Q&A with Amber Hinds

Matt: [00:00:00] That was fantastic. Uh, Amber, I was feverishly taking notes as you were going along. One thing I wanted to clarify just for those who are watching, if they’ve never heard it before, the autocomplete topic that you cover covered the auto, that autocomplete is when you’re in the browser and you’re typing in Elvis.

And the browser says, Oh, This is your last name and it puts it in for you. And this is your address. Is that a bra that’s a browser technology, correct? And that is, that’s what you’re pointing out with the autocomplete.

Amber: Yeah. So browsers are able to respond to that autocomplete attribute, which is an HTML attribute.

And this is really important for people who assistive technology. So if you, if you use a typical keyboard, you might not really. Maybe sometimes you’re like, Oh, that’s, it’s a convenience, right? For it to be able to fill in your name and your email address and your billing address, or even your credit card information.

There’s autocomplete for that. Um, but if you are someone who uses. eye [00:01:00] tracking to control your computer or uses, um, there’s a keyboard called the Darcy USB, which basically is a Morse code keyboard for someone who has limited mobility, but they can move like a finger or two so they can tap Morse code in order to be able to engage with their computer and type.

You can imagine that. Being able to autofill information will save them tons of time, right? Versus having to go through and type every letter every time. So that’s why this attribute is really important.

Matt: I have a similar question along that same topic. When folks are using like screen readers or other technology to assist them with a website, is there like a user agent?

Or some technology that says this person is using a screen reader and then, and then we can augment our own sites to, you know, sort of like when you target mobile views, like you could say, Oh, if somebody is using an Android device, show this, someone’s using an iOS device, use that. Is there that [00:02:00] kind of technology in this space for website owners to, I don’t know, dynamically load certain things on a site?

Amber: Uh, so yes, you can sometimes tell when someone is using a screen reader. Uh, you generally. shouldn’t just, this is something that it’s, it’s kind of controversial. There are things in the space called accessibility overlays. Um, and they do sometimes try to change websites just for screen reader users. Uh, it’s not always super consistent.

And so a lot of screen reader users have complained. Um, and also there’ve been times where sometimes it actually makes experiences worse. So I would say in general, like, I don’t think you’d be like, I don’t Well, so the autocomplete necessarily isn’t great for, um, it’s not necessarily just something for blind people, right?

Uh, I don’t know if you’d be able to tell, like, is someone using eye tracking to engage with this? I, I, I don’t know that you could get into that. But I don’t think you’d want to only turn this on. Just as an example. Right. I mean, or other things, right? Because a lot of these things, like I talked about, like adding the select with the blank value [00:03:00] in the dropdown.

Yeah. That’s not just good for people with disabilities. That’s good for everyone. And it’s good for you because then you know that people aren’t just ignoring the question and letting the default option be submitted. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. I was, I was just curious if, if there was some kind of like standard that these other softwares operated under.

And I remember one of the very first conversations that you and I ever had when we talked about accessibility on other podcasts that I’ve done. And I remember, you know, really realizing this is when I, you said this is not, this is not just for, let’s say people who maybe are using screen readers, they can’t see, but I remember holding my, when I had my first Son and he was really small and we were like freaking out trying to call the doctor’s office And I was using my phone with one hand and I’m like, where’s the telephone?

And I can’t find it and it’s it’s accessibility for all it’s not just hey, I’m sitting at my computer. I’m having a cup of coffee It’s so easy to navigate this [00:04:00] website. No, it’s for moments Where, you know, it’s one hand, it’s holding a crying baby, it’s, it’s doing all these things. So it’s, it’s for the greater good of, of everyone using your site, uh, and especially your gravity form stuff.

Amber: Yeah. You know, the one thing that is actually, that can be done really easy, which we recommend if, you know, they have the budget or something is you can do CSS media queries that, Look to see if someone prefers to have dark mode or light mode or high contrast mode in their operating system. You know, you can set your Mac to like, show you everything in dark mode.

And that’s something increasingly that we’re seeing websites respond to because that comes in in information in the browser. And you could serve someone a dark mode version of your website if they’ve told you, I prefer dark mode. Um, And, or I need a high contrast version. You could serve them the high contrast version.

So, um, that is something you can do. The other one that is common is, um, there’s a CSS media query for people who prefer reduced [00:05:00] motion. So you can also turn that on in your operating system. Like if you’re someone who gets nauseous, um, like there are people that parallax, which is when the image like stays kind of fixed and content moves in front of it, uh, that that can cause them nausea.

Um, or certain like slider movements and that kind of stuff. And so having the website respond to those kinds of things where someone has defined it at the OS level, uh, is really helpful.

Matt: It’s amazing to think that parallax was such a hot keyword for selling WordPress themes back in the day.

Amber: I know, but if you notice it’s not being used as much anymore.

Matt: Um, qu

Legalities and Getting Started with Accessibility

Matt: estion that I hinted at at the start of the show, small agency owner worried about accessibility requirements. You know, your first or second slide, you were talking about, you know, the legalities of this. What’s the first thing that they should do? Where should they go to get informed about this so they’re not making incorrect decisions?

Or if they get a client for the first time that’s specifically requesting we need this 100%, what’s the first thing they should do to get [00:06:00] more educated on this?

Amber: Yeah, so, um, what I would recommend is I’ll go back just to this and call out the equalizeusual. com slash meetup. Um, Beyond that, if you go on that page, we have recordings from every past meetup that we’ve had and we’ve been running it since, um, for a couple of years now.

Um, so there’s a ton of great resources there from speakers all over the accessibility and the WordPress community who are sharing things that might be relevant if you want to learn more. Um, I would say if you, if you’re a developer and you have a client who says, I need accessibility and you have never Done accessibility, then bring in a partner, at least for the first one, um, you can have like, we do this.

I know there are other companies in the space that will do audits. We don’t even have to engage a lot of times. We don’t even engage with the website owner or the customer. We just work with the agency. Um, and we can do screen reader testing and keyboard testing and all of that kind of stuff. So I would say, if [00:07:00] you know, from a legal standpoint, that it has to be accessible, just don’t promise something you.

can’t deliver because then you can get in a sticky situation with the client if you’re saying it’s accessible when it’s not and you’re not sure. Um, so I’d recommend that. The other thing again is our, our free plugin. You can go install it off wordpress. org and go scan like just the homepage even. Um, and that’s really helpful for finding problems.

And then the other thing is manual testing and anyone with a keyboard can do some of the basics of that, which is just go to the front end of your website. Put your mouse away, put it in a drawer, right? Turn it off and, uh, hit the tab key and use combination of tab and arrow keys and make sure you can do everything on the website without a mouse that you would do with a mouse.

Can you get to the navigation? Can you submit, fill out and submit forms? Can you, um, engage with the sliders or if you have tabs content or accordion content, can you open and close those? Um, so again, it would be [00:08:00] tab to move forward, shift tab to move backwards, return key, spacebar should trigger buttons or the return key would do links.

Um, so kind of doing some of that initial testing is something kind of anyone can do.

Matt: Yeah, 100%. And I really love the idea of partnering up a hugely missed opportunity in the early days of a lot of agency owners, afraid to reach out, don’t know who to reach out to afraid of that, like customer agency relationship.

And I think a lot of other agencies, especially yours, Understand that and you know, the good agencies understand that. So it’s not something like, Oh my God, I’m afraid to bring this, this client to them. They, they might know more. Listen, it’s not about that. It’s about the specialties. And at the end of the day, your customer is going to be happy because you’re serving them and they’re still going to look at you as, uh, you know, the, the leading professional and why they went to you in the beginning.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Matt: So fantastic advice, Amber Hines, equalize digital. Thanks for hanging out today. Equalize digital. com. Don’t forget to check out the accessibility checker for free in the wordpress. org repo, Amber. I know you have a, or you [00:09:00] had a tricky Twitter handle. What is it again? I don’t know. Oh,

Amber: yeah. Yep. It’s, uh, Hey, Amber Heinz.

Heinz is H I N D S.

Matt: Awesome stuff. Thanks, Amber. Thanks for hanging out.

Amber: Thank you.