Accessibility Pillars in Web and Design

O'KEYLA COOPER:
Most of you know me, I'm O'Keyla Cooper, the Advisor of Data Modernization and Public Health Communications at ASTHO, and very happy to welcome all of you today. Today our agenda features a presentation from three of my ASTHO colleagues, all of whom have a lot of experience and tremendous expertise in accessibility as it pertains to web and design. So, followed by that, we'll have a Q&A, and then we'll conclude with a brief evaluation so we can get some of your feedback on the presentation.

Before we dive into today's presentation, just a few announcements and technical reminders. We are, gonna have everyone muted throughout the presentation, but you are encouraged to engage with our presenters by utilizing the raise your hand icon at the bottom of the screen, or by utilizing the chat feature to ask questions or share comments. There will be a dedicated Q&A, as I mentioned before, where folks can actively participate. The session will also be recorded, and any relevant materials will be uploaded and shared to, the my.astho Peer Network community in the next week or so, for your reference. And then lastly, if you encounter any technical issues, we do have Victoria Tyra on the line. She will be our tech host for today, so if you have any technical issues, please feel free to just send her a quick chat, and she will, help you out with that.

So, we'll go ahead and get started. I'm pleased to introduce today's speaker… speakers. Three of my ASTHO colleagues, as I mentioned before, Emily Lapayowker, who is the Assistant Director of Web Content. We have Christopher Preheim, the Manager of Graphic Design. And Heidi Satter, the Director of Web and Data Solutions. So, I'm going to turn it over to those guys, and we will get started.

HEIDI SATTER:
Alright, Emily, I'm gonna have you talk, because O'Keyla already did our wonderful intro.

EMILY LAPAYOWKER:
Alright, that sounds good. Okay, so welcome to Accessibility Pillars in Web and Design.

Alright, so the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I suspect may be where most of you are here, is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against and requires equitable access for people with disabilities. So digital accessibility is considered covered under the umbrella of equal access to public areas that ADA guarantees. And Title II, specifically, of ADA, enforces digital accessibility compliance by requiring state and local government websites and digital tools to be accessible to people with disabilities.

The Department of Justice has announced a compliance deadline of April 24, 2026 for jurisdictions of 50,000 people or more. And, April 2027 for smaller entities. So, ADA and Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, if you're more familiar with that, use the same criteria to determine accessibility. So, if you're interested in 504 and 508, you're still covered by what we're talking about here today.

Accessibility standards. So the federal government has identified WCAG 2.1 AAA as a standard for accessibility compliance. So, WCAG, or the Web Accessibility Content… or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Are published by the Worldwide Consortium. Worldwide Web Consortium, guys, sorry. It's an international organization, that's dedicated to establishing open web standards, and it's currently in its second version, as you may have guessed, from 2.1. They are working on a third version, but there's no publish date announced at this point.

So when you're evaluating compliance, there are three different levels of conformance. There's single A, which is the lowest; AA, which is the middle; and AAA, which is the greatest. As you've noticed from the federal government's standard, AA is the one that most people aim to hit, because some types of content can't reach AAA. An example of that would be a scientific journal or a technical manual that can't meet a plain language guideline, because it's just not possible to get content there.

All right, so we'll learn a little bit more about WCAG. So these standards are principle-based, which means that rather than requiring all web browsers or software to meet a specific technical standard, they… are principle-based. So they, they require that all digital content adheres to four principles, the POUR principles. Which allows the standards to be more evergreen. You don't have to update them every time there's a leap forward in technology.

So the POUR standards are: Perceivable, all information must be presented in a way that ensures users can perceive it using at least one of their sentences. Operable, a website is considered operable if all users can effectively navigate it, even those who employ assistive technology, like screen readers. Understandable is actually a two-pronged principle, Users have to be able to understand how to use a site and understand its contents. That's that plain language I mentioned before. And Robust, content must be robust enough that multiple technologies, including assistive devices like screen readers, can interpret it.

So you're probably wondering what is digital content, what counts, and what doesn't. A lot of us think of websites, social media. But it's actually pretty much anything you look at on a screen, so it's your email, it's PDFs, it's Word documents, it's Excel, it's PowerPoint slides, or presentations like this one. If you are looking at it on a computer, a phone, or a tablet, it counts as digital content.

So, one of the best ways to make sure that your content, especially Word documents and web pages, are accessible, is to use structure and styles. So, the structure and styles, using the built-in styles, or the pre-programmed styles, will help screen readers navigate, through pages and documents. It makes it easier for users to understand, and it also applies a visual consistency, which is helpful for users who, have… are sighted. So, headers should always be used and should be deployed in order. Use H1 for the title and pretty much never anywhere else. Use H2 for section headers, H3 for subsections, and so on, down to H6, which, realistically, you will probably never use.

Lists should be deployed thoughtfully. So, use an ordered list if you're outlining steps in a process, but use an unordered list for things that are not sequential, like the ingredients in a recipe, or symptoms of a cold.

One of the big bonuses of using the structure and the styles that are inherent in Word documents, but also web pages… well, actually, Word documents specifically, is they… They give you a head start on creating accessible PDFs, which we will get to, and they also allow you to do things like build a table of contents automatically, or create an index of tables and figures.

Another big thing is linking best practices. So you should deploy links thoughtfully. So, some examples of how to do that are to use descriptive link text. Screen reader technology allows low-vision users to navigate webpages and other digital content. In a variety of ways, but one of them is by jumping directly from link to link without referencing the content around it. So the link text should be descriptive enough to stand on its own. You should use them sparingly, when possible. When a screen reader announces, or reaches a link, it announces it by saying link, and then reading the linked text. So, if you're linking every so often, that's not very disruptive to the reader's experience. But you can imagine, you know, if you're linking dozens of times in the same paragraph, for example, that could be really hard to keep track of the narrative or the content.

You want to keep link text consistent. Creating a consistent experience is important for all users, but especially those who rely on screen readers. So with that in mind, try to make sure you're not using the same words to link people to different places. For example, if you're writing a blog post and use the text "Health Affairs Article" to link to an article from March of 2023, Don't use the same phrase later in your product to send people to a Health Affairs article from September of 2021.

And use links strategically. Think about a user's perspective. And try to make sure that the link text and the destination make sense together. There are a few things more confusing than clicking on a link and wondering if you ended up in the wrong place.

Okay, so a couple additional tips. Using plain language is a great way to make sure you get your message across. Avoid directional language. Above and below are common terms, but assistive technology can't determine spatial direction, so instead use the name of the section, or the figure, or the table you're referring to. That'll allow the user to make the connection when they get there. Provide transcripts for all pre-recorded multimedia, for example, webinar recordings or podcast episodes, and include captions on videos. This is helpful for people who are hard of hearing, or those in very loud, very quiet settings who can't rely on their volume.

Okay, so we're gonna go through some accessibility requirement examples. Users with fine motor skill impairments need to be able to perform functions using a keyboard alone. Any interactive elements on screen should be clearly highlighted upon receiving focus. That's related directly to navigating a page with the keyboard. Text alternatives or alt text for non-text elements are required. Correct color contrast ratios should be applied, and color alone should never be used to convey meaning. Documents should be organized in a way that doesn't require an associated style sheet, so don't rely on the markup to make your content make sense. If server-side image maps are necessary, and they probably, hopefully aren't, an alternative way to display this information is to be, to have, like, an alternative access plan, or to make it compatible with screen readers. Tables should be carefully coded to clearly indicate whether a cell is a header, column, or row, making it easier for assistive technology to interpret, because it will read top to bottom, left to right, the screen reader, every time. Any embedded content should be placed in an inline frame or an iframe, that has an accessible name. Any flickering or flashing content should be limited or removed completely, if possible. If it is used, objects should not flash for more than 3 times per second, and if users require an applet, software, or a plugin to interpret content, a link has to be provided. And users should be able to skip directly to content and avoid repetitive navigation.

And now I'm gonna turn it over to Chris to talk about design's approach to accessibility. You're so good.

CHRISTOPHER PREHEIM:
Emily? Yep, I was trying to find the… I haven't done screen share and talked at the same time, surprisingly, so…

Hello, everyone. Just to reiterate, my name is Chris Preheim. I am a design manager here at ASTHO, and I'm going to talk to you about a more graphical approach to accessibility. What Emily mentioned, a lot of things she highlighted are particular to web elements, but the laws associated with those also pertain to graphic design. So, there are 6 core elements that we'll be talking about, call them the pillars. But ultimately, these 6 elements are best practices. They are detailed-oriented processes that are often final touches to be used on design products that are primarily digital, although some also apply to physical print copies as well. A majority of the work implementing these are done through Adobe Acrobat Pro, and that will be kind of the main software that we'll be talking about in this discussion for the design side.

Color contrast. So, readability, in particular, using color contrast, is very important in print, but super important for digital. Color contrast with the current WCAG AA standards is set at 4.5 to 1 ratio, which there are various online, entities that you can type in for, like, color contrast to be able to figure out what that ratio is for the colors using the hex codes that you have. it is, as Emily mentioned earlier, very difficult to exceed AA and reach AAA consistently. That is because the requirements for it are at such a higher standard, so… The example of for color contrast, WCAG AAA, is at a 7 to 1 ratio, so almost double. But it's very important, and it allows the audience members to be able to see the content no matter their surroundings or the lighting in which they are a part of. So one thing that we'll want to talk about is vision, hence the reason for color contrast and the impairments that we are talking about altogether. So, the main symptom of color vision deficiency, or color impairment, is you're not able to see colors the way most people do.

An example with normal vision is the image on the left of the random fruit assortment. We'll leave those are tomatoes. Some are very interestingly shaped tomatoes. You struggle when you have a vision deficiency with the difference between colors, how bright colors can be, and the different shades. And there are 3 prominent types of color blindness. Protanopia. Due to anomaly, and Tritanopia. Protanopia is the absence of red and green. Deuteronomaly is difficulty in distinguishing red and green, so there's a little bit of red and green still there, but much harder to distinguish. And then Tritanopia is a rare form of blue and yellow color blindness. And so this is an example of what Protanopia is. To kind of give you a sense of what some people might be dealing with who have color impairment. So as you can see, it's a little harder to distinguish the difference between the colors and the shades, although you can see the brightness You can distinguish a little bit on that, but even then, some of it's kind of difficult. This is due to anomaly.

Difficulty in distinguishing red and green in Tritonopia. So this one is quite a bit different than the other two, in the sense that You kind of have, in the yellow area, things are more pinkish-red, and… the upper left, you see, or more of the left side with the green, they turn into a bluish color. So, in your everyday life, you can tell that that would be very difficult to distinguish road signs, or… Just everyday signage as is, so that's why color contrast can be very important.

Now, this was a fun test that I discovered while, researching the topic years ago. The Ishihara test. So, this is a color deficiency test that was created by a man named Shinobu Ishihara in 1917, and it's an association of randomized dots with numbers or patterns placed inside. And so, while this is not a test that I'm giving y'all in any capacity, this is just to show you what the test looks like. If you have questions or concerns about your own, color deficiencies or color test, I would recommend consulting with a professional on this. That being said, it's kind of fun to look at and, see what you struggle with and what you don't. For me personally, the middle blue circle, with number 5 is one of the harder ones for me, but everyone has their own difference in what they can and can't see, or what they struggle with.

Alright, going on to the second pillar, fonts. So, fonts, there's a plethora of them. There are a handful of websites where you can download some fun fonts. As you well know. platforms such as Microsoft Word, Adobe, Illustrator, even just websites and various other creative outlets. they have fonts pre-loaded, and some are more fun than others. You got… please don't create designs with Comic Seraph, or Comic Sans, but yeah, Comic Sans is a popular one that people like, or Pyrus… Impact… there's… in the graphic design world, there's some taboo ones that you don't put in design, but sometimes rules are meant to be broken on that. Anyways… So, accessible fonts are very important, because the idea is to be able for readers, regardless of their skill set, to be able to read at an even speed across the entire page without interruptions. You want to make sure that the legibility and readability is improved upon by picking the right font. Now, there's no… deciding entity that has judged what fonts are technically good and bad. However, there are three key factors that play into it. Size, color, and contrast being the main ones. And then some examples shown below. As you can tell, the more sans-serif the font is, usually the better. That's not to say that all sans-serif fonts are perfect, and that's not to say all serif fonts are bad. You just kind of have to use your own judgment on it. The more curvy and wavy lines are. the more texture added, the more script-like, it can be harder to read, especially on longer paragraphs, where things aren't broken up, so you kind of have to use your best judgment. But some good go-to ones are Helvetica, Azdosans, Times New Roman. Tahoma… I think Microsoft Word recently just got Aptos as their main Preloaded font, so… yeah. Usually, they have good reason as to why they're choosing those fonts the way they do.

Another element about fonts that, while is important, is less… Kind of talked about is ligatures. So, ligatures are when two letters form a single glyph, and provide a little bit of an issue when reading. So, while the image, the figure 4, is from 18th century ligatures, hence, you know, the old-style fonts were a little bit more cursive-based and script-based. It still applies to today, even with Times New Roman and other used fonts that are popular. Ligatures are essentially… more times than not having F's and L's and I's and T's together, and having the connection or the crossbars of them actually intersecting with each other to create the glyph. And sometimes that becomes problematic in being able to distinguish what the word is. So, the idea is to find fonts that help mitigate that as best possible, and that takes a little research in itself. Also, Adobe Acrobat has also had issues. I'm not sure if people have experienced this, but in my line, I've had issues with Acrobat wanting to export. Microsoft Word text into a PDF. and that… and in that PDF in Acrobat, it deleted all the ligature marks. So, office, it would just spell O, blank, blank, blank, C-E. So I had to go and retype everything on that, so… Just be mindful that even the font, or the software doesn't like the font sometimes, too.

Tables and graphs. And I apologize if there are any questions, I can't see the chat during this, so if anyone has anything, just feel free to chime in. Tables and graphs. Tables and graphs and charts are one of the more challenging elements for assistive reading technology, such as screen readers. And there are best practices for these, which include adding titles, captions, summaries, make sure that you use descriptive names. There's an insert caption tool for Microsoft Word in the reference tab that helps to automate numbering and create appendices. That will help in the long run, for sure. It might take a little extra time on the front end, but well worth it. Always include meaningful names, not just a number. It gets really confusing when you do that. You want to be descriptive, but concise. Keep the structure simple. Avoiding merged cells for tables is very, very important when doing graphic design elements, and based on Emily's smile on that, also very important for web as well.

So… Avoiding merged cells is best practice, although sometimes it is unavoidable. You're just gonna have to put in a lot of extra work to help make sure that it's still legible for the screen readers. And then trying to make sure that it is… the tables are on a single page, or if the table is broken, ensuring that it has the proper headers so that you're able to allow the reader To be able to track a whole lot better, because if you were just to cut off the table and then continue it onto another page. It doesn't take long before you start to forget what was the original header, like, what's this column, what's this row supposed to be highlighting? So, just be cognizant of that. And then, as Emily mentioned again before. Assistive tech likes to read from top to bottom, left to right. And then, adding on to that, specify the table header. You want to ensure that the screen readers interpret the table correctly, which includes all the individual boxes, and making sure that the structure across multiple page tables is maintained. There are two… ways to frame or at least classify tables in the graphic design element. Simple tables and complex tables. And you'll see on the image on the left, a simple table is where there are no merged or tiered headers. There's the same number of… Rows, as there are… well, columns, yeah. But, making sure that there's a nice, even amount and everything flows correctly, or at least more laterally and vertically. It's not kind of, like, waved with all the different merged cells. And that's where Complex Tables gets their name, because it starts to make things very complex when you have the merged cells, and then the screen reader is just confused. So, while we understand that there is… A desire to have tables be a little bit more creative. Simple as best. Ultimately. So, when creating… the table. If you can, try to minimize the amount of information that's within it. If you can't. Just try to do your best to make sure that everything is appropriately tagged, which we will talk about later on.

Going on to the graphs section of this. I know everybody loves pie graphs. I know in the scientific community it's everyone's favorite, and I say this with wholehearted sarcasm. That, essentially, this is a great example for understanding graphs and the WCAG guidelines for them, though. So… Ultimately, if the data in a chart, graph, or map is crucial to the content of a webpage or on a design product, you must provide a text description of the image, alt text content that is presented to the user has an alternative text. So, we'll talk about alt text later, but as you can tell, a key kind of help fits this narrative on that. While it's not perfect, it's better than nothing, so you always want to have at least a key. And then supplementing color coding of charts with texture, difference in line style, text and graphs, or different shades of color to improve accessibility for colorblind users. Ultimately, what that's saying is that you cannot just have color to define the difference between sections or slices. So, color's not just good enough. As you can see on the second image, or on the bottom image on the left. The two major slices are a little bit close in their shades of color, and they're much harder to distinguish. So even with that key, you can't just use color to distinguish what something is. So with that being said, what you need to do is increase the color contrast, as we mentioned earlier. So, doing that helps to be able to create a better understanding of where the slices start and stop. And then applying the title or the name directly with the amount to the slice. helps significantly as well. This makes it a lot more accessible and a lot easier to understand. That being said, even with the colors as they are with higher contrast. If you look at no donuts, 13%, and plain glazed at 28%. it's still pretty close with shade. For someone who's not got visual impairments regarding to color deficiencies. It's still pretty close. It's not the best way to tell, so we need to go a little bit further with making it easier for people to read it. And that comes in with textures. Now, they can get a little crazy and hectic and vibrant and… Just a lot in such a small area. So, it can also be a little difficult to see the start and stop of the individual slices again. And… this is really more apparent in the black and white. So, again, if you don't have the color deficiencies, you probably won't think twice about it as being an issue, but you need to be considerate for people with these deficiencies and recognize that It's gonna take them a lot longer to distinguish what something is. So, let's help them out by doing some… one last step that makes it a whole lot easier. dividing lines. Just adding dividing lines to separate the slices can make a big difference. So, color, texture, dividing lines, and then applying the individual names and amounts to the respective slices. Implementing these design styles across horizontal graphs, vertical graphs, plot charts. It… that's just the standard of how things should be.

Alt text. And one of our favorite Adobe Stock images. So a picture's worth a thousand words, right? Ultimately, in graphic design, imagery plays a big part into our work. And also across web, as well. And so part of that… we have, in the graphic design realm, three main reasons why we would want to use imagery. One is so that we can provide a more concise narrative of a product through visual means. So, being able to take text and pretty much just represent it in the thousand words, take those thousand words, got a picture. Makes it a whole lot easier to understand. Number two would be to break up long lines of text that can cause reader fatigue. If you have a 40-page report, no one wants to read that novel. No one's gonna be interested. Gotta have some imagery to help break it up. Number three, to provide clean formatting. And so that kind of rolls in with the tables. That we mentioned earlier. When you have… A lot of text. and some of it spills over into another page, that can be difficult for a screen reader to continue on in reading. So when you have, let's say, a paragraph that spills over, maybe bump it down to a new page and just fill that space with an image that is either representative of the text above. or is decorative, but mark it as decorative. And we'll talk about that in a sec. So… Regardless of how the imagery is placed or played, it requires alt text.

And alt text is essentially… just a short, concise bit of information typed to describe the image, and so you have it for two reasons. One is so that someone who is visually impaired is able to hear and listen to what that image is portraying. Two… If the image doesn't load, it provides an option for you to know what was going to be Placed in that spot. So then you have a better understanding as to what is being presented there. And this is what you will find in Microsoft Word, if you are looking to put alt text on an image. So, this dialog box on the left… It's very short and sweet. It's got a space for you to write. Sentences regarding what the subject matter is, the setting, the action, all the relevant information. It's not recommended you do generate alt text for me. It's usually not where you want it to go. And the reason being is, it's either… Not succinct, which is the best practice. You want it to be succinct. Or it's a bit too non-descriptive. As to what you're wanting. And so, particular in that, you want to avoid phrases like image of, because screen readers will identify all images as a graphic. Makes it harder to understand altogether.

For complex images, such as charts and graphs, you want to communicate what it's trying to tell the users, rather than just telling them what it looks like. That's a big part of it. And then not all images convey information. So that was the part about decorative that I was mentioning. If something is just there to kind of fill the space to make it easier for reading altogether, or it's a design motif. That's been placed in the headers or footers, and it has no real merit to conveying the narrative, then it should be marked as decorative, which, in this case, for this dialog box, you can see on the bottom left of it. So, yeah, context is important. If you have an image or description of a painting in the body of the document, or something that's already describing the image. You don't need to necessarily be as… Concise and descriptive in it, because you don't want it to be repetitive. Of what that image already has been told about in the text. And so then… A big bonus that I think a lot of people might already know about alt text is that it can allow for higher SEO, search engine optimization. and artificial intelligence to recognize what the image is, and then that way, in our line of work, it's nice for Google search results, or Yahoo search, or whatever. software you use for that? And it also helps people who can't have access to high-speed internet be able to understand what images are being placed there.

Reading order. So this is one of the more time-consuming elements. for graphic design. And that is to make sure that the… Assistive technology, or the screen reader, is able to actually read in order what you want the text to be read out as. And so… I mean, it's… pretty simple to just say the reading order determines the order. And that's the way it is, and so it's also how, when you mark it in, in this case in Adobe Acrobat Pro. It should make it so that the keyboard and screen readers can use the menus, links, and form fields sequentially, so you're establishing that sequential order, which is very important, because otherwise, if you don't. the auto… order that's filled is not gonna… usually 9 times… 99 times out of 100 is not gonna be correct. So… You want to make sure that it reads it in the correct chronological order. And this is an example of what it looks like. So, as you can see, developing the data strategy and data governance policy is marked at number 2, rather than number 1. Number 1 is the page number down at the bottom. So, if I were to read this document, and the screen reader were to read this document, I would want it to know that, hey, this is page 16, developing a data strategy and data governance policy. So you have to actually also make sure that while it's not looking like it's sequentially in order. It still needs to be what you would want it to read first. So, wanted to read the page number first in this instance, then the text in its order. And as you can see, the links also have their own special call-out. But it can range from, you know, only 3 or 4 individual boxes based on the type of information that's placed, whether it's headers, or subheaders, or text, or links, or lists, or it can range as high as, you know, 50, 60, 70 different individual reading order elements. And then tags. Tags are important because, ultimately, they are a structural representation of the content that's going to be read by the screen readers. And so, this allows the assistive technology to know, hey, this is a header, this is a subheader, this is a paragraph, this is a list. This is a table, chart, figure, and it goes on and on. So these are paramount to have correctly done, and are time-consuming to do, but are very important. So, some tags also have multiple labels. In the instance of list. If you have bullets or numbers, you have 4 individual tags that you have to do per bullet. Well, to an extent. But, yeah. So, it's time-consuming, it's intensive, but it also is vital in making sure that screen readers can accurately read to their audience. And that would be the 6 pillars. And now I'll pass it off to Heidi for quiz time.

SATTER:
I get the fun part. Now, we've been putting a lot of information at you all at once, so we thought we'd end with, a couple of questions so we can get a little bit of audience participation. So, I will read the question, and if you want to put your answer in the chat, we would love to see them. So, for question one, this image, of course our corn guy here, appears in a featured article titled, The Emotional Connection Between Farmers and Their Crops on an Agricultural Advocacy Website. Which alt tests text is the best option for this scenario? So, number one is man with corn. Number 2 is man with blue shirt and gray hat hugging an ear of corn. The third one is a smiling man in a blue shirt and gray hat hugs a large ear of corn in a woodsy surrounding, symbolizing the deep emotional bond farmers have with their crops. And the fourth one is decorative, which is how it would appear on the web, or mark as decorative, which would be what you would select if it was in a Word doc. So, feel free to pop your number in the chat.

COOPER:
So we have a couple of answers. We have man with corn or decorative, and then we have… Number 2, number 2, number 3, Number 4. So… We have all the answers there.

SATTER:
We do have all the answers there. And I will just point out quickly, it could… 3 or 4 are the best options for this scenario. It doesn't mean that it is incorrect with what you selected, it's just the best options in this particular scenario. Number 1 is considered too generic, because it doesn't really convey the emotional tone of the connection between the farmers. Number two describes the… action and the setting, but it missed the emotional tone. And then the third one gives you a little bit more robustness, but if it is decorative and it doesn't add to the context of what you're writing in the article, you mark it as decorative if it's just a visual sort of way to get the folks to move to the next section. And now we'll go to the next one.

Oh, you know what? And that last one, I forgot to say, if, the blog post title was… Bill Lovescorn, wins the Utah County Corn Award for Outstanding Agricultural Innovation. Would you change your answer on this? Would you give a different description, if our friend here's name is Bill Lovescorn.

COOPER:
Can you repeat that, Heidi?

SATTER:
Sure, let's say instead of the Emotional Connection title, it's now… the title of your blog post is, Bill Loves Corn, Wins Utah County Corn Award for Outstanding Agricultural Innovation. And then you see this picture. Would that change your answer? I think I scared everyone.

COOPER:
It feels like a trick.

SATTER:
Yeah, the only difference, really, with that is, Yeah, so his last name is Lovescorn. We thought we were being adorable here, but I think we're confusing, folks. Bill here is in the picture, so we might actually want to call out that this is Bill, loves corn, hugging his prize-eating corn… his prize-winning corn, or something like that. That just means the context of what you're writing is different. And this is actually a real person, and then we'd want to call that out in the actual description. So that's really the only way that would change. It's all… the whole point is that it's all about the context of what's being written about, and you want to make sure that what you're using the alt text for matches the context of the article. And doesn't necessarily repeat it.

So now we can go on to number 2. Alright, question 2. You're reviewing a colleague's draft of a blog post about your company's new sustainability initiative. The post includes a link to more information. Which of the following examples demonstrates the best linking practice? Number one is click here to read more about our efforts. Number two, we've launched a new program to reduce our carbon footprint. Read more. And number three, learn more about our sustainability initiative to reduce carbon emissions. And yay, everybody put number 3, because that is the correct answer.

Basically, you just want to make sure that you're linking… they know exactly where they're going. It's… if you want to give, Adobe… more SEO, you'll put click here, because that's usually what's associated with Adobe. We try to avoid that. Click here, wherever we can. So… Ben, I don't know if I could tell your IT anything, but, you know… So that's that one there, and then we'll just pop into question… oh! I keep forgetting! The most important part about question number two is when you're trying to decide what you want to do, you want to be down with DCC, which is descriptive, concise, and contextual, and that's for anybody that's a fan of, Naughty by Nature and some 90s music. It's an easy way to remember the three things that you want to make sure when you're linking, is that it is, down with DCC. Descriptive, concise, and contextual.

Okay, now we'll go to question 3. Alright, you're preparing a Word document for public distribution, and you want to make sure that screen readers can navigate it easily. What's the best way to structure the document? Number one, use bold text and larger font sizes for section titles. Number two, use Word's built-in heading styles, or number three, insert text boxes for each section.

COOPER:
We got a number 2 here, another number 2.

SATTER:
Yeah, you all know this already. Look at that, all number twos, because that's correct. Building in… we just wanted to reiterate the heading styles, because that's… A wonderful way to… as soon as you open up Word and you start using those styles, it also helps down the road when you decide to do it to create a PDF. You're already creating a structure that sometimes does translate nicely as it moves through the process. Alright, so we'll go to the next one. Now, we threw all these things at you, but we also wanted to let you know, other benefits besides just legal compliance. So, if you need to preach it, to the world as you leave, we would love it. 25 to 30% of Americans identify as having a disability. So, compliant content means you're reaching more of your audience, which, obviously, we all want on the web, and we want people to see the things we create. Up to 10% of the U.S. population has some sort of color blindness. That's a lot of folks, both internal and external to your organization, so using best practices for color means that more people can interact with your content. Plain language improves scannability and readability, letting you connect again to that larger audience. Web users particularly like to scan and look through things quickly, and the easier you can make it for them. To absorb your content, the better you will be.

I know… I believe Christopher mentioned this already, following best practices also provides search engines with helpful information, which could help your SEO rating, or if you're already transitioning to focusing a bit on AI, there's multiple terms, but the AI version of SEO, where you open up your Google results and you're seeing the AI response at the top, that will also help with that. And then, in addition, sighted and other, sighted users benefit as well. It's not just folks that need to use screen readers and other assistive technology. It helps them, scan the content, the… Links can be visually overwhelming and lead people away from your content, so there's things you can do that act… that might actually deter sighted users. So these are all benefits to everyone that uses your content. And then I believe that is it from us. So the floor is open, unless… O'Keyla, you have something that you'd like to add?

COOPER:
No, it's time for Q&A, so if folks out there have any questions for our three presenters, please feel free to just jump off of mute or drop your question in the chat, and I can read it aloud. Will this webcast be available on demand to share with our staff? And can we get… yes, we will, send out the slides and a recording, and we will also upload it in my.astho, so it will be available for folks. No problem. You're welcome. Anyone else? Any last-minute thoughts from our presenters? Khalilah, I know you're on the call. This is our Vice President of Comms. Do you have anything that you want to reiterate to the group, or…?

KHALILAH LEGRAND:
Yes, I just want to say thank you all to our presenters. It was some really good and sound content. I know some of you are very much aware of the looming deadline for ADA compliancy. We, you know, certainly used your feedback from the survey that was sent out to craft this presentation. We hope that you do share it with your organizations, and if you think anybody else may be able to benefit, please do. I have a couple of comms groups that I mentioned this, to as well, so I will be sharing this, a bit more widely, and we certainly want to make sure that we're ensuring that we stay in compliancy and do all the things that we can do to streamline that.

And just really bake it into the fabric of what people do every day, because often, you know, we have this conversation with web and comms that lots of people think it rests in our shops only, and that sometimes makes it much more difficult to do something, on the back end versus starting it, so we are even internally just trying to get people to understand that if you start with the idea of ADA from the onset, it will make your process much more seamless, and we will ensure that people, regardless of ability, can access the information and get, you know, all of the great feedback and all the great information that we want to put out. So, just please feel free to share if you have other questions. Yes, it's less expensive in the long run. That is very, very true. I know I've had some issues in the past with some organizations, and we've had, you know.

Federal agencies come in and, we had to spend some money and do things to make sure that we were then in compliancy, and then you have regular meetings with those entities, and you don't want to do that. You want to make sure that you just start on the front end, make sure compliancy is there, so that you have the best product, and that, again, you're serving everyone, in the best way possible. So, I appreciate your time. If you have any questions or follow-ups Please let us know. We certainly want to, continue to support the peer network, and we appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to look at what we have to present and learn a little bit more about ADA. Hopefully, this will be helpful. I see some comments saying it's helpful, so thank you so much. And just wanted to…

SATTER:
...Thank you.

COOPER:
One more additional thing, it is a big topic, and we could have gone for hours on this, so if there's enough interest, we've talked about even, you know, doing maybe a part two or a small series, of this. So, if there's interest, please feel free to reach out to myself or Khalilah, and we'll work on planning maybe a part two, if we get enough interest there. So, also, thank you, Emily and Christopher and Heidi, for all of this great information. We really appreciate you. You shared a lot of good things, and hopefully, you know, if we get some more interest, we can do a Part 2 early in 2026, so… Yeah, I see there's some folks interested in a Part 2, so yeah, it's a lot of information, a good topic to cover, and we, you know, we could break this down into a couple of parts, so… Anyway, thank you all for coming. That concludes our meeting today. We will see you all, hopefully, on our next Public Health Communicators Peer Network Office Hours, which will be October 23rd at 3.30, so we can talk about, this topic a little more, and any other topics that you folks want to bring to the table, we'll be happy to cover. And if you have things in advance that you want to get, get on the books, and maybe even some of you to present, that would be great as well, on the work that you're doing in your state. So, thank you again, I appreciate it. Have a good day!

LAPAYOWKER:
Thank you.

SATTER:
Bye, y'all!