Excluding People Isn’t a Creative Choice. It’s a Strategic Mistake.

Brandi Starr [00:00:36]:
Welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandy Star and we have another amazing episode for you today. Excluding people isn't a creative choice, it's a strategic mistake. Every time your marketing ignores people's people with disabilities, you are walking away from revenue and your competitors are happy to pick it up. Today we are challenging the idea that accessibility is a nice to have. Because here's the truth. Accessibility isn't charity, it's market access. If your campaigns, content or customer experience aren't designed for everyone, you're not just leaving people out, you're leaving money on the table.

Brandi Starr [00:01:20]:
So let's talk about it today. I am thrilled to be joined by Maxwell Ivey. Maxwell, known around the world as the Blind Blogger, has been educating people about accessibility ever since starting his first website, brokering used amusement park and carnival rides in 2007. Then accessibility was non existent, so he had to teach himself to code HTML just to get it online. He now shares all of those years of experience through writing, speaking, speaking, consulting and podcasting. He believes that accessibility isn't just the right thing to do, but it is in everyone's best interest. Max, welcome to Revenue Rehab. Your session begins now.

Maxwell Ivey [00:02:10]:
Well, thank you Brandy. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. And I love your intro music and also your intro of me. And I look forward to helping people really understand just how much they're leaving on the table when they aren't inclusive.

Brandi Starr [00:02:23]:
Yes, I am looking forward to this discussion. But before we jump into that, our industry loves its fancy jargon, but let's be real, some of these buzzwords are just fluff and they can hold us back more than they can help. So tell me, what is one overused word you'd like to get rid of forever?

Maxwell Ivey [00:02:45]:
I think I'd like to get rid of the word inclusive because it's such a vague word, it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. It allows a lot of people to feel like they are doing the right thing for their business or for people with disabilities without actually taking action, without really empathizing with the needs of this huge market of highly loyal consumers. And it allows them just to avoid the hard conversations, to avoid the time and effort. Although it isn't really a Lot of time and effort in most people's cases. But by saying that they're inclusive, it allows them to feel good about themselves, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they've done the work. And quite often I read accessibility statements from website owners after I have used the website. And I ask myself, did anybody who uses this website who has a disability write this statement? Because I don't think they did. You know.

Brandi Starr [00:03:48]:
Yeah, no, I agree. The phrase inclusive inclusivity has definitely become overused. And I would say that people don't always really think about what they mean when they say that word. And so that ties nicely into our topic for the day. So, you know, this impact, this issue impacts pretty much every company and it's often misunderstood or overlooked. And so I'd like to start with what is the most damaging myth about accessibility that marketing and revenue leaders need to think about?

Maxwell Ivey [00:04:29]:
I think there are two. One is that I don't have customers who with disabilities or if I have them, they do not have the funds to buy from me. And the other is that when I create for accessibility, I am only creating for people with disabilities.

Brandi Starr [00:04:51]:
That second one is really, really interesting because, you know, I do know that there is a lot of common misconceptions around all of the different disabilities and even how they can impact different people. I know when we had implemented, we have a plugin on our website called accessibe, which is designed to help with making our website more accessible. And even when it went through and did its first check, it flagged a number of things that I didn't even recognize, like things related to colorblindness where there was not enough contrast between the background and the text. And, you know, people like yourself who need to have the website read it out loud, you know, you've got a screen reader and how the layout of that can impact the usability of the website. And I think so often, you know, people think, oh, I don't have a physical office, or I'm not selling a physical product. I don't need to think about accessibility. And so I'd love to hear you talk more about these misconceptions to help ground us all in what the challenge is.

Maxwell Ivey [00:06:09]:
Right? So I think the first thing people need to know is a lot of things that you will do to improve accessibility will improve the user experience of all of your other customers who don't have a disability. One of my favorite examples is offering the ability to invert the text colors. So say for people that are using black text on a white background, for A lot of people with vision loss, but who still have enough vision to use screen magnifiers. By switching the text to white on a black background or yellow on a black background, they lower the eye strain and they improve the contrast and comprehension. Well, it turns out that people using websites on their mobile devices, if they have the option of inverting the text, then they will be able to visit your website in really high or really low light in a manner that is much more enjoyable for them, much easier on their eyes. And the less stress we cause people to spend time on our website, the more money we are probably going to get from people on our website. So there are lots of examples of where improving accessibility improved other customers lives, such as curb cutouts in the physical world that are there mainly just for wheelchairs and walkers. But there are lots of new parents who thank goodness for those curb cutouts when they're pushing a carriage.

Maxwell Ivey [00:07:34]:
So that I think that's one of the more important things. A lot of stuff you will do to improve accessibility will improve everybody else's user experience. Improving accessibility will raise your search engine rankings because Google and everybody else are getting really good at knowing what the wcag, that stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the surgeons are getting really good at knowing what those guidelines are and detecting websites that are making the effort, such as proper heading structures, clearly labeled buttons and links, and alternative text for images and for images attached to videos and other stuff on your website. And so they will give love to websites who are making the effort. And I've yet to meet a site owner who doesn't want more organic traffic to their business. And then the third thing is, is the size of the audience and the potential purchasing power is highly underestimated. I interviewed somebody just this week who told me that it's somewhere around three and a half to $4 trillion a year from people with disabilities and those people who are concerned about people with disabilities, especially when you add in people who have challenges similar to disability based on aging. So we're a huge market, we're a highly loyal consumer base that will support companies through good and bad.

Maxwell Ivey [00:08:54]:
We will overpay for products because we see accessibility as a value added proposition because so few people are doing it. And we will promote for you. I like to tell people when you include the disability community in your marketing and your product design, you are getting influencers that you don't have to pay.

Brandi Starr [00:09:14]:
Yeah. And that that is a great way to think about it. And you know, I think this is really important for marketers because if we think about our buyer's journey and the fact that especially in B2B, because most of our audience, you know, are selling to other businesses, there is, you know, the buyer's journeys are getting longer and longer. There are more people, people involved. And you know, if you think about like percentage wise, there's a good chance that Your buying committee's 10 people, you know, at least one of those may have some sort of disability. And there's all different types of disabilities. And to your point, age, I mean, you know, I'm in my mid-40s, which most people don't consider old. But there are definitely things that I have already seen a difference in size of fonts on websites and you know, things like that that are impacting me already.

Brandi Starr [00:10:12]:
And so you think about this journey and how making your content, your website, all of the things that you're putting out there, easier to digest for everyone and therefore accessible. I see the conclusion that you are drawing related to revenue. Have you had conversations with marketers or business owners that have seen the impact of positively leaning into this?

Maxwell Ivey [00:10:42]:
Yes, but before I answer that question, I want to comment on something you said about the purchasing or the buying group that was great because we don't know who's actually making the decisions. But I think if you take that down a level to the smaller businesses, you know, as you mentioned before we started talking, you and me are both small business owners. So the person doing the research or actually making the purchase may not be the business owner. It may be their spouse, their child, it could be a friend who just happens to volunteer their help to the business owner to do the research because that person is wearing too many hats and doesn't have the time. So we don't know who's visiting our websites, who's making the decision or helping to make the decision. And a lot of times that person may have a disability or may have a challenge due to age. And as far as business owners I've talked to, I'm finding from them there's two different results that they will talk about. They will either talk about how they've seen gradual increases in their sales or their revenue, or they've seen more satisfaction among their existing customers.

Maxwell Ivey [00:11:54]:
The other thing I hear from business owners is satisfaction among their teams, among their partners, that in one case with a company that I've worked with on their CRM product, that they've actually been able to recruit better staff than they used to because of how many young and even middle aged people are concerned to have social consciousness issues. Around who they're going to work for. So by embracing accessibility and embracing people of all abilities along with people of all genders, races, ages, etc, they're able to recruit talent based on value more so than on salary, which really helps them with their bottom line. So there are two different ways of seeing the value of accessibility. And since we met three podmatch, which is operated by Alex Sanfilippo, is a good friend, my very first client. And he has seen not only an increase in the number of users and the quality of users, but he's also seen an improvement in the number of people with disabilities who are sharing their information with hosts through the host podcast. And those connections are taking place on Pod Match. So he's, he's developing credibility in community, in the business community, to the point that he was recently nominated for a Webby without even having to ask somebody to nominate him because, because it was funny, he posted about it.

Maxwell Ivey [00:13:36]:
He said, yeah, I woke up this morning and they're talking about my podcast on Variety on my Podmat site on Variety. And I'm, and he's like, he was just totally. So, you know, we, I'm not going to say it was all because of accessibility, but accessibility certainly has helped his business along with the others that I've worked with or that people I know are working with. And there are actual statistics that say the sales, your sales revenue will increase 1.7 times more than people who don't embrace accessibility, that your profits could be as much as 2.4 times as much. As companies in the same industry that don't embrace accessibility, they're starting to test for the emotional benefits of having somebody with a disability on a team or staff, which doesn't even count. The fact that most people with disabilities are very problem solving, creative oriented type people who bring a lot to the teams where the business owner is interested to make the effort to hire them. So there are a lot of benefits. We've only just started to scratch the surface in testing and monitoring to the point where we can, we can assign numbers, but if you consider that 16% of Americans, just Americans, 16% have a disability of some form and that a quarter of the, or say 20% of those, 16% are, you know, 1/6 of 350 million, let's call that 60 million people that have a disability and then say about 12 to 15 million of those have some form of vision loss.

Maxwell Ivey [00:15:15]:
And these are only the people we know about. The people who have publicly or in some other way identified themselves as having a disability because There are a lot of people with vision loss who don't want to admit that they're losing their vision. And there are a lot of people with invisible disabilities that find it easier to just mask their disability and pretend they don't have a disability. So there's a lot out there. We're learning more and more every day. It's only been, I think, in the last four or five years that we've even been doing the right kind of research within the business community so that we can explain this sort of stuff. But I did speak with a woman this week, Missy Sue Mastel, who runs a company that advises nonprofits. And she told me it's somewhere between three and a half and $4 trillion between direct purchases and the purchases that people with disabilities influence.

Brandi Starr [00:16:05]:
I was gonna say. And that's a lot of revenue. And so I wanna dig more tactically because I think a lot of, you know, marketing leaders are more conscious and aware, but sometimes there's a factor of you don't know what you don't know. And so let's talk about the things that marketers need to be thinking about, because I know, you know, things that come to mind is anything related to what people see, because there are different variations of visual impairment. Hearing is another one. So if we're doing videos or demos or those sorts of things, I've even talked to someone who has pretty severe hand tremors. And the amount of clicks on a website in order to navigate, they are impacted by that because of the tremors that they have. And I am sure there are tons of other disabilities that I am unaware of.

Brandi Starr [00:17:01]:
And so speaking to those marketers around, what do we really do about this? Or what do we need to be thinking about when we are developing our marketing programs? Is there any tactical advice that you can give so that we, you know, I feel like when you know better, you do better. So I want to. I want our listeners to know better.

Maxwell Ivey [00:17:23]:
Right. I'm going to give them four things in just a minute. But I wanted to comment on two things you've said so far. One about the. The trimmers, tremors, and number of clicks. Because in general, people with disabilities take longer to navigate websites or apps. So the fewer clicks that are involved between the process of deciding if I want to buy from you and actually making the purchase is critical. The fewer in there, the better.

Maxwell Ivey [00:17:48]:
And then you mentioned colorblindness earlier. And of course, most people don't talk about it, but Zuckerberg is a famous person with color, with red blind, colorblindness and I recently learned this. And as you mentioned, there are a lot of disabilities neither one of us knows about. I do my best to learn more about other disabilities every day. But as I understand it, with red, green, colorblindness, if you put red or green on the screen without some other contrast to outline it, the person with that color blindness sees gray. And of course, how many of y' all I know I used to do it have a button on your website with the color green on it to indicate that that's the button you want to push to buy something from me. So those are a couple things, but as far as where to start and how to be tactile, how to approach it that way, the first thing is something that you are probably already telling businesses. They've probably heard this a lot of times and many of them are still struggling to do it.

Maxwell Ivey [00:18:46]:
But the the first place to start is to focus on the most important thing. The less distractions you have on a website, the less information, links, pages, whatever that don't need to be there. The easier that is for the life of the person with a disability, the quicker I can get from deciding is this a website that will have what I thought it would when I came here? From the search engine to evaluating products or services to in the event of a service, scheduling a call or getting more information. In the event of a product, getting more information as far as size, color, description, shipping all of that good stuff, and then proceeding to make a process to make a purchase. So focus on the most important thing. Make the process of getting from homepage to press submit button as short as possible with as few distractions as possible, or as I like to tell people, make the most important thing. The most important thing second is design websites from the point of view of a keyboard operator. First, because the majority of people using adaptive technology, whether that's screen readers like me or screen magnifiers or mechanical switch devices, or people who have to use their voice to command their computers, we don't have access to a mouse.

Maxwell Ivey [00:20:15]:
Sometimes we can simulate a mouse, but that's not always reliable. It seems to me whenever somebody wants me to click a button to make my sale or subscribe to their email list, that button is never clickable. With a simulated mouse button keyboard navigation first. Third thing, take a minimalist approach to designing your homepage and all the pages on your website. If the information doesn't need to be on the homepage, put it on a different page. If the information doesn't need to be on a submenu put it on a different menu or take it off the website. So take a minimalist approach with as little information on each screen as you actually have to have in order to educate your consumer and help them make the purchase with confidence. And then the fourth thing is you want to use a simplified approach to your website because the more bells and whistles you put on your website, the more likely you are to add things that will create accessibility problems for people like me.

Maxwell Ivey [00:21:12]:
And some of it can be really simple. Some things are like, how is that causing a problem? Like modals, you know those pop ups for email subscription lists. Everybody seems to have them now where the first thing you see when you go to a website is their email list and they may or may not have a button that lets me get out of there easily. If they don't, I have to close their screen, go back, maybe even close my browser and go back and start over again. That's one of those things. It's really simple. It shouldn't have been a problem. It can be designed where it isn't a problem.

Maxwell Ivey [00:21:41]:
But the more bells and whistles you have on a website, the more likely you are to create an accessibility issue. So those would be the, the way I would tell people to approach it. Most important thing, keyboard navigation, simple design, minimalist approach.

Brandi Starr [00:21:58]:
Thank you, I appreciate that. That definitely gives me some things to think about. And it's so interesting that you talk about the green buttons because I remember, I can't remember how many years ago it was, but there was a study, you know, they do all the AB testing and green came out to be the color that most people clicked. And so you, you know, had a lot of companies that shifted to green buttons because it was air quotes proven to be most effective without realizing, you know, that is problematic for red. Green colorblindness.

Maxwell Ivey [00:22:35]:
Yes. And of course they have figured out a way around that. Like I say, if you're good with graphics or AI and you can properly outline that green or red button, then you'll be okay.

Brandi Starr [00:22:47]:
Okay. And that is a good. I'm glad you said that. Because often it is easy to think about things really in an all or nothing sort of, you know, way of thinking about it. So like, oh, never use green. And it's not. No, you can't, you know, you never use green. It's just you need to outline it so that it's visible.

Brandi Starr [00:23:10]:
And I have seen different things. I know there's different plugins out there. You know, good web designer at this point understands that. And I Think, you know, you brought up AI. I think that's going to play a key role as well, because so many people are using AI for coding now. And I don't know if AI naturally thinks about accessibility when building that code.

Maxwell Ivey [00:23:36]:
It doesn't, and it doesn't yet. And there's some. There's some debate as to whether or not it ever will. There's. There's actually a concern within the disability community or the community of differently abled people that AI is going to cost some of the jobs that we have carved out for ourselves as a community. And I have to reassure people that I don't think AI is going to result in us begging on street corners or being returned to institutions. But there is that fear, just like there's fear among everybody else as to what the future of AI and what the future of work will look like. AI does really good with certain things, but with coding right now, there aren't really a lot of people who know how to tell AI to code.

Maxwell Ivey [00:24:22]:
And it's good at simple things. Just like website checkers like you mentioned can be good at certain things, it's not great at other things. And in fact, one of my friends, Larry Roberts, who's very well known in the marketing world, especially in AI, he's like, you know, Max, you really need to be using your knowledge of accessibility to help people create AI prompts that will generate more accessible websites. So right now, not so much. There's been efforts on the advocacy side to try to get more people with disabilities at the table. And the design and the continuing evolution of AI that also hasn't resulted with as many voices at the table as we would like. So AI is still up a question, but I've had a couple of really good experiences with AI recently, both on the JCPenney website, where their AI noticed that I was purchasing a product that ran small. It told me, suggested I pick a larger size.

Maxwell Ivey [00:25:20]:
I picked the larger size. When the clothes got to me, I was happy with them. I didn't have to send them back and order the next size up. And it also automatically told me about a discount coupon that I was eligible for at that particular time, which I wouldn't have known if. If I'd have had the energy, I would have had to search for it to find it. But their AI built into their shopping cart told me about those two things. So there are some great things for AI. One place I really wish we could use AI is in colors because, you know, with marketers, y' all, and I'm not saying this to be negative, but naturally you're big on images and videos and color palettes and the color.

Maxwell Ivey [00:26:04]:
And the color palette of most marketers is bigger than the box of Crayola crayons I had when I was 9. You know, it had 24 in the box. So there are a lot of colors that I don't know what they are. I, I lost, finally, I lost the last bit of my vision in 1990 when I grew about the same time I graduated from college. So there are a lot of colors. I wish that we could use AI not only to describe images, which that's starting to be a thing, but I wish we could use AI to tell me what the heck the color actually is, because I really don't. I can kind of guess what Foggy Heather is, but I don't know. I can.

Maxwell Ivey [00:26:43]:
I can kind of guess what mustard is, but I'm not sure. But my favorite one of all, because I actually did a test with Google, I mean, with Siri, Alexa and Google, asking them if they could tell me what the, what the actual color was of, Of a color. Because a friend of mine is a, is a lady, and she spends a lot of time on cosmetic sites, and she's like, max, there are some really bad colors out there. And so she challenged me to see if Alexa could describe the color. And I. The color was, no, I am not a waitress. I'm not lying. That was the name of the nail polish.

Maxwell Ivey [00:27:14]:
No, I am not a waitress. And so I asked, I asked and I found out that it is. It is a mix of a really hot pink and a white is. So it's kind of like a. It's kind of like a, A stripe or a, or, or a shading or something that they put on their nails. But I'm. And it was, it was kind of funny to be able to tell my friend, yes, Alexa was able. And the reason they're able to do that is because they're accessing the color directories with the manufacturers, because a lot of these crazy color names are crazy color names because they could only be trademarked with crazy color names.

Maxwell Ivey [00:27:50]:
So there has to be a way for AI And I'm sure, you know, maybe somebody that's watching this as a marketer can tell me how we start making their case for either sensible color names, color name descriptions, like we have alt text descriptions, or some sort of AI widget that will tell the people who don't know what colors are, what the colors are.

Brandi Starr [00:28:12]:
Yeah, I definitely, I mean, as someone who buys makeup? I definitely could support like alt text of the color descriptions, especially if I could filter on them because I do like, the names are always fun for women's makeup. My favorite lipstick is called Flat Out Fabulous, but that would not at all tell you that it's a fuchsia pink. And so I, I agree there. And I think the key takeaway that I have from what you just described and is that in a B2C environment, like, consumer organizations are a little bit ahead of the curve in being a bit more accessible. And it's not uncommon that B2B marketers can look to what's happening from consumer brands as an example of things that we need to think about.

Maxwell Ivey [00:29:02]:
That's a very good point. And I forgot that a lot of the people I'm talking to today are in the B2B field. But we have to go back to the fact that you don't really know who is going to be making the purchasing decision. So that person may have accessibility issues. And the, you know, creating the accessibility features on your website is just a good way to cover yourself and make sure, you know, I focus more on the positive, the financial benefits of accessibility. But in some cases we really do it to avoid the potential regulatory challenges or the lawsuits. And you know, just an aside here. For companies that do business in the European Community, the European Accessibility act has already taken effect for new businesses and it will take effect later this year for existing businesses.

Maxwell Ivey [00:29:50]:
So if you are doing business in the EAA and you are not meeting the WCAG standards, they will penalize you. And it can be a financial penalty. But in Greece, for a multiple offender, it can result in jail time.

Brandi Starr [00:30:06]:
Oh, wow.

Maxwell Ivey [00:30:07]:
How they would jail an American website owner, I don't know. But they probably could keep your websites from doing business in that country as a, as a follow up. But the EAA is very serious about making websites in that do business over there accessible. And as a blind person living in the US where the regulations are very lightweight for lack of a better term, and right now even more so because we depend on the Department of Justice to enforce the accessibility rules, right now, there's not a lot of interest in the Department of Justice in enforcing anything having to do with civil rights. And since accessibility and disability is kind of like the stepchild of marginalized groups, I'm sure that there will be very little effort from the federal government to enforce accessibility. But that's why we have to focus so much on the positive benefits. And it's also why I'm hopeful and A lot of other people that have disabilities are hopeful that just like with privacy standards, where American companies improve their privacy stuff on their back end because they were wanting to continue to do business in the UK or Europe where they were required to do those things. A lot of us are hoping that the laws in European Union and in the UK and Australia, that those laws will affect businesses here in the US To a positive.

Maxwell Ivey [00:31:29]:
But the most important thing for the B2B people is you don't know who's going to visit the website. There is always the possibility of regulation and there's, you know, you, there's so many good things about improving the accessibility. And you know, you mentioned something you were talking about with colors. You said if you could use those colors as a tag when you were searching or if you could eliminate certain colors when you're searching using that sort of a tag, that sounds like the kind of thing that would help would be to be business that has a large product range when customers are wanting to save as much time as they can to find the product that they actually need and want and that will serve their needs the best. So.

Brandi Starr [00:32:13]:
Well. I was gonna say, yeah, you have definitely given us as marketers, some things to think about and to plan for. Maxwell, this has been a great conversation. Thank you. Tell us, how can the audience stay connected with you?

Maxwell Ivey [00:32:29]:
Right. The best way is to go to theaccessibilityadvantage.com or to visit my LinkedIn profile, which is under Maxwell Ivey and IV is I - V as in Victor - E - Y. Those would be the two best places to find me, connect with me, ask questions, or hire me. And I've been making this offer for a while and so far nobody has taken me up on it. So until people start taking me up on it, I'm going to keep making the offer. I have over 17 years experience educating people about accessibility in the real world, doing it every day, even when I didn't realize I was doing it or wasn't getting paid for it. I've been working with clients for almost five years now. I'm willing to review your homepage, just your homepage, but I'm willing to review your homepage for free and give you my opinion, not only if it's accessibility, but whether or not its workflow is friendly to people using adaptive technology.

Maxwell Ivey [00:33:29]:
So if that's something that interests you, reach out to me through the website. TheAccessibilityAdvantage.com Tell me you saw me on here or heard me on here, and I will help you out.

Brandi Starr [00:33:39]:
As I say, amazing offer we will make sure to link to both your website and your LinkedIn. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so so that you can connect with Maxwell and also take him up on that offer. Well, Maxwell, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it. This has been a very valuable conversation.

Maxwell Ivey [00:34:02]:
Well, Brandi, thank you so much for having me and for being such a great host and for for helping me stay focused on sharing the kind of information that the marketers in your community need to hear.

Brandi Starr [00:34:14]:
Awesome. Thanks everybody for joining me. I hope you have enjoyed my conversation with Maxwell. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time, Bye. Bye.