Norbert Rum (CPWA) – r/Blind, Alt Text, and the Future of AI

Norbert Rum (CPWA) is the creator of Reddit's r/Blind and an accessibility specialist at AmericanEagle.com. He has over two decades of experience in digital marketing, website development, and customer acquisition strategies.

Bringing his insights to the table, Norbert talks to Jessica about key moments in his life that highlighted the importance of accessibility, looking towards the future, and advice for creating an inclusive web today.

Transcript

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[Norbert] Don't get overstimulated. What I mean by overstimulation is, there's beautiful websites out there, and when I mean beautiful, I mean, perfect. Don't go far to the deep end where you're spending hours and hours trying to find a problem that doesn't exist. I even do this till this day. My nickname is McStabby.[Knife unsheath SFX] Yeah. I will find that little problem. But it'll take me hours, years, days... Does it actually provide a different user experience? And usually it doesn't, so be very critical of that.[Jessica] Welcome to the Outer Circle, a podcast about digital accessibility, what it is, why it matters, and the people working to make the web a better place for everyone. I'm Jessica Chambers, accessibility evangelist at Silktide, and each episode, I sit down with someone in the field to hear their insights, experiences, and challenges. Let’s see where today takes us.[Jessica] Today I am joined by Norbert Rum from AmericanEagle.com. Not the clothing brand, the digital agency. Norbert's been deeply involved in accessibility for years, not just through his work in UX and audits, but also as the admin of r/Blind, the largest community for blind users on Reddit. He's also the creator of WebAccessibilitySurvey.com and was the technical producer behind Blind Living Radio, a long running podcast about life with visual impairments. We're gonna talk about his work, what he's learned, and where accessibility might be headed next.[Norbert] Hello.[Jessica] Hi Norbert.[Norbert] How you doing?[Jessica] Not bad. How did you get into accessibility?[Norbert] So the story starts back in the 20... 2000's! I worked for a web development company in Chicago. And one of our clients was Industries for the Blind. And Industries for the Blind is a very large not-for-profit that provides employment for visually impaired employees. And I worked for them to develop websites. At first, I wasn't sure what I was developing because, again, I'm developing websites with just random CMS systems and just making them, putting them up. But then I was getting users' feedback from employees saying, I can't use this, I cannot use this, this doesn't work. So I started getting interested on what's going on and what is WCAG. And when I found out what WCAG was I was blown away. And during that period of time, I started taking the accessibility part very seriously. So seriously that I decided to create r/Blind at that moment. Because I noticed my coworkers, or the clients and coworkers because I started thinking of them as my coworkers at this company. We're missing a communication between each other. And I decided to create r/Blind during that period of time. And also learning as much as I can and getting as much understanding of what our user experience is online. That includes users that are using JAWS, users using NVDA, users using Zoom, and all these different type of technologies, braille displays and so forth. And I was just blown away by... There is no limitation for a user with visual impairment. And it took me in and I grabbed onto it and I started changing my career focus. I went from being in the web development sphere to being an accessibility specialist, more on the user end, not the web end, because I did not understand the web end yet. So I started learning JAWS and NVDA and really getting involved in those. And the company I was working for transitioned. The owner of that company actually got hired on by Industries for the Blind as a chief level employee. And I moved with him. I actually moved to Wisconsin and I became an accessibility specialist at director level for the information technology department. It was called IB Digital. And from there I started going, wait, we should be doing a lot more. And that's where Blind Living Radio came. Because there was so much I was learning and there's so many incredible people. The cool thing with Blind Living Radio, even though it had a short lifespan, I think it was three years, four years, we had incredible guests. And one of the guests on there I will never, ever forget was the winner of a show called Master Chef. Yes. Yeah. So once that happened, I, I, well, first of all, I had a call with her before, 'cause I was not on the podcast itself 'cause I couldn't be. But I had a call with her. I told her how she's, first of all, my hero, number one. Number two, I was like a little school girl going, oh my God, this is the best day ever of my life. And I was just blown away by knowing who I'm talking to and knowing that she beat all these people with visual impairment and was incredible. Incredible. So that was like, okay, this is what I want to do. And so I started changing my career focus from there on. I started getting into learning more about web accessibility and started to move on from there. But that was like my aha moment. That day it took me, and I couldn't explain it. I'm like, I love this. I love the people. I started understanding a little bit more of what it takes to make not just an experience for users who have some visual impairment or low vision impairment a better place online, but also the technologies they're improving. I could visualize in my head what technology is coming because I'm very... I love the technology and it's the future of technology. And I always visualize what's coming up next, what's the next step. And knowing that HP, for example, I got to see what is called their 3D experience system, which is a little pen looking thing that's on a hook and it takes something that's online, like a 3D element, like let's say an apple, and when you touch it, you start moving around that apple, and you just back and forth and you could feel almost like there's an object there. And I was just, I'm like, oh my gosh. That means visually impaired architects, blind architects could... It could be a real thing. And I got to mess around with this stuff and I'm going, okay, this technology is moving so rapidly. And this was in like 2014, 2013. This is way before anything great now that came out of that. But I felt that, wow, okay, I love this. This is a passion of mine. And that's where it started moving me. This is what got me into accessibility. Now for the digital part, for the web . I started moving that direction pretty slowly because I knew what I had to know and just to get by, but it was really the education I got here, like AmericanEagle.com from, I call – he's gonna get mad at me. I call him Carl Sagan of accessibility. The way he explains things, I could sit around and listen to him pretty much all day. So the way he explains failures and thoughts is just easier to respond to, especially for me, I have a little bit of a learning disorder where I need to visualize things. I can't read 'em, can't understand 'em all the time. I do, you know, of course understand it, but it takes a little bit more. So when someone explains it to me out loud, I grasp on it a little bit better. And the way he explains a failure to me really got me hooked. And the digital accessibility... I moved rapidly into understanding the failures of WCAG, the limitations of the WCAG and all the highs of it and the lows of it because there's so many of both. WCAG is imperfect, as you know. And so he was, I think, the push I needed. It was like, it had to happen in this certain way. So that was a great experience, that is a great part of my trajectory, I call it, because I had to go through certain phases of my life to experience certain types of users on the user end. And then I had to experience the backend of what users are dealing with and all these things. In order for me to understand it, I had to go through. And you know that was the great thing about this experience, my profession. And some people would take this profession more as a job. I take it as mandatory. It's not a job for me. It's mandatory I do this, it's... I have to do this. If I don't do it, nobody else will be doing it. And there is no other person who can take my position from me. It was planned like this for me, so, yeah.[Jessica] I love that. I feel like accessibility is a calling.[Norbert] Yeah. A hundred percent it was meant to be. And for me, especially for me, it... Especially when I go to CSUN, as you know, and I'm like, Hey guys, how is everybody doing? You know, but I was quiet for years too. And you know what's funny is I've been going to CSUN for years and never telling people who I was because, yeah, because, well, I learned a long time ago... My first CSUN was in 2014 in San Diego, and 2015 in San Diego. San Diego I love a little bit more than the California one because it's in downtown San Diego here in the, I think it's the Light District or Candle District, I forgot the name of the area. But it's so much fun and when you get out of the conference, there's all these restaurants and bars and it's a great experience to be in the hub. And the seafood over there is incredible. It was a different experience for me. A funny thing is, and I will tell you this because this to me is still one of the, one of the funniest things ever. I was at CSUN in 2015 and a man named Anvil. He is one of the chairs of National Federation of the Blind. Every time I met him it was in an elevator or next to an elevator. And it's the funniest thing because even when we moved to Anaheim, guess where I saw him last? By the elevator and he remembered that. He's like, what is it with you, Norm, and elevators? Every single year, that's the only place we ever say hi to each other. And I can't explain it. It's this elevator thing. It's my place. I, I don't know what it is, but it was him. You know he's a very, very nice man. And he's a very high up in National Federation for the Blind. And it was just funny 'cause see, that's how he remembers me is Mr. Elevator Man.[Both laugh] I don't think he went this year or last year, but the year before that he... it has been years, I mean, almost a decade since I saw him before that or, you know, and he is like, oh my God, we're by the elevators and it's you again, isn't it? And I'm like, yeah, how do you remember? I can't believe you remember me, but that's how you remembered me! It's a great, you know, great thing. Sorry.[Laughs][Jessica] Well, I'll tell you a quick story, then. And I'm gonna make this note here where I say, I'm not sure we'll include this. I didn't feel comfortable talking to anyone. I didn't feel like I had a right to have an opinion. It took me nine years in accessibility before I felt like I was allowed to have an opinion that was anything other than, this is amazing, this is what you do, don't question it. And CSUN for me was like this weird sort of coming out party because if there was one thing people kept saying to me, it was, where have you come from? I was like, England! Because I didn't really interact with anyone outside of our clients. Like, yeah, I read everybody's stuff. I was aware of r/blind and I hung out there quietly, and I was reading everybody's stuff on LinkedIn, I was watching webinars, but the idea of speaking was...[Norbert] It's a different thing.[Jessica] Yeah, like I, I just wasn't prepared to do it. I was like, I'll be over here, right? And it was very strange for me because it was the first time I spoke to other people and I was so certain that I didn't know anything.[Norbert] It's weird.[Jessica] And talking to other people and them being like, oh no, honey, I can tell, you know what you're talking about. It was, it was astounding. But CSUN is like a magical place for me. Everyone there is so supportive. Everyone's on the same page. We all want the same things, you know? And as someone who's gone to a lot of tabletop gaming conferences, like GenCon and things like that for most of my adult life, it was wild to be in an environment where everyone is just so nice, like, I mean, truly everyone is just so nice. And Norbert, you really stood out for me as one of the nicest people I encountered at CSUN.[Norbert] Is it because I’m tall?[Jessica] And when I talked to other people, they say the same thing, so...[Norbert] I call myself like a walking lighthouse because you can't miss me. I'm so, so big. If I ever go to a concert or something, friends know where I'm at because I'm the only one that peeks out of the crowd.[Both laugh] That's, and what's funny is I have a friend that, well, who works for Apple. He is part of their accessibility team. He's a great guy and he's extremely tall too. So he's... The way we met, he has partial visual, but the way we met was, he noticed my height and he was like, oh, another tall guy. It's awesome. I love that. And that's a great thing about, you know, CSUN. The whole community is incredible. I will bring up this. Two years ago when for WebEx Accessibility survey, we did our first presentation for it. It was our first time actually presenting. I told them who I was, from r/Blind. I never brought it up. I've been going to CSUN and never brought up I am Rumster. I tried to keep that to myself because, you know, privacy and stuff like that, but because of what was going on with Reddit at that time with all with the news, and I'm like, okay, I have to say it now. And plus, because of what happened on Reddit, the timeline, it all fit, it had to happen. So I told them who I was. What the return of that was, I got people coming up to me after the con, you were one of 'em, but I also had teachers come to me. And they told me three, four years ago, I helped them with one of their students in math in regards to their math and VDA and I was, I'm like, yeah, I remember it. I remembered helping someone, but that was, you know, I just do that and just move on. I very rarely talk on Reddit Blind because that's... I have a rule for myself. I only participate if I can relate. If I can't relate to a subject or matter on r/Blind, I do not participate in it. It's just my rule. The moderators, I have a team of moderators who are all visually impaired in some way or another, they participate. They're responsible for r/Blind. We're a solid group, but when it comes to like screen reader technologies and plugins and so forth, I do participate those because I'm always on NVDA or I'm on JAWS and I know there's technologies out there, but one teacher came up to me and she said, you help my students graduate. And I, that... If you knew, that blew me away so much, I had to walk away after that. And like, I was in euphoria for about a day. The best part of it was, the day we were leaving, we were at the airport in SNA, John Wayne Airport. And I had my Bears. I'm a Chicago guy, so I had my Bears thing on. Long story short, a lady came up to me and she said, are you Rumster? Are you Norbert Rum, Rumster? And I'm like, yeah. And she hugged me, random lady, and she's like, thank you, thank you, I just spoke to so-and-so. And I noticed the other person with her was the teacher that said, you know, all these things. And she said, you help my students. And I got these hugs from people, but I hear this one person in the back going, I don't recognize them as a Bears player. Who the heck is this guy? So I was... Again, just little things like that make my day. It made... It was... it was special to me. And then I knew, okay, this is why I do it. Not for that, more for... I am changing people, without knowing I'm changing people's worlds. I am helping them without knowing I'm helping them. I don't need that response back,'cause it's been, it was years ago. I didn't need any of, you know, I didn't get anything from it. It was just more of I did this and moved on to the next problem or issue. And I always, I keep that in mind because I don't know whose life I might be changing, behind the scenes. Never knowing about it for years and years and years, you know? And that, that's what's incredible for me in this field, 'cause you don't know who you're helping on the other side of the computer. But you know, what your work is doing is helping thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. But you just don't know who it is. And that's the great part of this job,'cause you know you are, you just, most of the time you'll never know. That feeling is there, though. I always still get it.[Jessica] I think it's really lovely that you actually got to talk to someone who you did impact.[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] They were probably so excited to find you.[Norbert] Yeah, it was... Couldn't miss me![Norbert laughs] I still can't forget the Bears thing. When I heard, I'm like, no, no. I'm not a Bears player. No.[Norbert laughs] That's funny.[Jessica] Oh, the humanity of it all.[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] Okay. Let's talk about alt text.[Norbert] Mm-hmm.[Jessica] A subject where no one agrees. So in your case, I'm particularly interested in your opinions on this.[Norbert] I am one of those people that, too much is too much, too little is too little, and you have to find a medium, and a medium is usually very specific. When I say too much, is when you over detail things, it's... it's noise. If it doesn't benefit the user on that website, very specifically on the website they're on, and then let's say there's a picture of a lady holding a coffee cup from Starbucks, has nothing to do with the website. The website is about a bank and she's at an ATM. The most important part of that picture is her at the ATM, not holding that Starbucks coffee cup, not drinking it, nothing on what she looks like, just that the woman is at the ATM. That's all you wanna put in the alt description. But for some reason, a lot of people believe that you have to describe everything. But do you? When I looked at the image, I don't care about anything else around it. Most users don't care for anything around it, and it's just noise. And for me, what was something that I caught immediately on the image, for a second glance, and that's it. And then I don't describe anything else. If I catch the Starbucks has a name on it, that's not important to me, because I don't know this woman. Again, she's not part of the site. What's...? Again, don't care. But she's at a big bank, name of the bank, whatever. She's holding a coffee cup. I could bring up the coffee cup somehow, but she's smiling and going and getting money out. You know, if there's something going on on the screen in the background, bring that up because maybe, you know, it has something like a million dollars or something. That's important. Or backwards, it's negative. Oh, no! But that's important to me, because that's information that might be useful to the user. I've seen online and, just, this is random, a lot of sites overexpose too much information. And unless it's... For me I have a rule, if it's for, let's say a museum, or an art piece, describe it to the nth degree. You want to describe it as much as possible because that's what the user's there for. But if it's for a product or for... I use banks usually because the banks are usually in my head for some reason. Get to the point. But if it's an art piece or a painting, or even from a photojournalist, again, photojournalist, that means it's information that you wanna have, you provide all the description on that photo. The famous photos from Vietnam, you know, describing everything that's going on in that image. That's extremely important to put in your head, to understand what's going on in that image. But a lady in front of a ATM is not. So I always have that line, and I always take that when I do fail alt descriptions, I usually fail them for those going too far or too low. Find a medium, find a medium. And that's my role on alt descriptions. Especially at AmericanEagle.com, we have an incredible team here. We have classes for this internally to help people understand the differences between the two. When to use them, when not to use them, when to describe more, when not to describe more. And that helps us provide the most important information to a user without over flooding them with useless information.[Jessica] Do you have any specific thoughts about when an image is decorative and when it isn't?[Norbert] Ah I'll keep going on a bank thing. Banks are my favorite because banks are usually the ones that go overboard. Ah, I'll give you an example. It's a page that's with houses for sale and, you know, it talks about houses for sale getting a loan, and there's a picture of a neighborhood of houses. But none of those houses are for sale. There's no signs for sale. The picture was a stock photo. Do I care? No, that photo doesn't mean anything to the user. But if that house, one of those houses has a for sale side on that house? Ah, there you go. That photo, okay. There's a distinction from that. Even if it's stock photo, there's a difference from that photo than a regular photo of homes. That one provides me, that there's houses for sale, there's availability. This is a house that's available and it's "For sale" on front, brown, whatever house, you know, in a nice affluent neighborhood or whatever it is. Again, you're providing extra to the user because, the opportunities, so forth, for owning a home, because that picture's different. It gives you something extra. That's difference in my opinion, of when and when not to use it. It also happens to be if you go to cereal companies and cereal companies like to use random photos of just random things. But one thing they never described for some reason, and I always go, why aren't you describing this, is crops. You know, like, wheat, a lot of times they don't describe it. For me, I would describe that because that's part of the cereal. Wheat is cereal, you know, part of the cereal. Describe that information. Describe that it's the season of that wheat or when it's about to get picked or is it a fresh growth? You're providing this information to a user 'cause it actually adds an extra level of information. The one thing I do want to bring out is product image alts. A lot of times, product images are in a different category, in my opinion. Product images need alts no matter how many product images there are. It could be in different angles, whatnot. Describe 'em. And the reason you'd wanna describe product images is because they're special. They're only on this page. They're not gonna be on any other site unless it's similar product. And they're unique, you know, different angles. You're telling a user you have a blah, blah, blah mouse, at a right angle with two buttons, you know, showing or whatever. Describe that, 'cause that's important for the user. Aerodynamics of a mouse, that's important to a user. Those are when I'm like, no, you provide every alt description possible for products, always. But for stock photography, it has nothing to do with that page itself. Ignore it. I'm very much like that. If it's a person, I'll describe the name, and put their position in. I don't know who Jack Henry is or whoever that is, provide their position or provide who they are. I always see images, alt descriptions, with just the name. Great. Who is this? It doesn't help me. Give the position in there, put the name there, the CFO or you know, CEO or sales guy, provide that information.[Jessica] I have a question. I think pointing out that ads and images of products really matter is something that I hadn't given a lot of thought to. I worry about stock images because over here, the BBC and the UK government don't even agree. And the BBC's attitude is that you need to mention it's a stock image and describe it. I often worry that we're hitting that point of, is no alt text worse than bad alt text? I used to wonder about that, but these days I think bad alt text is actually worse.[Norbert] Yeah, you know what, if stock photos, again, BBC, if it's the news, they usually have actual news pictures. But outside of that, yeah, I... I love stock photography, but again, very rarely do I even take a glance at it. It's usually ignored on my part, by me. And I... For me, it's useless jargon. It doesn't provide anything for the story. And usually, unless it supports the story somehow, which AI stock photography, which is a new thing I'm starting to notice, does start getting into that line. They're starting to mesh together. Maybe that's when it's gonna start changing a little bit, then my understanding of it might change, is because stuck photography with AI is gonna really... The iStock photo that, you know, websites and all these different stock photography websites are gonna start losing business when users are able to just design their own stock photography that feeds, whatever they're trying to state on the page. But then the new problem is it's too much still. Now you're adding, again, it's fluff information. Does it really matter? Does that image really matter? Well, no. Stock photography usually doesn't even support anything to the story at all. And I just ignore it. And most of the time I'm fairly, I'm on that page. I'm fairly on, we'll ignore this image. We'll put just a blank alt and just move on to the next part.[Jessica] Next question,[Norbert] Mm-hmm.[Jessica] what is your top tip for someone who's new to accessibility?[Norbert] Don't get overstimulated. So how do I... what do I mean by this? Okay. There's beautiful websites out there, and when I mean beautiful, I mean, perfect. Code perfect. Design perfect. There's nothing wrong with them. And I even do this till this day. My nickname is McStabby. Yeah, [Jessica laughs] I will find that little problem. And what I mean by overstimulation is, sometimes there're really good FEDs out there, or really good Front End Developers, really good designers, and not every site has an issue. Some sites are almost perfect and don't go far to deep end where you're spending hours and hours trying to find a problem that doesn't exist. And if you do find a problem, but it's really not a problem, it's one of those very... It's like a... the 2.4.6 issue where it's technically passing, its label's there, everything's there, but... there's a break in it. Okay? There's a break, there's a break of code, and you're like, nope, it's a failure. You're dropping everything. But does it actually provide a different user experience? And usually it doesn't, so be very critical of that. Especially if you're new to it. Also don't get, uh, this is one for, especially people that are just starting out in accessibility now, I couldn't believe when I first started, especially here, I would hear my boss, Nick Goodrum, literally say numbers, and I'm like, I'm never gonna get this. I'm never gonna get any of this. This is, this is over my head. How are, how is he, what? 2.1.1? 1.4.3? What, how, wait, what are they talking about? And I kept on trying to catch up. Eventually what happens is, you start catching yourself saying, oh, no, no, no, it's a 2.1.1 issue. It's keyboard only issue... Oh my God, am I... am I catching on? And then you start talking like them. And now you could have a full conversation with someone with just three digits. And you are like, oh my God, you're one of them. So it takes time. Don't get nervous because you don't know those numbers right off the bat. And that WCAG is still a learning experience. I still don't know every single WCAG criteria at heart. But I could have a conversation with someone learning with just the numbers, and I could straight be very, you know, I have certain beliefs on certain WCAG criteria that I believe are... They need a little bit more work. I have also believed that, especially with WCAG itself, that things are mouldable. And also don't forget, WCAG is not really a pass or fail. It's interpretation, and people need to remember that. So sometimes, if you look at the GitHub for WCAG, you see all these discussions back and forth, back and forth between the experts, especially the writers of WCAG, they go back and forth on things and then they have their aha moments during those discussions, like 2.2.2's Pause and play. Again, don't get discouraged because it takes you a little longer to get there and don't go, this is personally, I'm talking to myself right now. Don't go to the deep end and spend 10 hours on a page because you are gonna find a little tiny issue and then go, see I told you there was a failure on this page! I knew there was... and I spent 10 hours on it. And then go, what did you do for 10 hours? I found a button had a color that wasn't hard contrast. Y'know, it's just one random thing like that. I find myself doing that less and less now, but I used to spend hours, and I mean hours at night, on the weekends. What did you do? You know, people are having fun going out and stuff like that. And I'm literally color contrast checking every piece of a page until I find that one failure. Again, my nickname is McStabby, because I will, I will find something. But it'll take me hours, years, days. I'll eventually find it. But it's very rare though. And, and what's funny is I, I could go to a page, look at the code once, and I started noticing this just recently, and I'm talking about years in this industry, I could tell by just the way the code is laid out if I'm gonna have a lot of problems or not. And that's something that most people still can't do, and I can do it now. And I think that's a benefit of working for a web development company, 'cause I see our code compared to others, and you could see the clean difference in that work. You could see which one was written by AI even. You could see copy and paste too. And that's one thing that I never knew I could do and I started to be able to do that and that's really cool.[Jessica] Do you have a favorite website?[Norbert] Other than WebAccessibilitySurvey.com, that's my number one, I do have a site. Okay. I love beauty in design and I like corporate beauty. It's weird to say this. Canada's really good at making beautiful websites. I have no clue why. But they stand out. There's a site called Manulife and they make their own font for their website. And that's... that for me, takes it to the next level. Any site that takes that much time to create their own special font that brings out a lot. Also sites that use a lot of SVG, like... We use, for AmericanEagle.com, we use very specific color coordination, you know, red, white and blue, the American colors. Again, it stands out. I love that type of design. For me, that brings out a lot. But anytime there's a site that gives you an extra layer of a design element that only an artist would put together, that's my favorite type of sites. Manulife is one. You know, and American Eagle. I know the designer of it, and I tell'em, Hey, we could, should do this. You know, stuff like that I have also control over, that's my favorite type of site, you know?'Cause I could say, I don't like this, but then I see someone that uses a new concept and it blows me away. Stuff like that. One thing I do wanna say is I am, for some reason, anything that has a very geometric design. So I think again, it's another Canadian site, (CIBC) think it's a Canadian Bank. Their logo is very geometric and it's a, it's the maple leaf, but it has two shades. It's only two colors, but it's so special. And I, I love that. I love that. Very simple. For me, I love that stuff. It's just like, FedEx with the arrow, Amazon with A to Z, I love those type of designs. For me, when I see that, then I'm like, I have to go to the website. I gotta check this out. I love that type of design work.'cause that means someone took really a long time to think it through, especially for artists and artist sometimes, you know, like the Nike logo, you know, the artist that created the Nike logo. I believe she was a lady, and she designed something that was so spectacular. That's still to this day, you know what, 50 years, 60 years now, because it was designed in the seventies, right? Early seventies, 60 years almost. Wow. I'm old. I'm not, you know, that old, but you know, we're getting there. That's still... It looks as modern today as it did back then. And that for me is huge because if you notice, that swish never changed. It's always been the same. They never adjusted it. It's just the slogans, whatnot. But that switch alone has never changed. And to me, I always fall in love with those things. Those are my favorite kind of... That's art. If you don't have to change through years, IBM is almost very similar, even though it's basic. But IBM never really changed since the six... seven... eighties. They haven't changed. Apple changed, all these other ones changed, but the Nike logo never changed. And that for me is art, and... Those type of designs in, I know it's not a website, but more of just where my head's at. That's how I get my favorite website. I go to those websites because I see a logo and I'm like, oh, I have to see that. So our, the company I work for, AmericanEagle.com, we do a lot of websites for big corporate companies and I go through almost all of 'em by their logo first. I go to the websites to just check out their designs by their logo. And what's funny is sometimes the logo fits the design. It's like, oh, this makes sense, the artist took their logo design and put the page together because of the logo. And you can see that a lot of times on a lot of sites. That really stands out for me. If you could take that, the most important part of a company is their branding and create a website around it and make it look very close to it. You hit it outta the ballpark. And that, for me is my favorite websites because it really starts from there.[Jessica] Awesome. Do you have any pets?[Norbert] Yes, I have a Keeshond, a fluff ball. His name is Scarface. I know. He was Okay. For some reason, my sister decided she liked Al Capone. We had a dog that passed away a couple years ago. His name was Al Capone. So when we got this new dog who was given up because he was too much for the family, the Keeshond, we named this Scarface right away. You know, we wanted to keep it in the mafia, keep it in the family, you know. Now what's funny is I'm Polish and a little, maybe there's a little bit of Italian in me, but I'm Polish. But yeah, we have an Italian family in the house. The funny thing was, the Keeshond, his name is Scarface, there's no scars on his face. He's a big fluff ball. He looks like a Chow, but dark, dark hair, very fluffy. Weighs about 35 pounds. And he's older. He is 15 years old. He's in the senior citizen phase, so nothing really phases him much. He still barks once in a while but he's extremely smart and he's smarter than me because I have a little story if I could share. So there's a website out there, I forgot the name of the website. But one of the websites that's out there that says, Keeshonds are very smart and smarter than most humans. And I'm like, that's weird. Why would you say such a thing? And it stated that they like to fool humans to getting them treats. If you give 'em a treat for something, they'll fake things in order to get that treat. So, I live in Chicago. We get a lot of snow and I remember this, I read the whole article and it said they fool humans all the time. One day I take him outside to go on his pee break, you know, to the bathroom. And he is outside and he's looking at me like this, you know? And he is like, yeah, I'm gonna go outside. He walks down the stairs, puts his leg out, and takes about 30 seconds. Now I'm watching this whole thing go down, and then, he goes back upstairs and I give him a treat, thinking nothing of it. And I'm like, hm, I wonder if he's fooling me somehow? So I go downstairs and go where he peed. There's no pee. It was all fake. I'm like, huh I wonder how long this has been happening for? So I'm like, okay. Okay. Don't say anything to the dog. He got his treat. It's fine. Two days later, I get up to take him outside, again, it snowed. Brand new fresh snow. Fresh, fresh snow. Again, this whole thing, we, you know, goes outside, does his look, and, you know, put his leg up. But this time I walk downstairs with him, he immediately puts his leg down and runs back upstairs. No pee this time. He knew he got caught. So, yeah. I think I... I think there's a decade full of treats that were undeserved. And I got fooled by the dog, as this article stated. Yeah. So I am one of those humans that was fooled. I need to find this website. It literally says, beware. This dog tricks humans, and Keeshonds are extremely smart, smarter than me, and he probably ate maybe 10 pounds worth of free treats through the years, if not more. He's not overweight, he's just extremely smart and makes me look like a fool. Thank you.[Jessica] [Laughs] He's wiley.[Norbert] Yeah, very smart.[Jessica] What's one common accessibility mistake you find?[Norbert] Common... Overcomplicating the uncomplicated. And what I mean by that is... buttons. role="button" on an anchor. Why? Just change it to a button. Something so simple. Why use role? Why are you adding that excess to it? That is the number one, that one gets me the most is, what's the point of an anchor? There's no need. Change it. That'll be my number one.[Jessica] I love that. I'm a big proponent of like, ARIA is your plan B, not your plan A.[Norbert] Stay native, stay native.[Jessica] How do you approach making forms more accessible?[Norbert] Describe the problems. Easily. Describe 'em. If a form is being filled out and you just say a missing... missing text or missing name, but you're just saying missing. Error information is, is very just quick. Eh, you're missing something. Failure in the form. You're not describing it, you're not putting enough information in. You're failing the user. You're not providing enough information.'cause it's not just for users that have visual impairment, it's also users with neurodiversity. Sometimes there's information that you want from the user, but you're not providing that additional information to the user. What you're asking them for. That's critical in my opinion. Provide as much information as possible, especially on forms. Don't make forms too complicated. When I see a long, long form, it takes a day or two to fill out and, exaggerating, but you know what I mean. Again, too much, sometimes too much. That's why I like WCAG 2.2 where, if you're asking the same information over and over again, make sure it's there on the next page. If it's not, you fail WCAG 2.2 criteria. But also provide, what do you want the answer to be? Make it as easy as possible and don't rely on placeholders. Especially for users in the neurodiversity area when they're filling this information out, some of them have short memory spans, some of them have other issues. They might forget what they're putting in, in what form. If the form doesn't have a proper label, the label doesn't go up. Just keep that in mind. That's it. That'll be my number one. And make sure the errors are distinct and they provide enough information for the user to fix that issue. I personally have had times where, again, there are a messages so generic, I'm like, okay, where the heck did I make a mistake? You know, I'm looking all over it. I do like there's a certain form that I was recently filling out where the focus moved, which we want, to the error, but also made the input very dark, the border around it darker. So you knew this was the input and the error message is below it. It provided multiple levels of error. And to me, that was a win. It was just a random website. I forgot what it was for. But for me, I love that, that... that information is solid.[Jessica] That sounds like a good form.[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] Is there a myth about accessibility that you'd like to debunk?[Norbert] In order to make your site accessible, it has to be ugly. I think everybody's gonna say the same thing. You can make it ugly. You can go too far, but that's only on the triple-A. You start going into a very, very, very strong direction. But other than that, not really. Oh, there's one. Accessibility random tools you find online are not your save-all. They won't fix everything. And a lot of times users or especially users who're building websites, they just use a tool of some sort to fix their accessibility issues. And think that's it. We're done. That's an accessibility mistake that I find a lot of times adds actually new failures to a site. And that's a myth that everything can be fixed with one click. Other than that, I've heard many times before from people that say, if you got too much in accessibility that your site could turn ugly. No. I've seen sites, beautiful sites that are accessible completely but are not ugly. The designer not understanding what accessibility is, that's the handcuff on the designer limiting themselves because they think, oh, I can't go this level. Oh, I can't do this, I can't do that. What's great is dark mode and light mode. Now it kind of gives you, a user, an ability to, okay, maybe I could just go a little crazy on this one, and that gives 'em a little bit more flexibility, gives 'em some extra design abilities, and they just need to keep that in mind. But that's a myth, the myth of making sites ugly, and that's not true.[Jessica] That's one of my favorite ones. Accessibility can actually be beautiful.[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] What are your thoughts on the impact AI could have on digital accessibility? And I'm gonna make a note, here. It is currently the middle of May in 2025. So if what we say now in 18 months, you go, wow, that is not how things worked out. Know that we were working with what we knew right now.[Norbert] So I am for AI. I know the limitations of it. I also know the future of it. It's gonna start getting scary. But the good news is it's gonna be a cookie cutter part of AI. What people seem to not realize with AI, AI is not inventing, they're repurposing. They're like a, they're reading books. They're repurposing other people's work. They're not designing their own. For photos and whatnot, you know, okay. There's a little bit of that creativity, but in regards to code, they're not owning something from scratch that they create, that the AI created. No. They're taking stuff from GitHub. They're taking stuff from random websites they found and putting it together. Now, the good news is, humans are imperfect and they break things. So that means that what AI grabbed and put it together for you is gonna be broken most likely too. Also, and this, everybody needs to keep that in mind, that with AI advancing and I'll even make a bet in 18 months, I'll say this, the sites might work better, but break in a weirder way that it can't be explained, because it grabs from one deposit here and grabs something from this one right here. And it started putting this together, and there you go, it's broken again. It's not perfect. It won't be perfect, until it gets to the... There is stages of AI we're in. We're stage two of five. Once it gets to stage three, which is self-repair, that's when we should be concerned. That's when, AI is at that point where it realizes, okay, I know what the problem is I don't have to ask you what the problem is. I see it. I'm gonna recode this because I could see that problem. I'm testing it also on my end as well. And here's the final code. And that's scary. Once we get to that level, that means it's not just us, it's not accessibility, it's everybody. Once it gets there. We're not there yet. Stage three is far off, but by 2027, 2028, we might be getting close to that point. So that's the one that's a concern because AI could, for digital accessibility especially, it'll be able to pinpoint issues more often. It'll give you a little bit more hints. But also the good news of AI is it doesn't have the human touch. The way I test, an AI can't duplicate. There's nothing out there that can duplicate you. It can't duplicate a user's motor skill. If a user has an issue, it can't duplicate it. Even if it tried, it can't. Even if they created a system just to do that, they won't do it correctly because every individual is different. Everybody has a different speed, hand movement, behavior, we're all different. We can't duplicate that. So for the user-end testing of accessibility, I don't believe that's ever gonna be replaced. It could get close, but it will never replace it completely, even in 18 months, I don't think it will. If not, then I'm gonna go to Sam Altman's office and unplug those machines.[Jessica laughs][Jessica] If you could add something to WCAG, what would it be?[Norbert] Mobile.[Jessica] Mmm. [affirmative][Norbert] There's such a big difference between mobile and WCAG itself. And I'm gonna be fair about this, WCAG does talk about mobile, but it's so much, so different still, it needs its own WCAG, just completely made for tablets and mobile. Because I see so many, even at CSUN, I went to certain sessions that I felt wrong by what they stated, when they were going by a certain type of user. And that's not how I, well, I believe. I believe there's different type of users. So I test for different types. I could go to like, 2.1.1. Some users go by touch, some users go by flick. Flick exists for a reason. Well, why... This certain session didn't talk about it. Why didn't they fail for flick? I was on the site that they were talking about in the session and it didn't work. The focus order moved around incorrectly. They all cared about touch, but there's users that flick. So why aren't you testing for that? Because they didn't know about it, because there was no WCAG criteria for flick... There isn't for that statement. It's there, but it's not there... It needs to be more direct.[Jessica] I find it fascinating. I recently took a series of classes on making mobile applications more accessible and realizing that the language is different and like, here's what it is in Swift, and I've already forgotten what the name for the one for Android is, right. And I was like, wait, what? You know? And they don't match at all. Right?[Norbert] Nope.[Jessica] And how you use them was completely different. And I just found myself sitting there going, oh my God, I had no idea, and being slightly horrified because those two could have talked to each other and at least been like, let's make some universal standards, but they didn't even do that. You know, they've done the Wild West all over again. We've got browser wars, right, where you've gotta learn how they make things accessible and it's not the same. And that really infuriates me.[Norbert] Yeah. And, I'm in the same boat and I feel that there needs to be another criteria called M, and that talks about Android or Apple, and make sure people understand there's different types of users, tablet users, there's so many different types of users. And now the next thing is voice command. GPT and all of them, they should also be on that criteria list. Because that technology, that part of the technology is changing so quick like I kind of blow people away because I use GPT as my Siri every day. It's, first of all, I can have a full blown conversation with it, which is kind of scary. But the number two thing is it's almost, it's accurate, usually. Sometimes it hyperventilates and gives me wrong information, but I also always ask for source. So you always ask for source and if it gives you a source, click on that source,'cause sometimes that source is even fake. Hallucinations are a real deal. But don't go into a deep tunnel on them. Because then you can... Also, I found out how to break the rail, what's called break the rail is, and I know this is gonna just touch on something different, but AI has rails and sometimes you could actually take AI off the rail and get information that it shouldn't be telling you because it never had controls to limit it. So you learn sometimes a little bit more about itself, how it works, by sometimes breaking that rail. I found that out through a PhD in artificial intelligence. Him and I were just talking, I told him I played a game with an AI playing almost like a.... If you have a ball in your hand, you have to tell me the truth. And I started getting information that I couldn't believe I was getting, and it was really cool. And he says, yeah, you broke the rail. I'm like, what? What's the rail? And then he explained to me. And it's really cool because especially with something that's really your passion for like, alt descriptions, that one really gets me. It really starts getting into what you're thinking. And we should do this, we could do this, and why this is important. And I never thought of it. And it just breaks the mold, I think. That's why I'm so... I'm always excited with AI, what's the next step of it. They're already one step two steps in front of us of what they've shown to the public. From what I, when I spoke to a friend of mine, we're so far deeper than people could imagine. I'm only worried about step three, which is the repair. That's the only one that's, I'm like, oh. Because then a lot of things are gonna change really quickly, really rapidly, and a lot of people are gonna be thrown off guard from it[Jessica] I wonder if the web is going to remain the way it is.[Norbert] Web 3.0.[Jessica] Yeah, well, with everything changing and the way that Cursor and a bunch of the other things function... I use Wispr Flow to talk to ChatGPT, right? Because I think ChatGPT is just a little too slow sometimes in the uptake, or it interrupts me while I'm having a thought and I'm like, no. But I think we may be heading to a place where we just talk to the web, you know, instead of going to virtual storefronts like we've been doing, well, since I can remember, really.[Jessica laughs], You know, we'll be moving into a different interface almost. And I'm really curious how that's gonna change things, because right now, using your voice to navigate the web is obscure for most people. They don't think about things like labeling your icon. Is that a shopping trolley? Is that a basket? You know, like once you move to the UK you realize they call it something completely different, you know, and those kind of concessions and thoughts and even accents. There's a fantastic ad about an elevator with Scottish people trying to talk to the AI. Like it just doesn't get their accent. So they're like trapped in the elevator. And I think about those kind of things and I'm like, oh dear.'cause for years now, Siri doesn't like my accent, right? I finally switched Siri to be American because it just didn't like the way I say things like Andy, like my husband's name.'cause I'd be like "Text Andy" and it would be like, who?[Norbert] I have a hard time reading material, sometimes. So I have my GPT, I have memory set in my, because I pay for my GPT.[Jessica] Me too.[Norbert] I have memory set that it explains things a certain way to me. Because if it doesn't explain it a certain way, I don't get it. That will change and impact a lot of kids and a lot of people that have... I don't have dyslexia. I have, you know, some, you know, I, I have high grade, level grade... Jesus, maybe I don't.[Jessica laughs] High grade reading level. I have no problem with that. I need to visualize, like I said, my thing is visualization of what I'm reading. I have to read it and picture it in my head. And sometimes it takes a little bit longer for me to get that in there. Especially when it's instructions of how to take something apart.[Jessica] Right?[Norbert] I'll do it backwards. I'll literally do it backwards. I'll do exactly what it told me not to do. Not that it told me not to do it. I'll do it in the opposite way. Why? Because I'm reading it that way. So it's helpful in that, and that's gonna change and impact a lot of people. I just hope there's... they don't put too many safety guards on it, because if they put too many safety guards on AI, it will also slow us down to other countries, not, you know, not UK, not US, but more other countries out there that are literally letting it loose and seeing how far they could take it. DeepSeek scared the heck out of a lot of people. And, and it should have, it was important that it did. But it didn't scare certain people. It didn't scare one company specifically: NVIDIA. They already saw what DeepSeek is doing. They already saw what new technologies are doing. They're just not talking about 'em. And I will say this, NVIDIA, if people read about what they did with the money,'cause they got so much money coming in from all the, the stock market, instead of giving... Yeah, they gave themselves a lot of bonuses, whatever. Became billionaires, whatnot, millionaires. But they took a lot of the money and gave it to people to use with their AI to enhance their AI. All these industries, new industries that were created from just giving the computing power for free to these kids. There's kids out there that got half a million dollars of credits. Here you go. You have half a million dollar of credits to do whatever you want. And all these ideas have a little signature that NVIDIA has with them. They own parts of them. They've seen things that people are gonna be blown away by in the years or two years. A lot of companies have done this. Microsoft is known for doing this.'Cause there's some kid in high school, some girl in high school, some boy in high school that like reinvented the wheel pretty much. And built something else, something completely new. I hate that, the "You can only reinvent the wheel so many times." That's not true. You could reinvent it by different forms of it, you know. Eventually if you look at, you know, the moon mobile, you know, the one that's on the moon, that doesn't look like a wheel, it doesn't, it's reinvented. The Pathfinder reinvented the wheel. Again, all these things are reinvented. And that's the same concept of AI. People need to keep that in mind because it's, I can't... I'm excited. I am excited more than nervous about it. I'm just nervous how it will impact myself and impact you and impact people. But I'm, I am excited though.[Jessica] I know. I'm all like, I would really like to have a job.[Jessica laughs][Norbert] Yeah. Yeah.[Jessica] But honestly, I stand by what I said at my first CSUN. If AI takes us all out and we aren't needed because the web is accessible to everyone,[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] I'll go find something else to do.[Norbert] But I, but I will, I will drive to Sam Altman's server farm and unplug it.[Norbert laughs][Jessica] Dude, I, I honestly, I was a lot more worried until DQ came out with their AI assistant, which people have been putting through its paces, and I was like, oh, it's an LLM. And you're like, oh, yes it is. That and Figma sites that made me go, well, my job is not gonna be removed anytime soon if you people can't even start from scratch and make something that's accessible. Like, are you kidding?[Norbert] Because there were using— They're using other people's code until it starts creating its own code.[Jessica] That's the thing, like I keep looking at it and I'm like, the internet sucks. So if you're just gonna base your websites off of what's out there, you're not going to make it better. So I was curious what DQ was gonna do, but I think it's still suffering all the same problems that LLMs suffer, which is, once you scratch the surface, it's a bit iffy.[Norbert] Yep.[Jessica] Right. If you could remove something from WCAG, what would it be?[Norbert] I thought about this before. I really don't have one. I thought this through. I really, really do not have WCAG criteria that I don't like. They all belong. They have a place. Leave it as is. I will not remove it. It's perfect.[Jessica] I would make some adjustments.[Norbert] Adjustments are different than removing, [Jessica laughs] but I don't have a... Adjustments, yeah. Like, I actually had this talk with my boss on this, 2.2.2. There's a little animation on a site that I'm auditing right now, and it's barely visible. Let's say this, it's so barely visible that I barely noticed it until I was on the site for an hour.[Jessica laughs] Now the criteria for it, you would fail it because it's moving, it's constantly moving. There's no pause to it, and the you would fail it. But if you didn't notice it and then you notice it and you're like, wait a second, it's not moving enough to make it drastic enough to... Who is it hurting? 2.2.2. That one has to be retouched in my opinion.[Jessica] People with trauma, that's who it's hurting. Anyone with— Anyone with trauma, people with PTSD, anyone who is hypervigilant, movement, especially on the sides of your screen, that catches you in the corner of your eye will really distress you.[Norbert] Here's the thing. It's so subtle. So subtle—[Jessica] That makes it worse to me, because [Norbert] Oh, really?[Jessica] that's more likely to catch you unawares. You know? And our brains are designed to look for danger. I made fun of this by having like a tiger tail in the grass, but that's what it is. If there's movement in your peripheral vision, your brain is like, what? You know, and you get this weird dopa— Like, this sounds bizarre,'cause I'm pretty sure it's dopamine. But you get this dopamine hit as your brain[Norbert] It'll freak you out.[Jessica] tries to figure out what's going on. And unfortunately, as someone with trauma, who isn't, y'know. Like, I find... It's part of the reason I find movement so distressing is that like, I don't want a thing that's constantly catching my attention because...[Norbert] Yeah. This was so subtle. I'll be honest. This one was so subtle. It was a change of color from white to blue that was,[Jessica] Ooh.[Norbert] it was... it looked like water and it wasn't water, but it was so subtle and you would have to look at it. If you didn't look at it, you would never catch it. It wasn't like something coming on the screen. It was there the whole time. I couldn't—[Jessica] It's not even movement, per se, it's a—[Norbert] It's a fade in, and fade out. A fade in, and fade out,[Jessica] That's fascinating.[Norbert] And it's slow fade.[Jessica] See that's the problem with WCAG. You put five experts in a room and you'll get seven opinions, [Jessica laughs] It's one of the things I love about it and I hate at the same time where I'm just like...[Norbert] That right there would be a great one, 2.2.2 where we... I know like a snake or whatever and you know, things happening on the side, the, you know, but when it's so subtle. Like I said, I was on the site for at least an hour before I even noticed it and I'm like, wait a second, this. Oh my God, it's moving. Very cool. First of all, I was like, oh wow, this is really cool and this nice. And I had to say, where's the pause button? That was the second.[Jessica] As I always say, do you really need that animation? If it's so subtle, people aren't even noticing it...[Norbert] It makes sense on this site. It really does.[Jessica] Ah. [Laughs][Norbert] I was very... I'm like, mm, does it really need it? Yeah, it works. This one, remember, some designers are really in touch with their work.[Jessica] Mmm.[Norbert] This is one of 'em, and I was just blown away by it. I was actually like, oh yeah, this is really cool. I need a pause button. But it's really cool.[Jessica] [Both laugh] This is the thing, like, I tell people that I like one page wonders 'cause I do right? And, God help me, sometimes I like parallax scrolling. There's a website called One Last Drop, which is to teach you about water conservation. And as you scroll through everything moves around and like, oh, it's not accessible. But my word, I love this website.[Norbert] One—[Jessica] I think it's genius, right? But I also am like, can I have like a text version of this maybe where you explain what's going on for other people?[Norbert] Parallax and VoiceOver, the enemies.[Jessica] This is the thing, you know, like I love the website, but I'm like, you can't do that.[Norbert] If you do do it, make sure it knows if it's on a mobile device, because if it's on mobile, don't—[Jessica] Yeah, forget it.[Norbert] Yeah, yeah. A lot of times people don't think about those and those issues and parallax sites are very mobile unfriendly in my opinion. But yeah. This one's so perfect. It... but it needs a pause. And, but... [sigh] and the way that the criteria is written too, is... It's not words running through, it's not an animation running through, it's just like a fade. It's so subtle that you might not catch it your first time on the site. How about that?[Jessica] See, that's wild. Although for me, if we wanna do that, I just think we need a toggle at the top that says "Reduce motion".[Norbert] Yes. And—[Jessica] If I've got a toggle, I don't care what your website does, because just seeing that it's there, it makes me go, oh, I should expect some things, you know?[Norbert] Yeah. Reduce—[Jessica] I have the choice to, to engage or not. And I know everyone says you should just respect reduced-motion, but like, let's face it, nobody does. So my attitude is like, give me two things. One, a keyboard shortcut that skips to controls so I can stop your video if I don't want to hear it, you know? And give me a visible toggle so I can just be like, reduce motion. Because that way you're not relying on the user to, like... You should respect their settings, right? Like fundamentally the toggle is like, yeah, actually let's turn off all that stuff. Because some websites are really busy.[Norbert] Yeah.[Jessica] Like, you can, if you do it right, movement pulls your attention, right? So like you can use it to pull someone through a journey down your site, right? Like, I'm a firm believer that there are ways to do this. But I think we have to recognize that like, especially unexpected movements or you know, things can be problematic for people.[Norbert] Yep.[Jessica] Scary question. What are your thoughts on overlays?[Norbert] Okay. I'm gonna bring this up in a nice way. And I'm gonna bring up our website, WebAccessibilitySurvey.com. We talk about it, we talk about it in two ways. One is the negatives, what it causes, especially for users. Certain screen reader users had extremely bad responses from it. The number one thing that I don't get why overlays have this is a screen reader. What's the point? If a user is on the site that uses a screen reader already, they don't need an additional screen reader. I get it. That might be beneficial for other types of users, users that are in the neurodiversity stage. But how come the overlays don't look for a screen reader on a machine? They don't care. So that's a big no-no, in my opinion. I know screen readers give out an input, a certain type of input to a browser saying, hey, I'm here. I exist, I'm on the website. Turn that the screen reader off.[Jessica] It's considered a violation of privacy. That's part of the reason they don't do it.[Norbert] Oh, no, no, no. I, I understand that. But a user has the ability to allow it to happen. You know, where they give that permission, that the website knows that I'm using a screen reader. Okay? They do have that option. They could check a box and say, I give a permission to the site knowing that I'm using screen reader, so there's no chance of a screen reader turning on from an overlay. That's what I mean, because that was one of the top concerns from a lot of users was these multiple screen readers running at the same time. So imagine you're using NVDA and all of a sudden an overlay screen reader is running. Now you have two screen readers running. One is running the memory off your computer, and because of all this stuff going on, you're destroyed. And I mean, you don't know what's going on. What do you do? Alt, F4. And now you start from scratch. Now you go back to the site because the site has a cookie of some sort. Guess what's turned on the minute you go back to the site? The screen reader again. Where do you go from there? So there's things that the overlays should do. They should work with the screen reader companies, with JAWS, and they should give it an ability for the screen reader user: Yeah, I want the overlay company to know that I'm using a screen reader. Again, I know the privacy part, but given that. Having that option for a user to checkbox something that allows these sites to know that, 'cause that will prevent a lot of these weird things from happening. The other one was the memory leaks that users were having was a big one. What I mean by memory leaks, so people understand this, Chrome is what's called a memory hog. It overuses memory. So let's say you have eight gigs of memory. It'll start using what's called your drive memory as well. And everything will start acting slow, including the screen reader. Screen reader will start talking really slowly and you'll start noticing the delay on everything you do, your keyboard, your arrow down. It takes a second to happen. That's because the overlay is also using a lot of your memory and that's killing your machine. Be aware of this. So, you know, these overlay companies need to be aware of that. The positives of overlays. I have one positive that I personally use and that was the line. So when I'm reading something on the page and if there is an overlay to allow there, I could turn on the, what's called a line, like line reader, and I could arrow down and read line by line exactly what I'm looking at. So it gives me a better way of reading through a page. I do enjoy that. I do like that part. So there is benefits and on the survey, we provide other benefits of when it helps users. There is positives. Users that can't read. There's a lot of people that are illiterate, and if a screen reader is there, it could read the page for the user. You're helping that user out because they couldn't read the page. You also have users that are seniors who can't read anymore. They're just, you know, over that age. So you're benefiting seniors. There's so many positives, but there's so many negatives. They need to find the middle ground. They need to actually take their time and take the BS reviews and actually get real reviews of users, of actual users who benefit from the software and don't like the software, but it could at least give you a why, the reasons why. And then use that information to make their technology better. Because I do believe it does have a home. It's not a fix-all, and they shouldn't promise that, either. That's another big, big no-no, in my opinion. They say they'll fix everything. And it's not just one of them that's saying this. They all say this.[Jessica] Yeah.[Norbert] Now they're changing their verbiage a little bit, but they're a tool. They're not a fix. They should be used as a tool. Keep that in mind when you put it on a website. And this is for a lot of companies that are putting this on a website and saying, ah, this is gonna fix everything. No, it's gonna also open a can of worms as well, because your site might be useless with this thing on if it misbehaves and people forget everything's connected. So when you're on a website and your site depends on that overlay tool and that overlay tool is down for some reason. Maintenance, whatever. What do you do? You know, what do you do? So just keep that in mind. Accessibility is best by having actual code changed and fixed, and making sure it's accessible naturally, natively, not by a tool. with the FEDs, FEDs are a key part to making that more accessible site.[Jessica] Thank you so much for this, Norbert.[Norbert] Mm-hmm.[Jessica] I've enjoyed it. I hope you have.[Norbert] Well, it was fun. A little nervous half the time, but... And I'm a talker, so, you know. Yap, yap, yap. So... [Jessica laughs] Thank you for uh,[Jessica] Thank you![Norbert] letting me on and I can't wait to see it.[Jessica] It's gonna be awesome. That's a wrap for this episode of The Outer Circle. We called it that because accessibility can sometimes feel like a closed-off world, like there’s an inner circle of experts and everyone else is stuck on the outside. But that’s not how it should be. We talk to the people doing the work, from seasoned pros to unsung heroes, because their stories help us all see accessibility from a different angle. Sometimes surprising, always insightful. If this resonated with you, follow the show, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, keep breaking barriers.