Learning without limits: Ensuring accessibility in digital learning

00:01

Maia

So, you know, we want to broaden our ideas of what accessibility is and think about whether we're actually creating engaging content at all if we're not considering accessibility.

00:12

Matt

Welcome to today's episode of Totara Talks Talent, where we deep dive into the world of digital accessibility. I'm your host, Matt Lineker, and I'm excited to have an insightful conversation with our three special guests, David Dent from Blind Veterans UK, Maia Miller, Managing Director of Aleph Accessibility, and Steve Barnett, a front-end developer specialising in accessibility. Together, we'll explore how you can make digital learning more accessible, not just for some, but for everyone. Whether you're new to this topic or an expert, I hope today's discussion will give you valuable insight and practical steps to make your digital learning content more inclusive. At the end of this episode, we’ll also talk to Paul Clark, Head of Experience Design at Totara, as he discusses key initiatives aimed at enhancing accessibility across Totara.

Thanks so much for joining us today, David, Maia, and Steve.

01:00

Matt

I'm really looking forward to having a conversation all about accessibility. So, just as a starting point, would you all mind introducing yourselves so the listeners can know who we're talking to and where in the world you are as well? So, David, would you mind introducing yourself first?

01:13

David

Yeah. Hello, Matt, my name is David Dent and I'm a Learning and Development Business Partner with a charity called Blind Veterans UK. We're a charity that's been going for about 109 years, helping ex-servicemen and women who have lost their sight to live well with their sight loss. And I'm based down in Chichester near the south coast of England.

01:32

Matt

Brilliant. Thanks, David. And Maia?

01:35

Maia

Hi my name Is Maia Miller. I am the Managing Director of Aleph Accessibility, which is a web accessibility consultancy. I'm based in New Zealand, though I’m originally from Toronto, which is why I sound like this, but I’m based in New Zealand now. I'm a web accessibility specialist, so my focus is the web. Through my consultancy, we do things like auditing, training, consulting, educating, and trying to uplift how accessibility is done on the web.

02:01

Matt

Thanks, Maia. And Steve?

Steve

I'm Steve Barnett. I've been a front-end developer for a couple of decades, and I’ve been specialising in accessibility for a couple of years. I’ve been working at a place called Intopia for a couple of months, where we focus on digital accessibility and inclusion.

02:17

Matt

Thanks so much. So, three people working towards accessibility in different ways, but as a starting point, if people are coming to the topic and they're perhaps new to it, or even if they're experts, can we each think about what accessibility in the context of digital learning means to each of you separately? So, David, I suppose in your organisation there might be a specific focus on accessibility, or how would you say it for yourself?

02:46

David

I would say for us, obviously, sight loss is our major focus, but we recognise that we have colleagues with a range of different needs that we try to meet. But I think with digital content in particular, digital learning my feeling is that it shouldn’t be any more difficult because of the medium in which it’s presented. And I think often for our colleagues, because it’s something they have to access via a computer, they don’t get to sit in a room with some nice biscuits and coffee and things like that. They’re already a little anxious about it. And not just people with sight loss, but also people who are unfamiliar with computers. They often need a little bit of extra reassurance and help to engage with the material.

03:25

What we find with our colleagues with no sight at all is that much of the digital content for learning is nigh inaccessible because a lot of the elements in it are visual, and we have to find a way of mitigating that and actually facilitating learning. So, I think my feeling is that just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it should be more difficult.

03:48

Matt

Great. And Maia, what are your first impressions of digital learning and accessibility?

03:58

Maia

Yeah, I like to explain it in terms of the physical world because it’s quite similar. When we build a building, there are ways to build that building to make it more or less accessible—think ramps, elevators, braille on signs things like that. These considerations are best made when we're first constructing the building. Think about how hard it is to install an elevator after the building’s already complete. The same goes for web accessibility and digital learning more specifically. The way we build the web and online learning can be done in a lot of different ways and there are ways that we can build them that are more accessible depending on our approach.

04:38

So, it's about creating environments that are accessible from the start, rather than adding accessibility as an afterthought or leftover. Because, as with a building, if you leave it to chance, you’re likely to forget something. And so in the same way with accessibility and web accessibility and elearning as well.

04:59

Matt

Great. Thanks, Maia. And Steve?

05:02

Steve

That was really great. Well, just to echo what both of you said—making it easier for more people and considering accessibility early in the process are key. One thing I’ve found helpful is thinking more broadly about who your learners are and how they want to interact with your content, as well as how we think about disability.

05:23

Matt

Great. So, Maia, I think the example of architecture is really easy for people to grasp. I suppose, when we look at digital learning, what are some of the common barriers? Obviously, I lived in—I won’t say which city—but I lived in a major city for a number of years and was struck all the time by how the underground system felt like an impossible place for anyone with walking impairments or other disabilities to navigate. I don’t know about digital learning in that sense if there are just some places that you look at and you all think ‘this is going to be an impossible environment for a lot of people to actually navigate and to even access. I don’t know if you come across that a lot? Feel free for anyone to jump in here!

06:06

Maia

Yeah. From a web accessibility standpoint—doing audits, consulting, that kind of thing—there are definitely common themes that we see. These are red flags we can check quickly to understand how something was built. For example, colour contrast, images without descriptions, and keyboard accessibility. There are definitely flags there to check and that are really easy to know.

06:46

Matt

Yeah, and David for your learners, are there any common barriers that you consistently see, especially when it comes to, I don’t know maybe buy content? Or for providers or things like that?

David

I think it’s very difficult for content creators who are trying to make engaging content, which often means a lot of visual content, but that can be a real challenge for learners with vision impairments. For example, if there’s a video with a bit of narration about a topic and then some questions afterward, there’s no description of what’s happening visually on the screen. So, form a learners point of view they haven’t seen visuals happening on the screen, they haven’t been told about them. I can’t remember who first came up with this but something I read somewhere else. ‘If you display it, say it.’ If something’s on the screen for learners with a visual impairment then it has to be described and that’s often not the case. But I think what’s really helpful for people who are navigating by sound is for each page in the learning material to be consistent. So that when you got to the next page you don’t have to explore it to understand what’s there and to see how it works. But there are a lot fo things that are out of our control. For example a lot of our workers are now home workers and so it’s difficult for us to control what type of laptop they’re using to access training. So actually the landscape has changed when it’s going to be on all types of different devices. And just a little thing like having two factor authentication when you log in, that itself could be an accessibility barrier that is completely outside of our control. But can very much impact on a learner’s experience.

08:17

Matt

Thanks, David. And Steve, I don’t know in your experience if there are just common barriers or things that you consistently see that cause problems?

08:53

Steve

Yeah, I think some of my favourites are headings—when text is big and bold but not marked up as a heading in the HTML, or link text that says ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ instead of text that describes the link destination. Button text is another one—when every button just says ‘submit’ instead of something useful like ‘publish’ or ‘save.’ These things can cause a lot of trouble for people using screen readers.

09:34

Matt

Great. I think having worked as an instructional designer in the past, one challenge is time pressure. You want to create engaging content quickly, and accessibility might become secondary in the process. What advice do you have for making accessibility a priority from the start, so it’s not an afterthought?

10:33

David

Well, I think one of the things that I think we have moved away from, which I think is really good, is having an accessible version. You know, that it's click here to get the accessible version of this. I think designers are now thinking in terms of accessibility much earlier on in the process, and baking it in.

A trap some people fall into is they look up the WCAG guidelines or something like that and make sure they've covered all that, but there's a great difference between something being accessible and being easy to access. As one of my colleagues put it, he said, I could probably work my way through this learning, but it'll take me four times as long as my colleagues without a sight, sight loss, and I can't actually afford that much time to do this learning.

I think one of the things that designers can do is actually think from that point of view that actually, if you take something like reading a newspaper, If you have full vision, you scan the headlines, you decide what you're going to read, you jump about in it. You don't want to have to read it from the top left corner all the way down to bottom right, to understand what's on that page.

And I think it's thinking on those lines, as Steve was saying earlier, about making sure headings are marked and all this kind of thing, making sure the landmarks are there and they're marked so that the screen reading software, for example, can provide navigation cues that people don't have to battle their way through.

It's actually there laid out for them if they're comfortable using the software. And I think it's just thinking in those terms that how would I progress through this if I wasn't actually looking at it or, you know, or if English wasn't my first language and, you know, something like all those sorts of things.

It's putting yourself in someone else's shoes, which is a tricky thing to do when you say you're up against a deadline and you're trying to get something out of the door. But I do think the movement is in the right direction. I think people are now thinking accessibility is a key priority. And I think that's, that's very positive.

12:13

Maia

I would challenge the assumption that you're making something engaging that people can't engage with at all. The whole idea about accessibility is making sure that people can use it. And so if I want to make something whippy, whizzy, all that kind of stuff, I think it's all flash and pretty, but a lot of other people can't access it and can't engage with it, then is it really that engaging?

When we think about accessibility, I think those of us who are less familiar with it, we, our brain sometimes goes to a blind screen reader user, a fully blind screen reader user. And a learning designer might think, well, I don't, I don't have anybody who is disabled, who's using my thing. So I don't have to think about it, which one, you know, is an assumption because we don't know necessarily who all of our users are, but also there's so many more people and so many more disabilities to be thinking about than just fully blind. Um, it's something like only 15 percent of people who are legally blind are actually fully blind. So the majority of people who are legally blind actually do have some vision. So, when we're thinking about accessibility, we're not just thinking about edge cases, we're thinking about colour blindness, we're thinking about low vision, we're thinking about, um, neurodiverse students, you know, neurodiversity is becoming a huge topic, and we're learning more and more about it, and, you know, just more and more how prevalent it is, and when we're creating things for students. Things like images that are moving, you know, that can be really distracting and really make it really difficult to focus on the static content like text when we have moving pictures like GIFs or something like that. So, you know, we want to broaden our ideas of what accessibility is and think about whether we're actually creating engaging content at all if we're not considering accessibility.

13:53

Matt

Yeah, great, um, line there, Maia as well. “Is it engaging if no one can engage with it?” I mean, very well put. And Stephen, I don't know if you had any thoughts on this as well.

14:03

Steve

I, yeah, I absolutely agree with Maia, like if you can't use it, it's not engaging. I was wondering if a good way to approach it, even if you're under time pressure, is to as an accessibility person talking to someone who's in a rush or who wants to make something engaging is trying to ask them a bit more about what do they mean.

Do you mean that you've got lots of content you want them to go through? Well, you wouldn't be excessive and put it all on one page in tiny font so that it's all in one block, or you wouldn't put everything all in video. Yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't swing to an excess. So I think it's something to be wary of.

It's like, oh, engaging means animation? Cool, let's animate everything. All the text on the page should wibble. It's like, oh, of course not. It's a bit silly. So what do we mean by engaging? Do we mean get through it faster? Do we mean remember it better? Cool. So what is the best way of doing that?

14:47

Matt

So let's say you are maybe at the start of your career or you've not designed much yet and you're trying to design something at the moment and you're listening to this podcast and you think, okay, is there anywhere that I can go or there any resources that I can look at? Where should I be educating myself if I'm trying to learn more about the topic and making sure that my content is actually accessible?

15:12

Steve

Maia’s website is a great start! There's a couple of big names, like Microsoft has a bunch of stuff about inclusive design. They have a really great tool called Accessibility Insights, which is sort of like, um, quality assurance for accessibility. And it's, it's got this quite long, but really good guided assessment thing, which is really great for learning about how to test contrast, for example, and what it means and why it's important. WebAIM that I mentioned before have got a whole bunch of really great stuff. TPGI, that used to be the Pacello group. They've got a blog and a whole bunch of resources and tools. Deque, D E Q U E. They've got a whole bunch of resources and articles and a really great tool called acts, which is like an engine for testing stuff comes in browser extension and all kinds of other stuff.

Maia's Website - Aleph Accessibility

Microsoft Inclusive Design - Microsoft Inclusive Design

Accessibility Insights by Microsoft - Accessibility Insights

WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind) - WebAIM

TPGI (Formerly The Paciello Group) - TPGI Resources

Deque (Accessibility Solutions) - Deque

16:00

Matt

Great. Uh, just to say, if you're listening to this, I will link to those in the show notes, um, so that we can, can get those. And actually, even as a, um, a quick question. Is there a way to make this podcast more accessible?

16:11

Maia

So, you know, we're saying brilliant, smart things in this podcast, but not everybody can hear or hear well, or wants to be listening. So having a text alternative, and that's true, basically of every media, you want to have a text alternative.

So having a transcript of this podcast does two things. One is it, it helps you makes it more accessible. So people who are using screen readers who prefer to read versus listening to content, um, is more accessible to them. It's also great for SEO, Matt. So anybody who is looking up accessibility things, looking up Totara, looking up elearning, you know, the content that we're saying out loud, Google can't Pick up, not yet. Can't hear us, but when it's written down in a transcript, then the content becomes much easier to find. And that's true of videos as well. So if people are creating videos, we want to have captions on them, and then we also want to have transcripts. And that's going to provide the same benefits to the content designers as well.

17:00

Matt

Great thanks, Maia and David and no pressure here, but was there any areas you would recommend going to look at or websites or places to learn more about accessibility?

17:19

David

I mean, I have written down some of the things that Steve was talking about, but, uh, one or two of those I haven't come across yet. You know, many of the major disability charities have advice and guidance, which you can have a look at.

I think definitely with the transcripts, that's tremendously important, and not just for people with, you know, a disability of some kind, but many of my colleagues say, Oh, I've got to sit through a video. And they always turn it up to about one and a half times, two times so they can get through it quickly.

They can read a lot faster than the video actually plays, so they'd much rather have it in text form so they can whiz their way through it. That's the way they like to access the learning. And having that alternative, I think, is a very inclusive thing. Little things I get my colleagues to do, just if they have produced something, is say, okay, now try turning on Windows narrator, or Apple voiceover, or something like that, and turning off your screen

Can you now get through the thing that you have created and understand what's there? I mean, it doesn't cost anything, it's just a thing to try, and it just helps people just make that little adjustment, just think, Oh, yeah, that's, that's not so, that's not so easy, is it? And just to understand, obviously, um, it takes a while to build up the skills in order to be able to navigate just by keyboard without, without vision.

But, you know, actually trying some of these things, you know, trying an awful colour combination just to see what it, you know, what it might be like if, for example, you're someone with profound dyslexia who, um, would prefer a different colour combination to make things easier to see, you know, all sorts of things like that.

You can just try just to put yourself in their shoes.

Maia

I like that idea, um, David, that building that empathy is always really important. Um, just on the question on resources, the one, I guess, caveat or counterpoint, I would say to what was brought up, which, um, all the resources that were brought up where are really solid ones.

Sometimes there can be a bit of information overload. There's so much to accessibility and even us who are in the industry. You know, we're always learning something every day. There's always more to learn. So it can be really easy to fall into a trap of like, oh man, there's so much to do, so much to learn. It's so overwhelming.

Going back to that question about, you know, I don't have much time. How do I do it all? So my recommendation would be to just hone in on a few things and make those your focus. You know, things like text alternative to images, colour contrast and headings, you know, those are three things and you say those are the three things that I'm going to focus on and all the content that I make are going to hone in on those three things and you'll, you know, A you'll catch probably 80 percent of the accessibility issues that you've been encountering anyway, or that your students have been encountering anyway.

And then B, it just makes it a much more manageable thing for you instead of having to, you know, read a bunch of articles again and again and spending hours on it and getting overwhelmed. You know, it's about progress, not perfection. And, you know, making changes for your students. Every change towards accessibility that you make, your students will notice, you know, it's worth just getting into it rather than trying to make sure that, you know, you've covered literally everything.

20:01

Matt:

So progress, not perfection. I think that’s my new mantra for life. I think that must have been my mantra for life for a long time. Okay. Thanks so much. So I think we're just changing track a little bit. If I think about digital learning. So one aspect of digital learning might be compliance training. Something that everyone's made to do to ensure that business critical operations are working correctly. And one element of that might be some form of assessment at the end, a quiz or a way to prove that you have taken onboard the information that's been put in the training course. When it comes to assessment in particular, are there any things that we should be reflecting on again, or are there things that we've sort of touched upon already in this conversation?

21:31

David

I think with, with assessment, having an alternative form of assessment would be good, and the sort of things which are being talked about now, and we might mention later, things like chatbots and things like that, which can actually, ask people questions and they can record the answers that they give, as opposed to having to read a question and come up with an answer.

I think also with some of the assessments, I think with, with the courses generally, it's sometimes difficult to get the relevance right. So let's say, you know, you are someone with a physical disability, your actions in the event of a fire are going to be different from those for someone who doesn't have a physical disability.

But the course is, the one course that there isn't the opportunity to say, what do you do in the event of a fire? It's what should someone do in the event of a fire? I hope the time will come when we can actually move to the point where the content is sort of, you know, dynamically changes and the assessment changes to match the individual's needs and perhaps using the technology which is now emerging in the AI sphere.

22:26

Maia

I imagine that the content creators and, um, instructional designers are not creating their own, um, radio buttons and check boxes and stuff that that's programmed in. So that's, that's one area that as web accessibility auditors, that's what we look at. So if they're not coding it up, that's one good thing.

So the other thing is about the content itself, which we've talked about things like text alternative, you know, so not pick the picture that best represents, you know, cause not everybody can see that. Or if you have those pictures, make sure that there's a text alternative. All right. It's not to say that you can't use pictures, but make sure that those pictures are also described.

Things like buttons, you know, making sure that, like the red button or the blue button, um, not everybody can see red or blue because of colorblindness. So, you know, you don't want to say the red or blue button. click the go or stop button, you know, and, and then they could also be red and, well, I don't know, blue, but you know, that kind of thing.

And then it comes back down to the basics about instructional design, which, you know, accessibility actually is a lot of just going back to principles and going back to basics, things about having clear instructions, making sure that you're clear on the kind of question that you're asking so that people can predict what kind of answer you're looking for.

That's helpful for everybody and particularly helpful for people who have learning disabilities, who are neurodiverse, that kind of thing.

Matt

And Steve, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that?

23:07

Steve

Yeah, I completely agree with everything both Mariah and David said. It's great, especially in terms of like thinking more flexibly about how your learners might approach it.

Um, one thing that came to mind for me was to do some testing because all of these things we're talking about, like. If you work in the industry, it's very easy to think of these things, or more easy, maybe, to remember to check these things or think about these things. If you, ideally, can you test your assessment with a wide range of people with disabilities, that will highlight a bunch of stuff for you very quickly and possibly slightly at Uh, awkwardly, uh, things that aren't quite working for people.

If you can't test with lots of people with various disabilities, just test with a few. If you can't test with any, just test with some strangers. If you can't test with strangers, test with your colleagues, you know, but the farther away you can get from just you testing it, the better.

Maia

Building on what Steve was saying, I think changing up the assessment can also be really interesting and yield different results.

Um, different people respond in different ways, so some people are really good at reading and writing. Others are better at verbalising and recording videos. And, you know, why does it have to be a written essay all the time? Why can't it be an oral essay? Or you know, an interpretive dance or whatever, right?

You know, um, again, the more that we're learning about neurodiversity, the more that we realise that different brains work differently. And it's not that, you know, you have a dumb student that's, you know, nobody is dumb like that. It's, it's the systems that are created around us that allow us to excel or are holding us back.

And if we could create assessments that encourage students to express the things that they know and that we know that they know, um, setting them up for success. Um, I think we can get a lot of different results and yeah, maybe encourage students to excel where, you know, other assessments don't allow them to.

24:54

Matt

ange, like, in the, in, well,: 2024

I wonder if that just comes from what we've done as students as well as learners, like, things that we've, you know, encountered in our lifetimes and just thought we'll just repeat that because that's what assessment is. Do you think there's just something to do with that? Are people just repeating what they've always done or what they've known, um, rather than thinking about what's actually available to them, which could be, like you say, a multimodal response.

Um, I don’t know where that comes from that bias to just go to text?

Maia

Yeah, and you know, we're talking about elearning and we're talking about technology and, What an opportunity. There's, it's so multifaceted and diverse and um, let's leverage that. You know, when we were in school, we didn't have that. And so why stick to the old ways when there's so much dynamism that we can leverage?

Matt

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Thanks so much. Right, if I just ask a slightly different question. So one thing when you do courses or create learning digitally, you might ask for feedback at the end of your course and you might say, Eh, how did you find that? Was it good? Was there anything you'd like to give feedback on?

In those situations, would you expect people to put down feedback on accessibility? Or do you think that we should ask questions about the accessibility of the course? So, for example, when we ask questions like, how was that course for you? Do you think instructional designers should specifically say, did you find the course accessible as well?

Does it need to be explicit? Or do you think people would just provide feedback because it's, they're just going to give that feedback?

26:35

David

Well, I can speak from my experience in that my learners have no hesitation in telling us if something isn't accessible. And that's right and proper that they should. If I was to ask the question, and we actually do regular staff surveys, and it actually, you know, we talk about our learning and development and the obstacles people have faced, I probably wouldn't say, wouldn't ask the question, was it accessible?

Because the answer sometimes gets a little confused. What do you mean by accessible? I'd ask it more simply, you know, were there any difficulties that you encountered in actually completing this? And then let people think around that. And, and, you know, cause there may be things which are not, you know, Not accessibility as such, but they are actually difficulties that people encountered.

I know from some of the people that I work with, I mean, we've talked a little bit, uh, um, I was mentioning about the neurodiversity of the different neurotypes, uh, of people, but, uh, we also have quite a lot of people who I encounter who, for example, have had a horrible experience at school. They hated school.When we say assessment, They hear test or exam and it's terribly nerve wracking and I've spoken to a couple of colleagues and for example their literacy levels are very, very low. Um, and they have skirted around that and suddenly we're putting them in a situation where they're having to respond to text and respond in another way.

And then we ask them to feed back on it. we're not going to get any feedback. They just want to, you know, get away. So I think having a feedback mechanism where we can actually encourage, for example, oral feedback, where we can have a sort of suggestion box, you know, built into the system where, you know, just give us some informal feedback by voice, if you like on what you, on how you found that and what you thought about it. What do you think could be improved? Something like that. Something where people can give ongoing feedback. Um, perhaps once the trauma of having done the assessment has faded from memory. But I think, you know, to encourage regular and frequent feedback, I think is tremendously important.

29:08

Maia

The one thing I would add to that, I think that was a really good explanation. And the one thing I would add is, as an assessor, if you're explicitly asking for that feedback, then it shows that you are not one of those evil ones, you know, um, that you really do care about it. Um, so I think it's valuable to be explicit, not just do you have any feedback, but, um, you know, yeah.

Was anything difficult to access? Was any, any sort of more specific questions can, can show that you're really trying and that you do care about that kind of thing. Especially if people are coming with past experiences and trauma of like, Oh, you know, if I, you know, again, here it goes again. I'll say what I have to say and nobody will listen or nothing will really come of it.

So why bother?

This is showing that yes, please do bother.

Matt

Yeah, imagine there must be, you know, fatigue there as well. If you're like, because obviously if you've taken a lot of digital learning courses and every time you ask for feedback, but every time you feel like nothing's changing, then it must be difficult to constantly give the same feedback at the end.

But that doesn't, I mean, that can be on anything, you know, if you're not listening to, you know, you stop saying things, don't you? Um, Steve, I don't know if you, if you, what you think about just giving feedback, really, and how to ask for feedback.

Steve

Yeah, well, I mean, echoing what Maia said, like, it's worth saying, it's worth being explicit about it, that you want to know exactly, like I said, to show that you're one of the ones who care and not without wishing to get too kind of fire and brimstone, like we do live in like an ableist society.

And so explicitly saying, but we're trying to make it better is, I think is really valuable. And I think what David was saying about difficulties or other difficulties, maybe this is a good opportunity to sneak in a mention of the social model of disability. Like if some of the content, uh, if there was a video without captions, somebody might say it was difficult for me to watch that video.

Cause I'm in a noisy workplace. Somebody who doesn't have any, um, or doesn't identify as disabled might still have difficulty with some content that we say, this has got accessibility problems too. It's more like Maia was saying again earlier, it's like, it's more about broader usability of considering the situations and conditions that somebody might be in and where that might cause difficulty or trouble or a mismatch between them and the thing.

Matt

So just coming towards the end of today's episode Mari made a great point before we end, which I'll repeat again, it's about progress, not perfection, about thinking, about, about listening.But if you, um, wanted to close off or if you had any final remarks for anyone who's thinking about accessibility and trying to become better at accessibility. Um, are there any final thoughts that you would like to leave us with?

Maia

Yeah, I would say hone in on just a few things and focus on those things. There's a world of good that we can do and improve and all that kind of stuff. But really starting just with one step really makes a significant difference. Um, I'm sure both David and Steve have ideas and the also, the internet has a bunch of ideas of what you can do. And we've mentioned a few things about text alternatives to images and multimedia, colour, and, you know, headings. Those, I think, are three things that we mentioned throughout the podcast. And those are great places to start. If you just hone in on those three. On those, on two, on one, You know, pick one thing and, you know, you, you're a busy person. You've got lots of things to juggle. And if you focus on just one of those things, I think you'll make a really significant progress.

My advice is to pick one thing that is interesting to you that you can get passionate about and just do that one thing in your content moving forward.

Matt

Great. And, uh, David or Steven?

David

I think I would just say, I mean, content is, is king. Keep it simple. Don't overwork it. Think of what it is you're trying to achieve and how you can get to that end as cleanly as possible.

So that would be my message.

Steve

I think picking one thing is great advice. And if you want a bit of a challenge, picking keyboard. Uh, here's a good one, but based on some of the SCORM stuff that I've been through, like oof, that's a challenge. But my actual, I'm sneaking into it, my actual final thought is that accessibility is a people problem, not a technology problem.

So things that new tools like AI are going to be great help, but they're not actually the root of the problem. The root of the problem is we have to be nicer to each other, a lot, a lot nicer. Thanks, Steve. So on that note, we have to be nicer to each other, a lot, lot nicer.

32:31

Matt

I think that's a great way to finish today's episode. So thanks so much, David. Thanks Maia. And thanks, Steve, for your time today. Um, it's been great to learn more about this topic and this episode will 100 percent have a transcript and actually we'll go back and make sure that all the episodes have a transcript going forward. So that's something I should do. And uh, it's great. Thank you very much for your time today.

David

Thank you, Matt.

Steve

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Part 2

Matt

Hi Paul, thanks so much for joining us at the end of this episode of Totara Talks Talent. Paul is the Head of Experience Design here at Totora and we're delighted to have you join us just to tell us a little bit about some of the things that are happening behind the scenes at Totora with regards to accessibility.

So Paul, could you let us know a little bit about some of the work that's been done recently on accessibility and some of the direction that we're going in?

Paul

Yeah, we've got a pretty exciting piece of work going on right now, which is to look into our typography. And for me, this is a bit of a foundational thing for good accessibility as well as usability, right?

So with typography, we're actually looking at the heading hierarchy of pages throughout the whole site. At the moment we've got heading one is sort of assigned to the logo, which doesn't break any accessibility standards. H2 is actually being their page here at the moment. We're going to be doing some work to ensure that H1s are on the page as the heading.

It is the most clearest. So that sort of enhances the ease of making sites accessible. And I think that's the part that I'm most excited about. And so that will address a lot of foundational things for accessibility. Another piece that we're looking at, and this is coming about, we've got a bit of a UX uplift in the product itself.

And part of that is looking at a lot of the UIs where we have different experiences for mobile versus desktop. And we're kind of doing a little bit of a simplification of the product itself so that it makes easier to maintain. We have less things sliding through, which are like accessibility issues, but we also create a better experience for people.

It's more similar across their devices. And it just makes things like navigation page layouts, much easier to address those issues. So that that's a pretty exciting thing as well. And another thing for internally within our research and development part of the business, we have really looked at the way that we address accessibility issues coming in. So we've looked at how to define what is an accessibility issue, how to prioritise those issues. And most of all, the way we action those issues and making sure that they are sort of front of mind and that they're getting addressed as opposed to sitting in the backlog buried under other types of things. We do have a few clients and customers and partners who are pretty good at raising accessibility issues, but in the federal space in the U.S at the moment, we've been working with some people who have really been sort of reviewing the product and ins and outs of it and going through quite thoroughly. And we've been getting a lot of the times it's, it's more to do with the way a partner or a customer has used the site and gone out of the bounds of it. Perhaps what we intended it to be used for, actually there's still a lot of things that can be addressed or simplified or improved to make accessibility, like the ease of achieving accessibility much better.

So that's been a constant stream over the last year of having considerable effort sort of towards lifting the standard of where we're at. So I think that's a It's a really good space. And I think going into version 19, I think we're a lot better than what we were in previous releases.

Matt

Great. Thanks a lot, Paul.

And thanks for joining us at the end of this episode to give us an update as some of the things are coming from Totara.

Paul

No problem.

Matt

You've been listening to Totara Talks Talent, a series which goes behind the scenes with learning and development and HR professionals to understand how they use technology to meet meaningful outcomes for their people and organisations.

Totara creates talent development software to create lasting employee success. You can learn more at Totara.com or join our community of learning professionals at totara.community to share ideas and collaborate. Thanks for listening.