Guest Paul Rayius, common remediation struggles, testing with a screen reader

In this episode Chad Chelius and Dax Castro discuss what it means to understand the user experience of a screen reader as well as accessibility technology at large. Creating documents and digital media has its challenges, but what if your product does not respond the way you expect it to? Learn about how to adapt your understanding to the end user experience in today's episode. We are also excited to share two new A11y terms just for you! Introducing Chax-ified and Chax-essible! Other topics we cover today include our new partnership with Tamman, Inc, the experience of being an accessibility specialist on the Mac series of M1, M2, and M3 computers, our upcoming classes, CSUN, and more!

In this episode, we unravel nested tag structures. Chad and Dax break down lists, TOC, footnotes, and tables. Learn what the most basic way to create a list structure is and how Dax had to hit the books once again to make sure he wasn't telling tales. Chad talks about footnotes and references and why you might hear "Link Link" in your TOC elements. If you struggle to understand which tags get nested inside others, then you definitely want to listen to this episode!

In this episode, we interview Kelly Swanson and Sherri Smith from the Center for Schools and Communities to understand how Sheri was able to initiate interest in document accessibility and start a successful document accessibility program within their organization. Kelly shared key insights from a manager's perspective that can help others in their quest to implement accessibility at a program level.

In this episode, Dax Castro and Chad Chelius talk about the troubles with creating QR codes and reveal the common mistakes people make when trying to make them accessible. They show you how to create them, how to set the placement correctly, and what your options are when it comes to making accessible QR codes for your documents. Chad even shows how you can use InDesign to make your QR codes right in the program. If you struggle with accessible QR codes definitely tune into this episode!

In this final episode for 2023 we look back at the most frequently asked questions by people just starting out in document accessibility. We also dropped a major announcement about the future of Chax Training and Consulting. So you definitely don't want to miss this episode.

Top 5 Questions:

1. Do Span Tags Matter?
2. Do Container Tags Matter?
3. How Long Should Alt-text Be?
4. Can I have more than one H1 in my document?
5. What is the difference between deleting a tag and artifacting one?

If you felt like we missed any or want to post a final message for the end of the year, please feel free to post in the comments. We read every single one!

In this episode, Chad and Dax discuss the merits of having form fields inside tables. When is it okay? When should you avoid tables as a means of laying out accessible form-based documents? Listen in and you will learn what to ask and how to determine if it is okay to put your form in a table. We also take a quick look at the new PAC 2024 interface and our thoughts on the new release.

Skip koi pond chat @3:42
How to approach gaining accessibility knowlege @5:43 
How long does it take to implement an accessibility workflow into an organization @7:36
What is the best way to implement accessibility in an organization @8:56
The struggles of content creators in PowerPoint @9:58
Setting the Reading Order (Tag Order) in Venngage @10:59
How to convince the decision-maker to give designers the right tools @12:21
Venngage model of a discoverable learning experience @17:13
How to start down the road of accessibility knowledge  @19:23
Venngage leverages AI for generative Alt-text @20:50
How Venngage teaches you about accessibility as you design @26:43
Go vote to fix the latest bug in Acrobat @29:16
How do you balance the workload and accessibility implementation? @33:33 
How much is enough accessibility to not get sued? @37:03  

You have heard us mention Venngage a few times and have featured it on our podcast. Now we thought it would be great to invite Venngage CEO, Eugene Woo on the program to talk about is journey in creating this accessible online design tool. We talk about the struggles and costs of going down the road of accessibility but more importantly, the cost of NOT going down that path. Eugene also discusses how they took the opportunity to teach unfamiliar users about accessibility as they create their documents with the hope of getting more people thinking about accessibility from the start. Definitely great to hear Eugene talk about how they made a comittment to make their design tool accessible and able to produce accessible PDFs.

Chad and Dax take this session to talk about the possibility of having too much accessibility in the form of multiple patterns in pie charts. They discuss the merits of several approaches to making pie charts visually more accessible. Stick around to hear them give out some secret sauce for troubleshooting tables that just don't seem to want to pass accessibility. Their tip might just save you hours of needlessly hunting for the mislabeled property.

Oh, and if you want to skip the koi pond banter, skip ahead 7 minutes. Watch this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-F1VtJyMW34

Are you using accessible color contrast and colorblind-friendly designs? Chad answers the question: "Does it really Matter if I make my designs colorblind compliant?"
Learn some important colorblind statistics and find out who needs to make their designs accessible?

We share some things you can do to make your graphic colors accessible and review the WCAG success criteria 1.4.1 Use of Color. Dax gives you some easy ways to make your maps more accessible and Chad shares the color contrast ratio for Graphics and his preferences for making line graphs more accessible.