Episode 223 – Accessible Marketing with Erin Perkins

Hello, everybody. This is Ken Tucker with Changescape Web. Welcome to the Marketing Guides for Small Businesses podcast. Today I'm joined as usual by Ian, Jeff and Paul, the regular marketing guides. But we also have a special guest today, and that is Erin Perkins.

Yeah, we're excited to talk to you. We're going to be talking today about how you can attract more customers with accessibility marketing. Erin, before we get into our questions for you, would you like to be able to talk a little bit about yourself and what you do and a little bit about your company?

Sure. So I'm Erin Perkins. I'm the CEO of Mable eq. And maybe Q is a business that teachers businesses how to be accessible in the business beyond just a website. The reason why I do what I do is because I am deafblind. Just by looking at me, none of you would be able to tell because I'm online. I have access to using captioning. But my vision, I have about 40 degree vision, so I would not be able to see someone sitting next to me. And I usually don't see anything below me. And my hearing, I was born deaf. I wear a hearing aid and cochlear implant, but my parents made sure I had access to language, speech therapy, sign language, all the things. So I do recognize I have the privilege of being able to speak. And there are a lot of deaf people out there that cannot speak just because they weren't given that access. So I do what I do because I really believe that we all at one point will become disabled in your life. And access is really important.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm really excited to, you know, to have you share your experiences and recommendations for small businesses and businesses in general. So I'll go ahead and ask the first question. Many small businesses see, unfortunately they see accessibility as an added expense. How can, how can it be reframed to where they actually see it as. As a way to get a return on investment by doing inclusive marketing.

This has always been like a tricky subject because people feel like, oh my God, it's going to cost me so much more time or money. But the reality is the longer you wait, like say you are developing an app and if you wait to add in accessible featured in the testing phase, it's probably going to cost you between 12 to 30 times as much because you did not build it in in the beginning. So as a small business that you just like an online business, there are easy ways to do this. One is by making sure you transcribe everything. You're in a meeting. AI has made it so much easier. Doom had made it easier. You, you take that transcript, you clean it up. That's not going to cost you money. That can cost you a little extra time. But be aware that me as that person to transcribe something and edit it probably takes me five to six times much longer than a hearing person would. So you have a lot more privilege in that. So it's little thing like, you know, adding caption, just updating your website, making sure you're using Only 1 Header 1 Using the appropriate heading in your website. The other thing I like to share is ed check your color contract. Make sure your color contract meets the color contract standard of the website content accessibility guideline. There's a bunch of different free website that can help you check your contact. So easy. None of this cost you any money, maybe a little extra time. And I understand people can say we're so tight on time, but this is worth it in the long run.

Yeah, yeah, I, I mean we're in full disclosure to our listeners. We're an accessibe partner and you know, we recommend all of our clients put accessibe on their website because that gives you nice controls to, you know, have voice, you know, text to voice to read what's on the website. Contrast as you mentioned, you know, alt text, you know, to help understand what, you know, all the pictures are, all of that. And in my conversations with them, they've told me that the estimate is that 25% of people who are using the Internet have some form of disability that that limits their capability of being able to interact with a website online. And I think a lot of people kind of gloss that over. They don't realize that that number is that much. When you look at if you can increase your market share to reach that additional 25% because they can actually read and engage with your website and maybe your business to buy products from you. That's a win win. It's a small price to pay even if you're using a little bit of a paid service that costs a little bit of, of money like accessibe does. It, it gives you and it also my understanding is it helps with search engine optimization as well. But I don't want to get into that because that may be stealing somebody else's thunder. Yeah, okay, awesome. Thank you very much.

There's just one thing I will say, one thing I do personally disagree on is having overlay on your website, everyone. Because I Consider that being a band aid fit. So you can use a beat as a starting point to just to cover your bases. But in the long run, I really encourage people to look at the root of the problem, and that's what I strongly believe in.

Yeah, And it sounds like from building it with. Building your website with that in mind is what can set it apart from being super helpful or just the band aid approach. I'm so glad you're. You're on our podcast, Aaron. I. I actually was in the hearing business with a hearing aid manufacturer for years and then doing marketing and then in the BNI group I'm a part of. We actually have a charity in the group and they are deafblind Ontario, which is the region I live in. And it's been such a privilege to have them in the chapter and also to be able to tour some of the facilities, meet people, understand the unique challenges that deafblind face. So thank you for coming on our, our podcast today.

The question I wanted to ask you are what are some common misconceptions that small business owners have related to accessibility? These misconceptions hinder their marketing efforts.

I would say one of the biggest things is that, you know, people with disabilities don't have their own business. They don't like you. They don't have those people in the audience. But the reality is a lot of people don't share out that they have a disability. Like, it's so, like, I could very easily come on here, none of you would know that I have a disability because I can see. I'm using the caption that mask. Like, you can't tell because people are so scared of, hey, yes, I have a disability. And they're like, oh, this person is weak. It is not weak. We have to work so much harder to ensure that we have equal access. So as a small business, you'd be really surprised at how many people that interact with you. I actually have a disability. But to the point where they don't, they are exhausted for having to ask for help. They don't want to continue to ask for help. I'm at that point too. I'm. I'm tired of having to be like, hey, can I make sure there is access for me? Like, no, I want you to already have planned that. I want you to already have that built in. And some of the things you can do is really simple by, like adding caption to your social media video is not that hard. Technology makes it so much easier. Now you add caption to your Video, but don't. One thing I would say, don't rely on Instagram auto caption. I've tried turning that on and it's not accurate. And it tends to be overlapped by the actual caption itself. So it's hard to read. And it's tiny. Who can read that tiny? I cannot read that tiny. I need, like, bigger caption. So that's like, where I'm at with that, making those little tweaks and changes. It's not just for people with disabilities. It's also for, you know, maybe people who have, who are moms and they're breastfeeding their kid and they don't want to put headphones on or they can't get to headphones. They're watching social media video on their phone and they have the audio up. They have caption. Then a lot of Gen Z, they don't watch things with the sound on. So it's not just about people with disabilities and about creating that better experience for everyone involved.

Awesome. And just for clarification, this would be helpful to me to understand you're talking about the captions within, like, Instagram reels and that kind of stuff. Sometimes when we create Instagram reels for our own business or for our clients, we sometimes bake in the, the, the captions like they're, they're graphically built into the video. Is that a hindrance to people like what you're talking about or those equally good as the, the other type of.

Caption, as long as it basically highlights the word for word to. Or like, not like 100%, but like 9 to 10. Close to what is being said. But as long as you're not summarizing it and just being like, I am talking about all of this and you're just giving me a tiny little paragraph of this is what I just said. Like, no, I, I want to know what you say. Like, third caption. Useless. But if you do complete caption adding, like your own caption in real and stuff, that's good, that's important.

I think what I heard was it's even, even better than letting the platform do it automatically, because the platform is the one that maybe gets it wrong, maybe puts it in small letters. And if you do have your own graphics, then the automatic one can overlay it and then that can be really confusing. Is that, is that correct? I think that's what I heard.

Yeah. That and like, think about punctuation. It might not pick up the way you're saying something correctly. In my cause of Misunderstandings as well. We all know how important punctuation is. Yes.

Yeah, the old let's eat grandma versus let's eat grandma. Commas are important. Yeah.

Love it.

Hey, Aaron, this is Paul. Thanks for joining us today. So when we're talking about accessibility and things like that, and I don't know, none of us are attorneys, I don't know if we can talk about the legal requirements at all, but if we can, that's great. But also, what are some of the ethical considerations that around accessible marketing?

I mean, it's really tricky right now because we have the American disability that in America. But, you know, with how the political landscape is going, it's scary to see how that's going because basically they make it seem like people with disabilities are trash. Like, we belong in the trash. We belong nowhere. And that's, like, really frustrating. But, like, globally, there is a web content accessibility guideline, wcag. I don't like saying how people have said it with cag. With cag, it sounds weird to me, but that is not a law. It is a guideline. However, one of the things that I feel like is a gap is like, that literally only pertains to the website. They're not thinking about Apple social media, digital platform. So, like me trying to teach people, you need to take what they apply on the web content accessibility guideline and still apply it to all the other aspects of your business, which is how I teach. My framework is like your entire business. Your social media, your podcast, your event, whether you do it online, in person, your branding, email marketing, all of those things you need to take into account. So that's why I go beyond just your website, because it's not just the website that people interact with you. People might find you on social media first or they might find you at an event first. Like, what's that experience like? So when you think about the legality of it, that's, like, tricky because the web content accessibility guideline is a highly followed guideline across the world. It's not just in the United States. So that is something that people should consider. But ethically, like, I think if you want to include all people, you should just do it. Not that hard.

Yeah.

So, Erin, this is Jeff. We've talked about some of the statistics, the broader markets that can open up, the legal considerations versus the ethical considerations. And that's all great and important. But you know what really at the end of the day, sells things to people a lot of times is the stories around it. So do you have any compelling stories of How a business that successfully implemented accessible marketing has seen positive results.

Oh, let me think about that. So I feel like it's interesting because a lot of times people tend to, oh, here's a really great example. The Grammy just happened a couple days ago and people are raving about how some of the actors brought on interpreter. But we need to understand that it was not the actor or the music artist that brought the interpreter. It was the venue that took action and said, here we're going to bring in a team of an interpreter. Now when the artists come up, they have a choice to bring the interpreter with them. So it's like having that, like seeing that they're looking beyond that having caption on tv because not all deaf people have that same language understanding English caption versus American Sign Language. So it's that kind of story where it's like we're giving access in a way that is just much more inviting. I will say another thing is the Olympics is a really great example. The Olympics tend to share different stories, especially the Special Olympics, of how they can pull together, you know, family and athletes that can actually achieve. But also not making it seem like a pity story. That's like where we have to find that fine line is if you are telling somebody's story about I'm giving access to something, you don't want to make it seem like that person's weak, but sometimes you want to glorify it. So you have to find that balance between the two. It's like, look, I am a company. I'm providing access to those people because I want to. I feel good about it. But you also not going to be like, oh, I did this because I just want to make myself look good. Like, no, you got to find that balance between the two. And I think that's what a lot of company do struggle with. We want to it to look past just being a check that you shut down.

So, Erin, you know, one of the things that I did a long, long time ago when I was in college, I was in the student senate and I, I was tasked to go around our campus and evaluate it for accessibility just in terms of common use things, everything from. Are the buttons convenient for somebody in a wheelchair to be able to press on an elevator? You know, and we all know, you know, about ramps and things like that because we see those more frequently. But, you know, there are also. We also talk about, you know, there's. If you have a brick and mortar business where people come to your place of business, you know, a clothing boutique for Example, you know, there are things that you can do physically in the store as well to make it more accessible, you know, so, so I mean, it doesn't just pertain to the digital world. You know, websites, social media, email marketing. It's also your physical space and, and marketing capabilities that your physical space gives you. So I think that that's an important consideration as well.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the reason why I talk more about digital accessibility is because the physical asset is, is embedded in the American Disabilities Act. I think it's also the same for Canada as well. They have a different name for it, but it is embedded in that, that. Because I, I, but we're trying to make sure that extend to the digital aspect because like, you know, I don't know if anybody remember the Domino Pista lawsuit. I feel like I hear someone talking.

No, I'm not familiar with that one.

Yeah.

All right, so Domino Pizza, somebody was trying to access the app, but because they were blind, they had trouble accessing the app. Domino Pizza said, well, we have a store, you can just come in and get pizza. And that person like, I need the app because one I can't drive. You know, it's just like levels of actor. So the reality was for them, that lawsuit went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court basically said if you have a brick and mortar company, it pertains to your digital asset. So they lost that lawsuit because if you have a brick and mortar, you also need to make sure that you are accessible digitally as well. So we're trying to find that and educate those digital companies that are only digital based that you still need to have access in different forms of way. So it's like really interesting how Domino tried to get around it, but they lost in the long run and they had to create an accessible app.

Okay, so that's a great example. Thanks for pointing that out. Are there other, like, what are the other three steps, you know, first three steps that a business should take as they're moving into, you know, developing an accessible marketing strategy?

I would say the number one thing I suggest is making sure you capture your video. That's like one of the easiest thing to do. The other thing is, you know, actually add a digital accessibility statement to your website and actually mean it. But I do refer to people to go to my website as an example and feel free to copy and paste it and modify it to your preference. Show that you're like making that effort. The digital acceptability statement to me means that you are thinking about it. You're not just blocking it up there. You're thinking about it like, hey, if something is not acceptable to me, please reach out to me and let's figure out how to make this work. The other thing that I like to tell people is to shut your color contrast of your brand. Look at your brand, check your color contrast. If you're using a backdrop, right here we have the marketing guide. We have red and blue and gray as your color contrast. So like Shrek. And make sure if you're using a red background, does the blue stand out? I detect on it. If it doesn't, it. You know what? Like right now I know that using a white background with marketing in blue, that's going to meet the color contract. But if you were trying to put a red background, would that meet the color contract? And probably not. But also keep in mind it doesn't apply to logo. So you can have fun with your logo. But I'm thinking of you if you're creating like social media graphic and using text overlay, make sure those color contrast actually meet those standards.

That's a great point.

Yeah, makes a big difference. And, and just to be sure, because you mentioned your website, is it Mabel Q.com is that how I pronounce it?

MableyQ.com maybe Q.

So M A B E L Y Q dot com.

So that's where people can check out your, your accessibility statement.

Yes. And I've also provided, I believe I gave you guys a link to the three inclusive, three things you do to create an inclusive business. So it's free, it's easy, it's a good starting point for you to get done in.

Yeah, I just put that on the screen so you know, folks, screen snapshot that or, or write down the URL so you can go get that resource and I'll put that back up, you know, later on in the, in the episode as well.

And, and as Aaron, as people, as businesses embrace more accessibility, how are, are there unique or particular ways in how they need to or can measure accessible marketing campaigns?

This is one thing that even I struggle with as a business is trying to give people that return on investment value. It's hard to quantify that in a number and I acknowledge it and I show it, but I feel like even just by utilizing transcript, you're going to get so much value out of it because you can use it as user transcript as a blog, repurposed it into social media post, repurposed it into email marketing. So it's like using that and seeing that Advantage of being able to repurpose things in different ways. That's where I can see the value, because it's going to save you time because you have so much content from this one podcast episode and you're going to be able to repurpose it in four different ways, at least.

Yeah, yeah, we love what you're saying because we, we all talk about repurposing content in exactly the way you're talking about it.

Don't reinvent the wheel constantly. Don't feel like you have to, like, repurpose what you've already have and utilize it that way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, Erin. So I think we've maybe touched on this a little bit in different questions, but what are some of the most common accessibility mistakes of businesses make in their marketing and how can they avoid them?

I would say the number one thing in the color contrast, it is dash and easy mythology. Because fun fact, 1 in 12 men in the world are colorblind and 1 in 200 women are colorblind. So it affects men more than women. But men might not notice it or care, but they might actually like red. And green is actually one of the higher colorblindness. And so I can't even imagine if you were colorblind, how you can enjoy Christmas because you can't tell red or green kind of thing. But anyway, jokes aside, like, if you're not meeting a color contrast standard, you are definitely going to miss people who cannot see what you're selling, especially if you're using it to create graphics and stuff like that. So that's like the number one mistake I see people using. And I will say I have a graphic design background. It is something that I was not taught in school, and I feel like even school nowadays still don't teach graphic designers or web designers how to ensure that when they're creating someone's brand to ensure that the color contrast standard are being met. Once you can do, once you fix that, it's easy. It's like, I feel like you got it made from then on. Does that tend to account for at least 50% of website problem?

So, you know, I mean, that's really interesting because I think most businesses, they stress brand consistency over everything else and all of the graphics that they do. And if they didn't, if they didn't start out, you know, by thinking about the color contrast, they're going to be making that mistake over and over and over again, you know, and, and like you said, if you just took some forethought at the beginning and and built that into, you know, to your brand kit, you know, to have accessibility color contrasted. You know, design guidelines, you know that that would be a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, brand guidelines is like, you know, often they just give you your logo, a couple of submarines, your font, your colors, but they don't tell you how you should use it or what colors can be used with one another, especially if you're using it as background and text. Like, that's why I want to emphasize the color contrast pertains to the background and text, but it also does pertain to a viewer company that like to make chart and graph and stuff like that. You need to think beyond just color. If you're sending an email out and you have links in there, you want to make sure that there are more than two differentiators that identify that link. Underline should be number one, color should be the second one. But not just color. I would say bold. So I always recommend three differentiators when it comes to highlighting that this is a link. So but if you're using that as a button, you can just make sure that the color contrast stands out. So with little tweaks like that, like adding the color contract approval to the brand standard guidelines would make things so much easier for so many companies. One of my favorite tools I like to use, and it's free in the Color Buddy extension on Chrome because you can put in all your colors hat code and then you can below it, you can put in your favorite color pairing and that way you can quickly look at it and be like, all right, I can use those two colors together.

So that was Color Buddy.

Color Buddy is under the Chrome extension.

Okay. All right, that's. That's a great tip.

So, Erin, let's talk a little bit about, you know, businesses that integrate accessibility into their marketing and kind of what that means to them internally and then by extension externally. So businesses integrating accessibility into marketing, can they use that to foster innovation and creativity within their team? And then also what does that say about them overall to their target market?

I would say to that to the overall market is like they thought about beyond themselves, they thought about all the different people that exist in this world. And it's more likely that people will buy from them and commit to them. And the people with disability or vice versa, their family or friends who are connected to those worlds keep spreading the word, word of mouth, because of that. I mean, if anything, today's political landscape should show that with, you know, Some company dropping diversity, equity, and inclusion from their business. But then everybody else is saying, oh, if you're doing that, I'm not going to shop with you. And that word gets spread around because they're like, you don't care about us. You just care about one thing, and that's life lining your pocket. So we want to find that balance. If you are a company that truly does care, the word's gonna spread because people with disabilities are going to rave about you, they're going to talk about you, they're going to share your company with their friend and family and continue. And doesn't mean any. Could be any company could just be a simple clothing company. That said, you know, what they thought about me, they included me in their marketing, and they're not glorifying it, but they thought about me. And the word can be spread that way.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that we talk about is, you know, as a. As a business, it's not about you and your business. It's about your customer. You know, and you've got to focus on the customer and. And what's important to them and not, you know, and it's easy to fall into this trap. I mean, all, you know, all businesses are. Are at one point in time or another, have fallen into the trap of writing more about them and how they want to project out into the world instead. You know, what is. What is what. What are the problems that their customers have? What, you know, what solutions are they looking for? What do they need to see to develop that know, like, and trust about the business? So your. Your insights are really, really helpful.

Yeah, I mean, like, I can think about, like, you know, I'm a fan of sug, and I know a lot of these businesses do create products or services because they saw a problem that they had. But, like, as you grow your business, you're gonna have to start thinking about your customer, not, like, how you would want to function. So it's definitely a very hard balance to find. Be like, but this is what I want. Like, I know I have that problem. It's like, I hate long sales pages. I'm like, just tell me what you're selling, and I'll just dive right then and there. But there are other people that need, like, you know, testimonial. They need the fluff. And so it's like finding that balance of, like, I know this is what my customers need. It's not about me. It's about them.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the current political landscape a couple of times. And without getting too political, I saw a great opinion piece yesterday that said we should stop talking about DEI and spell it out. It's diversity, equity, inclusion. And really from a business owner's point of view, you want to reach as broad a market as possible, right? That's a diverse market. You want to have something that brings everybody in your target market in to want to do business with you. That's inclusion. So these, this isn't necessarily bad. These are all good things we should as businesses strive to maintain and kind of take the politics of the day out of it, if you will, and let it be, you know, talking points, whatever side of that you're on. But from a business point of view, think about it in terms of your target market and who you're trying to attract and what you're offering them. And that becomes, you know, relatively simple.

Like we're all human, we all don't function exactly the same way. We all have our own thoughts and opinion. We all thought in declutter same the world would be a very boring place. So like diversity, equity and inclusion really go so far beyond that. And I can't separate my business from the political stuff because it literally goes hand in hand. And if that goes down, I lose my business. So that's why I feel like I strongly need to share my perspective about it.

So Erin, you know you, you mentioned that Chrome extension, what color buddy I think it was. So are there, what are some other tools and resources that businesses can use to help them implement accessible accessibility into their marketing practices?

The color body is one extension. There are a bunch of other color contracts. So ColorBuddy is more of like an extension just so you can have quick access to your brand. But there are several other color contrast tool that basically tell you what color you can use together. So one is, let me quickly look in the accessible brand color by use all five. There is a colorblind what I can surely link with you in an email, a colorblind webpage filter testing tool. The other extension that I actually like as well is the heading map extension. And basically what it does is you click on it and it'll tell you how your headings are set up on your website to make sure that you have your website set up correctly. All of this stuff is free. They didn't cost you any money. That's what I'm saying is like there are tools out there that can be free. It's not going to cost you a lot of money. It just might cost you a little bit of time and money. To fix it.

Yeah. When you, if you provide us those resources, we'll include those in the show notes in the description of this, of this podcast episode as well.

All right, awesome.

So, Aaron, if we look ahead a little bit, you know, what are some of the emerging trends in accessible marketing that, you know, businesses should be aware of if they're, you know, forward thinking and want to plan ahead?

I would say actually providing, if you are, if you have a podcast, providing your own transcript rather than relying on like Apple. Because Apple is not the only podcast platform out there that auto transcribes the transcript for you. Because if, if you look at it from my perspective and you just read the transcript, you would not be able to read your own transcript because you would not know who's talking. So that's my perspective. The other thing is I think people are going to be a lot smarter about the use of color and how they're using color for graphics. I think those are the two biggest things that people are going to be paying attention to more because it's such a simple solution to do that.

That just triggered an interesting thought. You know, we see these color trends for a while it was the pastels and then the primary colors. We see these color trends changing from time to time. How cool would it be if specific color palettes that were very accessible, you know, became a current trend?

Yeah, so like Pantone, you know, all the paint brand, like, hey, reach out to me. We should talk about creating color accessible palette for everybody.

There you go. Yeah, I'll see if I can get some contacts from Sherwin Williams to reach out to you.

Yeah, for sure. I love it. Love it.

So Aaron, let's see, you talked a lot about, you know, just, you know, that, that it's beyond just websites, it's social media marketing. And, and you've talked about, you know, like making sure you've got captions on videos and, and doing your own captioning, not relying on the, to create the captions are there and, and then also the color contrasting when you're creating infographics or graphics, you know, any other thoughts in regard to social media marketing that businesses can do to make it more inclusive and make it easier for everybody to be able to, to see what they're posting.

One of the biggest things I've noticed that people do is they might create a graphic with text in the image and then the captions don't really say what would actually like, say you have a carousel and you have all that, but that's not actually included in A caption. And you likely probably haven't added alt text. But alt text only has a limited number of characters. The caption should actually say what is being said in the graphic. It might feel repetitive to you, but if you are a screen reader user, you can't see the graphic. So you are missing out on those people who actually use screen reader and want your information. But because you've disregarded adding that information in the caption, you've locked out on that post.

Are there, do you know of any video resources or anything like that that actually try to communicate or convey to people who don't have those types of disabilities where they can actually watch and engage with pieces of content, you know, and see how it is for people, you know, who have to rely on captions to be able. I don't know if that's even possible.

But I don't know. I mean, I've tried texting a green reader myself, but as a deaf person, it's completely useless to me because I'm like, I don't understand how it works. But why? If you really want to test what it's like being deaf, turn off the sound and really force yourself to go through videos and see, like, what access is like to you as a deaf person. And then you start realizing that, oh, this would make it a better experience. Like, try to put yourself in someone else's shoe for a little bit, just to see it out, test it out. Like for people who might have physical disability where they can't use their hand to manipulate the mouse or the trackpad, use the keyboard, see what it's like interacting by just using the tab key, the shift key, and the arrow to go through the website. I think you'll start seeing little things of like, oh, we need to change it. But it's so much more work for that person. Like, for me, for the longest time, people will say, oh, the transcript on my website. All right, cool. But how many clicks does it take for me to get there from the podcast episode? Like, is it five, just clicks? It should not be five or six clicks. It should be one or two clicks to get to that transcript. So thinking about what, like any other person choose, that's what I encourage you to do.

Okay.

Yeah. Aaron, a little while ago you talked about email and some accessibility things we can do within our emails. And email is such a powerful tool from a marketing perspective because people have. Hopefully we're not cold emailing people and spamming them. But, you know, that's not what we talk about usually it's more about people that have invited us into their world by subscribing to our lists or being our customers. So when we're thinking about accessibility in relation to that, you talked about making links more descriptive. You talked about higher contrast. Are there other things like you mentioned alt text for images when you were talking about websites. I know a lot of tools allow us to do that. For emails. Should we be doing that? And also what else should we be doing?

Alt text for images is great. I know people struggle with writing alt text. It's not easy. I struggle with it too. Because you want to meet your you're providing the right amount of information without giving too much information. I like trying to find that bound. There is a app within ChatGPT that is called SheKnown Alt Test and that is like really helpful to give you a starting point. So that is one thing. The other thing is give people the option of either having a regular email with images and graphics, all of that and text only email. I've had people who are neurodivergent reach out to me and say that me adding GIF or images is very hard for them. So I've given them that option to opt into only text email. Yes, it means you have to create two emails, but if people end up liking the text version more, maybe that's a little less work for you.

Yes. One of the questions that occurs to me is we love making things with bold bright colors and making emails look highly engaging. And sometimes, especially now with light and dark modes on computers, we like reverse text. Is reverse text harder than white black on white type text, high contrast or what would say in relation to that?

Dying? My dog got really dining.

We're a dog friendly podcast here.

All right, cool. Like she just like barking because something distracted her. Anyway, so the one thing that I will say I wish more email platforms out there would take into consideration and allowing because right now they allow you to twitch from computer view mode to mobile mode, which is great. But like can they add that where you can look at what it looks like in light mode and dark mode and make changes there? That would be amazing because you can't control how someone wants to view things. Some people I know prefer dark mode all the way. Other people prefer light mode. I'm like my computer can pick. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that would be that you can't control what that person. But like for my email I you put on the top say this email is best viewed in light mode so that people know that can be like an added thing that if you feel like, you know, every email you design is best in dark mode, tell your audience that, let them know so they can be like, all right, let me switch over to that mood.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great tip. Thanks.

Aaron, you mentioned neurodivergent a second ago and we've been talking a lot about color, color contrast and screen readers. But yeah, that brings up the things like motion on websites or you know, I have one client who didn't want any motion on the website. It just, just drove her crazy. And that, that kind of opened my eyes to. Yeah, there's a segment of the population that, that, that just totally distracts them and gets them off of your message. Are there any generalities? I know we're starting to run short on time, but anything in general for, you know, dyslexic, neurodivergent, adhd, any of that segment of the population that we should be aware.

I wish that the GIF you could control it like to the point where you can push pause and it not keep going over and over again. So email platforms out there, if you are listening, that might be another thing you would want to consider. So. Right. I got ideas for a lot of these things to give that control to people because I personally love my gift. So. But yeah, that is something you do want to take into consideration if you know, you might draw more neurodivergent people to your audience by giving them that option to be able to turn things off or exit out because sometimes they will just turn off all images on the website so they won't do see anything the any images and just test only. So that's something to think about.

Yeah, it kind of goes back to. Just because you, me, somebody, the person who owns it, likes it doesn't mean everybody does. It doesn't mean it's appropriate for everyone. I think a lot of those options and controls are great. That's, that's one of the thing. I know they're not perfect. That's one of the things some of the, you know, at least in the website world, some of the plugins can help a lot with being able to change, you know, fonts even or fonts that are more friendly for the neurodivergent population.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot, lot to think about. You've really, really opened our eyes and hopefully our podcast listeners eyes about a lot of it. And like you said, it's think about it and plan it in. It's a lot easier than if after the fact you go, I got all this stuff I got to figure out.

Yeah. But one of the things I do want to like, let people know, all your listeners know is like, I teach progress, not perfection. I'm not telling you to go back and fix every video, every social media, every podcast episode you've done. What I do tell you and want you to do is start now, pick one thing from like the free reader I share with you. Pick one thing like, hey, I'm going to work on this right now and do that, do it well, then move on to the next thing. Don't. Because I do not want you to feel overwhelmed. It can very easily feel very overwhelming with everything I shared here today. But I don't want that to happen to anybody. I want you to take one thing at a time and know that you're making progress towards being a better business overall.

Yeah, that, that's awesome. Thanks so much, Aaron. I mean I, I put the resource that you're making available back on the screen for everybody and again, we'll put this in the show notes and, and also, you know, anywhere where the public where this podcast is, is published to. Thanks so much for your time. I mean, this has been really fantastic. I agree with you that, you know, this is something that's important for everybody. Disabilities aren't things that you always can see and tell that people have a disability. So don't be fooled by, you know, just what you see in appearance wise. As you pointed out earlier, you know, at the very beginning with, you know, with all that we've talked about so far, is there anything else that you want our listeners and viewers to know? And also just again, if you can let everybody know how they can contact you and find out more about your business, that would be fantastic.

So like, yeah, so there's lots of different ways that people can work with me. I've tried to provide different ways so that it doesn't feel overwhelming at first. Like you can do the diy, do it yourself successful course and then do an add on of a strategy set your where we can help you figure, map out where to start and go from there. Or we can work together where I do a mini audit for you in one or two areas and I give you a game plan and you take it from there and you can actually apply that to all different aspects of your business. So there's lots of different ways you can work with me. All of that information on my website. If you're not sure, you can always sign up for a discovery call with me 15 minutes. We'll figure it out. Because I want to work with you in the way that feels best for you, not just. This is all I offer, like, what feels good to you. We're going to make that work.

Okay. You're.

You're also building a community, right? I saw that on your website. I love the name. Successable, brilliant name.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I'm. I'm sure that you're. Can you just tell everybody what your website is again?

Yes. Www.maybe m a b e l y q dot com.

Okay. Awesome guides. Any other questions for Aaron?

No, this has been great. Aaron, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. So with that, Ian, I. I will let you take us out as usual.

Sure. So, thanks again, Erin, for sharing your wisdom and advice in this important topic. And to all our listeners and viewers, Keep calm and mark it on, folks. Bye for now.