In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to accessibility guru Amber Hinds.
Amber talks to us about the importance of website accessibility.
Amber Hinds is the CEO of Equalize Digital, Inc., a Certified B Corp specializing in WordPress accessibility, maker of the Accessibility Checker plugin, and lead organizer of the WordPress Accessibility Meetup and WP Accessibility Day conference.
Through her work at Equalize Digital, Amber is striving to create a world where all people have equal access to information and tools on the internet, regardless of ability. Since 2010, she has led teams building websites and web applications for nonprofits, K-12 and higher education institutions, government agencies, and businesses of all sizes. Equalize Digital is a corporate member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) and a WordPress VIP Agency Partner.
Listen to the episode here.
You can connect with Amber here:
Website: https://equalizedigital.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/heyamberhinds and https://twitter.com/EqualizeDigital
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/equalizedigital
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wordpress.accessibility
WordPress Plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/screen-reader-text-format/
Accessibility Tool: https://theadminbar.com/accessibility-weekly/ambiguous-links/
Transcription:
I am here to introduce you to Amber Hines.
She is the CEO of Equalize Digital Incorporated.
They’re a certified B Corp that specializes in WordPress accessibility.
She’s also the maker of the Accessibility Checker plugin and get this, the lead organizer
of the WordPress Accessibility Meetup and the WordPress Accessibility Day Conference
as well.
Now through her work, she is striving to create a world where all people, just like you, have
equal access to information and tools on the Internet, regardless of their ability.
So since 2010, she has led teams that build websites and applications for nonprofits,
K-12 and higher education institutes, government agencies and businesses of all kinds as well.
But more than that, she’s here with us now.
Amber, thank you so much for joining us.
Seriously, it is such an honor having you on the show.
Thanks for having me, Vince.
I’m excited to be here.
I’m excited to have you here.
And not just because we get to geek out and not just because you and I get to hang out,
which is always a lot of fun.
Like honestly, we were talking before the show, everyone.
We wish that whenever we just jump on a call, we just push record because honestly, we have
so much fun.
But also because I’m excited because we’re going to be talking about website accessibility
and make sure you don’t tune out people.
This is a very, very important topic and it’s not as overwhelming as you think.
But before we kind of dive into that, Amber, give us your backstory.
Tell us how you got to where you are now and why you’re so passionate about what you do.
Yeah.
So I started working.
Well, I worked in marketing in higher ed at universities.
And then when I had my first child, I went out and decided I was going to be a freelancer.
I didn’t want to.
I had to travel when I was doing admissions work for universities.
So I started freelancing, doing marketing and web design and development and all kinds
of things just on my own.
And then in 2015, my husband and I realized, hey, this freelance business I had was pretty
serious and we were going to grow it to be a company.
We were talking about this in our pre-show that didn’t get recorded, but we set a goal
and we said, we’re going to have $30,000 in the business bank account and then he’s going
to quit his day job.
And we set that goal and he was able to give his notice four months later, which was super
exciting.
Yeah.
So I’ve kind of had this journey from being an individual solopreneur to then I worked
with my husband and then we started hiring.
And now I have myself, my husband, we have another equal partner who came on.
He originally was an employee.
And when we realized we were going to really shift and focus exclusively in accessibility,
we transitioned our company to be a corporation instead of an LLC.
And he came on as a partner and we now have investors.
So that’s sort of my business journey.
Yeah.
I love the way you kind of pivoted through all that as well.
And, oh man, I wish everyone could hear some of the other stories behind the scenes, but
we are here to talk about accessibility.
That’s awesome.
Thank you for sharing that.
As I said, we’re talking about website accessibility, but the problem we have is anytime those two
words are put together, everyone’s going to have their own interpretation of what that
means.
Some people are going to think, oh, that means larger font for the visually impaired.
Some people are going to think all sorts of things that I can get to your website.
But give us your definition to make sure we’re on the same page, Amber.
When you talk website accessibility, what does that mean?
The simple definition is websites that are accessible work for everyone on all devices,
including a vast majority or a vast variety, excuse me, of assistive technology.
So this could mean someone who is blind or has very low vision, they’re going to use
a screen reader to read out what’s on a website.
Or it could be someone who’s sighted and they’re deaf.
They need captions or transcripts to listen to, read a podcast, right, because they can’t
hear it.
Oh yeah.
So someone who has limited mobility, they might not use a mouse.
They might use only a keyboard.
They might use an alternative keyboard or they might only use eye tracking.
If you think about someone like Stephen Hawking, who just had eye tracking.
So it’s really trying to reach everyone of all abilities and disabilities.
And generally website accessibility makes it better even for typically abled people
as well.
I love the definition there, although that definition has definitely overwhelmed most
people.
They’re like, wait, how do I make my website work with eye tracking?
How do I make it?
There’s just too much here.
So let’s start from the beginning then and look at anyone here, because most people listening
to this have got their own website.
They’re all coaches.
They’re all entrepreneurs.
They’ve got small businesses, whatever.
They’ve all got their own websites.
How do we know?
How can we tell if there are accessibility problems with our site?
There are actually some really easy free tools out there that you can use to just do a quick
scan of your website and identify problems.
Our accessibility checker WordPress plugin is one, but there’s also browser extensions.
One of the most popular or well-known one is called Wave.
You can install the browser extension or you could just go to wave.webaim.org and put in
your home page or some page on your website and it will run and it will tell you if there’s
errors or things that they call alerts and our plugin, we call them warnings.
Now it’s important to know that not every problem can be found by an automated tool.
And so another good way to do it is manually testing is you could just take your mouse,
turn it off, stick it in a drawer and try to use your website with only your keyboard.
You would use the tab key to move around and you would expect that every link, every button,
every form field, any sort of control, you should be able to get to it by hitting tab.
And then you should be able to use the return key or to open and close things.
You should be able to purchase a product without using a mouse or submit an inquiry form.
So that’s a good way to tell even if you aren’t an expert, if you will.
Okay, that’s made everyone very nervous to use those tools and myself included, by the way,
because you and I talked even in our pre-call before the show that accessibility is something
that’s very important to me.
But I know that my website is not fully accessible to people.
I know that my podcast is not fully accessible to people and it kind of breaks my heart.
But sometimes that is quite a difficult thing to get 100% right.
So even using these tools is going to make me nervous because I’m like, what’s it going
to show?
Oh, no, what am I going to have to change?
That’s not cool.
So talk us through what are some of the common things that we need to be aware of?
What are some of the things that kind of trip us up around accessibility?
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, you’re talking about podcasts, I mean, I think a big one
on that, of course, is having a transcript.
So if you can’t hear or captions on videos, if you’re a YouTuber or someone like that
for other things that can really cause issues on websites are there are a lot of times that
there’s a button that’s not actually behind the scenes coded like a button.
So if you have a carousel or a slider, those little buttons that allow you to go next and
or just skip ahead to a different slide or accordions that open and close those frequently
if they’re not coded right, you can’t get to them with the keyboard navigation menu
sometimes can be really hard to use with only a keyboard or color contrast.
Now, this is one that really anybody can resolve issues with color contrast.
You just want to pick a brand palette where you have a clear color for your text that
stands out from whatever color you put the background on, whether it’s a light background
and dark text or vice versa.
So that actually is very common to have color contrast issues on websites, and it’s a really
easy fix.
You just have to pick different colors and whatever build tools you’re going to say.
I know this one very well because I’m very colorblind.
So I know this one really well.
I remember sitting through, oh, Amber, this will make you cringe, but sat through a presentation
one time and I was sitting there watching this guy standing on stage and I’m thinking,
oh, he’s going to be so embarrassed because he kept referencing the slides behind him.
And they were like just this giant green screen, essentially this dark green screen.
I’m like, oh, poor guy.
They have like red text on the green screen and you couldn’t see it.
Yeah, I couldn’t see anything.
And I’m sitting there and it took me a little while to realize, wait, because he turned
around and he looked at the screen and he’s like, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
And he points to it and I’m like, hang on a minute, I still can’t see anything on that
screen.
So I turned to the person next to me and went, is there writing on there?
I said, yeah, too much writing.
It’s just like nonstop wall of writing.
And I’m like, what color is that writing?
They said, oh, it’s red.
I went, oh crap.
And I couldn’t see anything.
It just looked like a green screen to me.
So I think one in 12 males is colorblind.
And so there are actually there are browser extensions for this color blindly is one that
I like.
Install that and then you just go on your website and you’re like, show me what my website
looks like with this.
Like, there’s different types of colorblindness, but the red, green one, I think, is really
common.
So so, yeah, that would be horrible if someone loaded a website and they could read nothing.
Well, the other thing, too, is that this is the bit people don’t realize is because I’m
colorblind.
So there’s color deficient and colorblind.
You have duternopic, duternopy, duternopy, I can even say the word, protonopic, protonopy
and the other one, the third one, which I can even remember the name, tritonopic.
That’s it.
So because of those three, I’m duternopic, but that means colorblind with a I think it’s
a green red, green skew.
Now, the problem with that is it doesn’t mean that you can’t necessarily see the colors,
right. But if I’m looking at screen, I can’t see the contrast between them at all.
But the moment that you know that there is words on there and that you can’t see them,
your brain is trying to adjust to it.
So I’m now sitting in an auditorium getting a migraine because my brain’s going, I
can’t see anything and it’s trying and my eyes are straining and everything.
And no matter how much I try and tell myself, don’t bother trying to look at it, your
brain’s trying to resolve the conflict there.
So it’s trying to see the words and it just can’t.
And and could you even hear what he was saying and really registered at that point in
time? Now, at that point, sometimes, you know, we’re trying we can only do one thing at
a time. Yeah.
And that’s what they say. Don’t put too many words on your slide.
Either people will listen or they will read.
This guy failed on every front.
Yeah. Oh, not any of that, by the way.
Boring, boring speaker.
It was terrible.
We will not be giving him a shout out.
No, no, no. I did have a talk to him afterwards and said, look, you should probably be
aware I’m colorblind.
But he was like, well, these are my brain colors and people just need to adapt to that.
And I’m like, you can’t adapt to something you can’t see.
And he goes, well, how would a blind person fear in here?
And I said, well, first of all, I said to him, they’ll be bored out of their brains
from the way you talk anyway.
And then I walked off.
I just got really stroppy with it.
Oh, man. I love that.
You’re very brave.
No, I mean, there are ways to give presentations to blind people.
We probably have a whole other episode about just describing and making sure you say.
But you do it with it.
I mean, audio books. Come on.
You can’t have illustrations in audio books.
You can’t have images in audio books.
You have to describe the image.
So it’s not that complex.
But in saying that, though, you talked about podcasts and you and I had this conversation.
And so I love this, by the way.
One of the reasons I was so excited to get Amber on the show is she challenged me to
my core because she said, look, I’m not going to be on your show if you don’t have
transcription of the episode on the show notes.
And I’m like, deal, let’s do this.
But also, I know that transcriptions are very, very difficult with my accent.
Most transcription software like Otter, like even Google documents, when you put the
audio into there, it’s only about 85 percent accurate, which means there’s a huge
amount of time in a 40 minute episode to actually go through and adjust the errors
and everything. However, I have to say, I’m not going to be on your show.
I have discovered Amber and I’m so excited about this.
I’m testing a tool at the moment called Whisper.ai and Whisper is even for my accent
is 99 percent accurate.
And I’m like, I’ve not tried that one.
So I’m going to have to try it.
Yeah, you have to we have a podcast and we just started paying and transcription
because honestly, like I think you have to start weighing and we do this a lot as
entrepreneurs. Like in the beginning, I think we do a lot of like we don’t have a
lot of money, but we have more time.
Yeah. And so we’ll like if I can do that myself, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to
take me two hours to transcribe a 30 minute podcast.
Like I’m going to do it because I don’t want to pay for it.
Right. But I think at some point you hit that balance where you start to realize
your time is money.
Yeah. And so for me, like we ended up in the beginning, we had our content
specialist transcribing them.
And then I’m like, how long is it taking her?
It’s like four hours because she’s not trained.
Yeah. Like the actual people who do it.
A lot of them are like court reporters and stuff, and they’re they have special type
writers or keyboards or whatever.
I think they’re machines.
They’re actually the machines that just type out things.
So they’re not real people in my mind.
They’re robots. Yeah.
But I mean, so I think shifting back just just a little bit on like all of that,
though, like I think it’s important to keep in mind that website accessibility.
The key goal, of course, is to give people with disabilities equal access.
Yes. But the bottom line behind all of it is it makes your website better
or your presentation better for everyone.
And and like a lot of website accessibility, things overlap with SEO.
Yep. And if you do accessibility, it will help your SEO, which gets you
in front of more people.
A lot of it will help with like conversion optimization.
So it could mean you’re making more sales or getting more leads.
And so it is usually we have to get away from the mindset of thinking of
accessibility as an expense or like added time and think of it as an investment
that is going to pay back our business.
That is one hundred percent truth. I love that.
The thing for me, though, the interesting thing is I’m motivated
more by one other thing.
And this is why when you challenged me on that, I was very happy to be
challenged because I’m like, you know what?
You kind of go through, like you said, early days of the podcast.
You’re not making money.
You’re just kind of like, I’m doing this because I’m passionate about it.
So if I was going to do transcripts, I’d do them all myself.
But that’s a lot of effort and a number of other things I’m trying to build.
So I’m like, one day I’ll get to this and then you start making money
and you start making a lot of money and then things start going really well.
But you’re still not doing the right thing.
So getting challenged on that is like, oh, that’s right.
I got I hate this word complacent.
So now is the time to actually shift things and change that.
And for me, yeah, there is a cost involved or there’s an opportunity
cost involved, but either way, it’s the right thing to do.
And that’s why I love being challenged on this.
And I think I may have talked to you.
I can’t remember if we mentioned this, Amber, in our prequel, but
somebody asked me recently what my favorite episode of this show is.
And I thought I wouldn’t be able to answer that because I’ve had so many
incredible people on here and so many people have gone on to become my best
friends, and it’s just amazing.
But there are two episodes that challenged my own bias
when I didn’t even know I had bias.
And this was a very interesting one where both the episodes
were with people with autism.
And I am very strong neurodiversity.
So, you know, because I have ADHD and RSD and suffer from that quite a bit.
So or deal with that quite a bit.
So I thought this is a very important conversation.
And these people, you know, one of them in particular, Hayley Moss,
she is an advocate for neurodiversity.
So I thought this is a conversation that needs to happen.
So I went, you know, booked her in and I was getting ready for the show.
And in my mind, I’m thinking this is going to be hard work
because autism often can’t read social cues.
So I thought this is going to be hard to flow between the two of us.
But I thought, you know what? It’s worth it.
I’m going to push through. I’m going to do this.
I got to the episode and discovered that I have bias
because it was the easiest podcast recording I’ve ever done in my life.
It flowed so well.
She’s in such an intelligent woman, an incredible speaker.
And the two of us bounced off each other perfectly.
And I got to the end of that and thought, wow, I was completely wrong.
And then realize, oh, wow, hold on.
That’s bias, because lucky for me, I value neurodiversity.
But for somebody else, they may see that and go, this is going to be hard work.
And it’s not worth the effort.
And so therefore, and they would have not even had her as a guest. Exactly.
And then she turned out to be a phenomenal guest. Precisely.
And genuinely, one of my favorites, we had so much.
I’ve never I think I hang on the episode.
Oh, that’s great.
And the other one is Jonathan Stewart, and he’s a productivity specialist
autistic. And both of them were just absolutely phenomenal guests.
And I hung on.
You can almost hear me hanging on every word in there and then giggling away
at some of the jokes and things like that as well.
So this is why I do think everyone listening to this don’t like.
Honestly, we do have this negative aspect of accessibility
where we think this is a cost or this is effort or this is something
that’s going to be, you know, like it’s not for me.
It’s for somebody else.
But you’re wrong.
It is something that is very important.
It’s the right thing to do.
But it also is massive opportunity for you.
It’s an opportunity to challenge yourself, your bias.
But also, as Amber said, there’s actually a potential opportunity
cost there anyway.
You could be missing out on sales or search engine optimization results.
You know, so this is awesome.
People with disabilities have jobs and they have disposable income
and they can spend money with businesses and they’ll choose, right.
They’ll choose to spend it with the person who makes it easiest for them.
Exactly, exactly.
And all of us have our own things about like
neurodiversity is a great example of that.
Most of the education system is not catered towards someone with ADHD.
And I found school very difficult.
I wagged most of my school, which basically I never turned up
to school most of the time.
I would just turn up for the exams, sit the exams and ace them.
And back then, we could get away with that.
You can’t really do that in today’s education system.
Yeah. But but you wonder why people are struggling in school.
And I’m thinking because you’re not tailoring it towards them.
And how many times do we do that as entrepreneurs?
How many times do we miss out on potentially great clients,
not just well-paying clients, but great clients,
because we’re not tailoring our systems or our website
or our process towards them. That’s super important.
Oh, man. Oh, there you go.
I feel I feel like we’ve gone on a soapbox now.
It’s a good soapbox to be on.
Yeah. So talk us through there.
So obviously, there’s a range of different things
that we can be doing on our website to to make it more accessible.
And you’ve covered off a lot of really cool ones there.
But what can we do for anyone listening to this?
That’s going, OK, Amber, I am not technical.
I can’t go in and code my website in a way that makes it very easy.
But what are some of the things that they can do
to still bring accessibility into their site?
Yeah. So there are definitely some things that require code,
but there are a lot.
Actually, a large amount of problems get introduced in just like the content.
So whether you’re using WordPress and a theme out of the box
or Squarespace or Shopify or something like that,
you just want to be sort of thoughtful about how you’re adding content.
So some important things that are easy to control is the heading order.
So you do not select your heading because of the size it is
or the font or the color,
because sometimes the H4 is a different color than the H2.
It’s really important to use headings in the correct numerical order
to build an outlined structure for your page.
I feel like most people are going, ouch.
Yeah. But it’s easy to go change, right?
Now, sometimes you might realize, boy, the H2 in my theme is really big.
Hopefully you’re using a builder that allows you to go in and make it smaller.
Yeah. Right.
And maybe you were skipping that because you didn’t like how big it was.
But but like that is a really easy example.
Another one that can make a huge impact
is having meaningful links on your page.
So don’t link the word here.
You know, contact us here.
And then you link the word here, right?
Like link, contact us or just contact us here
if you really want to include here.
But like everything should be in there.
Learn more is one we see all the time.
Like every home page is this learn more, learn more, learn more.
Learn more about what? Where is this going to go?
So you really want to have meaningful links as much as possible.
In your content, we talked about color contrast
for people who are blind, having alternative text on your image.
That’s like a a phrase or a sentence that describes what the image is.
And every website builder, social media even has this, too.
And if you’re thinking about marketing on social media, fill in the alt text.
So and that’s easy to do without code.
And it can really help.
And it helps your SEO, too.
Yeah, I was going to say everything you do.
This is what I love about this.
Everything you’re talking about with accessibility is also aligned with SEO
because like headings, for example, making sure your headings in the right order.
That is great SEO work.
Alt text on your images is an absolute must for SEO as well.
And the meaningful links.
Now, question for you, and I don’t actually know the answer to this
because I’m not up to date with what the kind of latest practices.
But when you’re putting meaningful links and this is just good practice
anyway of making sure it’s not learn more or click here,
but actually having, you know, if it was learn more, we learn more about our program here.
Now, as best practice to then have the hyperlink after that,
like a link to the website after that, or to actually hyperlink the text itself.
Well, you would probably want to hyperlink the text.
This is where we could get like quasi-technical
because sometimes in a design, the visible text,
you don’t have space for like in a in a grid of blog posts
where you have the title and a little excerpt and you can read more.
You don’t really want to have read more of blog post title
because it could be really long.
Like you want to have read more.
So a lot of like at least in WordPress, the core WordPress
post block does this and most of the good builders out here do this.
They’ll actually add hidden screen reader text.
So the visible text will still only say read more.
And then there’ll be hidden text.
And I could probably send you a link if you wanted to put it in the show notes.
It’s really easy to do this manually also.
And in WordPress, there’s a cool plugin, which I didn’t make,
that allows you to very easily in the editor without being technical,
add hidden screen reader text to anything.
So you can have all of your links or buttons say learn more,
but then it would say about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But it wouldn’t show up visually on the website.
Oh, I love the sound.
They definitely send us that link.
We’ll put it in the show notes.
Everyone love that.
Um, oh man, this is, this is so powerful.
I love this.
So we’ve got the heading order.
We’ve got meaningful links.
And what about navigation on the site and that as well?
Because obviously this is a problem for some people,
but how should we approach navigation?
So, um, well, one, you want to make sure your navigation
works with the keyboard only.
The other thing to think about is for some people who have low vision,
they’re going to be zooming in on your website.
So what happens if you zoom your website in 200% in your browser?
Uh, you’re usually going to get your mobile nav, which is fine and normal,
but you need to make sure your mobile nav works with the keyboard only.
Um, right.
Because some people might be getting the mobile nav, not on a touch screen
device, um, so that’s tabbing through and being able to hit the return key
to follow a link and load.
Um, you want to make sure your, your dropdowns open.
This is where it gets a little hard.
Like it, depending upon how you build your website, that might not be in the
realm of control for a, um, a non-technical person.
So this is where you might want to start to explore, um, if you have a developer,
if you don’t have a developer, like finding someone who is versed in
accessibility that can help you maybe just solve some of those problems.
Maybe you still continue doing most of the things in your website, but you
just bring them in to fix a few key things.
Um, or sometimes it’s easier to rebuild, um, which sounds daunting, but
usually I always say like, draw the line there on how old is your website?
Because if your website is over three years old and, and you have other
like optimization or, um, you know, conversion kind of goals, like rebuilding
might make sense because you can fix accessibility and you can improve like
the speed, like the page feed, how fast it loads or other things at the same time.
I’m literally just going through that at the moment and by going, oh man, is
that the point where you’re sticking up Band-Aids on a site and then you’re
like, at some point I just need to rebuild the whole thing.
So I will be doing that in the next, uh, probably six months.
Tell you a secret.
I want to do it to mine too.
I don’t know if that ever stops, right?
No, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t.
Um, the other, the other challenge when you’re talking about the technical
aspects there around the nav is, uh, obviously different browsers also.
Um, so obviously we try and we try and build for, you know, the majority
browsers, so obviously Chrome being the large one there, um, and probably,
uh, I was going to call it Bing, um, whatever the Microsoft one is, I
always forget because I tuned it out.
Yeah, that’s it.
Yeah.
I should actually think more about using Edge.
Yeah.
Edge is actually easier because Edge is based on the same browser
that Chrome is.
So it does a better job.
The one that always kind of throws me off is we occasionally have clients
that are like, well, we use Safari for everything.
And I’m just like, I’m on a Mac, like, but I still, I’m like, I never use.
Yeah, exactly.
But that’s one that I would check.
Yeah.
Look at your, look at your website.
Um, zoom in 200, 300, 400%.
Um, this is another thing you want to make sure if you zoom in that the
text, you know, wraps and resizes.
Normally you get them a whole mobile.
Yeah.
But you don’t want a word to go off the page or right.
It should stay all visible.
Even when you zoom in, you know, check it on mobile phones.
Um, and this is where color contrast can come in, like helping everyone.
If your website is hard to read on a mobile phone outside on a sunny day,
you probably need to do more with your color contrast.
Yeah.
I was going to say, to be fair with someone like me, my, my eyesight’s
getting worse as I get older, obviously I need reading glasses, but using a
mobile in general, it’s typical, whether it’s a sunny day or an overclass day,
overcast day, I’m like, nah, oh dear.
But I will say, yeah, when we’re talking about browsers, um, I still remember
the days and the first time I’ve kind of, I’ve always been quite inclusive.
I’m trying to make sure that, you know, we cater for as many people as possible.
But the one time I put my foot down working in the international education
sector and you would get these universities and secondary schools and
everything saying, oh, but the website doesn’t work for me.
Oh, what browser are you using?
Into the Explorer five.
You’re like, no.
And they go, can you just make it work for internet?
No, I cannot.
It’s a security.
Luckily it’s gone now.
So yeah, I know, but even when it was a massive security hazard and
Microsoft saying, don’t use it, these schools were still using that browser.
And they’re like, but it’s broken on my website.
Good.
You don’t deserve to be on the site now.
So I will say, I mean, we went through a time where we would build something
that would alert people if they visited in an Explorer, but one thing that is
probably worth noting is that people with disabilities, not all of them, but
many of them are typically slow adopters of new technology.
They might be using outdated browsers or versions because it’s something that
they’re used to and they know how it works.
Um, so they might not always be the first one to be like, let’s run the update
and get the most recent version.
Cause I have no idea if it’s going to break something for me.
And now I can’t use the web at all.
Um, so, so you do sort of want to be backwards.
Compatible a little bit.
Obviously I wouldn’t say you have to be many, many, many versions backward
compatible, but that is one thing that’s worth being aware of.
Yeah.
I mean, there are tools, there are websites out there where you can just, if
you just Google, um, test my website in different browsers, um, there are
websites out there where they’ll show you what it looks like in, in Safari
or in Chrome and things you won’t necessarily get the interaction with the
website, but at least show you if the text wraps around, if the color contrast
work and things like that as well.
So I love this.
Um, see now talking about accessibility, the problem with talking to you, Amber
is, um, this is too accessible and the time flies very, very quickly.
We’re already at the part of the show where I need to ask you the same
question I ask everyone, which is what are your three practical tips that
you advise every entrepreneur do right now?
Three practical tips.
Yep.
Should I be related to accessibility or should they be anything?
You know what?
You can go on any tangent you want, Amber.
This is your time to show.
Any tangent I want.
All right.
Well, so I’m going to go back to my, I, my challenge that everyone should
use their website with only a keyboard and do whatever important thing you
want, because that will be very eye-opening.
Um, but beyond that, like other, other tips for entrepreneurs.
Um, I would say having, I, I kind of talked a little bit about my business
journey and how I’ve gone from solopreneur, um, to being an LLC, to
then a corporation, which I know different countries have different
language for this, but I think one thing we figured out bringing on investors
is really figuring out what your long-term goal is and what the correct
business structure is for that sooner rather than later is really helpful.
Very helpful.
Yeah.
Because I’m doing that after the fact, very messy.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and we ended up our, we got, we got, I mean, we realized it before we
really were like, okay, we’re going to go bring on investors, but it was
probably later than we had to, because we had to do a lot of finagling with
money, which was not great and like new bank accounts and everything, but
switching to a corporation for us made it way easier for us to bring in our
investors are in the Netherlands.
They’re not here in the United States.
So I think like, think bigger than you maybe think you need to earlier, and
that will save you a lot of headache.
Um, so that was the second tip.
And now I’m like losing on my third.
Maybe I can think of another.
Well, I was going to say you’ve, you’ve already given us about a dozen different
tips within the episode itself, but maybe give us one that’s accessibility related.
So another one that’s accessibility related.
Um, you know, the other thing, this is sort of like a secret tip that is quasi
accessibility rated related or not, but, um, hot jar is a website that you can
use to record user sessions on your website.
Um, they have a free, but it’s, it’s very limited now.
So it’s worth paying, even if you only do it for a month, like the 40 bucks
or something to record more sessions.
That is almost like a good way.
If you aren’t yet at the point where you’re ready to hire random users, to
test your website for you, you can go watch how people move around your site.
And that will give you a big, like going back to navigation.
Of course we talk technical, but sometimes it’s just about making sure
you have the right words in your navigation menu and the right choices
and not too many choices and, um, install hot jar, watch people move around
your website, you will probably make a lot of changes to your content and
your structure and your calls to action.
Once you do that, we used to use lucky orange, um, just some of it’s a hot
jar and also crazy we’ve used that before, but it’s, it’s not even just an
accessible, well, it kind of is an accessibility thing, but it’s also
going to open your eyes to other issues.
Uh, cause we found this Amber with, um, we had a form that would, we had a drop
off in conversion at some point in the form and we’re like, why is this happening?
Like, why are we doing this?
So we actually use lucky orange went through.
And what we noticed was all these people, we look at the recordings of them.
So it’s all anonymized.
You’re not breaching privacy of people, but you’d see when they were
clicking on the page and we’re like, why are they not clicking
on the actual button itself?
This is crazy.
So then we looked at, cause you can tell what device they’re on.
And we realized they were all on the Android phone, all
the people that would drop off.
So we opened up our Android phone.
We get to that page and realize where’s the button.
Oh, it’s hiding behind something that’s off screen.
So nobody could actually, it was insane.
So it actually, that ended up making us quite a lot of money fixing that one
era and that era had been there from the beginning.
So most people didn’t even know that they existed.
See, I knew getting you on the show was going to be amazing, Amber.
Um, cause well, first of all, you and I get to catch up, which is always a lot
of fun, uh, but also this is such an important topic and I think you’ve
opened the eyes of a lot of people and in a way that’s not overwhelming.
I think a lot, a lot of you listening to this right now, you’ve got some very
practical things that you can do to bring accessibility into the website.
And like we said, there’s many reasons why you need to do this, right?
One of those is actually financially and from a search engine optimization
perspective, you could benefit from this.
But more than that, it’s the right thing to do.
And as entrepreneurs, and I know all of you listening to the show, your
heart centered entrepreneurs, you actually care, you care about your
audience, you care about people.
And this is one of the ways to show you care is to create an environment where
everybody feels like they, they are equal and everyone feels like they have.
And everyone’s welcome.
Yeah.
So this is awesome.
So Amber, thank you so much for joining us now.
I’m going to put links to everywhere you can connect with Amber in the
show notes for this episode.
So you know what to do.
Go to chasingtheinsights.com look for Amber smiling face.
Notice that all of the transcription of the episode is there as well.
Thank you very much.
But also you’re going to see a bunch of hyperlinks there, but you’re going to see
links there too, where you can connect with Amber on social media.
I highly encourage you to do that.
She’s awesome.
But also you’re going to see links to the 30% off sale because global
accessibility awareness day is coming up on May the 18th.
So I said to Amber, we’re going to make sure your episode is live before then.
And therefore we’ll put in the 30% off sale as well.
So make sure you go and check that out.
Amber, thank you so much for joining us here.
Seriously.
It’s been an absolute privilege having you on the show.
Thanks, Vince.
It’s been really fun.
It’s been a lot of fun and challenging as well.
I’ll be honest.
It’s a little bit of those where I’m like, Oh damn it.
I don’t want to do that on my site.
Cause it means it’s going to highlight that I need to make changes.
I know it’s, it’s, it’s hard.
I feel like, you know, I hate to have people listen to my episode or talk to me
and feel like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m horrible or I’m failing.
And I don’t think it’s that.
So what I always like to say, like, I want to leave on a positive note,
which is that it’s a journey and you could, you don’t have to fix everything
overnight, but if you like start, like, what is one thing I can do today?
Yes.
You know, can I fix my ambiguous links on my own page?
Right?
Yeah.
I love that.
You can do one thing at a time.
Yep.
Awesome.
Well, there you go, everyone.
See, you can do one thing at a time.
I love that.
So go and check out the show notes for this episode.
Click on all those links.
You’re not going to regret it.
Honestly, as I said, Amber is super intelligent, but also incredibly nice
person and you’ll do well to have more Amber in your life.
So go and click on those links.
Plus if you haven’t already reached out and give that subscribe or follow
button to push that way you notified every time there’s a new episode, but
more importantly, you don’t miss out on the gold that you just heard right now.
And I’m serious.
When I tell you this has been gold, go back, listen to this episode again,
wait till you finish this one, obviously, but go back, listen to it again,
grab a pen and paper, write down some notes and act on those notes.
It is going to transform your business.
I’m just putting that out there now.
Plus if you haven’t already, give that subscribe or follow button to push.
Now, my friends, that is the formal part of the show out of the way, right?
And I know you’re all buzzing right now.
You’re all going, oh man, I need to go and check out my website.
Need to go and connect with Amber everywhere I can.
Need to go and check out that sale.
Yep.
You have to do all of those things.
But first I want you to pause for a moment.
I want you to be present and I want you to hear something because this is something
that I was going to say you should hear, but no, it’s something you need to hear
right now and I can guarantee it’s something that you haven’t heard enough in
your life and that is the fact that you, my friend, are an extraordinary human being.
You really are.
Right.
And I know you’re rolling your eyes and I know you’re going, Oh, but Vince, you
don’t know me, you don’t know my backstory, you don’t know the mistakes I’ve
made, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You’re right.
I don’t know any of those things and also don’t care because it is fact and it is
truth that you, my friend, are extraordinary.
And there are so many reasons why you are, but I’m going to highlight one right now.
I’m going to give you a reason that’s going to prove to you without a shadow of a
doubt, just how amazing you actually are.
You see, think about this, think about what you’re doing.
You’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business owner, an author, a creator, a founder,
whatever you want to call yourself.
You’re one of a very small, very select group of humans on this planet that have
the courage, that have the tenacity, that have the passion, the creativity, and
the slight amount of craziness to actually birth something new into this world.
And I want you to think about that.
If you don’t feel extraordinary, if you don’t feel amazing, think about what
you’re actually doing as an entrepreneur.
You are taking something that does not exist.
This is like an idea or a seed, a concept, an idea.
You’re taking this abstract thing that doesn’t exist and you’re literally
calling it into existence.
You are birthing it into this world.
Now, first of all, that’s freaking awesome.
Secondly, that makes you extraordinary.
So on behalf of both Amber and myself, we just want to wish you all of the
health, all of the wealth, all of the happiness, the success, and the love
that you so rightfully, and I do mean rightfully deserve.
Before you run away, I just want to say one other thing to you, my friend.
You are completely, utterly unique.
And all of us as entrepreneurs, we go through very similar journeys in a lot
of cases, and we go through similar challenges, but I’m telling you now that
you are completely, utterly unique and you are also worthy.
You are worthy of success.
You are worthy of wealth.
You are worthy of happiness, of fulfillment, and you’re most
definitely worthy of love.
Please never, ever forget that.
Now, this is Chasing the Insights.
You, my friend, are awesome.
I’m Vince Warnock and I’ll see you in the next episode.
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