GAAD webinar: What it takes to build an accessible brand

Welcome

Josh: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for being here today. We’re here to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which is all about digital accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. Today’s conversation is simple. How do we move accessibility from something we do someday to something that becomes part of the way the brand actually shows up? So, quick note, hidden disability. Sunflower, unfortunately, had a last-minute personal matter and couldn’t join us, but we look forward to having them back soon. So, let’s jump in. I’m Josh Basil. I’m a community relations manager here at Accessity. I’m a Forbes accessibility leader, which was just announced yesterday.

I’m on the Forbes accessibility 200 list. I’m super proud of that and the work that we do every day here at accessiBe. And I’m a trial attorney and a C45 quadriplegic, which means I’m paralyzed below my shoulders. accessibility is not the radical for me. It’s every day I experience barriers and I have to figure out how to get around them. And hopefully, companies and others will help me get over them. Idan, I would love to throw it over to you now to introduce yourself.

Idan: Thank you so much, Josh. I’m very excited and humbled to be here with you on a panel. We had a really great conversation over the years, some of them have been recorded, but now live with a lot of people in the audience get me excited a lot. So, I’m Idan. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Right Here. We’re turning public spaces into more accessible environments primarily for people with orientation challenges, whether blind or visually impaired, as well as other folks, basically for everyone. And we do that by turning the regular signs and the rail signs into more audible, into talking signs, and maybe we can talk a little bit about that later.

Super excited about the conversation today. Josh, I absolutely love the work that you do. I’ve been a big fan for many years. So Dan, thank you so much for being here. Next slide. So before we go further, I want to point out something really important.

Why Accessibility Matters

You’re here. You showed up. This is huge. This means that you actually already care enough to start the conversation. That you might be doing something already in the past, doing something today, but that’s the whole point for us to be here and to do something. You don’t need to fix everything overnight. You just need to start somewhere.

Getting Started

So, when you work with organizations across the country, across the world, what’s the difference between the ones that get moving and the ones that stay stuck? I think the difference is that those who get stuck usually do so because of mistaken perceptions, right? It sometimes feels too complicated. So like okay, what does it mean to make our website or our facility or what’s not our product accessible, like we’re not using it the same way. So maybe doing it that way is too complicated, too complex, too expensive, too risky, and then I feel like a lot of organizations are getting this type of shock, and we’re not sure what to do with this.

So, so, so maybe it’s for next quarter, or maybe it’s for next year, or maybe it’s for someone else in the organization to handle that. And I think you know, as a matter of fact, in most cases, from our experience, it’s actually much simpler and easier than people perceive in the first place. As a matter of fact, you know, if the design process, whether it’s the building, the website, or the product, has been done according to best practices, you might not need to have any further accessibility things. So, it’s very, very simple. obviously from the get- go later, it might be a bit more complicated if you haven’t put that in in the in in place at the beginning, but it’s much easier, much simpler, much faster in most cases than people usually perceive.

And I think organizations that are willing to, you know, really, really give it a try usually are surprised by the simplicity of it eventually. So, is that answering Josh? Is that that was the It does. It does. And so, so much of this conversation today is, you know, accessibility; accessibility is a journey. And you don’t know what you don’t know. I know before my injury 20 years ago, the only thing I really knew about accessibility and disability was that Superman was paralyzed. And then all of a sudden, I get part of we get part of this world, or we have a conversation. And truly, when it comes to disability and accessibility, it’s not a matter of if, but when you need it.

Or somebody you love or a coworker. You know, disability impacts everyone at somewhere in their life personally or those they care about. So, this is such an important conversation. And I want to mention also, everybody here today, I want you to throw any questions into the chat because at the end we’re going to have a Q&A. If we don’t get to them, we’re going to also be responding to them later on, so that your voice and questions are heard. So, don’t forget to be active in that chat today. We can’t wait to hear what you have to say. Yes. And Josh, I want to maybe add a little bit of what you just said, right?

It’s you, you know, you’re here, right? This is what we can now see on the slide. You’ve really taken the first step. So, you’re all activists. you’re all coming coming to this with the right attitude cuz because I think to me I always when have these opportunities I’m saying that you know the technology the the the product the space around us for the most part is can be very accessible very easily what’s sometimes harder to make accessible is just people’s mind if you will or the attitude around it so I could and thank you all for joining us today because the first step is is learning about it and and and taking action around this.

Yeah, back with you, Josh. Thank you. We’re going to go to the next slide.

Common Misconceptions

So a lot of people hear accessibility, and they immediately think we need to rebuild everything. We need a huge budget. We need to be perfect before we say anything. This only affects people with disabilities. Most of that is just it’s just not true. Accessibility is usually built through small intentional decisions over time. Again, it’s a journey, and you don’t have to be perfect from the beginning. You just have to be doing something. And Edon, do you see the same thing on the physical accessibility side and kind of where people make it feel kind of bigger or scarier than it needs to be? Yes. Abs. Absolutely.

We see it often. Again, our focus is very much on making the public build environment space accessible. So, when people think about that, hold on, so we need to get you a very sophisticated type of map, like a CAD type of format. I don’t know where I can find it, and no, actually, we’re just doing signage right. So if you already have regular signs, they’re going to stick to them and make them accessible. So, yes, I think it’s just as I said at the beginning: I think companies like us, and just like again accessibly and many others in the field, their whole point is making this effort as seamless and simple as possible.

That’s the whole point of it, with the understanding that if it will be too complicated, businesses won’t do it or will struggle to do it. So, so I know again from the work with you with with you accessib in our case we’re this this is what we do day in and day out making it as simple as possible and that’s what also we’re hearing with all of our partners that you know a matter of fact it was much easier much simpler than we thought so it might sounds frightening at the beginning but eventually it’s much easier than that and I love that we got some data points before with our registration And about onethird of people attending today are from the government and public sector.

Another third are from agencies managing client experiences and the rest are a range of industries across the board. So it’s like the stakes look different for each of you, and the starting point is the same. You don’t need to start on everything at once. You just need to start somewhere. Next slide.

Barriers to Progress

Now let’s make this real. So I want everybody to be able to, again, drop in the chat what’s like a line that you’ve heard that shuts down accessibility. So again, what’s the line you’ve heard that shuts down accessibility within your business, your company? It might be that you don’t have a budget. No one has complained. We will deal with it later. We’re already compliant. Love to hear what’s one line that you see. Well, I think you know I imagine that to be a bit different in our case Justin than you know maybe in your case you know in our case a lot of time is very much the lack of awareness there a lot of times there you know partners and and venues we’re speaking with like we have never thought about this we’ve never we never even like we we had no idea it’s it’s even possible right we have braille signs across our building but no we didn’t know that over 90% out of the blind community cannot read rail at all.

No, we haven’t thought about the fact that you need to find those signs somehow. Oh, and I just had this call earlier today about the fact that postco touching a braille sign isn’t as appealing as it used to be, right? And it’s something we’re hearing often from the community. So, I think in our case a lot of times just we weren’t aware of that at all. And now that we are aware, we’re not fully sure what to do with it because we haven’t budgeted, right? It wasn’t a budget item for this year. In terms of complaints, yes, we haven’t heard a lot of them. So that’s to that u ticket there.

Honestly, Josh, this is part of what I love about my job: you get the opportunity to really educate and share, you know, information that I think is important for people just to know in general, whether they’ll choose to work with us or not. But that’s, I think, most of what we’re hearing. What about you guys? What’s what what what do you hear? I want you to go look in the chat for a second, and I want you to re-react to one of them. But as I’m going through these, I love these because they’re so real. They’re raw, and they’re honest.

And most of the time kind of these these these oneliners, they come from fear or kind of confusion or not knowing where to start. But you don’t pick one of your favorites. Wow, there’s a beautiful one. Thank you all for sharing that. We need to meet standards, of course. Yes. Not enough time to pick one just for you. Yeah, we need to meet the standards again. Is there a cheaper way? Our users don’t have disabilities. That’s something. Yeah, we’ve been hearing that a lot. People who are blind are not coming to our facility. Well, guess what? if you make it more accessible, they might they might they might come in, which is obviously wrong.

They are coming. You’re just not noticing it in them. But but it’s just Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s like if you’re not accessible, and you’re like, we’re not we don’t have many people with disabilities coming in or experiencing it. Well, it might be because they’re blocked from doing that. And that’s it; it’s just powerful to be able to welcome all cuz no business wakes up and says, you know what, we want to exclude this huge population of people with unique abilities and disabilities that no business wants to shut out potential customers. It’s just they don’t know what they don’t know, or they are blocking people out, and it’s just they don’t know because of that.

There there’s a lot of Josh there’s a lot of the comments here from what I’m seeing right very much around the the compliance and standards and there’s an extension for another year and this type of language and I think you know I think a a lot of time part of the challenge we we’re experiencing is is transitioning the conversation from a compliance conversation to an accommodation hospitality type of conversation. So needs to be both. It needs to be a lot of different things, but just being able to find out what your path forward is and to start now. And what I love about Accessibby, and I’ve been with accessiBe now for 5 years, is witnessing that businesses don’t have to do this alone.

And you know, one of my taglines in life is together we are stronger, and together we’re not alone. And when we don’t have to be alone going forward, it becomes a lot less scary, but it also becomes a lot more doable. And we need accessibility to be doable for businesses to be able to do it. next. All right.

Building Internal Buy-In

So, how do we get buy-in? This is huge. My my biggest advice is don’t only lead with compliance, lead with trust, lead with customer experience, lead with brand reputation, and lead with the cost of lead with the cost of excluding people. So, you don’t need to have everything on board at first. You need one champion or a few champions, but one champion will do, who understands why this matters and will let their voice be heard so that we can have the conversations and teach those throughout the company, and from the top down, making it a lot easier. But everybody can be an advocate; everybody can find their voice and be able to do better around this.

So I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about your thoughts, too. Yeah, I agree with you, and I think the center there builds coalitions; accessibility belongs to everyone. I think to touch on that a little bit, I imagine we have a lot of people here today. You’re all champions, right? you’re all trying to do this and I think as just Josh said building the coalition internally sometimes sophistic in a sophisticated way you know it could be just you know in the corridor later in the after hours before in this like hey look you know I know it wasn’t budgeted I know it’s not necessarily top priority for this or that but I really think it’s something we should have because you know it’s something we I believe is important etc.

So you know these type of convos to build those coalition I think is very very very important very powerful I want to acknowledge the the power of this actually the second movers within your organizations there’s there’s there you champion sometimes but then the other person said you know what I’m with you on this they’re equally leaders on that and and giving them the credit of this I think that’s super important to build this kind of peer positive pressure of doing good. Yeah, it wasn’t budgeted. Yeah, it’s not necessarily what the ADA exactly requires, but hey, if it’s the right thing to do and you believe it’s something that’s important and worthwhile and affordable or cost-effective or or or makes sense, you know, that’s that’s where really our values come to play in our work life.

So, doing it with other people as a coalition helps. What works when making the case for physical accessibility? Say again what works when making the case for physical accessibility- you know, again, just, I think what really helped us is the references; I think, in our case, when we can show, hey, there are others that have been doing that, then that’s built some sort of, again, maybe comparative pressure, if you will in in the different industries. So I think it also builds trust and confidence internally when you show internally, hey, you know what, this stadium has done that, or this library has done that, or this museum has done that. Okay, all right, so this is something that is happening in the world, and we’re not the first to try it.

That’s built, the I don’t know if the case but the trust I think in terms of the case Josh I think you know it’s easy right it’s when you open up the doors to more people guess what more people are coming in u right so we might talk about a little bit about ROI later but but it just makes sense when you think even from the another another talking point we usually talk about is you know emergency situations. So in case of emergency, how would everyone know where to go, right? And what’s around them? So if it’s the exit or what’s not. So those sometimes give the other side the tools and the talking points they might need to build a coalition.

I love that. And really, the last thing I’d want to say on this slide is, again, you just don’t need universal buying from every single person. You just need one yes to start the conversation and start doing well in this area. Yeah, next slide. There’s a lot. Just sorry to interrupt. There are a lot of messages in the chat. I’m having a hard time reading them. So maybe, Sapir, if you want, from time to time, just to pick one question, if it’s for us. I think that would be helpful. Hope we’ll get to the questions at the end.

I’m happy to read them out at the end. Sounds good.

What Makes an Accessible Brand

When we get there, an accessible brand is not just a website checklist. Checklists are dangerous if you apply them just like that. It usually shows up in four places. What you say, and this is like the captions, all text, plain language, where people find you and your website, apps, on social media, how people experience you through your products, your spaces, services, and support, and who you hire and how you hire. And this can be through accommodations, inclusion, and representation. So, Idan, I want to throw this over to you. With a physical experience piece that you really bring to the table, what changes when a brand thinks about navigation and physical access as part of the overall customer experience?

I think it’s very visible in our case, right? You know, when I compare, I always compare the digital sphere to the physical one, right? So, from the digital sphere, if I go to any website, I might not necessarily know right away if it is accessible or not; I need to test it a bit further. So sometimes not necessarily visible in the build environment though you know at least in our case when you set up those talking signs around which are visible right for good and bad but they are visible and if you actually more than our talking sign themselves but actually put a separate sign or we have our our accessible badge there then it’s much more visible and therefore it’s get more attention and and get more appreciation and I think that’s my point it’s The appreciation of being accessible isn’t just by the end users for using it.

Yes, of course, they’ll appreciate that, but actually by a lot more by a lot of their circles and outside of their circles when they just, you know, standing in the elevators going to their next floor and in the meantime looking into this like, oh, they’ve done something interesting here. I didn’t know about it, but this company, this venue, is innovative and inclusive. I’m probably going to come back here again. It’s values I believe in. So, so it goes way from a branding perspective, it goes way beyond the end users who are actually using it. An accessible brand, to me, is also so much about being welcoming, you know, not having a closed door, having not only accessibility but usability.

And I see that across so many different products and businesses, being able to actually get to them, experience them, or provide feedback. And even when I started with Accessib 5 years ago, the disability community didn’t have as much of a seat at the table during the earliest days. And as we, you know, wanted to strengthen our brand, we recognized that we need the disability community to have that seat to hear from them, to learn from them, and to get that feedback. And over the past year, we started the inclusive product advisory board here at Accessibbe. And it’s just been amazing to have all these different voices and, you know, perspectives to have a seat at the table as we’re bringing out our technology.

So, you know, doing it, you know, internally or externally through your marketing to make sure and through your website to make sure everybody has access. There are different ways that a brand can strengthen that story. Yep. All right. We are now going to jump to the next slide. Oh, you got it. Done. No, just one I mean maybe I’ll just mention the universal design aspect of it as well, right? At least in our case, what we often found, you know, either at the very beginning of the project or later, is that we’re providing the information on the signage in multiple languages.

So when when everyone and visitors that are not necessarily blind or visually impaired or necessarily have a specific orientation challenges can hear them in their own language surprisingly those facilities feels like okay this is actually helpful wider than the end user we thought and I think that’s what universal design is all about and so I just thought it was worth mentioning it when thinking about a brand is not just for a specific type of audience it’s it goes way beyond that. Oh, no. Very well said. Totally agree with you. And we’re going to skip this slide, but I’m going to talk about it kind of within the next one.

Small Changes, Big Impact

So, kind of small things kind of send a big signal. So, captions tell someone that they’re that they were considered. All text tells someone that they were also considered. And plain language tells someone that guess what that they were considered. And a a keyboard friendly form tells them that they’re also considered. I want to like re re you know hammer that in. And for someone like me, I I am paralyzed below my shoulders. So I have no use of my arms or my legs or my hands. So I rely so much on assistive technology to be able to access the world around me and especially my digital experience.

So, every click matters, and I use an onscreen keyboard to jump through a page, scroll down to get to everywhere I need to go, and experience dropdowns, or I use voice dictation to use search bars. But if accessibility is not built in, I’m either going to be stuck on the first page or the next page. But the goal is for every customer to be able to go from start to finish, to be able to experience the site and to be able to I know this sounds weird- but for me to be able to give you my money and for me to be able to sign up for a service, it’s just we need to have that.

And one of the big things from the last side was that the average job accommodation only costs a business about $500, but more than 50% of accommodations cost nothing at all. And that is huge to think about within your hiring and within your workforce. And I’m a big believer that a reasonable accommodation should be changed from a performance enhancer because we want all of our employees to perform at their highest level. Not only if they have a disability or any unique abilities. We want them to perform at their best. And this is a huge population. One in four American adults has a disability.

So let’s do more to have them perform at their highest abilities. I do want to throw this over to you, Idan, to see what your thoughts are on this as well. Yeah, I think you know that’s usually what brings it, and I imagine we’re going to talk about it in one of the next slides about how we measure that, right? How do we measure that increase in performance, or this ROI question that always comes to the table? I think that’s something I’d love to discuss today in this webinar. We wanted to make this as practical as possible and arm all the wonderful champions who came today for their next conversations.

But I just want to comment, you know, on what you said, Josh, you know, I like, and you said humorously but very truthfully, for you to get paid, right? It is on our I think it’s not just on your interest, right? It’s on the organization. It’s in our society’s interest. Everyone wins when everyone’s around the table. It’s not just those who got a new seat. If everyone is, it’s getting more and more talent and more and more customers in some cases, right? So yeah, that would be my two cents on this one, Josh. Well, it’s huge knowing that one in four adults lives with some form of disability.

Like, this is not a small side issue. It kind of impacts millions of people and often starts kind of with the choices of what is practical, affordable, and doable within a business. So these small improvements can help everyone can create better SEO, better usability, better better customer experience. So, like, what’s kind of one small physical accessibility change that can create a much bigger impact for people than you’d expect? I think it depends again if you’re looking at the physical space or the digital, which you could probably talk about better than I would, but in the physical space, starting with just the entrance sign, right?

Just at the very entrance to the building. This is the business. So this is the name of the business, right? Or it’s the door. It’s the door. This is the door. Welcome. This is whatever brand is welcoming you. Or, in the elevator, sometimes you’re on the third floor. You might be surprised, right? But when you get into an elevator with a few other people, sometimes- you know, we’re hearing that from the community a lot- you might find yourself left out on a floor you weren’t intended to be on, and you have no idea where you are now.

So being able to know what the floor is sometimes. Restrooms. A restroom is a very, very basic point of interest to me, an essential one. We all know it’s a human need, right? We’re all using restrooms even if it’s stinky to talk about it a bit but we’re all using that and and being able to know this is the men’s restroom this is the you know the women’s restroom and feeling comfortable going there without am I in the right room at all I think is something simple easy fast that you can do and and I think you know just maybe to share transparently Josh you know a lot of time in the in the I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years now and and in the beginning I always felt not very comfortable especially in like I I’m I don’t have a disability myself and therefore like what is that why why are you talking about it I mean it should be some so maybe do you have a family member who’s do that or what is your relationship to to that specific accessibility issue and it was it took me years to to understand that I don’t think I need to have that like so I’m talking to you all in the room today when you’re trying to build your coalition internally etc.

Like, what is your interest in that? Well, it should be in everyone’s interest. It’s not just the interest, as I said, of the end users or their immediate circles. It’s in everyone’s interest that everyone will be able to walk in independently, equally, whether it’s in the digital sphere or the physical sphere. So there are so many customers with so many unique abilities, disabilities, however you might have it. But accessibility creates a welcoming, easier, and more open space. And like you can even see like within like an escalator or an elevator somewhere, as it can help at any moment. And like when I’m going, you know, I live in the Washington, DC area, and when I go to the metro, and I take the elevator, I’m not the only one doing it.

We have people with luggage, people with strollers, and people who might have a cast on. Like accessibility helps anyone at any moment within their journey. And Josh, you could probably speak best for this, but it’s among the only minorities that you might find yourself joining at some point, right? It’s not a matter of if, but when that it will impact you or someone you care. It’s just a matter of time before age catches up to everybody at some point. A better well put. Yeah, absolutely.

Common Mistakes

And then the next slide is these are kind of the big mistakes, the four big mistakes that slow down teams. Doing nothing is one, overcomplicating it, going at it alone, and not celebrating progress. I love the not celebrating progress cuz every little thing you do is, you know, we we need to highlight progress because it’s I don’t I love a good pat on the back and it’s it’s encouraging. It makes me want to take that next leap, the next thing to be able to make more of a difference. So, just every little thing you do, I know I can’t physically, but in the background, I’m virtually giving each and every one of you a big pat on the back every time you do something.

So, just don’t be afraid. Get out there and do and keep on this journey. And Idan, I would love to know which of these you kind of see most often within your experience in space? Yeah. No, I I well I you touched most of them so I kind of relate to all of them. I think on the last one, you know, not celebrating progress. It’s just really leaving money on the table, if you will. Take pride in it. You’ve already made the effort. You’ve already gone through all this. I mean, yeah, it might have become, you know, a lot of times as we talk, it might seem very complicated and like too much, but then throughout the process it might look much simpler and easier, and then sometimes at the end of it, since it was that simple and easy, there’s maybe nothing to talk about.

Well, there is, there is. You’ve done the right thing. So, so, so sharing, and it’s also obvious that if you’re not letting people know that it is now accessible, they might assume that it is not. So, so, so, so from that standpoint, celebrating it is not just going to help you feel good; it’s actually going to directly influence the results, the performance of what you would try to achieve with it. So, it’s part of your branding, like when you do good, let the world know when you do good, whether within your technology, your products or services, within your accessibility, let it be known.

Yeah. And it’s also, by the way, inspiring others to follow, right? And that’s key. I love how you said that cuz it’s it’s you know I know for me and so much of my mentoring like I’m a big believer that for everybody for the rest of the their life they need to be a mentor or a mentee cuz there’s always more to either give or then there’s always more to learn and it’s the same thing within a business. It’s the same thing with a personal life. It’s the same thing I try to teach my kids: there’s always more to do, and learning is part of that process.

So the big takeaway is simple. Pick one thing, fix it, and tell someone. Now we’re going to jump to the next slide. Oh, I’m sorry. This is our slide. All right. So, all right.

Audience Q&A

So, now we want to hear from you. We would love for you to drop some more questions in the chat: what feels hard, where are you stuck? What do you wish your leadership team understood? And I know we’re going to have Shapiro read some of the questions that we can jump into right now and address.

Sapir: Thanks, Josh. So I do want to share a few things that everyone can already do this week. So in a moment we’ll share the offer right here. Thank you, Adon, if you want to share about that in a moment. But another thing you can do is share that you’ve attended a webinar, you’ve taken part in an activity for GAD, which is happening tomorrow, the 15th, global accessibility awareness day. So we have a social media kit on our website. I’ll add that to the chat as well. And you’ll be able to share with all text and an image description in the caption, so everything is made accessible for you.

And then take what you’ve learned from this conversation today and have one internal conversation at your next team meeting or, as Idan said, in the corridor by the water cooler. It’s always better to sort of bring these conversations and build up to them, right? Because what we saw earlier from everyone is that it’s very easy to get a no. It’s very easy to push it back a year or by the budget timeline. But if you have a conversation at a time and celebrate each one of those steps that you’re taking, you’re making it a much further way along with your accessibility journey. we do have some questions. We don’t have time for all of them because we are a little bit over.

But Josh, I’ll read to you one of the first questions that we got because I thought it was very interesting. What if an organization’s customers have disabilities, but the organization itself doesn’t understand disability? Specifically thinking about the healthcare industry. So again, this can be part of that learning journey. If you have customers but you don’t have employees, you know, being able to go out to the community and being able to learn from them or getting feedback from your customers or going to nonprofits within the space that you want to learn more from or being able to reach out to Excessive, and we have over 650 nonprofit partners.

We have access to labs. We have a lot of incredible voices within disability right here at Accessby to be able to help you along your journey. So, just again, together we’re stronger. Together we’re not alone. We got your back in this. So just all you need to do is reach out, and you’ll hear from us. You know, Josh, if I may, one thing that we haven’t said today, but I think is crucial, is remembering that when we talk about accessibility, it’s progress over perfection, right? Could you agree with that, Josh? Absolutely. Right. It’s better to do something. It’s better to start somewhere.

It’s better to try than to do nothing. And it’s a journey. It’s a journey. It’s a-, and it’s not a check; it’s not a checklist where you’re done doing one check, and you’re done. It’s just it’s not whether it’s just like with any business even even a few decades ago you know security you know was not always there for all businesses when the internet started but it became a core component sure that they have security in the digital and physical spaces and it’s something that they have to constate every year you know make sure that they address it and focus and make sure they’re up to date same thing with accessibility.

Yeah, we have one final question, which I think is really interesting, so I’ll also share it from Zena. How do we do both AEO, AI engine optimization, or answer engine optimization, and accessibility? A lot of issues are around SEO optimization and readability. Have either of you encountered this? I have some thoughts, so I’m happy to share, but have either of you encountered this spear? I love your thoughts. I’m going to throw this to you. Okay. So when you have an accessible website or when you’re going out of your way to create content that is accessible- that means formatted properly, structured properly, the language is plain, you have product descriptions for everything you need- it helps AI crawl your website a lot better and smoother, basically in the same way that a human with a screen reader might navigate your website.

So accessibility benefits both a user with a disability who wants to get access to your information and the AI that’s trying to surface it in more locations. And that goes back to SEO optimization as well. Add alt text to your images, making sure that you’re using descriptive language. All of that is basically what helps build up the strength of the accessibility and AEO. Thoughts on that, Josh? No, you said it very well, Zapier. And I do I was hoping can you jump back a few slides or I want to be able to say with our social media kit for GAD I’d love for everybody we have it in the chat and love for you to be able to see that experience it and also just advocate alongside us because it’s so much of this is the is being able to teach the world more about accessibility and GAD being global accessibility awareness month or week you know we we or day I’m so sorry tomorrow we want to share these stories as much as possible and I love to give a promo out to to right here because Don and the work he’s doing is is changing lives and businesses but they they you can add a free sign in your physical space with right here’s offer and they have a link for you to be able to do that so it’s just join the social media join the storytelling have your voice be heard and you know So much of this when I’m in I’m in the Washington DC area and I advocate every single day for change.

And when I wheel down the street, I might turn a few heads on Capitol Hill. But when I wheel down the street with more of my community members, more wheels, we turn more heads. And you know, that’s what we have to do today. Power and numbers. So please be a part of those numbers. Be a part of this movement. And we’re going to change lives and change business journeys. So again, thank you for being a part of this. Yeah, you know, Josh, it’s tomorrow, right, is the official Global Accessibility Awareness Day. And the keyword here really is awareness, right?

To build awareness around this. A single action that everyone today will do. A single action th this week is huge. It’s hundreds of actions right away. I you know I I have young kids eight years old and six years old and when I just send them today to school I ask each of them challenge each of them find someone in school to tell us something nice tell them something nice about their shirts and something nice about anything and I really do believe that this little actions practical little actions you’ll do even one make this entrance sign make this whatever whatever attending here is is is one of it so kudos on that talk about it help create the awareness.

It takes a village. It takes a village. So, just, you know, if you can all commit to one more thing you’re going to do this week around accessibility. That’s I think that was very much worthwhile today. I love that. Plant those seeds in life. Plant those seeds within your business. Got to start somewhere, and again, you’re not going to be alone in doing all this. So, I just thank you so much, Adon, for your voice and all that you do. Thank you, Sapir, for being a great chat monitor and all that you do. Sabir, I’m so proud of accessiBe. I’m so proud of being on this journey with everyone.

And for everybody who stayed to the end, you are awesome. So again, thank you.

Closing Remarks

It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day tomorrow. Don’t be afraid to share about it, and we’re here for you. And thank you, everyone. Again, just thank you. Thank you, everyone.