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Accessiversity Blog

Can Websites Turn Away Good Talent? - Part 1

Ep. 83: Can Websites Turn Away Good Talent? - Part 1

Podcast Transcription:

Voiceover: Your connected to Business Rap. Find us online at: businessrap.biz, on Twitter using handle AskBizRap, and on Facebook, just search Business Rap. And now, Work Matters with Julie Mann…

 Julie Mann: Hello everyone and welcome to the show that ponders, “does work matter? And if it does, why?” Today we’re going to talk about career web sites and do they screen in, or do they screen out good talent, because we know that talent is a very important component in making work matter and getting people to work for our organizations, and so we’re going to kind of dive into that. And joining us in the studio is Chris Knapp. And Chris is from a company called Accessiversity Labs and he’s the CEO and Managing Member of Knapp Strategies, I’m sorry, Knapp Strategic Projects & Consulting. And Chris is an absolute wizard on this stuff and I am so excited to have him in the studio. So, Chris, welcome.

Chris Knapp: Thanks Julie, I appreciate the invite to be here with you today.

JM: So why don’t we start out and kind of share with the audience, let’s just kind of talk about your background, and then that’ll kind of help us dive into Accessiversity, which really is looking at, you know, is your web site--this is Julie’s version not Chris’ version, which will be a lot more technical--but you know, is your web site accessible for people with all abilities to apply which is a very, very important component in looking at talent. So again, I’ll turn it back over to you, but let’s kind of talk about your background Chris.

CK: Sure, yeah. So, I experienced late onset blindness in my early twenties as a result of an auto-immune disorder. And really what that forced me to do was to, you know, starting with my undergraduate studies at Michigan State University and all the way through my 15+ year career as a workforce development professional an now as a consultant, is really leverage screen readers and other adaptive technology to be able to locate information, communicate with others, basically, perform on, you know, the same level or a higher level than my non-disabled, sighted peers. And I’m not unusual, there’s thousands and thousands of other people who are, you know, like myself, who have disabilities, many of which are hidden even, that are things that aren’t always perceivable…

JM: Right.

CK: …and so the way that we interact with the world around us, its different. And that, you know,  obviously relates to how we would, you know, look for employment or apply for a job, so on and so forth, as well. So that all happened to me when I was, you know, twenty-two, I’m forty-six now, so I’ve lived more than half of my life with a disability and, you know, have really, you know, been an advocate for accessibility in terms of making sure systems, and information is accessible to individuals of all abilities, or you know, folks experiencing different disabilities.

JM: No, absolutely, and I, you know I think that that’s so important, you know, we are as employers, everyone says “oh, it’s the war on talent” which is absolutely true, and so, you know, being sure that you’re job posting mechanism is accessible to all, is so very important because, you know, kind of like I mentioned in the beginning, you could be screening out good talent and not know it. And that’s where I think it’s, you know, so exciting to see what you’re doing with Accessiversity, because that’s really helpful, I think when you look at, kind of, just how you are engaging folks into your organization. So, let’s kind of talk about--let’s give your version--the high level, kind of description of what you’re doing with Accessiversity.

CK: So Accessiversity Labs is an innovative accessibility and usability testing and learning lab. So Accessiversity conducts assessments of a customer’s web site, software systems, mobile applications, business processes, etc. and really, what we’re doing is to assess that for compliance with Federal Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA, what are referred to as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And what makes Accessiversity different is that we’re actually utilizing individuals with disabilities to do some of the live testing of that customer’s web site and systems, so that we’re providing an authentic experience in terms of that accessibility experience of the individual. And for a customer, it helps them understand how an individual with a disability is going to be interacting with their web site or system.

JM: So, let’s go back to Federal Section 508 and the WCAG. Just in general, again for the person listening, what is Federal Section 508? And then the same thing on the WCAG, what is that? Tell us a little more about what those two things are. 

CK: Yeah, so those are the overarching regulations and guidelines that, kind of, establish what a web site or you know, publicly available information, the standards you need to adhere to, to make sure that those are accessible for all individuals. So, a lot of those are focused on, you know, the technical aspects of when you’re creating a web site, what sorts of things do you need to do to make sure that you’re making that accessible to the largest group of people as possible, the largest population possible. 

JM: So, if someone was going to then interact, to kind of have that analysis done, how would you kind of be working with that company, to, kind of look at that?

CK: So, there are a number of tools and resources out there. There are automated testing tools that can actually, well you can put in, you know, a URL and it will go through and check a web site page by page to see, you know, how the web site is performing in terms of compliance with all of those guidelines. We’re doing the same thing, but more through manual testing of the site, to kind of validate or reject what we’re seeing, you know, through some of those automated testing tools plus digging a little deeper in terms of just seeing how that experience is for the individual, because you don’t know until you actually, you know, are on a site performing a live test to really get a great idea of what’s going on… 

JM: Right. 

CK: …and you know, honestly, a lot of these tools, there are occasions where, you know, there are false positives, things, you know, come up during one of those automated test tool assessments that maybe aren’t really indicative of an actual problem related to accessibility. So, it’s really tackling it from a number of different angles, and trying a number of different things to kind of evaluate how good, or how much, you know, improvement is needed for a particular site.

JM: And are you finding that there’s, you know, there’s different sectors that are paying more attention to this? Or, what do you kind of find from a business standpoint, as far as where you seem to be doing a lot of work right now?

CK: Yeah, so big picture I think, you know, government, education, financial services, you know any of the big sectors that are receiving public funding, they’re already paying attention to this and a lot of that is honestly due to some of the big lawsuits and things that, you know, have happened with some of the state agencies, or public institutions that have been, you know, sued for not having systems that are accessible. And, you know, the private sector, they’ve been a little slower to react, or maybe a better way to say it, is to be proactive in trying to, you know, really look at accessibility. And I don’t think its because employers, you know, aren’t aware of this being an issue, or that they don’t care, I think a lot of it boils down to just not really understanding how to approach it, or there may be a little bit of, you know, fear of, you know, if I open this can of worms I’m not, you know, sure what I’m going to be getting if I start down this path. So what we’ve really tried to do, and you know I think, the better approach is to say, “hey organizations, here’s a way you can kind of dip your toe in the water, in terms of, kind of seeing where you’re at when it comes to accessibility”. And then, like anything, you know, what are you doing to provide that path forward?

JM: Right, right.

CK: You know, a lot of organizations have their own IT departments who are on top of this, and do a great job, but, you know, an assessment is just one piece of the puzzle. Once you have that information, its, “okay, what are you going to do to start moving towards being more compliant?” And a lot of organizations might just have their IT departments take care of those issues, and there are a number of IT integration partners out there that can help with remediating those sorts of issues. Or in some cases, you might just need to, you know, consider designing and launching an altogether new web site, just depending on, you know, where you’re at in terms of accessibility. 

JM: Right. And you know, I think at the end of the day they want to make their systems , you know, more accessible, and I think that’s a really interesting point, you know, somehow, a lot of times what stops us is we don’t know, we don’t know, right? We don’t know what we don’t know, and what I think is really neat, one of the things that your organization is doing is like you said, just even working with a company to say “let me give you an assessment of,” you know, “what your current state is today”, and, you know, here’s how accessible it is today, and kind of give you that idea of where you could be, and then you can build the roadmap. But, you know, keeping the blinders shut and just saying, “well, I don’t know, maybe its okay and maybe its not, in the private sector, you know, we just have to have that path. And that’s where you can come in, and I think that’s what’s really neat, is like help them create “what do I need to do?”

CK: Yeah, and I agree. I think its an iterative process, I think that, you know, it goes beyond accessibility. We say that Accessiversity is an accessibility and usability, learning and testing lab, because, you know, I think the bare minimum is, you know, making sure that your sites are accessible, but what businesses want is a product or a web site or whatever that’s more useable…

JM: Right. 

CK: …Because that’s going to help, you know, in terms of reaching and engaging all of your customers. And so, that’s not just something that happens, you know, after one assessment or one fix… 

JM: Right.

CK: …that’s where that, you know, let’s start here, and then here are all of these things that we’re going to do to kind of keep this moving in the right direction.

JM: Are there things that you tend to see that come up more often as far as that, kind of  low hanging fruit? You know, here’s what we find when we kind of do some of that usability/accessibility analysis?

CK: Yeah, well obviously, my background, with a visual impairment I’m somewhat, you know, have that slant when I’m looking at a lot of things and honestly that’s where a lot of the issues with web accessibility comes into play, is  with things that are visual in nature… 

JM: Right. 

CK: …just because of that particular medium, yeah, a lot of it is the graphics and you know, animation, and things that you want, you want the site to be visually appealing and have those aesthetics and if you’re not doing things properly on the back end with coding that, within the HTML, the Hyper Text Mark-up Language, providing alt text and things that are clueing in someone that’s looking at that through a screen reader, it’s just going to come across as a bunch of graphics and things that are going to be undiscernible to someone who might have a visual impairment. But that’s probably some of the biggest, I guess, culprits out there, the things that are graphic in nature, or animations, things that we want the sites to be flashy and to really convey certain imagery, but you    know you just have to make sure you’re not cutting off a giant segment of the population. And interesting enough I just think that as we move forward and as we all get older, normal things happen to us…

JM: Right. 

CK: …macular degeneration, for instance, and each generation is using technology more and more than the prior…

JM: Right.

CK: …so this isn’t something that’s going away, I mean we’re going to have, you know, you and me and our kids, as grandparents we’re going to be using, you know, technology way more than our parents or our grand parents did, so, you know, its going to be kind of a game shifter that way. 

JM: And that’s really an interesting point, I mean,, when you said that I was thinking back to my grandparents, right, and I would say, as they got older they used technology less, you know, whatever technology was in that day, right, which continues to have a different kind of definition. But I can see as we get older, us spry ones, as we get older that we’re going to have to use technology more…

CK: Yeah.

JM: …and so, it has to continue to be available, because there’s, you know, hardly anything that’s not on your phone or on your laptop or, you know, I mean its just that world where we need that technology really to even make it through the day. So, that is really an interesting point, I never thought about that Chris, that’s really helpful.

CK: Yeah, I mean, who knows, we’ll probably all be working right up to the very end and they’ll be prying our iPhones out of our hands right before they wheel us off… 

JM: Yeah, people will have their arms crossed with their iPhones in their hands. So, Chris, thank you so very much for joining us today. If people want to get in touch with you how would they do that? 

CK: They can call 517-881-4256 or email me at chris@knappstrategic.com

JM: Terrific, and its chris, c-h-r-i-s for those listening. So Chris thank you so much, for all of the listening audience out there, thanks for joining us, a very important topic, and as you know we always like to end by saying, “let’s transform today, let’s have an impact on tomorrow, and most importantly, let’s make work matter”.

Andrea Kerbuski