The Accessibility Show #9 – Best in WordPress design, or is it?

[00:00:06] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there. This is The Accessibility Show. I'm Nathan Wrigley and I'm joined as always by this gentleman over here. Joe Dolson. Hello, Joe. Hello, Nathan. How are you? Yeah, good. We've had a bit of a time off, actually, we were due to record at the latter part of last year, but we never managed it.

I think it was WordPress's uh, release that kind of got in the way of memory. yeah. There was just a lot of. A lot of things going

[00:00:29] Joe Dolson: on at once. And yeah, we got together chatted and we're like, yeah, we don't really have time for this.

[00:00:33] Nathan Wrigley: No. So that was good. You did what was probably more important, you were wrangling the accessibility side of the, latest WordPress release 6.9.

Um, and that's all behind us now, so it's the year 2026. We're making a fresh start and we are on, like I said, episode nine of the accessibility show. The endeavor of this show is to leverage Joe's expertise in the accessibility arena. The web more generally, but obviously this is a WordPress show, so we tend to focus on the bits and pieces that WordPress can bring to bear.

That's gonna be no different. Today we're gonna be focusing on some word pressy sites. Um, but as always, little bit of a caveat at the beginning. the intention here is to find things which may not be as Joe would have them, and that can easily be misinterpreted as an endeavor to I don't know, just.

take chunks out of different people and designers and the way that they've done things. That isn't the idea. The idea here is just to bring forward things, which Joe notices so that you can notice them. And so if you get the impression that we're being, I don't know, a little bit overbearing or criticizing things that don't need to be criticized, please just have that in mind.

Um, because it's important to notice we, I think we're doing this for the right reasons. I think Joe.

[00:01:51] Joe Dolson: Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. I'm certainly, I, my aim is to be kind. Yeah. you can, there's only some kind you can be while also calling out problems.

[00:02:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So in the past we've done, we've taken, um, a, different topic like we've navigation and menus and things like that.

We've done those one thing at a time. And, but this one, episode number nine, uh, Joe just wanted to bring. A, particular site to, uh, our attention. So this may be a shorter episode than we've done in the past. And, uh, probably the easiest thing for me to do, Joe, is just to put you on the screen or your share your screen.

So let's have a quick look at that. Sure. Let's do it. And you can tell us, um, how this caught your attention, where it can be found and whatnot. Maybe

[00:02:32] Joe Dolson: This caught my attention because, um, the automatic design blog posted this thing, it's just this best in WordPress design and this particular site, it caught my attention.

I was like, okay, this is interesting. Um, there are always a lot of, graphic design awards going to websites. And one of the things that I've known for a long time, when you look at the award winners at like the Webbys or things like that, uh, is accessibility is rarely a consideration. Um. That's just, it's not even a thing that they think about in these awards, which I find frustrating.

I feel like there should be some basic standards, these need to meet in order to be good enough. Uh, so I just wanted to take a look at this. it, it had some terms in it that I, that caught my attention that I thought were interesting. Uh, one of the key terms is that it's, It said best, best is always a very weighted term.

it has a strong idea behind it. Yeah. Um, it, it says quality, it says this is really well done, et cetera, et cetera. So I do wanna pick that apart a bit, but it also, it described it in particular as a slow, intentional, and emotionally charged. And I will say, I, might dispute. The degree to which this is slow.

[00:03:57] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.

[00:03:58] Joe Dolson: It is. I think it's certainly very intentional. It's got a very strong design. It's got a very strong character to it. Uh, when I showed it to Nathan right before we actually went live, he commented it looked like a Beatles film. And I was like, yeah, it's got a yellow submarine vibe abs. It really does.

Yeah, it really does. Yeah. Graphic design, the character design in it is very much like this. So I do not dispute that. It is a very interesting, unique design experience. So what does it look like through an accessibility lens? That is the point. So that's the first thing I wanted to look at, and the very first thing I notice in this site.

Is, um, not that it's incredibly design heavy, but it's really animation heavy. You watch, as I'm scrolling along here, and there's this one giant word that keeps changing. It seems to be scroll connected. So each scroll of the wheel, it changes. Um, it might just be timed. Not really sure. doesn't matter.

But it's, it's really intense. You see these enormous popups for each of the links that I'm hovering. Um, we get down to some of these areas here. We've got these constantly scrolling bars of information. Uh, this is a lot of animation and of course I will. First of all, observe that I do have the prefers reduced animation flag active.

[00:05:27] Nathan Wrigley: Oh you do?

[00:05:28] Joe Dolson: Gosh. All browse with that active.

[00:05:30] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.

[00:05:30] Joe Dolson: Um, you will note if this is their reduced animation, um, I am terrified to make any changes. 'cause this is a lot, there's a lot going on here. Yeah. Everything on page, every screen you're in, there's something moving. That to me, this is really deeply problematic for some audiences, and I, just want to say that I don't have any problem with a website using a lot of animation.

It's fine. There's a tool for dealing with that. It's called respecting the Prefers reduced animation flag so that a user can set in their operating system for themselves. I don't want all these animations.

[00:06:14] Nathan Wrigley: Can I pause you because I don't actually think we've ever drilled into this. Obviously, I, would imagine anybody that's watching this probably has some notion that animation is a thing and that the browser can set a preference to reduce it.

Are you able to drill down briefly, in why do people wish. To reduce animation. I am, I'm somebody who, when I see animation, I, I have, there's no visceral reaction. Typically for me, there's just a curiosity, oh, it's animating. But I don't have that sort of, uh, thing when I go to the movies and, I'm looking at the big screen and everything's moving quickly and you're in an airplane and it's swooping down and all of that.

I can just watch that endlessly and get great pleasure from it. I'm, curious as to what the, um. what the thing is or things probably that people, uh, people, I, don't have the vocabulary, but I can hope, hopefully

[00:07:12] Joe Dolson: you can see where I'm going around. What main issues. there's basically, I would say two main lines of why this is a problem.

One of them is within the kind of neurodivergent spectrums of all sorts, and it has to do with distraction. Uh, Like drawing your attention to things that are not the content you're trying to do. And honestly, a lot of these animations, they are there to draw attention. It's just that what makes, uh, neurodivergence is that some people see that distraction go, oh, cool, and then they go back to what they're reading, no problem.

Other people just keep getting drawn to it. It's just constantly there, and they can't tear themselves away from it, so they just aren't able to accomplish their goals. Uh, so that's a, that is an a problem. it can create, make this website extremely difficult. The other one is actually more to do with, uh, triggering actual medical conditions.

Oh, they can trigger nausea. So if you have a significant motion reaction with nausea, this website might be literally impossible for you to use. You just. Start to scroll around and you're like, oh, I can't do this. Wow. Okay. So there's an actual physical reaction Yes. Which

[00:08:32] Nathan Wrigley: is, that's fascinating, right?

Yeah. Uh,

[00:08:34] Joe Dolson: but then it can also with different, some types of animation, they could trigger epileptic seizures. Oh, okay. So there's a lot of different possibilities, uh, and really it's just not that difficult to respect. These flags and they're actually set at the operating system level. They're not in the browser.

Um, so usually, your operating system will have some accessibility settings and somewhere in there'll be something like disable animations, et cetera, et cetera. And that will disable animations if the website has actually. Respected that.

[00:09:12] Nathan Wrigley: Um, c Can I segue again? I'm sorry to, to keep doing this.

I'm gonna segue one more time. That's why we're having a

[00:09:18] Joe Dolson: conversation.

[00:09:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Does the real world, so let me just think this through in my head. Does the, usual world, if I walk outside my front door and I'm interacting with, I dunno, I go shopping or I'm walking in a forest or what have you do those, is there anything in the actual real world which, um, which may trigger those kind of same reactions?

Or is this more a case of. it's a new thing which has been discovered since the advent of all of us staring at screens all day and the fact that they can blink very quickly and that they can be incredibly bright and noisy and what have you. I, again, I don't really know where I'm going with there, but hopefully you can see where I'm aiming my target, uh.

[00:10:04] Joe Dolson: Yes and no. Mm-hmm. Um, so it is essentially to some degree, that's motion sickness and it's, which is always that disjunct between what your body is physically doing and what you are seeing. Um, that's most often recognized on ships or in cars when driving. Of course, yes, that makes sense. the same different, certain types of animation on a screen can basically be that same disjunct, and if you're much more reactive to that, can be a problem.

So that's a case where that is the real world thing. Um, but an awful lot of it is, it's screens, it's flashing lights. it is an element of the modern world as the modern world has gotten louder and faster moving and you've got a time square and you've got 200 foot tall screens that are flashing lights at you.

Yeah. this can be overwhelming. this is, and that is absolutely the modern world, and it is also reality.

[00:11:06] Nathan Wrigley: And it's a, very invisible thing to somebody like me who, not only can you not see it in the, person standing next to you who's experiencing that. But also it's very, unless somebody explains that to you, that there's no real direct empathy, I'm not going to intuit that is the way that they're perceiving that times square scene or the, the screen that they're watching.

Okay. That's really interest. Some people will go into that and they're like, oh, this

[00:11:35] Joe Dolson: is so exciting and vibrant and interesting. And others will go and be like, oh my God, I have to get out of here.

[00:11:42] Nathan Wrigley: Um, isn't that fascinating though, that essentially a website can cause something, which I'll just call. temporary illness, um, that, that's even plausible.

And there can't be too many people out there who would deliberately create something like that. However. They are deliberately creating things like that because they're not honoring these, um, these flags in the browser as this website. I think this is something that would

[00:12:09] Joe Dolson: be really simple to do. Yeah.

This is, a, thing that it doesn't compromise your design because you are still getting. You're giving people the experience they want, so the majority of people will have animations enabled it. They'll see exactly what you did. And those, that subset of people who don't see the animations, it's like, they're still gonna see your site.

And in fact they'll see more of it because without that, they're potentially gonna get to this and go, holy crap, I need to leave. Yeah. Yeah. And uh, it's not really great. thank you for the interesting Yeah. Challenge like. I know people can say, it's if you don't like this design, then you should go away.

You're not one of our potential clients. But that's actually mistaking the person doing the exploration with the person, making the decision about what will be hired, like the person doing that exploration. if you're a, manager at a company that's supposed to be looking at potential design companies.

You need to be selecting options. Other people might be actually making those decisions and you're going to deselect this one on the grounds of, I can't look at their website. But they might have still been a perfectly good candidate, uh, especially because this is the type of issue which is only.

An issue because they haven't taken this step to make it respectable for other people.

[00:13:40] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I, suppose a cur, a curious way that I'm thinking about it in my head is that if you're the captain of a ship and you know that a proportion of the people on your ship are going to be physically unwell, if you steer the, ship left.

Into that storm, right? Or go right where the water is calm, it's okay, which decision are we gonna make? Let's go towards the calm. Are you just gonna be a dick or are you gonna to try and,

[00:14:07] Joe Dolson: give people a better experience?

[00:14:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I apologize for the segue there, but I thought that was interesting in going down.

So back to the website, sorry. it's good

[00:14:15] Joe Dolson: to talk at length about some of these things that are invisible. Um, they're not always obvious. So the next thing I took a look at is, focus states. Um, I just was like, okay, what does this look like? Um, so let's just walk through a little bit.

first of all, this is pretty prominent. I don't really like the pulsing on this. If you can't see that the, uh, focus state on this particular item is just Pulse. Yeah, I can see it throbbing a little bit. I don't

[00:14:46] Nathan Wrigley: like is,

[00:14:47] Joe Dolson: um, these are pretty straightforward. They're, quite visible. But then you start to get past that and now we're in all these moving things, so where am I?

Okay, so moving to the right, uh, I can't really tell what I'm on. I assume I'm on. the item for this to the left that's fully visible in the carousel, but it's, not totally clear. Oh, that's interesting. So that one didn't move. Ah, I'm at the end of the carousel. Okay, great. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That one didn't change focus at all.

I'm now have, oh, I'm inside the YouTube video, okay. This is where I start to feel like. It's hard to see. It's hard to tell where you are. It's hard to tell what's going on. I could use some clues and now we're into these scrolling honors lists. So what just happened there? So the thing I was on, scrolled off the screen.

Where is this going? Are you seeing this? Yeah. I could see that you,

[00:15:56] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, I can brief. Yeah, I can.

[00:15:59] Joe Dolson: I'm on Elementor, which is on the second row. And it just scrolled off the page. I don't know where it's gone. Um, so anyway, I don't, I can't figure out what's going on here. It seems to be random.

I'm just navigating to random items. It certainly isn't doing all of them. 'cause all of these are links by, for the mouse, but I'm skipping most of them. So yes. I can't tell what's going on there. It's very confusing. And they keep scrolling once they're focused. So uh, if you wanted to actually.

get to that design made in Germany sites we like thing, eh, good luck.

[00:16:35] Nathan Wrigley: So in the ideal world, you'd have some, you'd have some navigable path where it was really obvious where you were gonna end up, but what I think we saw there was just a complete lack of knowing where the heck you were.

[00:16:46] Joe Dolson: Yeah.

You just can't feel I, and it was more, in this case, like you can actually, it's a fairly clear. Focus state on the items you're on. You can see that pretty clearly. What you can tell is where are you going to go next? Next, yeah. So it's like that next thing is not anywhere predictable. Arrow keys don't do anything like I would expect Shift tab to go to good web design website feature.

It didn't. It went to. The thing I can't fully see, but Viba. Mati,

[00:17:17] Nathan Wrigley: okay.

[00:17:17] Joe Dolson: Yeah. So I don't understand what's going on here. I cannot, I, cannot, there's no predictability and this is a very clear accessibility issue. It's just not in any particular order. And it, because it's moving constantly, it's that much more difficult.

[00:17:33] Nathan Wrigley: So if you were using assistive technology and you were using the tab key, at this point it's like you've just been thrown in the middle of a maze basically. And it's

[00:17:41] Joe Dolson: the interesting thing is this is, uh, partially a problem because visibly I know how much stuff is here. Okay. So I am seeing lots of things that I just can't figure out a way to get to for somebody who was not cited using like a screen reader, they would potentially just.

it would be very straightforward. They just tab through OCSS awards. Okay. Whatever this is, uh, moving on as far as they're concerned. There only were two links there. Yeah. That they got to, if they're not curious about those and didn't explore 'em any further. And, that's, fine. Uh, it's just, that's interesting.

I missed a whole bunch of content. that stuff didn't exist for whatever reason.

[00:18:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Joe Dolson: Um, and it's going to be highly variable because I got to different links every path through, every time I went to it, I had slightly different things. Um, okay. and that's probably because they're using a roving tab index, which is to say that as things come visible, they will be given.

The ability to be keyboard focused, and then as they leave, they stop being keyboard focusable.

[00:18:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:18:48] Joe Dolson: Um, which is a, it's a, this is not a good case for that. Um, but I'm guessing that's what's happening. It's a bit of a mess. Didn't enjoy it. Okay. Um, so then you're, get to the bottom and things are straightforward and clear again.

But a lot of this, the complaint I have here, it's all still connected to that. Animation because a lot of the problems are with these animated things that are making things really difficult. It's just making life harder to get to the different pieces of it.

[00:19:20] Nathan Wrigley: Yes, That makes sense. Things scrolling off and taking their focus with them.

So once

[00:19:26] Joe Dolson: I had looked at keyboard navigation, I was like, okay, now I'm gonna look at some of the accessible naming. So this is this is going to be about what are things called when a screen reader user gets to them. So let's start by looking at this carousel here. It's got all these things in it.

I'm gonna inspect this and let's figure out what this is. Okay, so it's a link. The link has an aria label of image carousel that's already pretty strange, like the image carousel is the. Entire container, isn't it? It's like all of this stuff. Yeah. In this case it's just the link, uh, inside the image container is all this additional stuff.

Um, uh. So there's an H three inside it that tells you what it is. It says it's Nonas market and Deli useful information. However, because the wrapping anchor element has an aria label of image carousel, you're never going to get that as a screen reader user,

[00:20:33] Nathan Wrigley: right? Because

[00:20:35] Joe Dolson: the aria. Overrides all of the content inside that link.

That is the name of the link. It is the only name of the link. So this stuff basically doesn't exist. Uh, you have no way of finding out what that actually is. Um, and interestingly enough, furthermore, uh, we've got this wrapping container here that also has an Aria label, two of 15. Okay. That's a role of group.

So in theoretically, what should be happening here is you jump in and you'll be notified that you're in a group and the group is labeled three of 15.

[00:21:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:21:21] Joe Dolson: That's also complicating because a group is actually should be a wrapping for a group of items for all the 15, right? What is actual, no, in this case, what that group is it's the.

Image and the heading and all of that. Oh, I see. Yeah. Got it reduced to a single element because they're inside this link. There's all that's actually in there is this one link. There is no group that is not a group. Um, so that's just very misconceived. It's really not accurate. Um. Above that, we are now into the other slides.

So let's go to the parent of all of these slides and figure out what that is

to get past the first slide first,

which is somewhere up here. Yes, it's definitely there somewhere. It's a lot of slides, a lot of slides. I don't want to go too fast because then I'll just, we zoom right past it. Yeah. Gosh. There's a lot of these. Okay. There we go. Think you got it? Yeah. Alright, so here we are. We've got this whole large scale group here.

Now this is the one I'm gonna look at. So here, this has a role. Uh, so a role in Aria is it's, a way of telling something what it is. So This has a role of list that is the automatic role given to any UL OL or dl. they're all lists. Great. yep. Now a list is only supposed to have one set of items.

They should be list items. So in a standard list, that would be an ally. Um. In this case it's a div, but you could give it a roll of list item and it would be okay. Uh, they haven't, uh, they've given it role of group. That's not the expected child of a list, so that's going to create some disorganization. It should be a list item.

Uh, it has an aria label of three 15. Aria label, as I mentioned, overrides the entire naming of the component, so it's. It's going to be giving it something like an enumerated list if it was actually a list. with the role of list that gives enumeration, so a screen reader user would be able to discover things like, by, entering the list it'll be, this list has 15 items.

They'd go to each one and be three of 15. They could discover that. Um, in this case, that's not helpful. Also, I'm a little dubious about their ordering. this is the first slide with the Aria label. 11 of 15. Okay. Yeah. That's curious. So presumably that means that there's a random ordering going on here, but the aria labels are associated with the some root order, but that's always gonna be 11.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I don't know. That sounds like chaos to me. Yeah. I don't wanna know all that detail. Um, but then like inside that each diviv has a link with the Aria label of image carousel, which doesn't make any sense. Some of the links contain background videos. So if we go here, this one was a YouTube video.

Um, so I'm gonna go back to this and then go to the next one, which is this one. Yeah, there it is. And so what do we have inside here? We have a link. With the Aria label, image carousel, and inside that link is the diviv containing the background video. Okay. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Okay. Yeah, like it's like you can't actually interact with the video because it's a link.

It just points you to this other page. Um, so to me that's just chaos. Uh, the vid video itself is in a container with Aria hidden. Uh oh. Yeah. This is clearly random because this is not the same image that we, you've now got a different one. yeah, that's true. Uh oh. No, it just took a while to load maybe.

Alright, that's fine. Um, um, so when we go inside here, this diviv, see it's got Aria hidden. Aria Hidden means not available to a screen reader. It doesn't mean not available to a keyboard navigator. So a screen reader is both reading the screen and navigating with keyboard. So when you start clicking through here, you can tab through all of these items, but because there are a hidden they have, they may have no name.

This is something that's in kind of flux in some browsers, so that's not necessarily true in any given case. Okay. Chaos. I can't look at this anymore.

[00:26:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah,

[00:26:26] Joe Dolson: there's, there is a lot going on. All of the controls inside these players are focusable, so you can tab through all of these things, but none of them will have a name.

They're all unnamed. Okay. And like I said, those, the links also contain these headings that have the name of the slide, which is the actual useful information for this slide. But they're hidden using display none. And they also are inside this container with Aria label that overrides them. So there's, no naming in here.

It's basically just terrible. You can't get to any of this. Um, that's, all I can really say. That carousel is literally the worst. Yeah. Okay. It gets a, now who do you blame here? this is an interesting complicating question because this, if you have been looking at this code, it is extremely obvious that this is an Elementor component.

Um, it's Elementor background video container. Yeah. It's Elementor. It's what, isn't it? Yep. No way to know really whether this is, okay. I'm sure there is a way to know. If I was more familiar with Elementor, I might be, oh, this is this component. I'm very familiar with it. I don't, it could be a custom component made for Elementor.

It could be a specific add-on. It could be a core component. They clearly just used it. Um, what responsibility does a site have for fixing those things? In my opinion, this is one of those things where we come back to that, word they used in the very beginning. Best, if this is the best in design.

I don't think best in design should mean we just used an out of the box component and didn't fix any of the problems with it. Yeah, in my opinion, best in design is we used this component and we dealt with these challenges and we fixed them, and now it's better. Um, if you're just using it outta the box, then eh, great.

But I guess, part of that is, is. is design just what it looks like or is design the whole stack of what it looks like and how it works? To me,

[00:28:42] Nathan Wrigley: I think,

the answer to that question in this scenario is the former. Yeah. Um, the, intention is to put the pixels on the page, and once that has been achieved, the enterprise is over, isn't it?

It's done.

[00:28:57] Joe Dolson: Um, but in, in judging these things, is that really fair? is it just about what it looks like? if you make a poster and stick it up on a, lamppost somewhere, it is just about what it looks like. It's gotta draw attention. Uh, there is no semantic context there.

Nothing for anybody to look at. Um, but this is a website and websites have a lot more to them and I think we should have higher expectations. Uh, if it's going to be considered to be a great website, it should be.

[00:29:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yes. I suppose that's the contention. Is it, if this was a website in development or it was, I don't know, for a specific audience or whatever it may be, but it, the fact that it's been brought to your attention because it's being promoted with this word best.

That's where the uh,

[00:29:46] Joe Dolson: that's where it goes. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:49] Nathan Wrigley: I start

[00:29:49] Joe Dolson: to look at it with a different eye. Um, Because this is something that somebody has decided is best. And I'm not saying that necessarily. I, don't know how that arose, how the design blog came up with that and decided it was best, like if that came from them and they're judging this and that is a fault of whoever made that selection and they picked this, and I think they should have looked more deeply, uh, because maybe there are things to design that are beyond just what it looks like.

Because all, first of all, like none of these things I complained about with the carousel are unfixable and not one of those things fixed would've had any impact on what it looked like or how they designed it. All of that accessible naming is just about exposing the useful content, the useful information properly to the user.

this is all Aria attributes and roles. They're just wrong.

[00:30:51] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.

[00:30:52] Joe Dolson: Uh, okay. They don't impact what it looks like. Yeah. So from a design perspective, those are all problems you can fix without any compromise at all to your website and your design concept.

And that is something that I come down on is if you can fix these problems, like I understand that, like if you're really, design focused.

maybe you do want to protect the, your design and how, in the integrity of the design for you, fine, whatever. I won't necessarily agree with that, but if that's your argument, fine. This is not that case. None of these things I've talked about are that case. They do not compromise the design.

They just fix problems. The next one, I looked at actually wood ultimately. Compromise the design a little bit. Okay. And that's this, uh, red against pink thing. Um, that's all fails color contrast.

[00:31:52] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Um,

[00:31:54] Joe Dolson: which is, pretty straightforward. It just, it's just below color contrast. And they just have to darken that red or lighten that pink a little bit and they would get there.

Um, to me that is. It's a minor point. Um, I suppose it's a minor point.

[00:32:15] Nathan Wrigley: Sorry. You carry on.

[00:32:17] Joe Dolson: no.

[00:32:18] Nathan Wrigley: Go ahead. I was just gonna say it's a minor point, but it's also one, presumably, which of everything that you've covered so far is also the most straightforward to fix. Oh yeah. That's very simple to fix. Yeah.

CSS change at one point in the website and, uh, yeah. That's dumb.

[00:32:34] Joe Dolson: yeah. And I don't remember exactly what. These colors were, um, I'm not gonna look for that right now. That's okay. They were just a little bit off. So there's a, I don't remember how far off, I didn't write that down and whatever.

Uh, there is an interesting rule in the, uh, US a DA Title two rules, which is called the Minimal impact Rule, which is essentially says if the. Change would have a minimal impact on the user, then it can pass within the rules of the a DA, the Americans with Disabilities Act Without Change. And the specific example they actually give when talking about that is about color contrast.

And it's about something that's at 4.47 where the rule is 4.5. Okay. Um. There are, there's more to that. It's, a little bit more complicated than that, but part of the argument there is that if something just barely fails, it might not be that important to change it.

[00:33:42] Nathan Wrigley: That's a really curious sort of definition because you can, if a sort of sporting analogy, if the football almost crosses the line, um, it, yeah, it's a, it's, shall we call it a goal?

I think it was a goal. What do you think? Is it a goal? It was probably a goal. Um, the feeling that the two teams might be in opposition on that. That's right. But also if there's a, if there's a guideline and the guideline is, okay, this is the boundary. To fudge the boundary. seems, it almost seems like you're inviting people to, it's fudge the boundary.

It's interesting,

[00:34:17] Joe Dolson: but I do think, part of the problem there is everybody knows with the color contrast guidelines Yeah. That those boundaries are fuzzy.

[00:34:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Okay.

[00:34:27] Joe Dolson: Because it's not that clear cut and the specific colors matter, and if you test it with a different algorithm, you get a different result.

And so is it. Is it that meaningful? Um, and maybe it's not yeah, the rule is definitely 4.5. That is a very strict guideline, but how much of a difference does that actually make? and, but one of the things in the guideline, in the, uh, title II rule is actually about the fact that, um, this isn't, you can't just decide on your own.

That this doesn't have an impact. It actually has to have a minimal impact on users. You have to actually test it with people. And those people have to say, yeah, it doesn't make a difference to me. Okay. Yeah. I do think that there is some

[00:35:16] Nathan Wrigley: logic to that. There's a little bit of wiggle room, but it's caveated couched in real world experience.

Okay. Okay.

[00:35:22] Joe Dolson: I would, I do question, one of the tricky things here is okay, so that's, it's a known thing that color contrast has these fuzzy boundaries. Um, but how does that apply to. Other things. 'cause most other things are, a little bit more clear cut. Like that form field either has a label or it doesn't.

what, is the point where that doesn't make a difference for a user then?

[00:35:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yes. Yeah. It's half a label. I dunno how that works.

[00:35:53] Joe Dolson: Yeah,

I'm with you. It's interesting.

[00:35:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Um,

[00:35:58] Joe Dolson: so then I guess the last thing I looked at here was really just with. Zoom. Oh. Oh gosh. Yeah. it's an interesting thing because this site has obviously got some absolutely enormous fonts.

Um, but it's also got some very small fonts, including, like the main navigation, is so minuscule. It's, hysterical. So while. You really very few people need to zoom to be able to see that title text better. Yeah, lots of people need to, be able to see their social media and their privacy policy and the navigation so you know what happens.

Let's see. Where do we go here? So here's a hundred and ten, one twenty five, one fifty, one seventy five. Oh first rule kicks in at.

Oh, gosh. Whoa. Wow. That's kicked in their, uh, their, uh, mobile, so that's Yes. Yeah. Notable, which is fine. Um, this is larger, this is all God, I, really don't like that. Um, this is all fairly functional.

What about some other internal pages?

I did click on that, didn't I? I think you did. Oh.

Huh?

[00:37:31] Nathan Wrigley: how is it not a link

[00:37:31] Joe Dolson: that these are links? I just assumed they were links because, they show that they have a hover state. What is that? What is that? That's curious. Okay. Oh, it's just paragraph, div. It's a preview image for you. So this is gonna have no keyboard. Equivalent.

It's just a, so it's just a tool tip effectively that shows that image.

[00:37:57] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Okay.

[00:38:00] Joe Dolson: Okay. so that's not a link. I, won't, Test that as a you could test it all. You like, you're not gonna get there. Yeah. Here I've been

[00:38:11] Nathan Wrigley: going, oh wow. That's, oh, that's, that really is now that background video really is, I think we just stumbled across the most dramatic bit of whatever that video was, but it, yeah, it's very flashy, isn't it?

There's a lot

[00:38:27] Joe Dolson: going on. Yeah. It's quite flashy. Um, and here the title texts are a little hard to get a context for, but they're visible. This isn't, no, their graphic has enlarged well beyond the text, so the text is now behind it. Um, that is a problem for Zoom. Certainly. You can't see any of that.

Um, it could be worse. That's more like missed details. Um, we got these images hovering over other bits of text at different levels of Zoom that could become more of an issue. Uh, 200% is where I've gone to, and that's basically the minimum allowable zoom. Yeah. Uh, some other rules required to go to 400%, which now looks like this.

Okay. Um.

[00:39:27] Nathan Wrigley: It's Oh, curiously, the text was all visible at that point. Yeah. It's gone to a different, flow. Yeah. Which is actually better that, I wonder if that's coincidence, the shoulder of that or whatever that picture was. It is probably

[00:39:42] Joe Dolson: a coincidence related to the specific width of this viewport.

Um, overall, like it more or less works with this type of zoom. Um, it is chaotic, but it, there are worse things than this. Um, there's a lot there, Joe. There is. It's Oh, that's interesting. You can see through that. Um. yeah. They

[00:40:15] Nathan Wrigley: really have thrown the kitchen sink at it in from the, yeah.

There, somebody I think probably is very much inspired by, like we said earlier, things like the Beatles and the yellow Yeah. uh,

[00:40:28] Joe Dolson: seventies right. Era animation, uh, with all the bright primary colors. honestly, there's a lot of things I find fun about this. This is absolutely a fun design.

I don't wanna. Dispute that like I'm not actually criticizing the design. Um, I think this is a fun site. It's really interesting. There's a lot going on. I do, however, think there's so much they could have done that would've just respected accessibility needs without compromising that. Yeah, and this is, I think this is really unfortunate, is when you've got these, great design things and like lots of people have put clearly an enormous amount of time and thought into what this is going to look like and zero time or thought into what somebody else's experience is going to be like.

Um. It's frustrating to me.

[00:41:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I suppose that's where the line is here, isn't it? It's uh, it's an exploration of what is by any account. A beautiful website. If it were a poster, you would stare at it and really, you'd walk up to it closely and examine all the little components that it would.

That is made up of, because there are lots of detail. a lot of thought and a lot of attention has gone into this, but I think, but you know mean I love be a little wacky creature. Yeah.

[00:41:44] Joe Dolson: It's very wacky, isn't it? But your right now we're looking at, for anybody who can't see it is, it's like this kind of purple ty looking thing.

It's got a tail with a pink tip and a, and it almost looks like a hand. It's kind, it's got. Um, parachute that's yellow attached to it, and it's holding a, an orange and yellow flower in its mouth. And it's just, it's bizarre. It's, and it's

[00:42:12] Nathan Wrigley: blinking as well. It's blinking and it's entertaining. It's, fun.

Very entertaining. But your hat, your whole thing is right now. yeah,

[00:42:23] Joe Dolson: That's funny. Prefers reduced animation on, and the thing is, it's an interesting thing about p prefers reduced animation. It is not. Turn off all animation. It is reduce animation. So like what you'd want to do is you want to take it down to only necessary animations, very minimal.

So it doesn't have to be that you'd have absolutely nothing dynamic. It should however, be that, like nothing should be just like continuously going like this. You shouldn't have these large movements. Um. Um, I think it would be like with reduced animation, I would want this to be static and maybe the eyes blink twice.

All doable. Yeah, it totally doable. It would be fun and unique and, but. Massively distracting. No. Anyway,

[00:43:21] Nathan Wrigley: there we go. um, the website, the URL and the place where Joe originally stumbled across this, the sort of award, if you like, that it received, the, sort of kudos it received.

Uh, I'll put those in a description beneath this video on the website and you can hopefully click on those and find them for yourselves. Again, the intention here is not to, as we made very clear at the beginning, the intention here is not to Poor scorn on this, but is Joe's hat is very firmly affixed on the accessibility side of things.

And so it is his role to look at these things and think, how would that be experienced by somebody who is not me, as in me, Nathan. And um, and that's important. we don't wanna leave people behind. We have this fabulous technology, the internet. Unfortunately, it's possible to create experiences which are not equal and equitable.

And uh, that just seems a little bit unfair, doesn't it? uh, there we go. In which case, I will stop sharing the screen if that's acceptable. We've finished, yeah, finished that side things. Okay. In which case, there we go. It's me and Joe back. Um, we'll be back for episode 10 at some point in the near future.

Hopefully that was episode number nine. Yeah, episode 10 is hopefully going to be, it's the year 2020. are you

[00:44:41] Joe Dolson: gonna say this? I don't know.

[00:44:43] Nathan Wrigley: No. I, don't even know. Let's, leave it as a surprise, but I bet you can guess if, uh, if, it's got anything to do with the last two or three years, maybe it'll be.

Something to do with that, but we'll see. But, uh, Joe, just before we go, uh, tell us where we can find you. We obviously now know if you've never seen Joe before, you obviously know he's got, um, a lot of expertise in these areas. Where do you hang out?

[00:45:09] Joe Dolson: So you can find me at my website, joe dawson.com, uh, where I publish articles and also.

Uh, distribute my premium plugins, my calendar, and my tickets. Uh, you can also find me on GitHub 'cause I live on GitHub an awful lot of the [email protected] slash Joe Dawson. Uh, you can find me on my WordPress profile, uh, profiles.wordpress.org/ Joe Dawson. Uh, I'm not on social media nearly as much as I used to be, but you can find me on Blue Sky or on Mastodon.

Okay.

[00:45:45] Nathan Wrigley: Ideal. Thank you very much. So we'll be back at some point in the near future. Obviously a great big thanks to Joe for giving up his time and, uh, teaching us all the things that we may not have found out otherwise. So thank you Joe, and um, I hope you, uh, I hope you have a nice time between now and our next experience.

Number 10. Take it easy, Joe. You too.