HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit | Bhakti Chai  ## Metadata - Author: [[Accessibility Craft]] - Full Title: HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit | Bhakti Chai - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/2172fd71-b9f6-4467-bcfa-9a794dda4097 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Ginger Juiced Chai Incident** - Chris tried making a spicy chai mix by juicing fresh ginger in a juicer. - When mixed with milk and microwaved, the acidity curdled the milk into cheese unexpectedly. Transcript: Speaker 2 The story goes that the owner of this company spent a long time traveling it throughout India, which is, of course, the point of origin for Chai and trying all the local Chai teas and kind Of came up with their own formula for a spicy Chai that kind of harkens back to those traditions and those flavor profiles. And it's definitely, I would say it's not your, it's not your average Chai in terms of what you're saying. Speaker 1 It has more flavor and less sugar. Speaker 2 It kicks like a mule and it in a good way. It's definitely got some spice to it. And there are certified B Corp, like us, which is cool. And yeah. That is four other certified B Corp. It's very ginger forward. It's going to be very ginger. It's like if a kind of more traditional Chai and a really spicy ginger ale got together and had a baby, this would be it. Speaker 1 So does that mean it's time for us to have a sip? Speaker 2 Yeah, let's have a sip. See if it lives up to memory in Amber and Icecase. Speaker 1 I got a, I got a stir mind because I didn't stir it. I have mine mixed with oatmeal and I'm having it cold. Are you having it hot Steve? You're like in a mug. Speaker 3 No, it's cold. It's cold. Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 Just like I remember. Yeah. Speaker 1 What do you think Steve? Speaker 3 I mean, it's got the chai flavor, right? Chris got the unsweetened one here. So I'm definitely like missing the sugar. I'm missing the sugar. Like need some sugar or some some Stevia for Steve over here. Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 1 I mean, I like spicier, not super sweet chives. Like if I make or even tea at home, I usually do mix milk in my tea, but I rarely put sugar in my tea or a sweetener of any kind. Like I don't put honey like my kids like to have tea with honey and I'm like, what? Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah. Some cream or something on top would be good too. Speaker 1 Yeah. Actually, I have kind of a funny story about when we were not able to buy this at one point, Chris was like, I'm going to try and make my own chai mixer that is like bokty and he took fresh ginger And I don't know if you graded it or what you did, but maybe you can answer that question. I juiced it. I juiced it. Oh, you juiced it in our juice machine and put it in. And it made a really good spicy mix, but I like to drink hot tea more than I normally drink iced tea. Well, I drink iced tea, but like try. I would tend to drink hot. Speaker 4 Yeah. Speaker 1 And I mixed it with milk and it was real milk that currently I have over milk, but in Colorado, we used to be able to get milk delivered to our doorstep in glass bottles from a milk man that Came from cows like and it wasn't homogenized or anything. And so I like mixed with milk. I put it in the microwave. I did it for like, I don't know, two minutes, one minute and a half and I pulled it out and it was like chunky. Speaker 2 Yeah, the acidity from the ginger had puddled with the milk. ([Time 0:02:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f66108c4-10ce-4371-953e-069fe2c6c209)) - **Rediscovering Spicy Bhakti Chai** - Chris missed the spicy high-end chai after years without it and got it shipped via Amazon. - The chai is ginger-forward, spicy, and less sugary than traditional chai varieties. Transcript: Speaker 1 I mean, I like spicier, not super sweet chives. Like if I make or even tea at home, I usually do mix milk in my tea, but I rarely put sugar in my tea or a sweetener of any kind. Like I don't put honey like my kids like to have tea with honey and I'm like, what? Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah. Some cream or something on top would be good too. Speaker 1 Yeah. Actually, I have kind of a funny story about when we were not able to buy this at one point, Chris was like, I'm going to try and make my own chai mixer that is like bokty and he took fresh ginger And I don't know if you graded it or what you did, but maybe ([Time 0:04:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/25442a1a-2f27-4974-8009-c726e148720a)) - **Prefer Single-Day Virtual Events** - For virtual conferences, blocking out a single day helps attendees prioritize and focus on sessions. - Multi-day virtual events can lead to divided attention and decreased engagement with content. Transcript: Speaker 1 The virtual multiple days is that I think when it's virtual, I am less likely to engage. Yeah, yeah, totally. Because I'm at my desk and so I'm like, okay, well, I'll just put the talks on on a different monitor and I'll try and do my work. But then I'm like, oh, if I need to focus, it's distracting. So I'll turn, I'll turn the talks off, right? And so if it's a single day, I think it's easier to say, I'm going to block this on my calendar. I'm going to say no meeting is this day. I'm going to actually go to the talks. So when it's a whole week of virtual, like then you're asking yourself, is it worth it to like block off a whole week for a virtual event when you're, you're getting the talks which are Valuable, but you're missing out on some of the networking that you normally get when you go in person. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 I mean, the networking is, is I think, I mean, for us, it's huge, right? There's a reason we're sponsoring this event. It's like, I mean, I don't know, Amber, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you're going to events, because you go to more events than Steve and I put together, like, you're, you're spending Most of your time in the hallway, aren't you? Rather than sitting in sessions listening to people. Yeah. Speaker 1 I mean, that's the thing that probably has changed a lot when I first started going to word camps. When I first started my first virtual events, I would go to like almost every talk, right? Or I would pick a track and I'd mostly be in that track, but now I feel like, Stephen, I went to word camp US last year. I think I saw two talks. Yeah. What I went to access you, granted access, you ended up being a little bit odd because I thought I was getting sick. And so they had a hybrid. So I ended up, I only went for one day and then I didn't, because I was worried I was going to take germs. But that one day I also had a sponsor table. So I was mostly at the sponsor table. But yeah, no, I'd, like, I do spend a lot more time talking to people now than I do necessarily going to talks or where I'll go to a talk if I know someone's giving a talk and I want to support Them at Cloudfest. It was that way. Yeah. Speaker 3 I think word camp US last year was definitely like a, seemed like a little bit of a special case because it had been, what, three years since they had had one, two years. Speaker 2 And it was just like, I think it was just this pent up energy. And then everybody got there and it was like, oh, people. Speaker 3 And like, you know, some of the, you know, some of the tracks and talks got kind of like put to the side because it was just like, oh, there's people to talk to. And, and, yeah. Speaker 1 I mean, yeah. Well, you know, one thing I'll say though is virtual events, they don't have that going for them, but if they're really targeted. So this is one reason why I like the high ed web accessibility summit is it is very specifically targeted to an area of interest for us. And, and we've in the past, we didn't do it this year, but in prior, in prior years, we've done things where like, we tell everybody to go to, um, ax con because ax con is free. And there's a lot of like, there's a design track and a dev track and a con like a project major. So there's like stuff for everyone in our team. And there was a year where we did that. We had everyone go and then after like the Monday or Tuesday after ax con ended, we did a lunch and learn where we got pizza delivered to everyone's houses and all their different places. Oh my gosh. Speaker 2 I forgot we did that. Yeah. Speaker 1 Gave a 10 minute. This was my favorite thing I learned to ask on because there were so many talks that there's no way we could have watched them all. And a lot of us were going to different things. And that was actually, I thought fun, but it was also a way for us to incentivize our employees actually paying attention and not just like turning it off and prioritizing their work. Like we were saying, we want you to be at this virtual event because we want you to learn about accessibility. And in fact, there's going to be a mini 10 minute quiz where you have to prove that you tend to talk. Speaker 4 Yeah. Speaker 1 So I think if you have team members and you're trying to encourage them to really be involved in a virtual event or learn at a virtual event, that's a way to do it. Because ([Time 0:11:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad4c4b5c-83b7-4dc9-b017-380cdff8b75f)) - **Use Quizzes to Boost Virtual Engagement** - Encourage team learning in virtual events by hosting follow-up sessions with quizzes. - This approach motivates team members to engage meaningfully with virtual conference content. Transcript: Speaker 1 Was a year where we did that. We had everyone go and then after like the Monday or Tuesday after ax con ended, we did a lunch and learn where we got pizza delivered to everyone's houses and all their different places. Oh my gosh. Speaker 2 I forgot we did that. Yeah. Speaker 1 Gave a 10 minute. This was my favorite thing I learned to ask on because there were so many talks that there's no way we could have watched them all. And a lot of us were going to different things. And that was actually, I thought fun, but it was also a way for us to incentivize our employees actually paying attention and not just like turning it off and prioritizing their work. Like we were saying, we want you to be at this virtual event because we want you to learn about accessibility. And in fact, there's going to be a mini 10 minute quiz where you have to prove that you tend to talk. Speaker 4 Yeah. ([Time 0:15:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/985eaf21-758b-4ea1-89ae-baf72b96cb52)) - **Section 508 Drives Higher Ed Accessibility** - Higher education institutions are likely to invest in accessibility due to Section 508 compliance requirements. - This legal context makes higher ed a strategic and favorable market for accessibility services. Transcript: Speaker 1 Providing equal access to information and resources for people with disabilities and section 508 covers that federally funded things cannot purchase inaccessible IT. And so if you do anything in accessibility, then we get into this like selling accessibility. I think we had a podcast episode about that recently, like thinking about who your customers are, higher ed universities and colleges in the United States are usually pretty aware That they have to focus on accessibility. So they make good customers on that front. Also generally, I think they're ([Time 0:18:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2099147c-dec0-4f65-84f3-8a1e0d1159c0)) - **Higher Ed: A Good Accessibility Niche** - Consider targeting higher education as a niche if you're a freelancer or agency in accessibility. - Clients in higher ed tend to be approachable with reasonable budgets and timelines. Transcript: Speaker 1 Kind of stuff. So if you're an agency owner or a freelance developer and you're trying to figure out a new niche to go into, maybe higher ed is the place to go. So let's talk a little bit about the conference. We're me and doing you guys. This is going to be a kind of random podcast episode, but I'll just give a pitch. If you do decide to go that I am talking, I'll be speaking at 11.30 AM Central time on key considerations for accessibility in WordPress websites. So specifically talking about WordPress, what's different about high ed web versus WV campus is WV campus is all WordPress. High ed web ([Time 0:22:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0d1bbc30-7426-4ace-a246-598fba6adc05)) - **Org-Wide Shift Eases Accessibility** - Accessibility in higher education benefits greatly when it becomes an organization-wide culture. - Making everyone responsible eases the burden on accessibility teams and promotes better outcomes. Transcript: Speaker 2 I mean, the keynote goes without saying because there's a big name there. So who is it, Chris? Pretty much anyone who's been in the accessibility space for even a little time will recognize the name Laney fine gold, the well known disability rights attorney who's been in practice For decades. So she's going to do something that she's calling the power of digital accessibility to build bridges and open doors and higher ed. So I will at the very least be tuning into that. But there was one other one that made that, I don't know, I like talks that are more organization level like high level versus things that get into the nitty gritty of things, not that The nitty gritty talks are unnecessary. And Steve may have some thoughts about that here in a minute based on some pre show conversation we were having. The other one that stood out to me was someone who I haven't met, but she's from Cornell and her name is Annie Hekel. She's doing a presentation called Breaking Accessibility out of the silo and it kind of references that in a lot of universities, accessibility is like a one team project and her talk Appears to be focused more on like turning that into an organization wide culture shift where everyone's thinking about accessibility on some level or as it relates specifically To their job, which I can imagine that if that's actually achieved, that will make the actual accessibility team's job way easier to actually ensure accessible outcomes if everybody At the university is thinking about accessibility at some level. So that's one that I want to attend because those are some of the conversations that I end up having with our agency partners, more from like an agency perspective, but also from like Potential potential customers reaching out and saying like, hey, we need to figure out how to get accessibility practices adopted at every level of organization, you know, and normally I'm trying to convince them to set up consultations with Amber because she's done that exact type of thing for large government orgs, but sometimes they just want to have a loose conversation. So if I can have more ways to add value and give them ideas, so yeah, long story short, those are the two I'm looking at, keynote obviously, and then breaking accessibility out of the silo With Annie Heckle from Cornell. Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think that one is actually a really important topic. There are probably a lot of organizations beyond higher ed ([Time 0:23:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15c9aa0f-554e-4485-a7a7-d1792ba6acf6)) - **Built-in Browser Validation Power** - Browsers provide built-in constraint validation APIs allowing custom control of form error handling. - This reduces reliance on heavy third-party libraries and improves accessibility for form validations. Transcript: Speaker 1 It. Totally. Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, to go back to Chris was mentioning, I definitely live in the nitty gritty. So I tend to want to go deeper on a lot of things, especially when it comes to accessibility. We got a lot of these conferences. There's a lot of virtual conferences and, you know, I mean, not to be disparaging in any way, but there can be a lot of the surfacing conversation a lot of times when it comes to accessibility. Speaker 2 And I understand why that discussion is always ongoing and always happening is because people still aren't getting on board with accessibility, right? Speaker 3 So we have to keep having these basic conversations to explain why people should be thinking about accessibility. And for me personally, I like to go a little deeper, right? Like I do like to get into the weeds of things. And I do like to get more into technical and code side of things. For the higher, higher ed web summit, one of the talks that, so that there are not a lot of code heavy talks here, but I did find one that I thought was pretty interesting. It's, it's the speaker is Jason Pataniak. I'm not sure if that's how you say it, but he's doing a talk. It's titled Hacking browser validation, taking control of form air handling without third party libraries. So yeah, so it's pretty interesting like where, you know, HTML, you know, he talks about in the description here, HTML5 brought enhancements to web forms and semantic field types. But there's certain things in client side validation that we can't control. And it looks like the set his sessions going to explore the constraint validation API and how it can be used to create reusable accessible client side form validation with full control Over the air handling, experiencing experience and messaging. So so sounds sounds pretty cool. Speaker 1 You know, we explain something to the non developers. Yeah, I'm signing myself on constraint validation API. That sounds like a third party tool. Speaker 3 Well, no, no, no, I think it's, it's built into the browser. It's an API utilized inside the browser. Speaker 1 There are APIs in the browser that you can. Speaker 4 Yeah. Speaker 1 I hope I am, I am learning new things right now. Speaker 2 There's all kinds of, I mean, open your inspector. Speaker 3 There's all kinds of APIs running in there, you know, lighthouse is running in there. That's an API. You can run light, you can, you can run lighthouse from the, from the command ([Time 0:27:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9757baaf-5dff-4a00-9a9e-977e292c90a3)) - **Accessibility Error Counts Need Context** - Accessibility error counts can be misleading without context: many errors may repeat across pages. - Prioritizing fixes based on severity and global impact achieves better compliance results. Transcript: Speaker 1 Good. So the other one, of course, that I think might be interesting is Jeff Dillon is going to be talking about achieving a 93.5% reduction in accessibility errors. And it's a case study from National Park College, which first of all, I was like, there's National Park College, how did I not know that? Because I would have loved to have gotten there. But I love case studies, I think they're so fascinating. To just see this is what the problem was, this is how someone approached it and these are the results. I love case studies. So I'm excited about this one. Speaker 3 That's a very specific number, 93.5%. Speaker 1 So it says that they had over 200,000 compliance errors and they got it down to just 13,000 in one year. Now the one thing I do want to say about those numbers, and I feel like, oh my gosh, this is totally, we should have Carl Groves on as a guest at some point to talk about numbers, he gave a really Fascinating talk about how you measure accessibility compliance at meet up and I think we should probably mark that for a future podcast. Was that one error? Like if they're saying 200,000 errors, maybe that's one error on 200,000 pages. And you fix that one thing and then you're like, we fixed 200,000? Right. Like that is the one thing that's a little dubious about numbers. So I guess we have to tune in to figure out how they're describing their numbers. Speaker 2 I don't know. You know, like efficiency should be rewarded if you're able to fix 200,000 problems with one code change. Speaker 1 I mean, is it really 200,000 problems or is it one problem that is repeated 200,000 times? Speaker 2 Well, I mean, it's probably the potato potato. Right. I mean, it's probably a set of global things that were, you know, there was some low hanging fruit where it was easy to resolve a lot with a little work, which is typical, right? Speaker 3 You know, our plugin does that like if you buy the pro version of our accessibility checker plugin, you're able to kind of group those global things together, right? Speaker 2 So that you can determine where you can get the biggest bang for your buck, right? And I mean, if it's one air on 200,000 pages, right? Speaker 3 In my mind, like I'd have to go back and ask the legal expert. What was her name? Speaker 2 Yeah, Lainey. Lainey. In my mind, I think that's 200,000 potential lawsuits, right? Yeah, I don't know. Speaker 1 I think it probably depends on what it was. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like there are things that any accessibility tool, including ours flag, that are problems, but they're kind of minor when it comes to actual usability verse, you know, like if you have An image that is maybe kind of arguably decorative and it's in the footer, but it's like not linked, it doesn't, you know, like adding alt text to that is probably way less important than Being like, oh, you're open and close button on your mobile menu is empty. Yeah, yeah. Which would also be on every page in the header. Like so if you had to choose between one or the other, like which one should you focus on? Of course, one has more importance. And I think that's something that we're hoping with the plugin, you know, to be able to evolve towards providing more clear guidance on like how to prioritize. Right, right. Speaker 3 So there. Yeah. Well, there's ([Time 0:35:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1ed013bb-42fd-4027-9ab2-10ef47a63c8a))