Chad Chelius and Dax Castro during an Accessibility Podcast with the Chax Chat Logo between them.

Unique Struggles of Document Accessibility Amidst the COVID Pandemic

Accessibility Podcast Topic Links

Accessibility Podcast Transcript

Dax Castro
Welcome to another episode of Chax Chat. Join Chad Chelius and me Dax Castro, where each week we wax poetic about document accessibility topics, tips, and the struggle of remediation and compliance. So sit back, grab your favorite mug of whatever, and let’s get started.

Chad Chelius
Welcome everyone. Today’s podcast is sponsored by the North Idaho College and the upcoming pave the way to Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which is on Wednesday, April 20 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. More information on the PWGAAD Free Accessibility Technology Exhibit can be found at nic.edu/A11Y. So we want to thank them for being our sponsor for today’s podcast. My name is Chad Chelius. I’m an Adobe Certified Instructor, an Accessible Document Specialist, as well as a Trainer and Consultant.

Dax Castro
And my name is Dax Castro. I’m an Adobe Certified PDF Accessibility Trainer, as well as certified as an Accessible Document Specialist by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. Hey Chad, how’s it going, man?

Chad Chelius
Going well, man. Doing good here on the East Coast. How are things on the West?

Dax Castro
We are rocking and rolling. We already have sprouts, man. We’ve started our seedlings and they are just going crazy. We use a grow light inside on the… It’s like literally the kitchen table right now. It’s full of plants. So we’re excited to get everything going. The frost has passed. And this weekend, we’re going to put stuff in the garden. So I’m excited.

Guest: Jeremy Seda from North Idaho College

Chad Chelius
It’s such a different world. There are no sprouts in Pennsylvania at this point in time. So hopefully soon, we’re going to do the same thing, plant some seeds inside and hopefully have something to plant once the frost date hits. So we have a lot to talk about today. But we definitely wanted to welcome our guest on today’s podcast, Jeremy Seta, who is from the North Idaho college. And we’re going to be talking about a couple of things today. We’re talking about his event and some topics that Jeremy wanted to discuss on today’s podcast. So welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Seda
Hey thanks, guys. It’s a honor to be here. I love the podcast. And it’s just amazing work you guys are doing.

Dax Castro
Well, thank you so much. Yeah, we really appreciate that. It is definitely a labor of love, for sure. But it always seems to come together. Matter of fact, the podcast we’re doing live next week, Chad [yeah] at CSUN. So we are pulling. I’m taking all of my gear and we are carding it down to LA. And we’re going to set up and do a live podcast at CSUN. So excited about that. It’s our first live. It’ll be interesting. And for those interested, we will be streaming on LinkedIn. So follow me on LinkedIn or on our PDF Accessibility Facebook group, as well as I think we could do it on Twitter as well. But maybe not Twitter. But definitely LinkedIn, our Facebook group, and the PDF Accessibility YouTube channel. So those three areas will definitely be streaming. So I’m excited for that.

Chad Chelius
Awesome. Yeah, should be a good time.

Dax Castro
Yep. And Jeremy, you have an event coming up. I mean, CSUN right around the corner. Your event is when, again?

3rd Annual Pave the Way to Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Jeremy Seda
It’s on April 20 from 10:00AM to 01:00PM at North Idaho College. And it’s a free event to just get people familiar with assistive technology, accessible technology and the greater vision of universal design. We have everything from Braille Embossers to like… Sometimes in the past, we’ve had the Microsoft Xbox and the adaptive controller, just anything to deal with accessibility. And it’s been a very cool event where people walk in, not even knowing about a lot of this technology and asking me, “Hey, where can I buy something like this? I don’t need it for disability but I could really use it to focus on my studying or whatever.” So it’s kind of an enlightening event for folks who originally are just trying to come in, get some free cookies or a prize, and then they walk out with a lot more knowledge than they expected.

Funkify Disability Simulation Plugin

Dax Castro
Which is the trick. Accessibility education by bribery is a thing and I’m okay with that. I mean, a cookie can go a long way. But I think the biggest thing is having an understanding. You know, Chad and I were playing around with a tool called Funkify. And it is a disability simulator. And it’s a plugin for your browser. And so they have things like Blurry Bianca and Color Carl, Dyslexic Danny and the ability to like turn on these filters. And when you turn on Blurry Bianca, some of these young people, they don’t understand what low vision is really like. And to be able to see that and interact with… And the other one that is Trembling Trevor simulation that simulates mouse tremor, your hand tremors. And when you’re trying to click on an actual piece of live text, only the the lines in the text or the hitbox, it is a whole different experience when your mouse is shaking uncontrollably. So things like that… I mean, Funkify is a great tool. If you just google Funkify or Funkify.org actually is their website. We love that tool. So you might even consider having as an in person event, having a couple of workstations set up with that tool for people to get an idea what’s going on.

Jeremy Seda
Thank you for the idea. Actually, as you were talking, I thought I’m gonna steal that as you said. I’ve used it for about two minutes, downloaded it, and start playing around with it. And I just thought, “Oh my gosh, this tool is so amazing.” Yeah, I can’t wait to use it to test websites and whatever media that people are putting out there for the college.

Chad Chelius
One of the guests we had on our podcast, she had a really great analogy. And it was trying to navigate something on your mobile device while riding in the backseat of a car on a bumpy road. And it was just such a really, really poignant illustration, but I think one of the most rewarding things that I experienced when we do conferences – or especially like at the conference that you’re talking about, Jeremy – is when you see people have that “Aha moment” [yeah] where they get it. All of a sudden, they’re like, “Oh my Gosh, I never thought of that.” And of course that’s from the awareness side. But I think that’s the key. I think… [Absolutely]. Because those of us who are generating accessible content, I think it’s so important for us to be aware of our audience, the people whose lives were impacted.

How Jui-jitsu applies to Document Accessibility

Jeremy Seda
Yeah. I also teach Brazilian Jui-jitsu. And I like to give this analogy because, well… Anybody can identify with this. And when you’re in a bad position in Brazilian Jui-jitsu, if you try to make that situation 100% better, you’re going to fail every time. [Right]. So I like to think of it of, if you can make your situation 1% better, do you think, maybe you’ll see how to make it 2% better? If you can make a 2% better, you think you’ll see how to make it 5% better. And then just eventually, you’ll be able to work your way out. But so that initial 1% is just so crucial. And so kind of a same that people remind me of all the time is, “Hey, just make it 1% better.”

Chad Chelius
That’s a great analogy. That’s a fantastic viewpoint, for sure.

Dax Castro
Well, I mean, the 1% better… For those of you that are listening to this podcast, who maybe are new to accessibility or who are struggling how to implement an accessibility program in your organization, that 1% better is literally right clicking on an image inside Word, and adding alt text, right? [Yeah]. Or making sure that you’re using styles or making sure that your tables don’t have merge cells. Now we preach that the idea of no merge cells inside tables is a falsehood and that you can definitely have merged cells inside a table, but when you’re first starting out, do the easy stuff. If you can avoid doing a merge cells, then that makes table remediation really easy. And really not an issue. So like you said, the small wins. It’s really about the small wins. And we appreciate the work you’re doing at the college level. Because the thing is [yeah] those people are going out into the workforce and looking, maybe the accessibility part of what they’re studying is going to help them get careers in accessibility or when they go to a certain job…

Covid Cases or Inaccessible Information: Which grew faster?

Dax Castro
My son is studying to be a teacher. He wants to be a history teacher. And I know he won’t admit it. But he probably has learn some things about accessibility from being in the room next door to me or hearing me rant. And I know that when he goes to be a teacher and has to make content for his students, he will have some accessibility knowledge. He will have heard what it is and what it means and why it’s important. And I think the more seeds we can plant in those people today, the better off they are tomorrow. So yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we were going to talk about today is, which grew faster: COVID cases or inaccessible content? I would love to say being on the tail end of COVID, I think COVID is just here to stay. It’s just a thing that we’re just going to have to deal with on a continuous basis. But there was a start. There was a starting point at which it all started to kind of blow up. And matter of fact, I remember being at CSUN two years ago, and I’m saying, “Everybody go home. This thing is coming.” And so everybody left early. And the last day was a ghost town. But what I noticed was then CDC and the World Health Organization and all of these organizations started putting out all these papers and none of it was accessible.

Jeremy Seda
Yeah. They were just massively trying to push content out. And I think that just goes for just about every industry. “Well, we need to get this out as soon as possible. We might have made this accessible before, but we’ll get to it later.” [Right]. And as you guys can attest to, later never comes.

Chad Chelius
No! It doesn’t. I mean, whose job is to follow up on that? But again there are people with disabilities now… That would be like saying, “Here’s this flyer. Here’s this important memo. Don’t open it for two weeks.” [Right]. You know what I mean.

Jeremy Seda
It’s crazy.

Chad Chelius
Yeah, it’s insane. You know what I mean? So in the meantime, people are getting sick and people are in grave danger and your message is not getting out to everyone. And that is a problem. That’s a serious problem.

Dax Castro
Well, what was interesting is that when I taught at the Creative Pro Week, my very first session in Seattle a couple years ago, Michael Davis from the CDC (The Center of Disease Control) was actually in the audience along with a couple other people from the CDC. And they had asked some questions at the end. And we kind of developed a little bit of a relationship. And when COVID came out… If for anybody who follows me on LinkedIn, they know that I’m the first person to call people on the carpet for not being accessible, for not pushing out accessible content. And so what had happened was…

How the CDC improved their level of Document Accessibility

Dax Castro
Sometime in between the first conference and COVID, there was some CDC information that was pushed out> And I’m like, I kind of took him to task on it. Not him personally, but the CDC in general and said, “Hey, this is not accessible. The reorder is all off. No one is gonna know what’s going on in this document.” They made a serious turnaround in their efforts to make things more accessible. Mark Urban is a manager or leader in their department. And he reached out to me. We had some conversations. And there was a market improvement in the quality of content that was being pushed out that I was just so impressed by. But so many other organizations weren’t. The World Health Organization, every single one of their reports, 80% of the charts and graphs inside their report said “Image of Sunglasses” for the description of the bar chart. I swear to you.

Chad Chelius
So Dax, how did they make that change? So what method…? Was it internal? Did they leverage an outside source?

Dax Castro
So it was a combination of internal training and small steps. It really was, “Hey, let’s just start adding alt-text. Hey, let’s just start making sure our headings are correct.” These small wins are the way that they were able to just like you were talking about Jeremy, that they were able to improve their documents a little bit at a time. And no document is ever perfect. One person’s accessibility could be another person’s barrier. But the improvement on just the basics was huge. And I think it really made a very good impact.

Chad Chelius
Yeah, for sure. And you and I, what’s interesting Dax, and I wanted to bring this up, we often mentioned adding alt-text as a low hanging fruit. Just add alt-text to your images. But alt-text is not as easy as you would think. And I think to some level people overthink it. But at another level, alt-text is… If you’re selling a product, and the question becomes, “Okay, what alt-text do I write for this product?” [Right]. And it’s not a black and white answer. Because you have to ask the client, “Well, what message are you trying to tell?” You what I mean. Like, there’s no like black and white answer to that question. And again for somebody like me, I’m not intimately familiar with your product. So you as an organization need to make that decision. You need to think about what message am I trying to tell in the description of this product. Is it strictly visual? Is the purpose of this image is to support the content that’s already on the page?” I guess, the point I’m trying to make is that, it seems like it’s like, “Oh, just write alt-text.” But I can tell you so many of my clients really, really struggle with how to properly write alt-text. And part of the challenge is also that it’s just not a black and white answer. I can’t just say, “Oh write this.” Because it’s really not up to me. It’s up to you.

Jeremy Seda
If anybody doesn’t know what we’re talking about, I would challenge you to take a meme and write alt-text for it and still have it retain the humor behind it. It’s so challenging, even at the simplest level, it’s something like a meme.

Chad Chelius
That’s a great idea, Jeremy. That really is! I never really thought about that. But you’re right. I mean, jeez, how much of our lives are spent looking at memes nowadays. I mean, if you’re on Facebook, even LinkedIn – you know what I mean – it’s riddled with memes. And that’s a great exercise, I think. You know what I mean. And I think I’m going to try doing that later on, for sure.

Jeremy Seda
I was just saying that I second guess myself a lot of times when I post things to social media, because I do have quite a few friends that are blind, low vision. And I want them to be able to get an update on what I’m doing as well. So if I don’t have the time to write the alt-text, I just kind of pull my images, whether it’s a vacation or whatnot. And as I post the image, I’m writing the alt-text alongside with it, so that everybody can get to enjoy. Well, hopefully enjoy my content.

Chad Chelius
Yeah.

Say My Meme Podcast

Dax Castro
Well, I will say that I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to talk about there is another podcast out there called Say My Meme. And their whole entire podcast is about describing popular memes for people who use assistive technology. So each week… I don’t know if it’s weekly… Every… Looks like November 17, September, August looks like twice. Maybe every other month or so they do a podcast on a set of memes. And they talk about them. And the humor and they describe the images and what they mean and the context around them. So people who use assistive technology kind of can be included in why these memes are funny or why they’re important. And that’s Caroline from a company called Scribe Lee is a host for that. And you can find her on Apple podcasts and everywhere there are podcasts. Hershey and Will from Be My Eyes are [right] two hosts that do that.

Be My Eyes Accessibility App

Dax Castro
And Be My Eyes is another favorite of ours. We’ve talked about it a few times. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Be My Eyes is an app, you can put in on your phone that will allow you to be basically visual tech support for somebody who might need help. And so your phone might ring and it’ll be someone who says, “Hey, I set these two shirts down on the bed. I’m not really sure which one is the red one. Can you tell me?” And then you can see through their phone and it’s basically like a FaceTime where you’re like, “Oh, yeah, it’s the one on the left.” And they go, “Okay, great. Thank you and bye.” And that’s it.

Chad Chelius
Dax, about two weeks ago, I got a call [oh you did] from Be My Eyes. I was so excited. And I got the notification. And I hit the button. And I got a message it said, “Somebody has already picked up the call.” I was like, “No!” I was like, “I really, really wanted to contribute and be of assistance to somebody,” but I was too slow.

Dax Castro
Well, we need help now. It’s their help. And they want it now.

Chad Chelius
Absolutely.

Dax Castro
And there are millions of people that are actually registered to help. And only, I think three or 400,000 people that are actually need the service. So that’s a really great problem to have. [Sure]. Because you want to [yeah] instant bank of people that can help.

Jeremy Seda
That makes sense. I received a call when I was in the middle of teaching a Jui-jitsu class. And I was like, “Oh shoot, that was my little opportunity!”

Look to Speak Eye Gaze Conversation Tool

Dax Castro
That’s funny. So we definitely love those apps that make people’s lives easier. There’s another app – while we were talking about that – I want to share with you this other app. And it’s called Look To Speak. And this app actually uses your eye gaze to allow you to pick words. I just turned it on by accident. It allows you to look at a series of screens and it has a bank of words, like Hello, Goodbye. “Hello” might be on the left. “Goodbye” might be on the right. And if you look to your left, it chooses “Hello”. And then it says another. It’s predictive text. So it might say, “Hello, my name is. How are you?” A series of phrases. And you use your left and right eye gaze to just kind of filter through these words until you get to a sentence and then you hit Speak. And it will then say the sentence or you can display it to someone. And so if you have no mobility, if you have very low mobility, and you just have eye gaze movement, it’s a huge tool for being able to communicate with other people. And it’s free. It’s called Look to Speak. It’s pretty cool to play with. If you’re looking for an empathy lab, if you’re looking for something to kind of get people interactive with how someone using a system… Because how can you emulate what it is for someone who was a quadriplegic or has just the use of their eyes as a means of communication. They can’t speak. All they can do is I gaze. How do you approximate that, right? This is a really great tool for being able to kind of give people a little bit of that. A little insight to what that window was like.

Jeremy Seda
While we’re on these topics of great ways to kind of introduce people to that 1%, I just marathon at weekend on Apple TV, the show See.

Chad Chelius
Oh my Goodness.

Jeremy Seda
It was like perfect for me because I had accessibility, had Jui-jitsu, had action, and it was a dystopian future. I’m like, “Where’s this…? Why didn’t I get the first season when it came out?” It was very well done. And I actually learned a ton as far as new things I could possibly be doing with my events and everything to be more inclusive to folks that are have blind low vision.

Dax Castro
So talk to us more about this event. So what are some of the topics? What are some of the things people can expect?

Jeremy Seda
Well, it’s basically set up like just an 80 exhibit hall. But [Okay] I want it to be very just immersive and interactive. And obviously, with the last couple of years, we couldn’t do that. We tried doing the whole virtual thing, [right] last year. And man, that was challenging. I can see why a lot of events are not doing virtual anymore. Because I’m alongside with them. But this year, we want people to be able to actually get to use this. It’s one thing to see like, for example, some bone conducting headphones. But for somebody try it on, and then you can still have a conversation with them, because their ears are open and it’s the sounds traveling through the bones in their ears. It’s a completely different experience.

Chad Chelius
Wow.

Jeremy Seda
And that’s what we’re looking to do is just kind of… Again, we’re trying to resonate with somebody on some level with this different technology that they may or may not have known existed. Another cool – without giving away too much – we wanted to demonstrate audio description and…

Chad Chelius
Oh sure.

Directional Audio

Jeremy Seda
So we kind of did a… We have a TV that’s going to play a segment of a movie or show. Another TV that’s doing the same thing but with audio description. And then we’re using something called an audio spotlight which direct sound to a certain area, but you can’t hear it outside of that area. So it’s a [right] very, very sound targeting speaker. And just so people can kind of jump back and forth and notice the difference of what audio description is doing.

Dax Castro
That’s really cool. I’ve seen a couple of… I’ve been on a couple of different exhibits where they use that very directional speaker. You’re standing under the speaker and you’ve got about a two and a half foot, three foot radius around you that you can hear it in, and you move out of that radius, and you can’t. It’s amazing how it works that way. It’s uncanny.

Chad Chelius
I don’t know if you guys have ever experienced that in a church. I know, at the one church that I was in, you could have a person stand on the far end of the church like front to back. And if you stood at a certain spot, I could talk to them like they were standing in front of me.

Dax Castro
Oh yeah. The way the acoustics work.

Chad Chelius
Yeah, it was bizarre. I mean, they were literally 100 feet away, but we were talking like, we were three feet apart. [Right]. It was crazy.

Dax Castro
There is a temple. I’ve been inside a couple of different exhibits, but religious exhibits where it’s very humble, quiet environment. But they have maybe a painting on the wall. And you want to hear about the painting. And when you step under the speaker above you, it’s motion activated. And it starts talking about this painting. But the moment you step out of it, the rest of the room is quiet. It’s a very, very cool experience definitely. So awesome. That’s great that you’re putting that together. And when it is this, again?

Jeremy Seda
It’s going to be April 20 from 10:00AM to 01:00PM. It’s just a short timeframe. Because it’s a exhibit hall. And we have about 20 to 25 different exhibits. Most of them are going to be assistive technology, accessible technology, or applications thereof, but we also have some advocacy groups and trying to just bring everybody together to know about even just the services that are offered in a community. And that’s one of the big problems I see with a lot of the different institutions and agencies around accessibility, we’re not talking to each other enough. And so there’s obviously tons of redundancy that’s going on.

Being the only “Expert in your Organization”

Dax Castro
Well, it’s funny. I was putting together one of my slides for CSUN and talking about this document accessibility in higher ed. And one of the slides was about the fact that there are not very many peer-to-peer groups, that if I’m the accessibility expert or so-called expert, I’ve been tapped on the shoulder and said, “You need to be the accessibility expert.” There’s not a group or panel or club that I can just plug myself into, that’s readily available in the EDU community. I mean, you know, Chad and I have been running the PDF Accessibility Facebook group now for almost three years. And we’re only up to… I mean, only. I say “only” because globally there’s a lot more. But we’re about 2200 people in that group. And I’m like, “I know that there are so many more people out there that are just searching for a community to belong to.” And our group is great. Because we have a diverse group of people. But it’s definitely not focused on any one group. And if I’m in a higher-ed situation, my struggles are different than if I’m working for an ad agency or for a large corporation. What are some of the struggles you find at northern North Idaho College?

Jeremy Seda
Oh jeez, how much time do we have?

Dax Castro
The floor is yours.

Accessibility Struggles in Higher Education

Jeremy Seda
If you talk to anybody about their struggles with accessibility in higher education, they’re usually going to say, a lot of has to do with faculty. And though, they’re not just my ultimate focus. Yeah, it’s just a large group that we’re trying to deal with. I find that talking to most people and faculty, you take the time to explain it, showing them that, “Hey, you don’t have to be an accessibility expert. I don’t want you to be 100% accessibility expert.” But again, looking for that 1%, where is it that you can improve and this is why we’re looking to improve. I had a project. I was working on doing audio description, which is super challenging. And I had a two hour theatrical performance that was going public and they were promoting as public. And so I had to come up with a script. And I was working with the guests, the producer, the director of the whole production. And I explained to him like, “A lot of what’s going on is all visual in this performance. And so how’s it going to go for a blind person? It is super confusing.” And I was like, “Here, just turn off your monitor.”

Dax Castro
Exactly. That’s a great way to do it. Yep.

Jeremy Seda
And as soon as I did that, he’s like, “Oh my gosh. So I need to go back and do all of this. Because this is super important.” I’m like, “No, I’m here to help. But yeah, be thinking about this, how can we integrate more of the audio description in a more organic or natural sense in these performances.” So I guess just calling people into some of the information that’s only being conveyed to one of the senses, it’s just huge. And I find more often than not that people are actually, if you explain to them take the time to show the frustration that somebody with a disability might be having, they’re more than willing to jump in and do the work. It’s not perfect. But I love that people are now making an attempt. That is a huge improvement. That’s not 1% to me. That’s like 25% of somebody just having the passion behind making something accessible. That’s a huge improvement.

Chad Chelius
It is! That is huge. Now, Jeremy, at your event, I mean, aren’t there also presentations going to be happening?

Accessibility Camp Coeur d’Alene

Jeremy Seda
We’ve done that in the past with one of our events, but it got to be so challenging to do presentations and exhibit. Someday we might do that again. But we parse that off into another event, we call Accessibility Camp Quarterly. That happens in August.

Chad Chelius
Oh got it. Got it. So you have another event coming up in August, in addition to the one here in April?

Jeremy Seda
Absolutely. That’s more of a conference. But again, people are saying, “Hey, why don’t you have exhibits?” “Well, that’s what April is for.”

Dax Castro
You are like, “Look, I can’t do it all.” [Yeah]. We got to keep this compartmentalize. So I totally understand that. So the AW campus is August 3th through 4th. And that’s at the Administer Student Union Building. Right?

Tactile maps and other Technologies

Jeremy Seda
Both of our events are going to be at North Idaho colleges student union building. [Awesome]. So it’s nice central location. And we’re gradually getting everything to be much more inclusive and accessible. We just installed some campus building maps for accessibility camp, where there’s tactile maps on each of the floor and how to get around. And again, it was another thing that I didn’t foresee. I was so excited. I’m like, “I’m just gonna put this nice podium sign out here. That’s tactile.” And people like, “Oh you guys have those signs.” The blind folks will be like, “You have those signs. I didn’t even know. So [right] how are we supposed to know that they were even there?” I didn’t tell anybody where they are located. So absolutely a learning process.

Dax Castro
It’d be really interesting if anybody from Google, just for some… I can only wish, right? [Yeah]. I know some people from Adobe listen, but maybe there’s somebody from Google. It would be great if there were a way on Google Maps to have a local marker that says, “Accessibility podium” or “Accessibility Signage” or “Information Center” that’s accessible. Some way to trigger that if I’m on campus using my phone, because if I’m non-sighted, I’m going to use my phone to try to get as much information as I can, right? [Yeah]. And that might be a way to be able to introduce that information. But I have no idea how that works.

Jeremy Seda
I think it’s genius. That’d be awesome to have.

Dax Castro
Right. I know they are working on… I actually used my phone when I was in Colorado. The GPS wasn’t working very well. And the Google Maps popped up and says, “Hey, we’re gonna turn on your camera and and point it at some buildings. And we’ll tell you where your are based on what we see.” And so basically, I used the camera to identify businesses where I was standing. And then instead of using the GPS, because it didn’t have enough signal, it used that visual location of, “Oh, you’re out out in front of target.” And then it literally moved my pin to where it was supposed to be. And I’m like, “Wow!” I can imagine using this for assistive technology if I just open my phone to kind of reset where I’m at if unsure I were in the right place or not.

Chad Chelius
So it’s like triangulated your location based on the the things that were around you. [Right]. And then… I mean, the thing that always drives me crazy about maps in general is, it’ll say, “Head Southeast on North Third Street.” And I’m like, “What do you want me to do? Pull out my compass?” I mean, I think I don’t know what direction Southeast is? You know what I mean. I wish it would say, “Turn left on North Bay,” but it just always cracks me up. And even in the movies, I love when the cops go into the building, and they’re like, “We found the perpetrator in the northeast corner of the building.” And I’d be like, “I don’t know where that is?” But I guess those people are trained to pay attention to that stuff. But I know when you’re out driving, I’m not actively paying attention to, “Oh, I’m currently going Northwest,” or “I’m currently going southeast.”

Jeremy Seda
And when do we typically need directions is when we’re in a place that’s unfamiliar to us.

Chad Chelius
Exactly.

Dax Castro
All the more reason to not know.

Catch Chad and Dax at CSUN Assistive Technology Conference

Chad Chelius
So guys, don’t forget that Dax and I are going to be speaking at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, the week of March 14. We’re going to be presenting on a couple of different topics. Dax is going to be presenting on understanding document tag structure. And he’s also going to be doing a presentation on WCAG for PDF in plain English, which is a really, really cool session. If you’re like befuddled by the WCAG success criteria, you’re definitely going to want to sit in on that session. And then I’m going to be presenting on the topic of bridging the accessibility gaps from MS Word to PDF. And then I’m also going to be doing a session on solutions for creating accessible tables with color. And then we’re going to be doing a dual session.

Dax Castro
Our first dual session, by the way. This will be our first session we’ve done together at the same time.

Chad Chelius
Like I mean, how long have we known each other and this is the first time we’re going to be doing this. But I don’t know why it took this long. But we’re going to be going to do a session on accessibility in higher ed. So if any of those topics interest you and you’re going to be at CSUN, we would love to see you there. And again, if you’re going to be at CSUN, please come up and say, “Hi!” We’d love to meet you and talk to you about all things accessibility.

Dax Castro
And get a sticker. We’ve got stickers. We will have stickers.

Chad Chelius
And get a sticker. Exactly.

Jeremy Seda
I need one of those.

Dax Castro
We save you one, Jeremy.

Chad Chelius
We will definitely get you one, Jeremy. And Jeremy, Can you also tell us about your event as well?

Pave the Way for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Jeremy Seda
Yeah, sure. It’s, again, paved the way to Global Accessibility Awareness Day on April 20, from 10:00AM to 01:00PM at North Idaho Colleges Student Union Building. God willing, it’s going to be an amazing event with lots of people, lots of interaction, and we would love to have more folks come out to just engage with us around assistive technology and accessibility in the greater idea of universal design. And one more thing on that, just to remind everybody out there that Global Accessibility Awareness Day is the Thursday in May. And it’s just kind of a what this event is all about. It’s trying to urge people to be more involved. Hopefully not just one day a year, but hopefully every day.

Chad Chelius
Absolutely. Those are great words. And that’s really what we all do as accessibility advocates. It’s really just a matter of making people aware of it. And then, of course, for some of us, in addition to being aware of it, giving them the knowledge to help them create content that is accessible.

Jeremy Seda
Absolutely! And before I forget if anybody needed more information on the event, they can go to www.NIC.edu/A11Y and there will be a link to the PWG AAD event in there.

Dax Castro
And you can actually Google PWGAAD. And they’re actually the very first results. So definitely easy to find that way. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate you being here. And we always love to talk accessibility and you can’t hardly get me to shut up about it once I get going. So it’s nice to be able to share this day in this podcast today with you so thank you.

Jeremy Seda
I appreciate your guys’ time as well. Just keep up the good work. I love the content you guys are putting out there.

Chad Chelius
Thanks so much, Jeremy.

Jeremy Seda
Thank you.

Chad Chelius
Well, on that note, we want to thank the North Idaho College and the upcoming pave the way to Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Wednesday, April 20th in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for being our sponsor. Once again, more information on the PWGAAD Free Accessibility Technology Exhibit can be found at www.NIC.edu/A11Y. My name is Chad Chelius.

Dax Castro
And my name is Dax Castro, where each week we unravel accessibility for you.

Chad Chelius
Thanks, guys.