Hello, and welcome to the Theory of Marketing Relativity podcast. I'm Jess Burton, a marketing specialist here at Epic Marketing Consultants Corporation. Let's talk all things marketing and merchandising with our Epic team. Today, my guest on our podcast is our very own Epic woman in charge, Nancy Dibert. Welcome, Nancy, back to the podcast.
Nancy:Hi, Jess, thanks for the re invitation.
Jess:No problem. We always love having you on because it's like, I always get excited because I'm like, Oh, I get to spend time with Nancy.
Nancy:I wish my family felt that same way.
Jess:You telling me they don't? I'm sure your granddaughter feels that way. She probably thinks you're the most amazing person on the planet.
Nancy:Well, that's what I think of her. So
Jess:that's how I feel about my grandmother. So I can only...
Nancy:aw
Jess:All that fun stuff aside, we are here to talk about ADA compliance.
Nancy:We are; what a segue.
Jess:I know I, I don't know how you segue into ADA compliance.
Nancy:You don't.
Jess:Um, so give us a neat in a little bow version of what exactly is ADA and what is ADA compliance.
Nancy:So ADA is the Americans with Disability Act. And when we're talking about ADA compliance, in particular, we, for our purposes, today, we're going to be talking about their accessibility on, say, a website. So your website is your place of business, even for your credit union. That's where you do a lot of your business. And the ADA says that you have to be accessible to people with disabilities. A lot of people think that that just means visually impaired, so blind, but it could also mean that they have low vision, it could also mean deaf, it could mean hard of hearing. It even could mean that they have problems that they can't use a mouse, so that they have to use an assistive device for like a keyboard. So there are multiple different disabilities that we have to really plan for, so that they have access to our digital online experience with our credit union. So it's making sure that anything we put up there digitally, that they are able to use.
Jess:That is a whole bucket of information. Um, cuz I definitely see where you are where like, I think a lot of people think a ADA compliance is hard of hearing or blind. I think that's kind of where everybody's like, oh, people need to see people need to hear, but don't always think about all the in betweens.
Nancy:Exactly. So what if someone has a broken arm?
Jess:Exactly
Nancy:They can't use that mouse, then they have an assistive assistive device where they use their keyboard. So if your menu if your navigational structure on your website can't be done with a tab key on a keyboard, then it's not compliant.
Jess:I'm like sitting here with my jaw open. Because I think about all the times that I use, like, Command K to like insert, link into a document or use like Command C to copy and then Command V to paste, like, never actually thinking that like, Oh my gosh, this is like assistive technology for people who need it.
Nancy:Right, exactly.
Jess:Um, so when did the, I don't know the correct term, when did the when did ADA compliance become a bigger focus, in I guess the marketing compliance world?
Nancy:A few years ago, a suit was brought against Domino's Pizza of all things. But yeah, I know, by someone who said that they weren't able to place an online order. And at first, it was ruled for the plaintiff. And Domino's was going to have to pay of course, the leg..., not just the legal fees, but then punitive damages. And then more recently, that was reversed. And then again, then that was reversed. So kind of who knows at this point. But it really focused on not just the legality of it, that credit unions and credit unions were really targeted two or three years ago, at the end of the year, by a firm in California, Pacific travel attorneys that I will leave unnamed. That they just they went they would go state by state and we watched them come up a map. They would they would sue every credit union in the state of Florida, and they would say that they had someone in California who was not able to use that website. When the person that they said that they were representing did not even have standing. Because they couldn't become a member. But anyway, that turned into the whole legal piece of it. But then really that what that helped to do is move the conversation forward of "as credit unions, we really need to be there for our members. It's not just a matter of following the rules and playing by the laws. But we really want to make sure that our digital storefront as a user, our digital credit union front is accessible to all of our members, regardless if they are visually impaired or hearing impaired or movement impaired."
Jess:Yeah, I think definitely within the credit union world, it's super important. I, I can't believe some people would like, sue people from others, I guess there's always icky, iffy people everywhere in the world.
Nancy:I was going to say icky. Yes, you did. Ick
Jess:Ew. Um, but yeah, I think I, I always I think we've made a lot of progress in becoming more ADA compliant to things. And I think, especially for credit unions as financial institutions that hold our money. I know, I tell people all the time that like one of the, one of the parts of our job here at Epic, having so many credit union clients is that like we we understand that, like, there are hardly any days they're closed, they have to be available to their customers and their members where they're at. So if they're, you know, deaf, or if they're blind, or if they're in a wheelchair, they need assistive technologies, it's available to them. I always I think of it from like a social media perspective of like, did I add my alt text to that image description? On Twitter and LinkedIn? Yeah, it is so much more than just that. And now I'm curious, because I think it's fascinating that someone would sue credit unions. Yeah. If you're not ADA compliant, what are some of the like repercussions that can happen?
Nancy:Well, first is that your member is not able to access your site or to use your site as they they need to. So we need to make sure that we have those alt tags that you just mentioned on any any images, and that the alt tag actually represent what's on the image. So if we have a picture of a credit card, it says, "credit card," not, "we h ve here the best" no, we actual y want to describe what th t picture is. Not just it's he file name, that doesn't work I see that all the time; we a so need to really be sure that we look at contrast, because peo le think well, it's the blind re going to have read ng technologies. But those with ow vision, they have problems w th contrast, they're actua ly looking at it themselves, but we need to make sure our co or contrast. So if you're putt ng text on top of an image, or e en text on a plain background, ut there's not enough contra t, then they're going to h ve problems seeing that. It me ns that any video that we put up there that we put subtitles on for the hard of hearing or f r the deaf, it means that our me u is navigatable with our tab. I means that any PDF document i has also been put through to ake sure that it can be read by ssistive assistive tec nologies as well. So there's mul iple pieces to this. What if the e's a form on the website, and they someone can't fill it out because they can't get to it bec use they don't have that mou e. So we really have to thi k about all of those things. Thi k about a form for someone who an't read it, it has to be able to be read to them. And then it has to say, "and this but on does." And they even have to know that there's a button th re. So it doesn't just it's ju t not saying "submit" we have o say, and here's a button for ubmit. So you really have to hink about it holistically. So got off of a little bit of the hy, I wanted to give that background there. And and the the repercussions. Number one is that we want our members to have access. And number two, that there are legal repercussions. There are financial repercussions for suits for not being able to access and it is still going to continue to wind its way through the court system to say what can and cannot be adjudicated and levied for fines But let's not take thos chances
Jess:Exactly. Let's all be proactive instead of reactive. Correct. Although I feel like now we're all reactive because someone made a big deal about it.
Nancy:Oh yes. Oh yes. So like December of I think it was 2018. It might have been 2017. December was just, well, December's always kind of crazy. With all of those suits coming in one, I mean, it was just a snowball, suit after suit. That it was just, it was mind boggling that they literally came up state by state starting with Florida.
Jess:So how do you? How did like I mean, obviously, white on black is very contract is contractual a word? Or did I just make that up?
Nancy:Just kind of made that up.
Jess:obviously like, white on black and black and white is there is a big contrast. But how do you, what tools do you use to kind of analyze how A like, ADA compliant is it? Like, is it a sliding scale? Or is it like, nope, you either are or you
Nancy:There is a scale, there's double A or triple A. So double aren't. A means that you're almost all the way there. And right now the ADA is required. Well, I'm not going to use the required you can, if you could see me I'm doing my air quotes requiring the double A. Triple A means tha it's like picture perfect, whic is kind of funny if you're usin the word picture, and it's ADA Anyway. Um, so there is tha scale, we want to get to tha double A compliance. personally use a wave checker And it's by AIM, it's a fre Chrome plugin, called Wave AIM And it, you just click th t button when you're on a pag , and it right there tells y u anything and everything that s either a contrast issue, or a structural issue, and then y u can go line by line, it ev n shows you in the code, where y u have problems. Now, I don't me n to make that sound easier th n it is because it is not easy o fix those things. But it giv s you that idea. There's also t AIM, AIM is a contrast chec er where you can actually put y ur two different colors in the eb rgbs codes for those colors. nd you can see "Do I need the contrast that we need for ei her double A or triple A," a d it gives you it all right the e in one handy dandy little char , as soon as you put those tw RGB color
Jess:So there's a way to do it, after you've launched a website. And there's a way to do it in the process of launching or just I use a website, but like branding, when you're looking at your brand colors, like picking, you know, the comp, the complementary colors that will help make your contrast greater.
Nancy:Do you know today, for a client, I was running an ADA audit, and it came back that it failed for red text on a white background. And I thought, well, something's wrong here. Red on white is high contrast.
Jess:Yeah.
Nancy:But it was the tone of red had too much. It was just a little on the pink. I mean, it was just a little on the pink side. But based with that, and on the actual size of the font, it did not pass. So there's multiple pieces to this. It's not just this straight line.
Jess:Absolutely. It's funny that you mentioned like size of font. Um, yesterday, Sheryl had me look at something. And I have a very large monitor. And I have corrective lenses, with my corrective lenses, I have 20/20 vision. There was no way. So I made it full screen single page. There was I still couldn't read the smallest font on this on the magazine link that she sent me. I was like, I can't read this. And I have air quotes, perfect vision. Right. And I found it very interesting because they have all like the I mean, I don't know, aside from readers and stuff, but I could make it one page, I can make it the entire size of my monitor. And I still couldn't read it. And she was like, You know what, I'm just going to scrap it because I don't want to send people to a link that is inaccessible. If they're not if they don't have like a magnifying glass.
Nancy:Exactly. And that's really good thinking on both your and yours, and Sheryl's part, because we don't want to send anyone to a link, whether it's for our one of our credit union clients or one of our other clients, where it's just not accessible. So I'm really proud of both of you.
Jess:Well thank you. It's funny how things pop up in our day to day work world and they all overlap.
Nancy:Really, and I needed to say seriously do
Jess:So with ADA compliance, how let me think how to ask this question...How do you weave it into like website creation or even just like digital. I know a lot of our clients have newsletters and they're available online. So people are they're in their email boxes, or they're online so they can access them from the websites. How do you weave the compliance into the creation of these medias forms of media media medium.
Nancy:For websites, it's really at the very beginning. So looking at the ADA issues come right in at the very beginning, when we're talking about design, when we're talking about structure, when we're talking about navigation. And when we're talking about the colors, and sometimes even the branding. We really have to have that that sometimes difficult discussion. Yes, your logo is great, and you love it. However, because it has to have, it has to be a ADA compliant. So for a website, we it, it's part of that conversation from step one. And if we're looking at a redesign or a relaunch, it really is part of that, from the beginning. For our printed media that we put online for like a newsletter, we save it in a PDF, PDF format that is readable by assistive technology. For anything that we put on social as you know, image wise, we make sure that it has the alt tags, any video has had the what are those called the closed captioning, captions. Yes. And I that's pretty much we just make sure that everything we put up there is readable. Oh, email. So email, even on an email, and everybody misses this, stop missing this thing, stop missing this. If you put an image in your email and you use a like, say Constant Contact, go into your library in Constant Contact, go into your image. And say that you want to give that image a description because then guess what? That serves as the alt tag when it's served to someone who is visually impaired and uses a screen reader, they can read your email and they can tell what your image is. In there, you have to dig for it, it is not easy to find, but it's in the library, and then go into those images and put in the description. Put in the description that will come as the alt tag.
Jess:I feel like that should be way more easily accessible to those of us creating content, than, and constant contact makes it.
Nancy:Agreed.
Jess:Well I, one of the things and I we everybody here knows that my favorite social media platform is Instagram. Um, one of the things that like I've noticed about Instagram is that like, if you're on the native platform, and you're posting, when you're finished posting, it gives you the option to edit it to add alt text. But if you don't go back to your post to like edit it, you might not ever add alt text to your image, which I'm like, that's a little sheisty. I feel like you're like trying to be, you know, part of the part of the ADA compliant party but like you're doing the bare minimum.
Nancy:Right, exactly. They're not at that double A they're at the single leg which doesn't count.
Jess:It's like your participation ribbon.
Nancy:Exactly. And it really does make it more difficult for the creators to make sure that their content is ADA compliant. And that it's it's enjoy. It's, it's able to be enjoyed by everyone.
Jess:Yes, I spent a good chunk of time messing with some different apps because I have noticed it's funny, like we don't really talk about TikTok. But it is funny to watch that a lot of people have said like, you know, captions would be really helpful, and videos especially ones where you're just recording it like live like you would a Snapchat or Instagram Facebook story, a TikTok and there are so many apps now that you can record in the app, and it's sized for your Instagram story or TikTok but it when you're done recording it, it automatically auto populates the closed captions for you. And you can change the fonts you can change the colors you can make them pretty you can edit them, but I was just like it's interesting to see that shift on other platforms and in other ways than just you know the I don't say traditional but like websites and emails but to see other platforms and other ways of digital media trying to like catch up with the time.
Nancy:The exact words I was going to use was catch up.
Jess:I've it's funny because I feel like in Digital Marketing and in this whole sphere, it's really all just everybody's playing catch up, things are changing so fast that everybody is just sprinting to the finish line as the finish line keeps moving further and further away.
Nancy:Yep, this goalposts keep moving. And what I want you to realize is that you are so on the cutting edge of it. Jess you are one of the few that are actually the impetus. You're moving those goalposts, you are so good at what you do here with Epic and in everything, that being at that cutting edge and at that forefront you're one of those that are moving the posts.
Jess:I appreciate that. Yeah, I think that it's social, digital, anything. I was just telling a client the other day, who was it? I don't know, if so many zoom calls, I don't remember, I was telling someone the other day that like from, like a good measure for us is like the beginning of the pandemic until now. How much stuff has shifted, how much stuff has changed, how much of our jobs have evolved so quickly? Because it has forced everyone to get with the times.
Nancy:Exactly.
Jess:I think I tell I tell everybody all the time when we're talking about like some of our clients as I'm like, Oh, well, when we talk to this client about this, you can just give them the information. And they'll either say yes or no. But then there are some people are like, no, we're gonna have to like sit down on a call with them for like 30 to 45 minutes and like, thoroughly explain like how this works and why this works. Because their idea process is not as elastic as some other.
Nancy:Exactly. And as human beings, I think we find that across everything. I think maybe we're more attuned to it, because we expect, I don't know if we actually realize that they don't have the same skill set we do, or the same knowledge or depth that we do in some things where their knowledge is, is in other things. And I know for me, it'll be like, oh, yeah, just do it this way. And they, they're like, what? And then is that go back and go, oh, wait, let me explain this. Yeah, and I, you know, like when it comes to SEO, I throw out those terms and like, hey, we've got a redirect chain going on here. Let's get that fixed. And it's like, What now? Go back and say, okay, let me, let's have this conversation And let me explain it. And find that it's usuall miscommunication on my part tha I'm not understanding. The don't have that jargon. And have a really bad habit of usin jargon as a shortcut. You know it's sitting there an explaining it.
Jess:Yeah, it's funny you mention that, because I remember. Oh, my God, was it last year? Yeah, it was last year, because we're in 2021. Going over, I remember talking to someone about something. And they were like, yeah, we were actually talking about ADA compliance. And I was like, Well, why don't you just brighten the picture? And she's like, What do you mean? I'm like, Well, if we make the picture brighter, it makes the blue contrast more, right, we can just brighten the picture. And like me being having a photography background, like I knew that I will just make the picture whiter.
Nancy:Right.
Jess:And she was like, I didn't even think about that. Like, yeah, I was like, that's why it's always helpful to work in groups.
Nancy:Exactly. You get that mind bend or you know, the communal brain.
Jess:Exactly. And especially with I feel like with, like ADA compliance, too, you do have to get creative because there are, we do have clients where I like their logos, or not at all, anything that I would call ADA compliant, which I think is why like we advise everybody, you should have a white all white logo, and you should have an all either black logo, or like if navy blue is one of their colors. A couple clients who have like a dark navy blue, because that's one of their brand colors. They have a dark navy blue logo. But like that's one of those things where it's like, it's not necessarily breaking your brand. It's just we've, we've made it a more fluid motion versus just having one specific thing.
Nancy:Exactly. And we have those tools and tricks, because we've done it so many times. We have had to figure those shortcuts out.
Jess:Absolutely. And I always feel like if I have ADA questions, I can always ask you. I feel like you have this wealth of knowledge on like the super niche. I feel like it's a super niche topic.
Nancy:It is.
Jess:I had never like I mean, before coming to Epic I it never it had been on my radar but it wasn't like important, but now it's like on my daily checklist of like the top 10 things I think about every day at work.
Nancy:Isn't that crazy? Like for me. Of course we always build our websites ADA compliant, but after that that spate of all of those lawsuits, then it was this super hyper vigilance that okay, not just the website, but everything has to be ADA compliant. And for the majority of it was, but boy did that really bring it into focus that, that that was a vulnerability that was a soft spot for not just the credit union industry, but digital industries and digital ecommerce as a whole. And still to this day, I'm gobsmacked about how many are not ADA compliant. Oh, and I just have to say one more thing about that company in California, whose name I will not repeat. When one of our clients got that letter, and by the way, that client was ADA compliant. So that was all dukey. I went to that website for that trial attorney, and their website had something like 63 errors on one page alone. And oh, man, did I keep those receipts. I screenshotted every single one of them.
Jess:Oh, my God.
Nancy:I am not joking. I still have them.
Jess:That isn't like the pot calling the kettle not even because they didn't even check.
Nancy:No.
Jess:I like I have spent a lot of time watching and teaching small children. And I just remember one of my key phrases is you can't critique others until you're perfect. So or close to perfect, because I mean, as a teacher, nobody's perfect. But like, I would tell them like are you perfect? And maybe they'd be like, no, and be like, well, then you need to work on yourself first. That just reminds me of that like phrase that I use literally every day like before you critique others make sure that you're in check.
Nancy:Yeah, well if they were going to push that lawsuit issue with our clients, buddy, I was going to turn it right back around on them.
Jess:And that is something that I would never want coming at.
Nancy:Nope.
Jess:A Nancy defending her clients. That is a barked up the wrong tree, buddy.
Nancy:Yep. Mama Bear.
Jess:Exactly. Well, Nancy, thank you so much for sharing just a peek into the knowledge and to your knowledge on ADA compliance. Because I'm sure you could spend hours upon hours.
Nancy:I could I think at the beginning of this before we started recording, you said, Hey, we can keep it short and sweet. And I said, Yeah, of course.
Jess:That's why I only sent you like four questions I've learned.
Nancy:Well, thank you so much for inviting me and allowing me to speak on ADA, for credit unions, and specifically for our clients. As you can probably tell, I'm really passionate about it. Because I do I thoroughly thoroughly believe that having access for all, especially in the credit union world is so super important.
Jess:Absolutely. And if anybody needs us to check on their ADA compliance of their websites, who should they reach out to?
Nancy:Well, I would say that they could reach out to any of us, but emailing us at connect c o n n e c t at epicmc2.com. We'll put them in the ballpark for the right person. And we all know that that right person is going to end up being me because I can't keep my fingers off of any project that has ADA compliance as part of it.
Jess:Well, thank you so much for joining me, and hopefully we can have you back soon.
Nancy:All right. Thanks, Jess.
Jess:Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in this week. We hope this theory is relative to your marketing needs. Make sure you subscribe to get notified of our latest episodes.