Making Accessibility Fun and Brain-Friendly for Web Developers and Designers

Anne Bovelett:
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode on Open Channels fm. Today I’m your host, my name is Anne Bovelett. I’m an accessibility specialist and a WordPress Gutenberg freak. And with me today I have Nina Jameson and Tobias Roppelt from Gehirngerecht GmbH and what that name means, we’ll get to that in a moment. But first, guys and girls, would you like to introduce yourself? Nina, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself? Who are you, what you’re doing?

Nina Jameson:
Yeah, sure. Hey Anne, thanks for having us. My name is Nina and I’m a software developer basically. So I’ve been developing front ends for a couple of years now and this is where I actually met Toby who is probably going to introduce himself in a second. And during my profession as a software developer I get into accessibility and this is our main profession now today.

Anne Bovelett:
Right, right. And you Toby, we call you Toby or Tobias.

Tobias Roppelt:
Toby is totally fine. Nice to be here. Thank you. So hi, I’m Toby, I’m the co founder of Gehirngerecht or let’s call it Brain friendly for now. Maybe we find a better name. So I’m a UI UX designer and I started designing and then I did some deaf stuff where I got to know Nina and then I got myself to be self employed and got into contact with accessibility through America and to American content creators because accessibility was more of a topic in America than in Germany I would say until like two or three years ago. So I got introduced to accessibility through America and then so I got self employed because I was a bit, yeah, confused with the world and I didn’t want to just build websites to make people more money. So I had a kind of, I didn’t know exactly what to do to earn my money in life and accessibility was one of the, the way is to give me a feeling of responsibility or to do something important. So that’s why I got into accessibility and learned about it and started building websites and make them accessible. And then we figured out that we are quite good at teaching people about accessibility. So our main thing we’re doing at the moment is teaching for now German companies how to design accessible, how to create accessible content, how to make their websites accessible and really focusing on teaching it in a very interesting and easy way so that everyone likes to learn more about accessibility.

Anne Bovelett:
So for you this clearly became a thing from passion, right from a social motivation. Now you know, we all know it’s really hard to build up an existence on social motivation because as soon as money is involved, people are getting cold or are like oh well we can postpone it and stuff. So folks, do I know you work for both small companies and very large companies and enterprises. Didn’t you have one or two universities as well? How do they find you? Do they come to you? Do you go to them? How does that work for you?

Tobias Roppelt:
So our main marketing point is inbound marketing. So everyone is coming to us actually. So we’re very happy about this because we hate cold calling people or go outside and present ourselves and tell people what we can do. So we started quite early with just trying to create as useful content as possible and really try to teach people with small. We started on LinkedIn with LinkedIn posts how to make your buttons accessible or your links or whatsoever. And like I said, we tried to make it in a very easy to understand way. And we at the time we started like three and a half years ago, we really hit a niche with this because no one else was doing this. So we started to get a good following and then we also built our website and we wrote a lot of blog articles and got on Google very quickly. So we have a good zero standing. So all in all we really, our marketing worked well with our content creation that people got interested in our content and then they. Well in Germany we have the law regulations now too that people have to be or that websites have to be accessible. So that was a big motivation for companies obviously to find someone who can teach them how to do it. So they come across our website and they liked our content and so they got in contact and we were able to give workshops like you said, for very small freelancers to big, big companies like the. Someone knows this but the Deutsche Bahn for example.

Anne Bovelett:
Deutsche Bahn. Yeah, I know it mostly from being stuck.

Tobias Roppelt:
We can’t help with this but at least we can help to make their apps for example or websites a bit more accessible.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, I was, I was in Switzerland last week giving a talk and then we have been looking at the website of the Swiss Bahn SBB and that one made my heart sing. Except for their cookie banner. That ruined everything. Which is insane right? People have. They spend a lot of money getting an accessible website and then they decide to install a third party plugin like a cookie banner and that thing just locks the door for everyone. But yeah, finding that apps are accessible. So you taught them was this before they were Deutsche Bahn was launched launching their new app.

Tobias Roppelt:
Hard to say. I don’t know because Deutsche Bahn also have a Variety of different sub companies and so on. So we actually worked with DB System is the name of it. So it’s one part of the Deutsche Bahn and there are a lot of teams doing different things on different apps and websites and web parts and so on. So it’s hard to say actually. So we didn’t help to make one product accessible. We just, we just teach people in the company how to.

Anne Bovelett:
Don’t say “just”, Toby. That is a huge thing. I mean, I know it’s, it’s not so easy to, to teach because these people are in this big company and their boss is like, okay, buddy, you’re gonna learn about accessibility now. And then some will look at you and like, what are you doing here? Or why am I here? Why do I need to learn this? Right? There’s a, there’s a lot of friction. Nina, are you also involved directly in the training of the developers? For example, do you get into discussions with them?

Nina Jameson:
Yes, absolutely. And what you said about the friction is a problem where we start teaching because people feel like getting forced into accessibility. And I think one of the reasons why our content works is because we really try hard to put a lot of fun into accessibility because actually it is an awesome, awesome area. It is very complex and that makes it so interesting. So for me, accessibility is also a lot about quality of code and quality of content. So you can take accessibility and make a very great digital appearance if you do it right. And once people get that, how helpful it is to know about accessibility. Actually, they are all on. So I really never met someone who really understood accessibility and then said, I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it. It’s more like the outer boundaries, so to say, like time and budget that make it hard. But people actually, like I said, once they are into the topic, they really try hard to make the best they can.

Anne Bovelett:
Right? Yeah, that’s what I found too. But I remember someone saying at one of my customers, that was not a training project, it was remediation. And then he, he said my testers complained. My, my kind testers were just writing the tickets like, you know, fix this and fix that. But yeah, so I, I just, I find I’ve been in this for a little more than over five years now and sometimes it wears me out. Sometimes it’s like having to audition over and over and over again. Do you experience the same? And if you do, how do you cope with that?

Nina Jameson:
So unfortunately, most of the times we teach people and then we don’t stand contact because we are sort of the initial point where they get into the topic. And in rare cases we cooperate and take a look at what they do and give feedback to it. And that works very well. But it’s like you say, it’s a lot to learn. So it’s not done overnight and certainly not in a week or a month. So this is something you keep on doing and you will going to do it for years and you will still learn new things and find out that you did something wrong because it’s really, it’s a process of getting accessible. And I think this is something you always have to keep in mind that nobody does things because they are bad persons or they are stupid. That’s just because they don’t know it. And we all need to learn how to get better in that topic. So that helps me.

Anne Bovelett:
For example, one of the things that the people cannot see because we can see each other as we’re in a video call recording this podcast is that behind you. And I have one myself, I still have to frame. It is a wonderful poster. So you created this poster with all these criteria, and then you did some wonderful rhymes on it so people can remember it. Right. And a little birdie told me that this poster is going to be available in English.

Tobias Roppelt:
That’s true. So when the podcast comes out, hopefully we are have finished our English website and you can find the poster on the website. So yeah, that was out. It started as a side project. We just wanted to make the criteria a bit easier to understand and we started making like I said, posts on LinkedIn about it or on Instagram and something like this. And then we just come up. Okay, to be fully honest, now I remember we wanted to get a big customer and so we were thinking about how what can we offer the big customer so they. That he will take our offer. And then I was just inventing something like a poster with accessibility stuff on it and they took the offer. So I was forced basically to create a poster.

Nina Jameson:
Yeah, I remember that we had nothing and we made a workshop and then I said, Toby, we promised a poster and that’s, that’s where it started.

Anne Bovelett:
No pressure at all. Right.

Tobias Roppelt:
And now the, the poster is everywhere. So we are super happy. I think we already sold it 150 or 200 times already. And then signing.

Anne Bovelett:
I love this poster so much and I’m so happy it’s coming in English because I think one of the great things that you do and it’s, I mean, we’ve known each other for a while now, and I know we like each other as people, but also as a company, you guys, you, you spread care and love and, yeah, we just talked about your company name in German. Gehirngerecht. What did you say would be the great translation?

Tobias Roppelt:
I don’t know if it’s a great translation, but it’s brain-friendly for now. So. Because gehirngerecht is not really a German word, it’s also a made-up word, people know what you mean when you say it, but it’s not really. You can’t find it in an official language dictionary.

Anne Bovelett:
Well, I mean, let’s not. Because this, I love this challenge when I have people that are not native English, so they’re from other countries like you. The German language is fascinating. I mean, I think you can win a lot of Scrabble games with it. You can create long words. But I think we can actually explain it because “gerecht” it means it’s suiting your brain. It’s more than just suitable. It’s like, right, it’s like being serviceable. Am I right? I mean, I’m Dutch, I can, I can say all kinds of nonsense about German. Right. You have to call it.

Tobias Roppelt:
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s absolutely right. So the, actually gehirngerecht is a mix between two words and one is Gehirn, which is obviously it means brain. And second one, or the second part is stolen from another one word which means mundgerecht, which says mund is mouth. And mundgerecht, for example, means if you cut a meal or pieces from a meal or whatsoever so that they can fit in your mouth easily, basically. So that means mundgerecht. So we combined both words like, I.

Anne Bovelett:
I think this is, I think this is a genius name.

Tobias Roppelt:
Thank you.

Anne Bovelett:
Because it’s, it’s. People are so afraid of accessibility and then they see this tsunami rolling down at them especially. You know, we had a lot of fear right when the EAA was coming and everybody’s like, we have to be accessible. And suddenly there were no specialists available anymore, which is still the case. We’re not there. Not enough of us. But I think what you’re doing is absolutely brilliant. I hope there are more people doing it like that, where you give people the opportunity to not be afraid of accessibility and to cut it down in chunks like, this is for design, this is for coding, this is for content. Right.

Anne Bovelett:
Oh, I know you have been working on a product where people can learn how to test for themselves. You want to tell us about it or is that still too much in the making?

Tobias Roppelt:
Yeah, so in German at the moment we have our own testing tool which we also would like to get out in English but in English we have because we have kind of different laws behind it and different testing procedures and things. So it will take a little while. But we, yeah, made our own tool in German to test the criteria. We have the EN301549.

Anne Bovelett:
You got it right, you got it.

Tobias Roppelt:
Right about stuff and it’s a bit different than in English or America. So we made this tool to test directly on websites and we loving it for our own work and we hope we can spread it through the world in a few.

Anne Bovelett:
I hope so too.

Tobias Roppelt:
You tested it already?

Anne Bovelett:
Yes, I’m testing it. Obviously I’m actually going to pull in a big project in there next week so you’re going to get a lot of feedback. But I think this product is so much in line with how you operate. So small chunks people are able to test and learn at the same time actually. And I think that is absolutely fantastic. So we’re going to keep the world updated about that. But this is all in your philosophy and I think it would be great if more people would act like this. I was really upset last week. Some very big influencers were ranting on X about how people in accessibility are bitter or angry or pedantic and I do understand where that comes from, but I think it’s really dangerous because if we would be like that all the time and sticking up our finger and saying, ah, you’re doing it wrong and you have to do this and that, or if we scare people into legislation or whatever, we’re not reaching the goal and that is to include everyone. I think people tend to forget that it’s not. They think it’s not about them, but it’s about you in 20 years as well.

Nina Jameson:
Absolutely. And yeah, and I think what it comes down to a culture where it is okay to make errors and then you will have the possibility to fix them. And this is the same approach we take with accessibility, that it is a lot to do and you will have to take time and if you do errors, you are going to have time to fix it. And this is, I think this is the thing that works. If you create a culture that is learning friendly, where people are allowed to do mistakes, where they do not need to be afraid of the mistakes they made, then we are going to have a future where accessibility is something we all can achieve. But if we are going to have those hard cuts. And of course people are afraid to do something because they will be afraid of getting. I’m not going to say the word because I do not know.

Tobias Roppelt:
How kids friendly it should be.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, yeah, okay. I don’t know what you were gonna.

Nina Jameson:
Say, but you know, I mean, people shouldn’t be scared. It’s like you say, if they see those influencers ranting and this does not. This is not good for a culture where you want people to have fun.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, it should be fun, right? So talking about fun, I mean, I’m not sure if. Well, making things accessible should be fun because that gives a lot of energy and creative energy. But there’s also, I think this part that is so satisfactory. You know, when did it, did it happen to you that people came to you and said, hey, look, because you changed this or because you made this, I can use this now or I’m really happy or because this is the thing that I hear right now. Recently there was an interview in the Accessibility Meetup with Amber Hinds where she spoke with Matt Mullenweg, one of the co-founders of what we know as WordPress today. And if I recall correctly, he said, give me user stories. Where are the user stories? And you know, I understood where he was coming from. We are in our accessibility bubble and we talk about it all the time and you do it from an educational standpoint. And I keep companies how much money they lose because they don’t make things accessible. And then I was like, yeah, that’s a good question. Where are the user stories? And I think it would be great to have user stories of people saying I can use this or I can use that to take that from a positive side and maybe we can get something like that going at some point.

Tobias Roppelt:
To be honest, it’s not so difficult. Obviously it’s a difference between getting real user stories for your product. But we know a couple of disabled people now. And I also have a video up with a blind woman who is using a website using a screen reader. And I just talk with her while she’s using the website and you see how freaking disappointing or exhausting it can be to use an inaccessible website. And you could do the same. I mean, we could do in recording with going to a bad website and going through a good website and see how the positive effect of it is. And everyone can do this. I mean, there are a lot.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, let’s make videos.

Tobias Roppelt:
Yeah, sure, I would love to.

Anne Bovelett:
We have to make, we have to make a lot of videos because I think people are not, are really not aware of it until it’s too late. And it’s the same with someone who’s breaking his arms, going on a skiing holiday and then breaks his arm, suddenly realizes he can’t use his mouse and then he can go over the websites using. Using his keyboard. Right. So, yeah, I have a question. What do you think? It’s, I mean, it’s almost the obligatory question these days right now. What do you guys think of AI in accessibility? Nina?

Nina Jameson:
So I think it can improve accessibility, maybe in the future. But to be honest, if we take a look at the solutions that are out there currently, they don’t provide a solution. And it’s very important for people who are using AI that they know that they don’t provide real benefits currently.

Anne Bovelett:
You are referring to the overlay plugins.

Nina Jameson:
I think, for example, or if you’re generating alt text with your AI system, for example, you still need to check the alt text that has been generated and prove, or check it manually to see if it’s correctly. And of course that can help you to some point. But in the end you still need to have a human to look over it because we are building websites for humans.

Anne Bovelett:
And it’s not context, right?

Nina Jameson:
Yeah, it’s context.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah.

Nina Jameson:
And what we often see is that people start developing AI systems without knowing anything about accessibility and without knowing anything about the needs of people with disability. And that often leads to solutions that don’t solve anything at all. And this is why you have to be careful if you use something like that, Right?

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, I agree. And you, Toby, you have something to add to that?

Tobias Roppelt:
Not really. I mean, yeah, AI is at the moment used especially in accessibility to just try to make an easy solution so that companies think, oh, so now we can do this plugin or make this easy automated test and Then we don’t have to spend further money on it and everything is solved. And that’s the problem it comes with. It’s not an AI problem, obviously. It’s a problem of people who are trying to sell easy solutions.

Anne Bovelett:
It’s a human problem. We tried to. Yeah, it’s a human problem trying to solve another human problem. And the thing is, humans are individuals. This is why it’s so hard. Right. One of the things that’s buzzing that I do think we can use AI for is to create an LLM that has been solely trained on curated resources. So you and the audience will hear more from me about that in the future. But I think that would work. So instead of trying to use AI to resolve something, we can use AI to teach others. I think that would be great. Right, so folks, do you have a dream in accessibility or something else? Nina?

Nina Jameson:
So what I dream of is that people start to see the necessity in learning how to build accessible websites. So they start to see the handcraft that lies behind accessibility. And if I’m working in the role of a designer or a software developer or a content creator, it is part of my job to know those criteria and that, you know, everyone starts to learn that in university, in school, it should be just part of the usual education. And I think in order to have really accessible products, this is what would need to happen. And I would wish for in Germany that all schools and universities would introduce accessibility as a fixed part in schooling, for example.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, that would, that would be great. And then in general, everywhere. Yeah, Dobby.

Tobias Roppelt:
No, I think what Nina is saying is absolutely right. You have to start with teaching people and people have to learn about it. And knowing is the, the main goal. If people would know and would learn from an early point, it wouldn’t be the problem these days. I mean, we also made, when we made websites or web apps, we got rid of the focus indicators and things like that because we thought that they were ugly. And so we had our mistakes and accessibility too, because we never learned about it beforehand. So it would be great.

Anne Bovelett:
I felt so bad when I discovered it. I was like, oh, I’m going to go back to all these websites and I’m going to fix it. And of course I couldn’t and that would have been so impossible. So one of the things I wonder is, I know you are also still building websites as an agency now. How do you deal with that situation where you have an old customer from a time where you weren’t building accessible websites yet. What if you approach them and say, hey man, I’m sorry, but you would have to relaunch your website would be a great idea. Did you get into that situation?

Nina Jameson:
Luckily not.

Tobias Roppelt:
No. Luckily not.

Anne Bovelett:
Lucky you. Yeah. Because I think that is also a dialogue. I hear a lot, you know, where agencies are panicking because their customer is like, hey, I hear about accessibility and all that stuff and is our site accessible? Did you build it? And then you stand there as an agency and you’re like, I don’t know what he’s talking about or I’m scared, I’m just going to give some. And on the other hand, the customer. In these days now, when legislation came to push so hard and came in effect in June, I can’t imagine there are companies that are like, you’ve known about this legislation for the past five years and you didn’t tell us or you didn’t do anything about it. I think that’s a really tough discussion if that would happen. Is there anything you can think of you can say to agencies who land in that situation to help them? Because I think this is something we should do in general especially, I mean we always try to help each other in the WordPress community, but in general.

Tobias Roppelt:
Well, so first of all, I think obviously we train a lot of other agencies in accessibility because they wanted to know or they need to know. So the last years I think you always had a good way out because nobody knew about it. So you could always say, yeah, well it’s a new law. We, we didn’t know about it, nobody knew. So and we didn’t say we make you an accessible website. So now we are obviously we can do the improvements, blah, blah, blah. I think that that wasn’t that big of a difficult discussion because nobody knew back then. These days, obviously if you don’t know, I mean, come on, then what did, what did you do the last two years not being in the Internet? Because you have to know as an agency these days that accessibility is a thing. So if you don’t know and if you start new projects not making them accessible from the get go, it’s. I can understand that you have tough discussions because you should know. And then, well, obviously you can say, yeah, but we didn’t write it in a contract and we didn’t promise accessible website and so on. I think you will find ways out of it, but you should really then see it as a point to now start thinking about and getting into accessibility and start building your. Well, also something I believe it’s like responsive design. I mean in three years from Now, I believe not even maybe in two years or in one year from now, you will not charge extra for making things accessible because you do it. It’s just part of your web design process to make things accessible.

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, I mean, that’s, it’s something I said in a, in a talk once. I said, when you buy a new car, you’re. You’re not asking the salesman if it’s been tested for security.

Tobias Roppelt:
Exactly. So that’s, that’s the same with accessibility. You have to. Now, as an agent agency, it’s your responsibility to make new projects accessible and start planning them accessible and so on.

Anne Bovelett:
But, you know, there’s a big catch here. I think with, especially in WordPress, with the page builders that came, a lot of people suddenly were able to create something that looked pretty slick, pretty fast. If you don’t know anything about UX and UI, you probably think something looks good really fast. And then they call themselves web agencies and they call themselves. And now we have people creating websites with AI and since they don’t know what to ask for, they don’t know to ask for accessibility. And I’m always wondering about it. I mean, we don’t have to try and solve this problem in this podcast, obviously, but I wonder if you have ever had any thoughts about how can we reach those people doing that about this subject? It’s something that’s on my mind all the time because these people are creating something they are unaware, they don’t know that they’re doing something that’s not completely right and then get in trouble for it.

Nina Jameson:
Yeah, the fame and unknown unknowns. Probably the largest problem, I think the people creating AI systems that can build web pages and the plugins that create web pages are the ones that should talk more about accessibility because this is where the people are at. And the only thing that we can do is again, just post on social media, talk about accessibility, bring it to public and do that again and again. And maybe in a couple of years it won’t be anything new to people.

Anne Bovelett:
It’s a great point talking to the creators of those generators. Yeah, let’s see. I was thinking about. There’s something the audience doesn’t know is that you were part of the team and Nina was managing the project. We were in CloudFest Hackathon this year in March, and we created. We wanted to actually just describe how to create a plugin where you can create alt text and descriptions for infographics. You know, something that potentially saves companies millions if they can do it like that. And I’M honestly thinking maybe when I see what they’re doing in WordPress and with Telex and everything, maybe we should. And they want to bring or are bringing AI into WordPress core. Maybe we should ask them to bring that into WordPress core. What do you think about that?

Nina Jameson:
That would be awesome. That would be really great, right?

Anne Bovelett:
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. So, folks, to wrap it up, where can people find you? We’re going to put links you mentioned in the show notes, obviously. Let us know where do we find you?

Tobias Roppelt:
I think the best way would be actually to follow us on LinkedIn and then obviously our website. But I think when the show notes are coming out, we already have our link to our English translation of our website.

Anne Bovelett:
I don’t know. Yeah, it could be. We will see. And if it’s not, well, people will have to come back and we will add it to the show notes. Don’t worry about that. Yeah, true.

Tobias Roppelt:
Otherwise, yeah, you will find our LinkedIn handles in the. In the show notes and then you can.

Anne Bovelett:
All right, just follow us. Wonderful. Any famous last words? Not really.

Tobias Roppelt:
Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for the invitation. And don’t be shy. You helped us to translate the poster in English. So it was part of your effort to make our. Our poster come out in English soon.

Nina Jameson:
Yeah. Thank you very much.

Anne Bovelett:
I’m just trying to stay out of the spotlight in this podcast, guys. Thank you so much.

Tobias Roppelt:
It’s fine. You should. Yeah, you should be.

Anne Bovelett:
Your.

Tobias Roppelt:
Your work should be appreciated.

Anne Bovelett:
Thank you. I appreciate you too. So thank you for being here and yeah, I hope to talk to you guys sometime soon again when. When there are English projects coming up. Have a great day.

Tobias Roppelt:
Have a great day, too.

Nina Jameson:
Thank you. Bye.