Join Natalie and Natalie for the eleventh episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they delve into the realm of assistive technology, particularly in the digital world. They discuss various types of assistive technologies, including screen readers, screen magnifiers, braille displays, voice command software, and more. The episode also covers best practices for making websites accessible for users with visual, auditory, mobility, cognitive, vestibular, and seizure disorders.
Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our 11th episode, and here with us today is me, Natalie G, and I am an Accessibility novice and your mic MC. And with us today is,
Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, an accessibility expert. Natalie Mac.
Natalie Garza: Yes, Natalie Mac. Otherwise known as Natalie Mac. Alright, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about assistive technology. And no, it’s not just screen readers. So, what is assistive technology, Natalie?
Natalie MacLees: Assistive technology is any kind of technology that helps people accomplish tasks.
Natalie Garza: And it doesn’t have to be a device.
Natalie MacLees: It doesn’t have to be a device. Things like glasses and contact lenses, crutches, walkers, et cetera would also count as assistive technologies.
Natalie Garza: Would you say features could be considered assistive technology?
Natalie MacLees: Sometimes, yep.
Natalie Garza: So, any tool, device, contraption,
Natalie Garza: including glasses, could be an assistive technology.
Natalie MacLees: Including glasses. Yeah.
Natalie Garza: And, in this episode we want to focus mainly on the digital world, right? Because there’s so many.
Natalie MacLees: We’re going to talk about mostly websites. So even, narrower than that.
Natalie Garza: So, when talking about making websites accessible, there is a lot of different devices we have to keep in mind.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. There’s lots of different people with lots of different capacities, lots of different abilities and using lots of different kinds of assistive technology to look at the websites we built.
Natalie Garza: And WCAG does its best to cover a lot of them.
Natalie MacLees: It does its best. It’s not perfect.
Natalie Garza: Really?
Natalie MacLees: There’s always more that you could do. Yes.
Natalie Garza: Okay. Is that where your best practices come into play?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. There’s some additional best practices that are pretty commonly accepted in addition to WCAG guidelines. And then there’s also just testing with your own users because they might have their own set of preferences for your specific audience.
Natalie Garza: Would you say that users that use the same assistive device even have their own unique preferences to using a website?
Natalie MacLees: Definitely. Screen readers, for example, have dozens of settings, so you can’t even count on a screen reader always acting the same way. It can be configured and personalized just the way that somebody likes to use it.
Natalie Garza: All right. Do you want to dive into breaking down the different types of assistive technology and how websites typically accommodate them?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. How you can make your website work better for them.
Natalie Garza: Yes.
Natalie MacLees: All right. We’re going to start with a visual impairment, which visual impairment includes of course being blind, but also having impaired vision of some kind, anywhere from very mild, or maybe you just need reading glasses to pretty pretty severe. And can also include things like colorblindness, right, is a vision impairment. So all right, assistive technology that would typically be used by someone with , visual impairment screen readers, of course, and to get your website to work with a screen reader, you want to use semantic HTML. You want to make sure that everything is marked up in a clear way so that its role on the page can be determined by that screen reader. We have screen magnifiers, which can increase the size of whatever is on the screen and this can get very intense, like sometimes with just a few letters or a couple of words on a pretty big monitor at a time so that it is readable to somebody who has, you know, a pretty profound vision impairment. But those are very useful. You want to make sure that your design can be resized easily that it reflows if it’s a responsive website, that’s a good start. And you want to avoid putting text inside of images because that’s gonna get distorted when it magnifies. So we wanna use real text and make your font size adjustable and make sure that your testing to make sure that that works. We also have braille, refreshable, braille displays, braille keyboards and things like that. And those are basically the same things that would make your website work with a screen reader will make it work with a refreshable braille display. There is voice command software, somebody who cannot see where the mouse cursor is on the screen, obviously isn’t going to get a lot of use out of a mouse. So being able to talk to their computer or their mobile device and tell the device what they want, they’re able to get a lot further that way. If they can just say, click the button that says buy now, and then they can check out, it’s super easy. Tools for ensuring that you have enough color contrast ratio and then providing a way for people to switch to even a higher contrast mode if they want to. Of course, there is also, you know, desktop software that will enable that for them as well. And then you could also, if you have a map or some kind of a graphic, you can provide that in a printable format so that if somebody has like a tactile printer, they could print it out and then feel the design. So there’s printers that will, you know, emboss or like layer on , almost like 3D printing on paper so that it is tactile and you can feel it and kind of get a get an idea of what a design or a map or something like that might look like.
Natalie Garza: And not every user with visual impairments is going to use all those.
Natalie MacLees: No, no, they’ll probably have one or two that they prefer to use
Natalie Garza: mm hmm. And can get really
Natalie MacLees: good at.
Natalie MacLees: You know, you don’t want to learn 50 different technologies if you don’t have to. Yeah, you want to learn one or two and get really good at them.
Natalie Garza: Some of these are more specialized than others, right? Like the tactile printers.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. That’s obviously going to be an expense that not everybody can afford, unfortunately. So, just something to keep in mind if you are doing something that is highly visual, like a way that you could maybe make that a little bit more accessible for more people.
Natalie Garza: While some of these other ones are super common. Screen readers. Or a contrast.
Natalie MacLees: Screen readers are super common. And we’ll get to it a little bit later, but people with vision impairment aren’t the only ones that use screen readers.
Natalie Garza: Okay. Do you want to go on to the next batch? Or the next bucket? How do you say that? The next category.
Natalie MacLees: The next category. There you go. Next we have hearing impairments. And of course, not all websites have some kind of sound. So, but if you do, you want to make sure that that sound is accessible. So if you’re providing videos or audio files, you would want to make sure that you’re providing captions or transcripts or both. Because somebody might have a preference from one over the other. If you are doing phone calls and you have somebody with a hearing impairment who might want to call, you could use a video relay service. For that call so that they could have a sign language interpreter to help them out, to understand what you’re saying and to communicate back to you. Of course we all know about hearing aids, cochlear implants, and things of that nature that can just help to take sound from the world and get it into somebody’s brain in one way or another. And there’s also assistive listening devices, which there’s a whole variety of those devices that can do different things.
Natalie MacLees: So sometimes they’re like a text to speech that might connect to somebody’s phone and, you know, turn what they’re listening to in a speech. Other times they might like connect to their hearing aid to help them focus like in a college classroom, for example, if you have a bunch of jerk students who are in the class with you who like to talk over the teacher. You could use one of these devices to help amplify just the teacher’s voice for you so that you weren’t distracted by students and things like that.
Natalie Garza: What kind of things should websites do to help with hearing devices?
Natalie MacLees: For if you have video or audio on your website, you want to make sure that that content is available in another format. So, captions or transcripts is going to be the easiest way to provide that. But if you have the budget, what’s really, really nice to be able to do is to provide sign language interpretation of that content. And the reason for that is that for many people who are deaf, sign language is their first language. And if you’ve ever learned a little bit of ASL if you’re in the United States, ASL you know, that the grammar and things is different than spoken English and so sometimes it can take a little bit longer and it’s a little bit more work to actually read printed English as opposed to being able to ingest that content through ASL is easier and faster.
Natalie MacLees: So if you have the budget to be able to provide that with ASL, it’s always a great idea to do that.
Natalie Garza: And do you want to go over what a video phone is? Because I didn’t know what that was. I
Natalie MacLees: before, before we all had zoom, and I think almost made this technology completely unnecessary. Yeah, there were video phones where you could call and it was like a little, you know, a little old fashioned CRT TV. I think, I think they’re still around and they obviously would use a newer type of screen.
Natalie MacLees: But, you know, and you could see somebody on the screen speaking sign language and they could see you speaking sign language. And you can have a call that way.
Natalie MacLees: Those TDD phone services as well, where it’s to text, it’s like a relay call, like you connect to an interpreter, and then that person calls, you know, the company or whatever you’re trying to call, and then they’re in between you. Right. And they’re the person with hearing impairment is typing on one end and then the relay is reading that to the company and then the company representative speaks and the relay types that back to the person with hearing impairment. So that’s that technology has been around for a long time too.
Natalie Garza: Okay. It’s called TDD?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. TDD.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, I think these days it’s been mostly replaced by FaceTime.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, yeah, yeah, now we have nicer technologies. We have FaceTime, we have Zoom, we have all kinds of video calling, and yeah.
Natalie Garza: Is it pretty common for stuff to kind of go out of date and then new technology to come in?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, just like anything else. We have all different kinds of technology. It’s also really common for assistive technology to become commonplace for everybody to use. Things like typewriters were originally invented so that people with vision impairment could write letters.
Natalie Garza: Oh, this is a fact.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, we could probably put a link in the show notes because there’s lots of articles online about like, you know, 20 things you use every day that were originally assistive technology.
Natalie Garza: Oh, okay, cool. I will, I’ll look for something like that and get them. Do you want to go into the next category?
Natalie MacLees: Sure. Next we have mobility impairments. And when we’re talking about websites, it would mainly be mobility or fine motor control issues with your hands and arms. And there’s all kinds of things that you can use if you have this kind of challenge. Which could be, maybe you just broke your arm. It’s the middle of winter, maybe you slipped on the ice and broke your arm. You might not even know, there’s stuff that can help you out. So you can use your computer better. So there’s all different kinds of keyboards and mice. For all different kinds of situations, so, if there’s some part of your hands and arms that you can move at least a little bit, there’s probably a keyboard or a mouse for your specific situation. You’ll be all set. Eye tracking software. you can control a computer just by looking at things. You could click a button just by looking at it. There is speech to text where you can talk instead of having to type. You can just, you could say out loud your email that you want to send to somebody and send that, which is using your voice without having to use you know, your hands or arms. Uh, head pointers and mouth sticks. So, different devices that attach to your head, basically, so that you could use your head instead of your hands and arms. Then there is almost an infinite number of different kinds of switch devices that you could work with your feet, with your cheek, with your tongue, with your, with anything on your body that you can move.
Natalie MacLees: Basically, there is a switch device available that you could use instead of a mouse or keyboard. To enable you to get through a website, type up emails, write a book, whatever you want to do,
Natalie Garza: And what kind of stuff do websites need to make sure to implement so that it works with all these devices?
Natalie MacLees: They need to make sure that their website works with keyboard only. That’s the main, main, main thing. And very often doesn’t happen. So if you’re building a website, put mouse on the other side of the room and try to use your website with just your keyboard. If you can do that, it will probably work okay with one of these technologies.
Natalie Garza: Even the switch devices, all of them.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Even the switch devices. Yeah. All those different devices, like they all look very different and the way that you operate them is very different. But as far as the computer is concerned, that’s just a mouse or a keyboard that you just plugged in. It doesn’t even know that it’s not.
Natalie Garza: I see. And, so a lot of people with mobility impairments, do they use a combination of these? Like, if you have a switch device, how do you type in, like, words and letters?
Natalie MacLees: There’s on screen keyboards that you can navigate. With those, yeah, yeah, a lot of, a lot of devices have that built in now, like an on screen keyboard that you can bring up and use if you want,
Natalie Garza: Okay. So like a, like a touchscreen phone.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, yeah, you could turn your laptop into a touchscreen phone basically,
Natalie Garza: I see, I see.
Natalie MacLees: If you have the ability to move probably more than one part of your body, you probably would switch between these because just like anything, right, like whatever you’re using is going to get tired. I used to read a blog by a woman who called herself “The Left Thumb Blogger” because that’s all she could move reliably on her body was her left thumb. And she wrote all these wonderful blog posts, long blog posts all the time and was very active on social media. But you know, she had technology that helped to make that doable
Natalie Garza: Yeah. And the other thing, too, is making your website easily, Navigatable. Navigable? Navigable?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah.
Natalie Garza: Okay, I don’t like that. Easily navigable. And as little clicks as possible.
Natalie MacLees: Yes. Easy to skip to your main content. Yeah. Things like that. Like really easy to get around. Not a lot of extra stuff that’s getting in the way. You know, not a lot of sign up for my newsletter pop ups showing up every two minutes.
Natalie Garza: Oh yeah, cause they have to close them.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah.
Natalie Garza: so painful.
Natalie MacLees: everybody’s got to close that and nobody, nobody wants that
Natalie Garza: Do not make your website like a 2005 search engine.
Natalie MacLees: Don’t do that.
Natalie Garza: Before Google.
Natalie MacLees: We’ve learned so much. There were so many mistakes made on the web early on. We’ve learned so much about how to build good websites now.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, I guess when the internet first started, accessibility was, there was none, basically.
Natalie MacLees: No, nobody thought of that at first. Yeah. And ironically, it was less of a big deal, because when the web first started, we just had HTML. We didn’t have CSS or JavaScript, and HTML by itself is pretty accessible.
Natalie Garza: It’s the styling and all of the other actions. Okay.
Natalie MacLees: It’s often all the other stuff that we do that gets in the way of that.
Natalie Garza: Okay, if you had a button to go back to the old just HTML style of websites across the entire world and internet, would you press it? No.
Natalie Garza: You wouldn’t?
Natalie MacLees: No. Oh, you want me to like go back in time and suddenly tell everybody that they have to make their websites accessible?
Natalie Garza: No, i’m saying like right here right now with what websites and everything we have right now press a button and we simplify the entire web to HTML only.
Natalie Garza: What did you do it?
Natalie MacLees: I mean, that is basically how a significant number of people experience the web already, who are using assistive technology.
Natalie Garza: Oh there they strip all the other stuff.
Natalie MacLees: Well, something like a screen reader isn’t telling you that text is bright green and 42 pixels, right? So, you’re just getting that HTML content.
Natalie Garza: I see.
Natalie Garza: Okay. So your answer is no
Natalie MacLees: You should be able to. You should be able to, because that is how a lot of people are going to experience your website. So, you should absolutely load it up in a browser and turn off all of your CSS and JavaScript and see what you’ve got. It should make sense. It should be navigable.
Natalie Garza: Yes, I would press the button I would want to see chaos ensue.
Natalie MacLees: You want to get rid of all the CSS and JavaScript?
Natalie Garza: On the web.
Natalie MacLees: Building a website would get a lot easier.
Natalie Garza: H1 open. My website. H1 close.
Natalie Garza: All right. Next category.
Natalie MacLees: All right, we’ve only got a couple left. So we have cognitive disabilities. And for people with cognitive disabilities, you can provide some kind of a simplified user interface, distraction free mode, keep navigation very simple and easy. That’s helpful for everybody. Honestly, we’re all very busy.
Natalie MacLees: We’re stressed. We’re doing things on the go. So these things are helpful for people with cognitive disabilities, but they’re helpful for everybody. At the pace we’re living life these days, for people who have dyslexia or learning disabilities, being able to modify fonts and put them in of a typeface that they might prefer is always really helpful. And then you can use noise cancelling headphones to help you focus, block out all the noise around you, especially if you’re in an open office environment. Right? Like, again, like, even if you don’t have a cognitive disability, you might want to take advantage of these kinds of technologies just to help you out because there’s a lot of distractions happening in a lot of workplaces all the time. And then the last disability group that we have that’s impacted or has their use of the web impacted, I guess, vestibular and seizure disorders. And the thing that you want to do to accommodate this group is to respect the “Prefers reduced motion” setting in their browsers. So there is a browser setting. So if you have issues with seeing lots of motion on websites and you don’t know about this, there is a setting in your browser that you can say, I prefer reduced motion. The trick is that people building websites have to check for that. So you have to build your website in a way that if you are going to build a CSS Spinning animation.
Natalie MacLees: For example, you can use a media query to check to see if “Prefers reduce motion” is enabled and then not do the animation if that option is enabled. You can also check that option in JavaScript and make sure that you’re not automatically playing videos, automatically playing different kinds of animations and movement on the pages if that preference is turned on in the browser. Because, of course, we can, by lots of motion on a page, you can make somebody sick. You can make somebody physically ill. They could be nauseated. They could be dizzy. They could have a seizure, they could faint or pass out. So you could cause some serious harm to somebody by not respecting those settings.
Natalie MacLees: So you want to be very conscious of that and use motion and animation very judiciously.
Natalie Garza: Yeah. And it’s not saying that you can’t put animation, because there’s ways to respect the setting.
Natalie MacLees: Respect the setting. You can also make it so it doesn’t play by default, so that a user has to click a play button if they want to see it. If you absolutely have to make it run by default, it needs to have a very clear, easy to find stop or pause button so that people who don’t want that moving can very quickly disable it if they need to.
Natalie MacLees: But the preferred thing to do would be to not have it moving by default and to let the users who do want to see it. Hit a play button and start it happening.
Natalie Garza: All right. Natalie, do you want to wrap up? Where do we go if we want to help make our websites accessible?
Natalie MacLees: You go to aaardvarkaccessibility.com. It’s free to do on your homepage, scan your homepage. You can try out our manual testing tools on your homepage. We have education built right into the tool to help you figure out how to fix any issues that you find.
Natalie Garza: Yes. And with that, thank you for joining us today. Everyone, go subscribe to our podcast, AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, wherever you’re listening to, and we’ll join you next time. For the next episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast.
Natalie MacLees: See you next time.
Natalie Garza: See ya!
