[Music] [Narelle] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digital Access Show. Buongiorno, buonasera, ciao, arriverderci. Whatever you want to say, whatever language, here we are again. Today's guest is someone I've been a fan of for quite a while actually. I've been following Meryl on LinkedIn. Meryl is a US lady. US of A. And she's got some great information for us. But in particular, what I'd like to look at today is what's happening in USA in regards to digital accessibility. The legal side of it. And let's have a look at what's happening in Australia and do a comparison. Everyone, I'd like you to meet the wonderful Meryl Evans from Plano, Texas. Hi Meryl, [Meryl] Hi everyone. Thank you for having me today, Narelle. I am excited to be here, and let your listeners know that this is not American accent I have here. It's, it's an accentt that comes from nowhere. It's a deaf accent. So. So, it'll be a little adventurous. You may have to listen a little harder, a little differently. But, it's just part of me and who I am. [Narelle] Meryl, I am really excited to meet you. As I said, I've been following you for quite a while and. We've been talking to each other on LinkedIn. Meryl, tell us a bit about where you came from, what you do, and where you're heading. [Meryl] So I come, but do you want to go the all the way back to when I was born. [Narelle] Oh, no. We'd be here for ages, I think, if we did both of us. [Meryl] Well I am, I have lived in Texas most of my life. I only lived outside of Texas for a little bit up north. And early in my career, anyway. So what did I come from? I was born profoundly deaf. And I'm the youngest of three kids. So my parents were noticing things I did or didn't do, because they had two older kids. I wouldn't respond if they were behind me. But little things, like that. So they took me to the specialist. And I got hearing aids. But I came out with one. The old vintage hearing aids that you wore on your chest. And then, [Narelle] Oh, my gosh. [Meryl] They were vintage. yeah. And, And they, I took a lot of speech therapy A lot of speech therapy for ten years. So, no way to hear my voice, like most people hear their's. That's why I have the accent. It's very, very hard to overcome. Not overcome. That's not the right word. But make it clearer. More non standard, a more standard speech. Anyways, back in, back in that time, they didn't encourage American Sign Language, which is our sign language, here, in the USA, as you have AusLan, I know. Anyways, the wisdom being, you develop speech at a very young age. If you wait too long and you miss that time frame, that very critical time, it could be harder to speak and, and, And I learnt how to lip read. That's how I listen. So, my parents, of course, didn't mind if I wanted to learn something else, but it just never came up. Because there was no one in my life who was fluent. [Narelle] Oh, of course. [Meryl] Yeah. But, some people, like learning another language. Any other language. It's hard. It's hard. It requires dedication and practice. I mean, if I had a niece, or a child that you standing with, you bet I would have learned it. There was just no-one in my life, my everyday life. [Narelle] Well, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? You know, Because it's all about communication, isn't it? [Meryl] It is. It is. And it's so important. So, for the last five years or so, I have wrapped up my advocacy for disability inclusion and accessibility. Not just digital accessibility, but, what I like to call 360 degree accessibility. In other words, accessibility everywhere. Not just our kind, right? So, that's what I'm focused on. So, to keep educating, keep speaking, keep turning, keep voicing to many people who haven't gotten the message. [Narelle] What does accessibility mean to you? As in, in practical terms? [Meryl] Accessibility means giving everybody, is never the same field for everyone. And keep everyone on the same level. And on the same field as a idiom. No. No. So, I can't hear, right? So, if on a video meeting, and there's no caption, there's no anything. I'm being left behind. That's not level playing field for me. When you caption, adding captions give me what I need. And it means, giving people what they need to be able to do whatever they need to, like everyone else. That's all it is. It just... That's about what it is. [Narelle] And, Well, I actually agree with you, because one of the things that I often hear is, oh, but it's expensive to do. Or my second argument that I hear is, really hard to do. But how hard is it to turn on captions on Zoom? [Meryl] That's not hard, well it depends. The funnest thing is, with Zoom, even though it's 2024, Zoom added captions in 2020 after the pandemic. And as they're willing to account, that don't have the caption turned on, because they need to turn it on, on the account. So, once they do it, then they have captions available for all those meetings. So without one step, that makes it more complicated than it needs to be. But that's what happens when accessibility is an afterthought. When accessibility comes later. When it's not baked in from the beginning. If it happened, baked in when Zoom first came to be, it would have been a much easier process. Anyway. [Narelle] That's it. I agree. [Meryl] Yes. Accessibility is not expensive at all. Most cost under five hundred dollars. And then a lot of options that are free. It's not hard and it's not expensive. [Narelle] Yeah. And that's five hundred dollars, U.S. Obviously over here, double it. But you know what? I agree with you. If you do it from the start, it's not expensive. It's when you've got to go back, and add it in. That's when the cost comes in, doesn't it? It's not. We can't do anything about it because you're rebuilding what you've already got. [Meryl] Exactly. And what happened there as you adding things? You could cause other problems. That's just how development works. It's not like, ooh, I can add this little thing and it will be fine. But no, adding these little thing might break something else. So, development is very complicated. I see people complaining on social media all the time. How come they haven't done that? It's so simple. How come they haven't done this to make it accessible. But it's not simple. It was that. That's the thing about development. It complicated and has so many overlaps. Like an, a domino effect and cause more problems? [Narelle] Yeah. And you're right. And I'm a coder by trade. So I wrote code for 35 odd years. And, you know, when you do it from scratch, and it's just part of your standard practice, it's not hard stuff is it? You know, So, one of the easy ones. I did, I used to do desktop, and I do database stuff. So database, it's slightly different cause we're in the guts of it. But, you know, when you're doing a desktop app or you're doing a web app, it can be as simple as ensuring there's always a shortcut key to access the function. And that's very simple code wise to do. But if you've got to go and add it in later or take things out. Because like one of my hates is music that blares at me when I go onto a website and I'm using the screen reader and something else has opened up and running at the same time. I've got to find it for a start. I've got to turn it off. And it's also very disorienting to find that. And then, you know, if you've got to strip that out because it's something that's very disorienting, maybe you've got to redesign your website. That's when the cost comes in or the other one I really hate. Because I've still got a tiny bit of sight. It's the flashing. Anything that flashes at me or really bright because I'm very light sensitive. And I get straight off the website because I can't deal with it. I can't turn it off. But if it's in the design at, the web designer has done, it's got to be stripped out or stopped or changed to something else and that's where the cost comes in. But it's not just with that is it? It's like audio description for TV is another one. They put it in as an afterthought and that's when it gets costly. [Meryl] Absolutely right. Yeah. So that's why it's so important to build it from the beginning. I used to work in process management. Basically, I was go between for marketing teams and the development teams. Speak and no speak not happens. So, it was always complicated because we had the end piece that was going to run for a many, many years. So, I didn't feel sure of them changing things was never simple. It was always a lot of work. So, and no-one accessibity related. That's just how the band works. [Narelle] It is. What's the legal background for a digital accessibility or any accessibility in the US? [Meryl] What's the legal background in the US? So we have the Americans with Disability Act. But it's not to focus on digital accessibility. It's focused on all accessibility. It's very general. And it doesn't say, "Oh, you're right. That should be accessible." No. It's general. Yeah. It says, whatever the public has asked to, whatever the public has access to, people with disabilities should have equal for access and enjoyment of the same services. And when you have accessibility barriers, you're preventing that from happening. So it's all about how the court translate it, how the lawyers with their cases. Yeah. Not to talk bad, here, of America's a very lasting, happy country. People want to sue. And most of the time it's not because they can't access something. It's because they want to make a quick buck. They want to make money. So, cause they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They are doing it to make money. [Narelle] So, over here, we keep hearing about Section 508. What's that? [Meryl] So, Section 508 is part of the Yeah. We have a Location Act. So, they, they look at different things. One is based on, It has a Title, Title 2 and Title 3 about women worldwide. I always get my knowledge mixed up. So I, I always have to look it up. [Narelle] No, that's alright. I'm just curious, yeah. [Meryl] I'm not just not work well with law. It's about, um, government senators, businesses and, uh, uh. It's also education. A section for education, equal access for education. So they have different pieces, but they are applied. What we apply depends them to keep the law. [Narelle] Interesting. [Meryl] I'm not a lawyer. I'm not. [Narelle] Yeah. And I'm the same as you. I'm not a lawyer. Over here, we have Disability Discrimination Act 1992. It sounds very similar to your American Disability Act. It does say, like yours, that we should all have access within reason to the same information. The words here are within reason. And then we have a standard. So it's called the, um, Digital Accessibility Standard, which is maintained by government here. And it aligns to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, uh, version two level A. And it is not mandatory. The easiest way I explain it to people. I'm a bit of a hoon. I used to love driving. And I still do love driving. They don't let me. But I used to be able to change the oil and change the tyres. And I had a bit of an idea. And I'd say to people, it's equivalent to someone grabbing their car and saying, right, I'm gonna change the oil, change the windscreen, a windscreen wiper fluid, check the water. Um, yeah, I reckon I can get another hundred kilometers out of those tyres and writing the road worthy certificate. In Australia to drive, have a car on the road. You've got to have a road worthy certificate. But it's equivalent to you writing out your own road worthy certificate. And so what happens is companies over here and government does the same. They go and they assess themselves. But if they're not assessing using a screen reader or they might use the screen reader, but if they've got sight, they can work out how to get to it. But if you're only listening and you've only got listening and touch and smell, you know, four of the five senses, it makes it really hard to get around. And there's a push on in the disability sector here to make it mandatory. That all government, all private should be accessible. It's not going to happen because of the cost I know that. But one of my things when I look at it now and think, what can we do better? And I keep saying to business the best thing in Australia, meet those standards. Because we've got, like, 13 million Australians with the vision impairment. There's three and a half million with hearing impairment. This is 2018 stat. There's 4.4 million with disability. English is the second language is another issue. We're talking over half our population. So just putting the standard in, is going to make life better. And it's the same with physical standards for wheelchair access and crutches and all those other things. What's the feeling over in the US in regard to that? [Meryl] Can you ask your question again please? [Narelle] What's the feeling in regards to the US in relation to bringing in standard for digital accessibility, physical accessibility so it's mandatory? Do you think it will happen? [Meryl] Oh, no. At least not any time soon. I mean, not just reality. A lot of times, the state or the local government, my people spoke about throwing the Apple. I'm excited about New York, the state of New York. They, we the senators have proposed a bill that requires compliance with WCAG Version 2.0 AA . It's not, it's not passed yet. It's out there. And Colorado, I believe, has passed something similar. I've, I've been learning this from Thomas Logan and Ken Nakata. They've been producing, either of them right inside A11ys, short, for accessibility. It's a normal room. Anyway, so they've been talking about all these different, not these California, New York, Maine. Oh, the interesting thing about Maine. There's a business in Maine. Yeah, they were saying a customer in New York. They put up a lawsuit against the Maine business. And the Maine business was getting all these lawyer notices. And they're like, New York, this is a spam. This must be spam. But the customer's in New York. They had to file in New York. Anyway, I'm getting off track here. [Narelle] Oh my gosh. And that's legal. [Meryl] It's legal. As I told you. USA is lawsuit happy. We love, not me personally. They love lawsuits. Oh, on Section 508 and ADA, they um, they just have different scripts. So, ADA just the three protects Americans from discrimination based on accessibility. Accessibility Act. Not accessibility. Well, Section 508, based on what entities have to use and create to make it accessible to people, make information and communication technology. It's not to work with people with disabilities. There's no focus on procurement. You know, buying things at the government level. So that's what I mean. They have different scopes. They don't care. [Narelle] Yeah. [Meryl] So, [Narelle] It's crazy, isn't it? Here in Australia, you can be sued for not being, for being discriminatory in Australia. But you can never be sued for not being digitally accessible. And look, I'm not into suing anyone. I think it's not worth it. It gets around. It doesn't help the situation. But here in Australia, the other thing that happens is we've got the Human Rights Commission. And we can go to the Human Rights Commission and say, oh, Joe Blows company. I can't, you know, that's discriminatory. And they do a lot of mediation. And nothing's happens. You know, not a lot happens. [Meryl] So, um. Thomas and Kenneth, I was just talking about. They, had some lawsuits in 2021, 2022. It was a bunch of drug companies in grocery stores. The websites, do not make the COVID vaccine appointment, you know, to make appointments, to get your vaccines, accessible for screen readers. Well, they did that. I said, look at all those company websites today. I mean, 2024, the two years later. Only one of them was accessible. So despite this lawsuit, it changed nothing. Sometimes lawsuits don't change anything. However, that company in Maine I told you about. So they added an accessibility overlay. That is a. A lot of people don't know about it. That is, it is a tool that's, add a little code And it's supposed to make your website more accessible. But that's not true. We know that. It cannot. Ken and Thomas looked at the original lawsuit. They pinpointed one of the specific problems identified in the lawsuit. Wow. They tested it out on the overlay. The divas solved the problem again. It's still not accessible. So overlays don't fix anything. That's a whole other thing. We'll be here for hours. [Narelle] We, that'll be another podcast. That'll be another one because I have the same problem. I find those overlays sometimes interfere with what I'm trying to do with my screen reader. So I just leave the website. You know, it's not worth it. Look, Meryl, we could be here, seriously for hours because I think we've got a lot in common. [Meryl] I think we are just about out of time. But basically, in summing up, neither the US or Australia are really serious about digital accessibility. They are serious about discrimination and, unfortunately, that doesn't help because we're talking communication. What do you think? Have I summed it up properly? [Meryl] Yes, you did. Very nicely. [Narelle] Meryl, thanks. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for your time. Have a lovely night. Have a lovely weekend. [Meryl] Thank you for havine me. I enjoyed our conversation. Got a little off track. [Narelle] Well. Do you know what? I think we could probably get very off track, very, very easily. Because I'm pretty renowned for it as well. Thanks. And we'll have to do this again, Meryl, because I love chatting. [Meryl] Thank you. I enjoyed it too. Have a great day. Yeah, it's your Thursday. It's the end of our Wednesday. Yep. I'm done for the day. I'm going to go toTrivia night and enjoy myself. So. Do it all again tomorrow. [Narelle] Great. See you next time, Meryl. Oh, Meryl, how can people contact you? If anyone wants to contact you? [Meryl] Oh, they can go to my website, Meryl.net, M-E-R-Y-L-.-N-E-T. And they can find me on LinkedIn. Just enter my name on and then you'll find me easily. [Narelle] Awesome. Thanks, Meryl. Have a wonderful night. Win at trivia? [Meryl] Thank you. Yeah. I'm competitive. [Narelle] Well, this is another Digital Access Show. And yeah, Meryl Evans. What a wonderful lady, great insights. And we'll see you next time. [Music]