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Ep. 4: Building Digital Accessibility into Your Brand
39 Plays1 year ago
Episode Overview:
Join hosts Chloe and Darci as they discuss the importance of building accessibility into your brand from day 1 and breakdown the basics for business owners who might be new to the topic.
From color contrast to alt text (and more), this episode of Brand Jam offers actionable tips and helpful tools to make your brand’s digital presence accessible to a wider audience.
So, if you’re a small business owner who wants to build an inclusive brand, you won’t want to miss it!
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Web AIM color contrast checker
Using Design Accessibility in Canva
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Website https://www.brandjampod.com
Follow Chloe at Chloe Arielle Design:
Website https://www.chloearielle.com/
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Follow Darci at Sweet Tooth Creative
Website https://sweettoothcreative.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Brand Jam Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Brand Jam, the brand strategy podcast for colorful and compassionate brands. I'm Darcy, the candy-fueled copywriter behind Sweet Tooth Creative. And I'm Chloe, owner of Conscious Design Studio, Chloe Ariel Design. On the show, we'll be talking about what it's really like to build a brand from scratch when you're a business of one. And how to find what works for you so you can create a brand that grows with your business without burning yourself out. At Brand Jam, we believe there's no one right way to be, and embracing our differences enhances the experience for everyone. So if you're a fan of bold flavored branding and are trying to do business better, come hang out. We're so glad you're here.
00:00:41
Speaker
Accessibility is worth the discomfort. It's worth the learning process. And doing something is better than nothing. You can have a beautiful website. You can have a beautiful brand and still have it be accessible.
00:01:00
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Brand Jam.
Why is Digital Accessibility Important?
00:01:02
Speaker
This is episode number four. And today we are going to be talking about accessibility, specifically digital or web accessibility as it pertains to your business. So Chloe, why don't you start us off by explaining what we mean when we say accessibility or digital accessibility? So in the broadest sense of the term, accessibility is the practice of making it easier for people with disabilities to access your content. And there's a lot more to it, but that is the the basic definition. Yeah, so a couple of accessibility concerns that you might have heard of already are things like, you know, being careful about using flashing images or videography in your content, using alt text and image descriptions are becoming, you know, more common and as they should be, and things like color contrast so that they
00:01:54
Speaker
And especially, I mean, we're coming out of it now, but a couple of years ago, we were really deep in the trend of handwritten fonts. And that was a big accessibility issue for people because they're not always legible. Like they're not easy to read. Yeah. So those are just a couple of the things and we're going to dive deeper in that. But first we want to talk about why accessibility is important and honestly necessary.
Understanding Disability and Audience Inclusion
00:02:17
Speaker
You might be thinking to yourself, oh, I have this very specific audience. I don't think I need to worry about that. But the fact is, is that you never know who has a disability, temporary or chronic or anything in between. And, and you don't want to lose your audience. You don't want to leave people out. The latest stat from the World Health Organization is that approximately 1.3 billion people live with disability. And that's 16% of the population.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah and I mean like I'll say my own non-expert but lived experience as someone who's disabled is that I bet you anything that number is actually much higher because there are a lot of barriers to being recognized as disabled. There's barriers to diagnosis, there's barriers to acceptance within yourself, and there's knowledge barriers in terms of what is a disability because you may not realize it but if you wear glasses, if you have to wear glasses in context all the time, That's a disability and those are disability aids. You know, if you need help with accessing the world as it's been built around us, if the world was not designed for you, that is an accessibility need. Yeah, and even more on the physical side of disability, but a lot of us experience temporary disabilities. If you have surgery or break an arm or something, then you are experiencing a temporary disability and you need accommodation. And it's important that you get that.
00:03:45
Speaker
Something that's said a lot in disability circles is that like disability is one of the few marginalizations that can touch everyone. I'm not going to wake up and suddenly you know be marginalized for the amount of melanin in my skin. I did one day wake up and I was more disabled than I had been you know the previous week. And that could happen to me again. There are different levels of it. And you know I have times when things improve and you know I need less help with accessing things, but then there's times when things get worse. And so it's dynamic.
00:04:23
Speaker
it can fluctuate and it's not well understood by the majority of the population. Yeah. So because most people look at me and assume I'm not disabled. So unless I'm actually using a mobility aid, I have a rollator, I have a wheelchair, they're like, but you're fine. I'm like I am absolutely not but I see why you think that because we assume that disability looks a certain way or presents a certain way and it really doesn't. You can't tell if someone's disabled just by looking at them. No definitely not. So to bring that back to your point Chloe about your audience
00:05:01
Speaker
You don't know who in your audience is disabled and it's not really for you to figure out. It's for you to make it as welcoming and as accessible as possible from the jump so that you are not creating barriers to working with you. Exactly. Because that's ultimately the goal of your marketing. You want people to work with you. Don't rule people out by making it inaccessible. Exactly. And if we are going off of the WHO stat, that's still one in six people. And as we talked about, it's probably a much higher number than that. So if you're standing in a group of six people, and you're totally ignoring someone, like that's going to be very obvious.
00:05:40
Speaker
And it's the same with your accessibility efforts on the internet. If you're totally ignoring it to that one person or that 16%, which probably higher of your audience, it's going to be really obvious. Yeah, especially to the person that's ignored and that your brand is how you make people feel. Do you want to make anyone feel ignored? No. So even if they're not the right person for you, like like I am pro filtering out people who are not a good fit for you, but most of the time with the one exception of competing access needs, when you have certain access needs um because of a disability that may conflict with another disabled person's access needs, disability is not a reason to rule someone out as a client or a ah customer. No.
00:06:27
Speaker
Here at Branch M, we don't consider disability to be a dirty word. Different people have different feelings around either person-first language or describing themselves as disabled, um including it as part of your identity. I fall into the latter category. I think that it serves disabled people as a whole to use the word, destigmatize the word, and recognize that there's no there's no moral weight to disability. There's no more weight to ability. Your ability to do more than me does not make you a better person. It doesn't make you a worse person. It's completely neutral. like so And I think a lot of people a lot of people who are resistant to using the term disabled to describe people directly are well-intentioned. But if you dig a little deeper, it's almost always rooted in internalized ableism. So um and you're not a bad person for having internalized ableism. We all do. I do. I've been disabled for half my life at this point. And
00:07:34
Speaker
I still have internalized ableism. It's in the air around us. It's impossible to avoid. So don't feel shame about it, but do listen to disabled people um and start to consider why maybe You feel the need to make sure you're pointing out that there's still a person with person first language. Again, if you are disabled and prefer person first language, that's fine. That's your prerogative. And I will respect that and use that language towards you. But as the majority from what I have seen in the disabled spaces I'm in, the general consensus is we prefer to be called disabled for the reasons I've already mentioned.
Taking Action on Accessibility
00:08:16
Speaker
And I think the key to this and part of what ah Darcy is starting to get at here is that there's no perfect way to do this. It's all about imperfect action. It's about the intention behind it, trying, thinking about other people and just doing your best. Like i I do my best. I'm sure not all of my efforts are perfect because nothing really is perfect, but I put the effort in and, and I try and I do my best and that's all, that's all we can really ask. Yeah, and I think it's really, really normal to feel overwhelmed by accessibility thinking when you are first starting out because you're already you're already learning new things, you're maybe building your first website, or, you know, writing your copy for the first time, and then
00:09:01
Speaker
to be thinking about accessibility needs just adds 15 more things to consider. And it's absolutely fine to feel overwhelmed by that. But what we just don't want is for that overwhelm to make you give up. We don't don't give up because of that. Accessibility is worth the discomfort. It's worth the learning process. And doing something is better than nothing. Exactly. So just like Chloe said, I can guarantee you that the accessibility on my website is not currently perfect. I find it hard when you have ADHD to like remember to do all the things and I'm putting systems in place and trying to make sure that it's accounted for, but it' it's a process. And my goal is just to keep improving it, keep making it more accessible, you know, and just keep doing my best to be as inclusive as possible.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, and especially from a designer standpoint, when you first learn about accessibility, it seems incredibly limiting. And it's almost like, oh, shoot, there's this whole other thing that I have to do now. like Can I not use fun colors anymore? like What the heck? Everything has to be super high contrast. It's going to be so ugly and gross. That's just not the case. And that's not a reason to not to not do it. you can have a beautiful website, you can have a beautiful brand and still have it be accessible. And we'll talk more about ways to do that later on. But that was something that even when I first learned about it, one of my first clients out of college is actually a digital accessibility company. And that's how I got into all of this. And they taught me so much because I was doing their rebrand and they were like, well, we have all these limitations with colors. And I was like, but what the heck in design school, they just told me to use whatever colors I want to use. And I was like, maybe I want to use yellow. And they're like, no, you cannot use yellow.
00:10:52
Speaker
And I was like, wow, this is so never yellow. Yeah, I thought it was so limiting. But then the more that I got into it, it honestly was almost like a puzzle where it's like, okay, these are the rules I need to follow. How can I interact in those rules and still create something compelling and interesting and even fun within those and it's still possible. Like it's not it's not not impossible. And it's not that hard once you kind of learn and understand the rules. Yeah, as someone who is very aesthetically driven like I just, I want everything to be pretty I want everything to be colorful. It really makes a big impact on my overall feeling my mental well being just
00:11:33
Speaker
my mood color contrast is probably still the hardest part of accessibility for me even though at this point I have my palette I know most of the time if the contrast is adequate without having to test it I probably still miss certain times because like there's this like fine line where like if the font's big enough I can use white text but if it's not I can't. Exactly. And it's like, it like you know, my my colors are all very bright, happy. And then to be like, if those are my colors, then I need to be using black text. Black felt so harsh. And I mean, I ended up with like a really dark navy blue for my text, but it felt hard to do that.
00:12:14
Speaker
over white, which was, you know, just to me more aesthetically pleasing. But if that means that people can come on my website and can't read my headers, it's not worth it. It really just isn't. And even though it's like sad for me to like make it black and it's not quite as like offy and bright, it's not worth it. So I want people to read what I wrote. Yeah, being able to consume your content is the top priority. Having it look cute is also nice. and And you can still have it cute on brand and be accessible. Yeah. But should we get into new color contrast since we're talking about it already? Sure. Yeah. Why don't you explain more about that? Because that was definitely, i went and when I first started building Sweet Tooth Creative, I was aware of, because of copywriting for other clients, I was already aware of
00:13:01
Speaker
you know alt text and screen readers and things like that which we'll talk about more but the color contrast was the one that really kind of had the biggest learning curve for me so why don't you break that down yeah that was the one for me too that felt the most limiting at first so color contrast if you think about it it is the difference in color or lightness or darkness of two colors so the way i like to think about it is if you have two colors let's say we have a green and a blue in the middle of the shade. And you turn those to gray scale. Those colors, since they're both in the middle of their ah shade of their color, they're going to be basically the same shade of gray. So when you're thinking about color contrast, you want to make sure that I mean, not ever, it's fairly rare to have, you know, like black and white color blindness. But if you think about it that way, if it was turned to gray scale, how similar would these shades be?
00:13:50
Speaker
and that you can kind of start to get an idea of which colors will pass color contrast. There's a lot of other rules to it, but that's how I visually like to start thinking about it. That's interesting to me because like I've always just kind of like I never even put together that the back like the underlying tone, the grayscale underneath of it it is the same and that's why two colors still work. Like this is Newsy right now. I have always just approached since learning about color contrast, I've kind of used my own eyes for it or used tools and had and kind of considered it as like just an instinct of like, do they blend? Do they not blend? Like is are they
00:14:32
Speaker
different enough that I can see them clearly and it's a completely amateur way to do it. But it's different for everyone, yeah. Yeah, right. and Which is why like I go back to tools and stuff. And I just kind of learned like what worked according to the tools and then like remembered that and carried that forward. But news to me about the grayscale, so love that. Yeah, so if you think about it, black and white have the most contrast, they're the complete opposite ends of the scale, which another thing to consider is that some people have a sensitivity to too much contrast. So some people, black and white really vibrates and is uncomfortable or hard to read. So that's another thing to consider. I don't usually use straight up black and white. I usually use like a dark gray or a dark version of one of my other brand colors, if I'm going to put it over white.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah. That's part of why I i opted for like a very dark Navy. I call it Navy black her because the, the zero, zero, zero, whatever black, um, the black is black is ah like, I, you know, from my own research did find that apparently then that can be too harsh. Um, so in competing access needs are a thing. So you got to find the point in between that allows the most people to access your content comfortably. So now that we know about the grayscale, how do you recommend someone who is like me, not from a design background, start incorporating color contrast accessibility into their work? Do you recommend using a tool to check everything? Yes. I 100% do. You have a ah go-to tool that you like? I have a couple. I have one that is an extension on my computer. It's only for Mac right now, unfortunately, but it's called Pika. It's P-I-K-A, like Pika color. And I think the website is like superhighfives.com, but we can put all of the links in the description. Yeah, they'll be in the show notes. And then the other one that I use that is like kind of the gold standard of color contrast is
00:16:37
Speaker
web aims w e b base a i am And that one is just a little less convenient because with the the one that's in my computer, I can just pull it up as an extension and I can use an eyedropper tool really easily and quickly to grab colors and test their contrast. It's going to have a margin of error because it is using an eyedropper tool in all screens. are shows color differently, but for what I needed, it works very well. but The web aim one, you're going to copy and paste the direct hex codes into it.
Tools and Techniques for Accessible Design
00:17:03
Speaker
I use it a lot. So for my needs, I need something a little faster. But if you're just setting up your brand, and I think that is a very easy way to go. Yeah. Webaim is what I use. And if you are not switching colors a lot of your own, like obviously you work in many different palettes, Chloe. Yeah. But if you are working with the same color palette, because you're only doing your own brand designs, what I did was I kind of made myself a chart using Webaim and all of my brand colors. And I was like, okay, these ones work. And certain ones, it's like, I can have text in this color with this background, but I cannot reverse it. It doesn't work in reverse. And so having a chart of what works and what doesn't made it easier for me to then carry that forward and as I'm designing being like oh does this have contrast instead of having to use a tool to check that specific combination again and remind myself I can go to the chart. And there are extensions like I have an extension in Figma where you can put all of your hex codes in and I'm i am sure there are more now I think I saw
00:18:01
Speaker
someone's reel that they made a website for it specifically, but where you can put all of your hex codes for texts and all of your hex codes for backgrounds. And if those are all the same colors, just put them all and then it'll run the contrast for you and tell you what passes for the different sizes and what doesn't. So it would have made the chart for me is what you're saying. Exactly. But awesome. And we'll have to add that to the show notes. yeah so Yeah, this is all about saving time where we did not. So there you go. Exactly. Okay, so color contrast. Yes, it may feel like a sacrifice aesthetically, but we promise it's worth it. Yeah. Now you know how to do it. What's next in terms of being having the most impact on your accessibility? I mean, there are so many, I guess we can go into kind of what you talked about is one of the more well known ones like alt text and image descriptions and kind of go through the difference between those and what those are and when you should use them.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, and the the really important thing to start off with when it comes to those, that a lot of people don't use them because they don't realize that some people access the internet differently, that some people use screen readers. yeah And so alt text and image descriptions help people, a screen reader basically allows people with low vision or for if there I'm sure there are other reasons to use them too. It reads aloud the webpage, but it also describes non-written sections of the website page. So if you have, you know, stock images on your, or, you know, brand images on your website, it will describe them to the person view using a screen reader to access your website. But if all your image says on the back end when you built it is stock photo 473,
00:19:45
Speaker
That's all they get told. And they have no idea. That could be a picture of a bunny rabbit. It could be a picture of pizza. They have no idea. hu That actually leads into another thing that's another slightly different thing, which is descriptive image names, where instead of having stock photo 143, it's poppy flower, red poppy flower, something, whatever it is, dot jpeg that would be image name. For me, personally, it's easier to like categorize that as SEO. And I know I'm going to talk about it during our SEO episode. So you could certainly can like lump that in with accessibility. But there's also some strategy with SEO there. So I would say. Yeah, I think it's both. Yeah. So well we won't go deep into that. And we these things are important. So they'll keep coming up.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, all of this stuff overlaps. So the difference between alt text and image descriptions. Alt text, like Darcy was just saying, is the text that is describing your image on the back end. Most people aren't going to see that. People who use screen readers, it will be read aloud to them. It's usually, it's in a different place on every platform, how you add that. It's going to be a short description of the image. It doesn't need to have a lot of personality. You are just getting across what is in the image so that everyone can understand what is in the image. The one time when this does have applicability to people who don't use screen readers is it if they have bad internet and the internet's not loading, sometimes the alt text will pop up where the image is um and so then they can still see what the image might have been. Okay and then so when do you use image descriptions?
00:21:30
Speaker
and Image descriptions, we're talking about like Instagram, the alt text again, there's a spot for it on the backend, but the image description is going to be more on the front end. I include it in my caption and it it can be a little bit more conversational and people go different ways. And my, the way that I've learned is that you can kind of. insert your brand voice into the image description. It can be a little more detailed, um whereas the alt text is really, you don't want it to be too long. You want it to be a clear description of the image. The image description can be a little longer and it's going to appear kind of on the front end.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah and now correct me if I'm wrong you may know more about this than me but I have heard where different screen readers will pick up different things and so like whereas before I thought that if you had all texts you were covered and you didn't need an image description and I would tend to use an image description in a place where like I maybe couldn't figure out where to add the alt text. More recently what I've been doing is using both because I saw somewhere someone told me that different screen readers may pick up the alt text or they may not and or they like have an option for alt text but they may just like the user may not
00:22:49
Speaker
may skip it because they prefer to have the image description because like for example on Instagram there is a place for work to add the alt text as you're putting in your post but if you also have an image description under your caption before hashtags if you're still using hashtags then which I say like I use hashtags but but there's debate about what I do rather. wherever you fall on that. I wouldn't put it after the hashtags because I'm not sure anyone really wants the screen reader to read out all every hashtag for them. But having the image description there can be helpful in certain scenarios is what I'm getting at.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yes, exactly. i I would recommend doing both if you are able, if you are not able or, you know, it's, again, it's imperfect action. Do as much as you can. um I know I'm waiting for the scheduling apps to allow you to schedule alt text ahead of time. Oh, that makes me nuts. There's still, it's, Instagram is still not allowing it. But since Instagram has changed it to allow you to add alt text while you're posting, maybe that'll be coming soon, maybe even by the time this is out, that'll be an option. But right now, I try to do both. I at least always do an image description if I, you know, if I don't have time to go back in right at that second to add alt text after posting if it's scheduled. The other important thing is that not everyone with low vision uses a screen reader. So some people, maybe you have a lot of text in your image, some people maybe can't read it very well if it's too small, you know, there's so many different things. The image description is also helpful for
00:24:23
Speaker
other people who don't have screen readers to still be able to consume your content and see what is in your image. Yeah, I have a hard time with anything where like, I don't have low vision, I require glasses, but I i don't need them legally to drive. So like, I can still function for the most part, um without them when necessary. And yet, and I don't know, maybe this is an ADHD thing, maybe it's just me, but I have a really hard time with walls of text, and or like on an image like on Instagram, when it's crowded, there's a lot of text. That's overwhelming to my brain. um But specifically, I mean, I've had someone sending me messages on Facebook Messenger. And like, I don't know them very well. And they're just sending me walls of text. I can't, I can't get more than like three sentences into it. but
00:25:17
Speaker
my eyes need a break. They lose their spot. It just, my brain is just like, and some of it, some of it's probably because I'm not that engaged in the conversation. It's about something superficial that, you know, it's, some of it's probably my brain being like, this is not worth the effort. But I'm also just like, Oh, please press enter. Please use the line break. Like, so So it's not it's you're right that it's not just like specifically low vision that may have trouble processing your image visually. There are other you know neurological reasons that nothing to do with your eyesight itself that can make it hard to digest visual information.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, and as just a good practice, if you do have text in your image, it's a good idea to repeat it in your caption, even if it's not specifically in an image description, just because you never know. And some people just don't want to swipe through the whole thing. Some people, it's just easier for them to just be able to skim it all in one spot and not swipe through. but And even if you don't have text in your images, it's still good practice to include an image description and all text. Yeah. And like we said with the imperfect action, I mean, Chloe mentioned that schedulers, social media schedulers ah don't give you an option to add all texts, which I find incredibly annoying. I've reached out several times. It's something I'm dealing with right now because you know i've I have 10 weeks of pins scheduled and I would have to go back in
00:26:54
Speaker
Every day or or like at batch them at a time and go back through the pins that post it automatically and add adult text for all of them and I'm like, I again, competing access needs are a thing. I want people to be able to read my pins, but I have chronic fatigue. I can only do so much. And that is not like an efficient use of my time and energy, which is so limited to begin with. So I'm torn. And in
00:27:25
Speaker
listening to you talk, Chloe, I'm like, Oh, I forgot I should be I should have an image description in the caption. I haven't been including it, one, because it just probably slips my mind. But then the caption, the character length on a pin is pretty short. It's really short. Yeah, that's the other thing is Pinterest. Yeah, I'm like, ah So it's just like, there's all these things. And it feels overwhelming, even when you have been doing it for years. But that doesn't mean that I should just be like, well, that's how how it is on Pinterest. I'm still going to be trying to make that better, trying to find a way. I mean, I've i've got the next 10 weeks scheduled out. I probably will not be able to go back in and add them. But from here on out, I'm going to make it a point to have at least a short image description in my caption. And you know, and
00:28:14
Speaker
Hopefully one day my scheduling app will let me add all texts also. Yeah. And, and the more that we can talk about it, like, I mean, the more people that can reach out to Instagram and later or whoever and say, Hey, we need this. Like the the more people that do that, the the sooner they're going to make it available. Like you look at Instagram, they make changes based on what people ask for and what people want. So if we can make this more of a priority for more people, and again, we're not making disability is not a dirty word. It exists. we want to help people. So yeah, if we can spread the word, then maybe we can get some of these things happening. Exactly. And it's a really that's a really key piece of being a disability ally. If you are someone who strives to be an ally, it is one of the most exhausting things is the selfad of about being disabled is the self-advocacy and the always having to ask for accessibility um and like no one else thinking about it and a great great way to be a disability ally is to ask those questions even if you don't need the things like I so my scheduler is tailwind I now because of what Chloe said I'm gonna go and put in another another request because I have done one already but it was a while ago
00:29:28
Speaker
about the alt text. But if you use Tailwind, I just told you that this is a problem. Go put in a request. That's and awesome. Thank you. It takes a couple minutes, but it's much appreciated for the people that need that accessibility. Yeah. Back in the day of hashtags, I used to use um flick for hashtag generation. And I put in a request for hashtags to be in camel case, which camel case is just having each letter capitalized because otherwise a screen reader, I mean, the first letter. of each word yes the first letter sorry of each word capitalized so that you can see where each new word starts so that if a screen reader is reading it or if someone's just skimming your hashtags they can see where each word is and i think that it's kind of important with like all the ai stuff and seo too happening right now because i I tried, I was playing with an AI bot the other day, just cause I don't like to spend a lot of time in hashtags. So I had it come up with some hashtags for me and it didn't put them in camel case, but then I asked it to put it in camel case and it did. And I was like, this is amazing. So then I was like, well, does this is working the other way. So I took some other hashtags and put them in there, not camel case. And I was like, Hey, can you just, I talked to the AI, like it's a person. Can you please put these in camel case? And it was like, can't handle, cannot handle. Cause it, it wasn't the one who generated it. So it couldn't tell.
00:30:43
Speaker
where the different words were, so another reason to do that little accessibility thing. I find that really interesting. Okay, so all text, image descriptions, also in terms of readability, font choice, text size, letter spacing, line breaks. letter case, as we were saying, all of those things.
Design Considerations for Readability and Safety
00:31:04
Speaker
Okay, so for font choice, basically, you want to choose fonts, and we've talked about this in previous episodes, so I won't get too much into the font choice conversation, but ah legible fonts
00:31:17
Speaker
we want to avoid calligraphy unless in small doses and you know some of those really fun melty modern decorative fonts again in small doses and yeah just try to try to keep things legible ah you can still have fun again you can still have fun you can still have fonts with some personality but you know we're trying to help people on the similar thing text size larger text not always is easier to read, but when it comes to like an Instagram post, like an image, a small image, like, I mean, the the bigger, the better kind of not always, but yeah, if you think people are going to be scrolling on their phone and coming across your content specifically, like i I read somewhere and you'll have to tell me if this is anywhere close to correct Chloe.
00:32:05
Speaker
But I think it was like minimum 30 point size to be easily read on a phone screen from a height like when you're scrolling. I mean, probably, I would say that I think the thing is, is that that kind of changes depending like what app you're using. The the sizing is different. So at least like if I'm working in like a design app and I'm working on like a print document, And it's different with like Canva, but like working in inches versus pixels, the the point sizes appear very differently. um So 30 point digitally is like still relatively small. 30 point physically is pretty big. So it varies depending. And again, different fonts run larger or smaller. like Gotham font runs a lot larger. Garamond is pretty small.
00:32:56
Speaker
So there's just a lot of variation. So again, kind of use your intuition. So of course it can't be simple. so No, of course not. Of course not. I mean, as a general rule, that that probably is good. But yeah, well, and again, if you're, you know, if you're not a designer, if you're generally only working with within your own brand, you can find the size that works for you. Like, exactly. I have kind of found my I read the 30 point thing at some point and it stuck in my head, but I actually just in my canvas designs have kind of.
00:33:34
Speaker
my standard title set based on what I found works with the fonts that I use and one of the simple ways that I like kind of determined what that was was by clicking the multiple squares button down in the bottom that lets you if you have multiple pages in a design lets you zoom out When you have a lot of them, like, because I'll have 200 pages in one design, when you click that button and it zooms out and lets you see, I don't know, 10 across and like three rows down. So like 30 designs at a time or something.
00:34:09
Speaker
it makes it a lot easier to imagine what it's going to look like on someone's phone. It's and closer to kind of the proportions you'd be working with and so I just found what worked that way and then copy and repeat. Yeah, that's a really good way to do it. Also, while we're on the the font text track, which is funny because and in design, the I'm going to talk about letter spacing. It's called the tracking between the letters hu design pun. What's kerning? Kerning is the individual space between the letters and tracking is just like overall, like even spacing. Gotcha. Okay. Cause I'm like, I swear kerning is the space, but okay. Yeah. You would know better than me. I'm just like,
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, kerning gets in more in the like specific letters and how they relate to each other where tracking is just kind of a broad like, Oh, I want this to be spaced further apart. So like on Canva, the letter spacing, I think it's just. it just spaces them all evenly apart. But what I'm trying to get at is too much letter space makes it hard to read. There's some design phrase, it's like those who letter space lowercase steel sheep or something that I don't know where that came from, but it's basically don't do it. It's some mnemonic device. It doesn't stand for anything? Or is it just an obscure
00:35:27
Speaker
insult. I don't know honestly probably should look that up before saying it in the podcast. We'll look it up and add it to the show notes maybe. Yeah I don't remember what it what it it just means like don't do it which again there's always there's always exceptions and some fonts have very tight letter spacing and so you do want to loosen that up a bit but what I'm trying to get at is you don't you don't want to space them out so much that like you can't tell the difference between the space between words and the space between letters because then it's just really hard for brains to read anything. And what that phrase kind of was getting at is that it is sometimes more acceptable to spaced out uppercase letters. It's sometimes a little easier to read slightly more spaced out uppercase letters than it is lowercase letters. I think that's subjective. I still wouldn't overly spaced out uppercase letters.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, but I do think I think the guideline of if you stop being able to tell what is a space between a word and what is space between letters, you've gone too far. Yeah. Like, that's a good general rule. Yeah. And then the last thing on that I'll talk about, I mean, there's I could go on for these. But it's something that I see a lot is a large use of all uppercase letters. And because there isn't the variation of the ascenders and descenders and you know letters going up and down, it's a lot harder to skim and read. So a lot of text in uppercase can be really difficult to read. So again, I would kind of keep that to like the headlines. if you If you want to have uppercase as part of your brand or like a small or like ah a button sometimes, just in small doses, uppercase is good, but not for a whole paragraph. It becomes like it just all melds together.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, I've had where, because I use a font that is very tightly spaced together at its default, um I've had where like it does feel like switching it to all caps in in like a short paragraph makes it easier, but the fix I really needed was to add spacing. And once I did that, then I, the regular paragraph case was fine. So sometimes you just have to like think it through a couple, a little more in, um, and try a couple of different things to see what is going to make it easier. Because again, like it did the all caps did make it easier for me to read for me, one person, but I knew that the general rule was that all caps was not good for that much.
00:37:56
Speaker
And so I was like, hmm, there has to be, there's something else, something. And ultimately what I figured out was that, oh, this font is just really kind of tightly spaced. And if I add it, if I add more space in between the letters, then it reads fine as an paragraph. Another thing that could help that is the line spacing as well. So it's also is called leading from back in the old days of the letterpress where you had an individual thin strip of lead that you would put between the rows of type. I didn't know that I love that though. Yeah, I dabble in letterpress. So the the spacing between your lines, again it goes either way. If they're too close, my kind of rule of thumb is if you have like a descender like a P and an ascender like an L, and the lines above and below each other, you don't want the the tail of the P and the stem of the L.
00:38:47
Speaker
to touch. If they're touching, you start to blend letters together and we get a little confusing. So when I'm studying the line spacing, I usually kind of use that as a key and make sure that they have, you know, a bit of space between them. I'm someone who has to ration my energy and my effort and I look at everything through that lens. So if you are using more of my energy for things that aren't necessary, like that's not accessible to me. If you want to check your website's accessibility, there are extensions that will do that for you. At least, you know, the, the minimum requirements that are free that we can link in the show notes. Well, they do now. I'm not sure that I've used besides using specific ones for specific aspects of accessibility. Are there ones that do like multiple aspects all at once?
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah, the more detailed you're getting, you're probably going to have to pay for it. But like one that I use is xdevtools. And I just use the free version for now. I'm sure I'll end up paying for it. But it yeah, it does like a quick scan of each page and lets you know if you've missed alt text, if there are elements that are not labeled properly, or things like that. Awesome. We're going to link to those extensions in the show notes. Okay. So are there any other big key, like if you're just starting out and working on making your content more accessible, do we miss any other big ones? What about, um, you mentioned before we started recording, uh, the flashing. So what are the rules? I, I'm not sure that I've ever used anything with flashing in it, but I know that the consequences of using it can be very serious. So it's an important rule to know. So why don't you break that down?
00:40:32
Speaker
What do we need to know about flashing images? Okay, so in general if you don't need to use a flashing image I wouldn't use it if you do need to use it I think the the rule last I checked was that the The length between the flashing should be at least one second if it's under that not so good I still think it you know You never know who's watching it and what their sensitivity level is when you don't want to cause anyone harm. So I And I should clarify, because I said like it can't be serious. I didn't say why. If you aren't aware, flashing photography and videography can trigger seizures in some people. So yeah it's not that's not an experience you want people to have with your content. No, no. And I think that was a problem with one of the Twilight movies. There was a scene that caused people who had never experienced epilepsy or seizures before to have seizures.
00:41:22
Speaker
And it was because there was a scene with red flashing lights or red and blue flashing lights and that gets to another kind of guideline for when you're using flashing things, avoid the color red tends to be ah more of a trigger for whatever reason, maybe because of the harshness of it, but it it tends to be not so good again. Yeah, so avoid flashing if you can. If you must use it, try to keep the length between the flashing at least one second. And if you again, if you must use it, try to avoid the color red. For me, I will just be avoiding it all together. Yeah. Well, if you want, so if it's like a small graphic,
00:41:59
Speaker
You can always do something like have it kind of bounce like start small and get bigger and then shrink back down instead of like the full on flashing of the full screen. But I know like a lot of reels like cutting really quickly to different things is really popular. If you do want to do that, you could always also put a trigger warning beforehand. and just say flashing graphics, trigger warning, and then that give enough time for someone to scroll past. I mean, there's yeah there's a lot of different ways to look at it depending on what you feel is important for your content. None of my content is ever worth risking a seizure for someone. No. yeah I'm good. But that's not, I mean, it's just not necessarily my style anyway. Yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah. So there's, like we said, there's always more to learn.
Closing Thoughts on Accessibility and Inclusivity
00:42:48
Speaker
There's ways to improve. Perfect accessibility is not a thing, but the important thing is that you are making the effort. You are trying to continue to up-level your accessibility and build on what you've learned and just be inclusive. You don't want to be excluding people from your audience based on disability, based on access needs. There's a lot of reasons to exclude people from your audience, but that's not one of them.
00:43:17
Speaker
That's it for this episode of Brand Jam. Check out the show notes for links to the resources we talked about. If this episode hit the spot, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps Brand Jam reach more listeners, so we really appreciate it. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.