lot of view buttons. Doesn't tell me what I'm viewing, so I'm not sure Jan McSorley - how that works. It's all, I'm assuming, working with this article.
Screen Reader: toggle, app switcher, menu, pop-up, button, search for text and book content, library button for reports, button, toggle, user, probe, toggle support center, English current language, button, 7 of 74, 1050. Reading levels. Select English current language. Button 707. Go to the English button to activate presenter English current language button collapsed to activate presenter English current language button collapsed.
Desiree Simeone: I'm going to try to press this button expanded.
Screen Reader: English button expanded Spanish button.
Desiree Simeone: Okay, so I did find the Spanish button, but I had to actually press the English button to do that.
Teenya Franklin: So we have.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. Oh, yeah, is that going to translate the whole page to Spanish, or just the article? It's very confusing. Right? So besides, the screen, reader user. Who else might find it? Kind of confusing to have a button that's labeled just English that gets you to kind of the other languages.
Teenya Franklin: So Jana Tate mentioned, she said. Oh, no, it skipped it entirely. The Spanish top left above article.
Jan McSorley: Yep, yep, it did that.
Teenya Franklin: And then be. I'm waiting to see if anyone else answers your questions, and then I have a 1 from the question and answer panel.
Jan McSorley: So I'm just gonna I'm gonna just repeat the question, yeah, non. English speakers. The question was, besides, screen reader users, who else might find it difficult to have to press a button labeled as English to get to another language. And yeah. Brenda's correct. Anyone?
Teenya Franklin: Anyone who doesn't know English.
So there is a question in the Q&A from Sharron: So sorry if this is a distracting question, but wondering how designers can determine end user needs. How do we learn what neurodiverse users need to know or be able to do effectively across to access or use content?
Jan McSorley: Well, it's a very good question, and the answer comes again from our design frameworks, where they all use what they call an iterative process to gain user feedback. So you need to do user testing with people with disabilities.
Sharron Rush: Well, and that was I. I wanted to ask that question early when you had those slides up, and I didn't mean to take away from what you're doing now. But I just…yeah. So thanks.
Jan McSorley: Yeah, I mean, that's part of like listening to people that have experience with being excluded. That's why I love the Kat Holmes book so much because she talks in that book about how you know, we would all sort of have a different definition of what inclusion means, because we're going to see inclusion through our own lens, our own experiences. But we all understand what it feels like to be excluded.
So exclusion is actually something that is quantifiable. You can recognize it, you can measure it, and then you can eliminate it. And that's why I really recommend reading her book, because she does stress the importance of you have to listen to people who are experienced with being excluded, and that certainly is people with different types of disabilities. They need to be a part of your user stories and your user testing.
All right. So yeah, anybody who doesn't speak in English, you know, they're the ones that probably need that language. Button are not going to be able to find it, because it's hidden under a button called English. And then people with certain types of cognitive disabilities won't be able to understand how to get there, either.
So, Desiree, you want to talk a little bit about your experience on this. How many buttons there were on this page. We're on slide 33.
Desiree Simeone: Oh, yeah, this one. This is the one that had 74 buttons instead of 52, which is, you know, way more difficult than the previous screen. And out of context. As you saw, I had a lot of view button, you know, different. And I had no idea. What am I viewing?
And you know I could technically go through each of the articles and figure out, okay, maybe that view button goes with this article. But it. That would, you know it's possible. But if I had any kind of cognitive disability, or even when I don't, I mean, it's a very tedious process. So you know, out of context, you have no idea what you're what you're viewing. You're not able to see things, you know fully on the page to know what the content's doing.
I kind of had to guess and figure out. Well, maybe if I you know, if I press the button labeled English. Then maybe I can figure it out to figure, and maybe it translates it to something else. And you know I've been on the web for a long time now, and so sadly. I have a lot of experience with inaccessible content and navigating through all of that. And so you know, for me, as you know, kind of an older user, going through this, I kind of expect certain things, whereas if someone's coming in as a student and they're not real familiar with some of the barriers that might happen, they wouldn't necessarily know what to do.
Teenya Franklin: So there's a comment in chat from Deborah Fitzgibbons. Says, Desiree: you have to work so hard to understand. I am so sorry.
And yes, we are recording, and everyone will get a email when the recording is ready.
Jan McSorley: So alright, Desiree, you wanna explain the next, the 4th and final video. Yes, we are coming to the end, I promise.
Desiree Simeone: And the 4th and final video. Hold on one second. I was so on. That was the one I just did hold on.
Jan McSorley: That's slide 34.
Desiree Simeone: 3, 4.
Okay? So in this last video, we're going to be discussing the importance of indicating the language that's being used on the on the page. So it's going to talk a little bit about what happens if you don't use correct tagging for languages.
Jan McSorley: Here we go
Screen-Reader: list with 2 items, Spanish button to activate, press, enter scientifico, Z. Affirman, K. Pacer, the video and video continuumente and Internet, Mp. Or El Abramiento scientificos affirm, and K. Pacer, the video.
Desiree Simeone: So it's it did create Spanish here. However, there aren't tags in it. So my screen reader isn't actually effectively translating that into Spanish, typically, what happens is it'll actually switch voices and speak with a Spanish accent.
But in this case it's Americanizing the Spanish. The translation is there in text, but it's not tagged correctly. So the screen reader doesn't realize. Oh, this is actually Spanish, and I need to translate it and change my accent.
Screen-Reader: Heading level 2 status updates, scientific heading navigation list of 4 I toggle apps which visited search for text, and more.
Desiree Simeone: that time it did when I got down to this heading, but the top part was not translating. So that sound that you heard with the different voice is what's supposed to happen anytime. There's another language content.
So that is kind of what it would do. And it's supposed to do that. And it's it is reading it here in the Spanish accent that JAWS has.
It's a similar voice, but it's actually better than like up here. That's what happens when you don't have a tag. That would be the way I speak Spanish if I don't know Spanish.
Teenya Franklin: Comment that says, only body the page. There's a couple from Lordes. 1 is the page name. Language is not set to Spanish, so some parts have the language specified, and then, Jana, I hope pronouncing your name right, Jana Tate. Only body copy is translated so many other elements still in Spanish – question mark.
Jan McSorley: We're gonna talk about all that in just a minute. Promise.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah, and that's exactly kind of where we're going. So though, you guys pretty much nailed it. And what did you think the designers and developers did not consider about their design for screen reader users? What did they not understand, I guess, is the…
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: That the Spanish screen reader users have their language set to Spanish so. But since the page still had it set of English, it was still trying to read it as English.
Desiree Simeone: Hmm. Yeah. And it would be the opposite thing if they had it set to Spanish to try to get it, to translate into Spanish they would have to deal with, you know, speech that was trying to speak English in a Spanish accent. So it would be kind of the opposite experience.
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: All right. Their Spanish would be like, Yeah, oh, yeah. But yeah, that would be nice.
Desiree Simeone: And, you know, I think, that they didn't understand how do screen readers handle language attributes? And you know, because the title element is, of course, going to support the language attribute.
Jan McSorley: Doesn't actually support.
Desiree Simeone: Doesn't support it, right? They shouldn't have written that title in Spanish. One of the things I was thinking is, they should just put the title as Article X in Spanish or Spanish version of Article X, so that you know in English that's what it is. When you get down to the body of it that's going to speak in Spanish.
Teenya Franklin: So, Nicole!
Jan McSorley: Yeah, remember that one of the common threads in the design frameworks that we reviewed is the importance of deeply, deeply understanding the user. So you have to understand people with disabilities and how they use assistive technology and how the assistive technologies work. So again, that requires designers and developers and engineers to sit down with people with disabilities and watch them use their product, get their feedback iteratively throughout the design product.
We're throughout the design process. So they need to understand how a blind person uses digital content, or they're not going to get it right. And we're usually very willing to share.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. Our experiences. And because we know that it's going to make it better. And that's the biggest thing. And the fact that we're being considered, you know, takes away from that exclude excluded feeling to when the users are considered.
Jan McSorley: So I've got the next one up that has the code on it. Desiree…
Desiree Simeone: Yeah. So speaking of the language attributes, and I'm still learning code myself. But so we're looking here at the typed kind of HTML code, and this is to show you, of course, how the language attribute is supposed to look. So at the top of the code on this HTML element. You'll see the language. The lang equals quote E N quote. And that E N stands for English. And once you've set that language, then the screen reader knows that's the language that I'm supposed to talk in. That's where what I'm supposed to do. Unfortunately, the title of in this code is actually written in is not written in English, it's written in Spanish. And so that's why it's trying to read it as an English title down here. So, and the jaws actually has, you know, multiple ways of pronouncing different languages. And as you kind of could hear in there, it would kind of change the voice just a little bit to have the accent when you got the actual thing that was correct, and trying to speak Spanish correctly, because that part was set to the Spanish in the tags.
Jan McSorley: Yeah. So when you got down to the heading one, the language attribute was lang equals E S for Spanish and so that's when it read it correctly. Yeah, that's right.
Okay, so that is it for the presentation. And are there any questions in the. I see a question from Lourdes in the chat about what Kat Holmes books do you recommend? I'm just going to flip down to some of these other slides really quick.
I want to tell everybody, first of all, about Knowbility's AccessU conference that is happening May the 12th through the 15th. We are doing actually a full day pre-conference workshop on the 12th about, how do you evaluate Ed tech products? How do you look at them for the kinds of things that you saw today? So you'll get some hands-on experience if you come to the conference for that, and I highly recommend AccessU. It's a fantastic experience.
The other thing I wanted to quickly point out was, there's an organization called the National Digital Accessibility Academy. I can't remember what Academy stands for now. But it used to basically be the Ames center. So it's the National Center on accessible digital educational materials and instruction. It's newly funded by the US Department of Education, and they want to know what you think about the resources that you might need for accessible Ed Tech in K 12 and higher ed. So if you can take the survey here, you can. You can look it up on NCADEMI.org/input and then I will come back to this slide that has the place where you can go get the copy of the materials.
But I also wanted to point out that there's a slide at the very end about how to use plain language. I didn't cover that because of time, and then the recommended reading. There are a couple of books. There's 1 called The End of Average by Todd Rose, where he introduces the concept of individual fit. It's an excellent read. And then there's my favorite from Kat Holmes Mismatch: How inclusion shapes design. And then also, Frankie Wolf is on the cognitive accessibility task force with the W3C. She's got some really good resources on designing with neurodiversity in mind. And so that if you just visit Frankie's website there, you'll get some great resources there and then there's, of course, the references. So there's several different slides of references here at the end of the of the presentation.
So I'm going to go back to the URL and see if we have any questions.
Sharron Rush: Well, I think this would be a great all day workshop. It seems like we just. I just kinda got oriented to it, and then? But this was great. Thank you, guys, that you all did such a great job of explaining these concepts.
Are there questions.
Teenya Franklin: We had a couple of comments. Thank you so much for sharing this this knowledge. No questions. But this is the group I've been looking for, thank you. And then I popped the link for AccessU into the chat window.
Sharron Rush: So I did want to promote next month. We're gonna March 20th Dave Dauber and Mark Thorson are going to tell you why it's good to be a big digital ally, and how the help you give someone today may just help the you of tomorrow. Because I don't know about y'all, but I haven't figured out how to stop getting older, and it seems like, you know, you acquire different different disabilities as you age and I'm really looking forward to that from Mark and Dave. So put that one on your calendar for for next next month.
Desiree Simeone: Yeah.
Sharron Rush: And then AccessU. Of course, Jan just said all the good stuff about AccessU, but you can't say too much good stuff about AccessU, because not only do you learn a whole bunch, but it's a great opportunity to meet wonderful people.
We have a new track this year. It's a flipped learning track, where you prepare and read and watch videos and get sort of up to speed, and then come in to do kind of exactly what we were talking about here from the community - learn from each other. And this will be the first time we've had an entire track. We did a couple of sessions on that last year, but we'll have an entire track, and of course, all the all the normal, usual things that we try to do at AccessU, which is teach people the skills they need to create a more accessible world.
Okay, Teenya, it's over to you.
Teenya Franklin: Okay, everybody. Thank you for joining us this evening.
Jan McSorley: I'm just gonna keep the tiny URL in the chat because there's some people that are asking for that.
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: Just about to ask.
Jan McSorley: Yeah, yeah.
Teenya Franklin: I was, I was responding. So you guys took care of that for me. So, we thank you for joining us. We hope you continue to join us monthly and participate in other ways with Knowbility - AIR, AccessU, volunteer. We have many volunteer opportunities on volunteer match right now.
And please take a few moments to either use the link or take your camera and grab that QR code and fill out the survey. Give Jan and Desiree their props. I think they did an amazing session today. And we appreciate you all, and both of you, for your time and dedication. And with that I wish you all an enjoyable evening.
Jan McSorley: Yeah. Bye, everybody.
Desiree Simeone: Thank you.
Lourdes Morales Villaverde: Thank you.