ATD Core 4 and More

Jacob Wood: This is Beyond Alt Text, the podcast for people who care about accessibility. I'm Jacob Wood.

Nicole L'Etoile: And I'm Nicole L'Etoile. Let's get into it.

[Beyond Alt Text theme music]

Nicole L'Etoile: Hey, everyone, welcome back. So, Jacob, quick question. Talk about… I don't think it's gonna be a quick question. I don't know why I said that. Talk about your experience at the ATD Core 4. This was your first time going?

Jacob Wood: It was, yeah. So the question was quick, but the answer? That might be a little bit longer. Alright.

Nicole L'Etoile: Not gonna.

Jacob Wood: Yeah, so I just got back from the ATD Core 4 conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. And the ATD is the Association for Talent Development. Most of the people listening to this podcast are probably pretty familiar with them, but if not, they're an organization that does certifications for training and development. And the conference that I went to is one of their bigger conferences. It's not the international, but it's, I guess they do an annual conference in connection with OrgDev, which is, was run at the same location simultaneously, but was technically a separate conference. But overall, I think there were, I don't know, hundreds of people there at least. It was a pretty big to-do. And it was over the course of three days.

So it was Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And, I only made it there for, like, Tuesday night, and then all of Wednesday, and, Some Thursday, and they wrapped up in the afternoon. the conference itself was really great. Everybody in this, who was there was just amazing. They were fun to talk to. I got to meet a lot of the people who I kind of think of as minor celebrities in the L&D space. I met Moe Ash and Betty Dannewitz and Katrina Kennedy. Oh, Katrina.

Nicole L'Etoile: Katrina, one of my favorites.

Jacob Wood: I love Katrina and Bianca Woods. So just so many people who I have known on LinkedIn and met online a few times, but never had a chance to hang out with in person. And it was great to meet them and get pictures with them. But also to just really soak in all of the knowledge that people were sharing.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, so you were able to attend a bunch?

Jacob Wood: Yeah, I got to go to a bunch of different sessions. Now, I had originally gone because I was also speaking on a, I did a topic on accessibility, and I'll get into that in a minute, but I got to enjoy some sessions about learning games with Moe Ash, with podcasting with Betty Dannewitz. I…

Nicole L'Etoile: come in handy.

Jacob Wood: Absolutely. and then, I missed Katrina's session, but, I'm sure it was fantastic, because she's amazing. And I attended a couple of others. One of my favorites, though, was, this LEGO Serious Play.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah.

Jacob Wood: It was the last session on Tuesday, so my wife and I had just gotten there and gotten our badges, and we weren't even planning on sticking around for a session, but we heard people talking about it, and we're like, oh, it's in the ballroom, let's go! So we went and played with Legos as our first event of the conference, and it was great. Everybody was given, like, a little package of Legos. And some constraints around what and how to build, and they were talking about innovation and, creativity, and we were given some prompts about, like, build a tower, or build what it looks like when you innovate.

Nicole L'Etoile: Hmm.

Jacob Wood: And then we sat around the table and we talked about our builds, and they, again, constrained our actions based on time. So we had 3 minutes to build what we had to build, and then it was hands up. Stop touching your Legos. So whatever we got to in the amount of time that we were given is what we had to stop and talk about, which was really frustrating for a lot of people who are very perfectionist and they're like, I'm not done yet. And for me. I was like constantly breaking my pieces right as the time was up. And I was like, I want to fix this, but because Legos fall apart really easily. So I kept having like these half builds that I wasn't done with, but I decided I had to talk about anyway.

So it was great to really stretch your muscles and your thinking, with these, what we think of as toys, but are really, a great way to build and innovate.

Nicole L'Etoile: From an accessibility perspective, when you went into the session, were you a little bit. Anticipating any, like, was there any anticipation heading into the session and, you know, talk about, you know, from an accessibility perspective?

Jacob Wood: No.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah.

Jacob Wood: I had no idea what I was getting into when I got there, but I do know that. One of the very first things that the presenter had asked people to do was to pull out the pieces for the little, LEGO minifig, the person, and put your person together. But for me, because I can't see the pieces in the bag, I have to just kind of wrestle around and feel what I feel. I had a hard time finding all of the parts of this guy. And that, to me, is so much my experience with accessibility, is it takes me longer to do. certain things than it takes the average person. So while everybody else had, like, put their minifig together in a matter of seconds. by the time we had started building, I still couldn't find my head.

So, I just started putting weird things on top of my character's head. So I put a flag on top, I put a propeller on top, and I just made that his head for whatever time it took me. And people laughed at it, because it was funny. They didn't know that I was doing that as, like, my backup plan, because I was still searching for the head. Eventually I found it, at the very last build. I finally had a head, and I didn't know which way the face was pointing, so I was like. this is how I feel when I'm innovating sometimes, is I don't know which direction I'm looking, I just kind of go with it. And for some reason that seems profound to people. But for me it was just like, well, this is how I'm making accommodations for myself.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Wood: But that, I think, was a really powerful, Representation of accessibility to me. is sometimes you do things a different way. And if we have universal design. Then we can account for that, and people can build whatever they want to build in the way that works for them, as opposed to trying to… shoehorn some sort of, some sort of lesson. We… come up with it as we go, and that's sort of the approach that I take to universal design.

Nicole L'Etoile: I mean, and I wonder too, I mean, and there's gotta be people out there listening who have presented at conferences or are responsible for any, you know, part of a conference or attended. You know, and I've heard this, you know, like, how do I account… I've had someone ask me from the conference team for a client that I work with, how do we, you know, how are we proactive? If I don't want to ask, even though I will ask, or I don't want to put anyone on the spot, like, what are those proactive things that I could be doing differently that I hadn't even considered? Right. Any of those thoughts when you were participating?

Jacob Wood: Yeah, so, and one of the other sessions that I was in, The speaker had actually, like, asked ahead of time if everybody in the room was okay with him not using a microphone. And nobody spoke up to say, we need it. But I also don't think there's the psychological safety there for people to do that. Because later I had heard that, people had wished that everybody had just used a microphone. That's what the tool was there for. So… I think… to your question. The way that we can give people… what was your question again? Now I've already.

Nicole L'Etoile: Well. Were there things that you thought of like that people ask in conferences, like, how can I be more proactive? And actually, when you speak about the microphone, because I was recently speaking, and there was no microphone available in the room, and that. it bothered me, it was a small room, and there was about 25 people in it, but what it impacted was my ability to use my live captions on my Mac, because it wouldn't… it would not pick it up. So I kept trying to use the live captions, and I wanted that. I wanted the live captions, because it's one, it's modeling, and two, there could be people in the room that needed it.

Jacob Wood: Right.

Nicole L'Etoile: And so, yeah, and that was something that I think is important, right? So.

Jacob Wood: Right.

Nicole L'Etoile: So that was my question. More like, how can people be proactive?

Jacob Wood: Yeah, that's exactly.

Nicole L'Etoile: Those things is, if you have a microphone, it sounds like, use your microphone. Don't ask people. If it's okay if I don't, because who's gonna speak up? We just met.

Jacob Wood: Right, exactly. And being proactive, one of the things that came up during my session is somebody had asked about sharing their PowerPoint slides after a session, and I said, the thing that I would recommend is to share your PowerPoint slides before the session. Be proactive about it. You don't need to wait for somebody to ask for them. You don't need to wait for somebody to say, I need an accommodation. Just share your slides proactively before the event, so that people who do need to look over them first aren't sitting feeling left out during your presentation, only to catch up later. If I get a chance to read your deck beforehand, then I already know what's coming, and I have a kind of a sense of what it's going to be like. As opposed to waiting until the end when I've already lost a plot, because I'm trying to imagine in my head what's going on when you're speaking.

So, one of those things that you can do to be proactive is to just make sure that all of your universal design or your accessibility is all offered ahead of time.

Nicole L'Etoile: Hmm.

Jacob Wood: So with my particular session, all of the notes and decks and everything for the conference were uploaded to the ATD app well ahead of time. That's something that, to their credit, ATD required of us.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah.

Jacob Wood: They wanted all of the documents, like, three to four weeks ahead.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, so they can, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. So, so other, other things as you were, your experience, like, for, for that particular conference, or any conference, like, is there other things that people… Could take away from this conversation.

Jacob Wood: Yeah, I think the other two things, these seem… almost… petty in some ways. I don't know if petty's the right word, but they seem small to some people, but they can make a really big difference. Yeah. So, the conference had us up on, like, a high-rise. There were two steps. And the podium was right at the edge of the drop-off from this riser. So for me, with my cane, I needed to make sure that I wasn't stepping too far past the podium, or I would have tumbled off, and The only person who was there to tell me about it was my wife, who I'd actually brought with me as a sighted guide, but had that not been the case, if nobody had announced it to me. There's a good chance that I could have taken a spill.

The other thing is, when I was coming down off the high rise, I was like, what do we do if somebody is using a wheelchair and is presenting? Because now they don't have a ramp. There was no ramp to get up there. So, yes, they could have brought the wireless lavalier mics down to the presenter, but that person is now stuck sitting, like, in front of the high-rise at the same level as the rest of the audience. So the space wasn't necessarily built for everybody.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, that's a really good Takeaway for people to think about, is that spatial awareness. For sure.

Jacob Wood: also related to space is the chairs were kind of your standard height for an adult, but my wife is only 5 feet tall, and so when she sits in a standard chair, her feet dangle. And when your feet dangle for an hour or more.

Nicole L'Etoile: So uncomfortable.

Jacob Wood: It's really uncomfortable, and she's often sore at the end of the day.

Nicole L'Etoile: Just.

Jacob Wood: Having something to put your feet up on or having adjustable chairs makes a world of difference. attending and you don't have any control over the environment, bring an inflatable footstool. But if you are coordinating the event, then try to have a variety of options for people to sit in.

Nicole L'Etoile: Oh, I love that. I mean, especially from a person who's 4'10". For those listeners who have not met me in person, I am 4'10". So, I do know that. In fact, I do know, you know, from the perspective, too, of the podium, of, you know. making sure that there is a step stool, or that I can walk around cleanly. But yeah, I think the, you know. Considering all of these things, if you don't know, you don't know, and so. Yeah, this is a great tip, to be proactive, that there are… there could be different seating arrangements and different ways to make people more comfortable.

Jacob Wood: For sure.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah. Yeah, it's been a while since I've done, I've gone to a conference. That was one of the things that this year I kind of didn't, I didn't do, but I did go to Access, access. Accessing Higher Ground, if any listeners have been to that one, or if you haven't yet, I highly recommend it. There's usually… it's in Denver, Colorado, and it's in November, and I went last year, and I, you know, that specific conference is about accessibility, so, I think they've just really have fine-tuned it, and I don't imagine that, every conference is going to get it right every time. Right. you can certainly, you know. take some tips, for this, and it sounds like, getting those presentations up, getting everything uploaded right away, beforehand makes a world of a difference.

And that, you know, you had agency. I go back to the… we've talked about this in our first, when we talked about our, you know, our origin stories about having control and agency, and that, in that LEGO session you talked about, you were able to have that agency by… and participate, and… and I, you know, that's… Something that everyone could be thinking about. How does everyone get to participate in my session?

Jacob Wood: Right. Yeah, I think if there are any conference organizers in the audience, I know that there are people who do professionally consult on conferences specifically for accessibility, and it's worth Finding somebody who can help you with that because there are very real logistical issues and it comes down to like being able to control the conference space. And we were at the Indiana Convention Center, which is huge.

Nicole L'Etoile: Mmm.

Jacob Wood: And it's a very long walk from one end to the other.

Nicole L'Etoile: Been there, yeah. I've I've I've seen it, yeah.

Jacob Wood: In addition to that, though, like, you don't necessarily know what equipment they have available, unless you have somebody scope it out ahead of time, where they give you a list of the… amenities. And so, making sure that you ask those questions and know what to ask of the venue before you book it is really important, because you could be thousands of dollars into a contract before you realize that it's going to exclude people using wheelchairs.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, yeah. And I wonder, did, were there some sign language? Do you know if there were any sign language on site?

Jacob Wood: I don't know. I don't believe there was.

Nicole L'Etoile: Hmm. Yeah, so I do notice that, specifically learning and development conferences that I've attended, for the most part, in that, those… that specific. topic, learning and development, not maybe an accessibility conference. I have not seen. Sign language. Yeah. Interpreters. So that's definitely something that. probably could be doing all around, just checking in on that, too, right? Like, especially when you're booking a place, maybe… Asking like, do you have a contract with with folks locally that would be someone that we can talk to?

Jacob Wood: Right, yeah, that's a good idea.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, yeah. So, all right, well, it sounds like you had a great time. It's a good experience overall. You got to meet some really cool people, some of our favorite LinkedIn friends. We should probably put some like. I guess, what are they called? Show notes together for people to check out the conference, right?

Jacob Wood: Yeah, we'll get some links to the conference, to folks that we mentioned, for sure.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah. Cool. So, there was another topic that we were going to talk about today, was just kind of, what I think would be, you know, relevant to a lot of, listeners out there, is just, that core idea around putting accessibility at the end of a project, right? So. And I had shared with you recently that I had been asked to come on board, at the end of the cycle, and I wasn't… and it… well, I actually wasn't even at the beginning of the project. Started, it was designed, and I was asked to join. With no… I don't want to say, like, I didn't know it was coming, right? So, it wasn't as if, like, I was on the sidelines waiting for my part, right? Like, or that I was contracted from the beginning. It was… we have this contract, we've done this design, this contract required an accessibility reviewer, can you be the reviewer?

Here it is, we'll get it to you in a couple of days, right? So that's my experience with this one particular project. And it was fine, because, I mean, it's… I'm not going to say no to taking on work, right? So I take the project, and I give my review, and I included a second round of revi… like, a second review. Right, so I said, okay, so we're gonna do this first one, I'll give you back your feedback, and I did, you know, kind of what we normally would do, you and I, when we audit storylines, and Content, and put it together in a… in a… spreadsheet, or wrote it up, but I also did some. I use VoiceOver as my screen reader tester, so I did some VoiceOver recordings on my Zoom clips and sent those, and I got back a lot of great, thank you, this is wonderful and really helpful, and we didn't know about focus order in Storyline, we didn't, you know.

see or know that we didn't have the right alt text for this. Okay, so, couple of main issues. But because of their timeline, and it being the very last piece, it was the revisions were prioritized, right? So, there might have been, let's say, 10 things that needed to be addressed, and only 2 to 3 were addressed and prioritized because of the timeline. And, and then there was no second. Check, no. Second review, because of the time.

Jacob Wood: Right, so how do you know if what they fixed had solved the problem?

Nicole L'Etoile: Right, right. So, and that's, you know, as somebody in a freelance consulting business role is kind of out of our hands. Now, if you're internal and you're working on a project, like, so I guess what is the point of this, me telling you the story, is we wanted to talk about, kind of, like, what are some ways that people can. change that workflow so that they can do more review cycles? Right. And what can they be doing to. Build it into the, you know, the culture that we don't wait to the end to do the checks.

Jacob Wood: Right, because when accessibility is treated as quality assurance. We end up running into this position where. There isn't time left over before the project has to go to the SME or the client for review to. correct any of those issues that we find before launch date. And the last thing that you want is for… and I've actually had this happen before, where I've had somebody say, well, we'll just correct it after launch. Well, how many people have already interacted with it on launch day, only to find out that they're stuck waiting for you to fix it later? If that later ever actually comes. Right. So how do we solve that problem where accessibility isn't left till the end, or after the end? How do we move it earlier in the timeline?

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, so we… I know you and I talked about adding it in contract language, right? Like, that it's part of this, this contract, it's part of this project, right? And so even in the ex… even in the one that I was hired on, it was in there. Their project, it was in their contract, but it was called an accessibility review, and it was left. as the… as, like, a final one last check, right? After quality, or during… even at the same time quality assurance was happening. It was, like, two separate things. Somebody's gonna review for quality, the other person's gonna review for accessibility, and we're gonna be making changes. So it's in the contract. So, what do we need to be doing differently in the contracts?

What do we need to be doing differently? So that we're not in this push-pull with clients, and we're just building it, right?

Jacob Wood: Yeah, so absolutely we need to bake that… those contract dates. So, if they are going to leave it toward as… as part of our review cycle, then the dates need to be very clear. Test one is due by this time, and then revisions are due by this date, so that we have time to retest it. If you don't build in extra time for revisions. then you end up in a situation where the client wants it now, and it's not done yet. And I've had that issue with one of my clients, where We contract out to another company, and we're doing work for them, but now they… the SME doesn't get the content to us with enough time to think about accessibility until the end. And then, they want the document back, you know, the same deadline that they gave you originally, even though they didn't deliver the initial files to you until later than expected.

So we have less time to do the same amount of work, and this is going to happen whenever you're working with a client or a SME. So, the best thing that you can do is to not have to worry about accessibility as part of a quality assurance check, but to build it into your design process. Because if you are building things in an accessible way from the start, there's less to go wrong, and less to check, and less to fix.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, and I think this, we've talked about this too, is that there's this core idea that it takes longer to build an accessible product. But if I make different decisions, right? If I make a design choice. from the start, I don't spend time making the bad design, I spend time making the good design, the accessible design, right? So it's a design choice, it's not as if I'm gonna design, and then design again, and then design again, right? It's not accessible design takes more time, it's… I know that that drag and drop is not the best approach, so I will make that same question a multiple choice, or make it a… You know, some other way, because… Right? It's good learning, it's good design.

So, so we talked about contract dates. We talked… so, putting those into the revision cycle from the start, and then there's that… that pushback of, we don't have time for accessibility, we don't have the money for accessibility, and we're saying, learn it, you know, build it accessible. What if I don't know how to build it accessible yet? I didn't learn it. So again, this… I'll come back to this one project, was. When I shared my review, it was a new learning. for these designers. They didn't know about focus order. So this was the first time they experienced that, or went through a review, and realized that, oh, I have to go into Storyline and change my focus order, because it's also calling out shapes, and it's also, you know, just not reading in logical order. Right.

And so now they know that. So next time, will they build it differently? I would imagine yes, right? So sometimes you do have to just go through that first icky one. Yeah. Right? Because… and then you now know how to build it accessible. And so, if you're… that, we'll call you that lone ranger out there on your team who's saying all of what you and I are saying, right? We're probably preaching to a choir here. You know, what are the tips that we're gonna try to give them to take away? And I think we're just saying, you know, keep sticking with it. Get those clear contracts.

Jacob Wood: Right. And make sure that you know your tools. when it comes to something like Storyline. like you said, it doesn't take more time, necessarily. Like, to add alt text, you right-click, you just, like, add alt text, or whatever it is, and type in the description of the image. That doesn't add… Half an hour to every picture, if you do it as you place the images, right? Focus order doesn't have to take a ton of time if you're doing it as you go. You don't know what you don't know. And so the first step that you can take is to really learn your tools. And we're not taught these things in school. A lot of people have gone through their entire master's degree in instructional design and never learned about accessibility. And I know I have a friend who just finished her master's in instructional design, and she said they had no classes about accessibility.

Nicole L'Etoile: We will not call that team. Should we call them out? No, don't do it. What academy was that? No, just kidding. Don't say it.

Jacob Wood: State College. Okay. Fair enough. you have to take it upon yourself sometimes, and I guess, like we said, we're preaching to the choir here, maybe, but you have to take it upon yourself to learn the tools. And the more knowledge we can share with one another. the better we can make the profession as a whole. Because if you don't know what you don't know, neither does the person sitting next to you most likely.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yep, there it is, and we're trying to bring that to teams, and we're trying to you know, just share the knowledge, and sometimes it doesn't need to be extremely structured, but we're gonna save that for another episode, because we know we have a lot to share about leadership on this topic, right? And, not just shifting left, but shifting up, so we'll get there. But I think for this episode, I feel pretty good about, you know, I think what we talked about, and… Hopefully people will walk away and, yeah, so I'm gonna come off my high horse and, just leave it at that and, Hopefully we'll hear from others on what's been going on with them. Anything we need to wrap up here?

Jacob Wood: I think just, if you have any, comments or tips, make sure that you are letting us know. We're both available on LinkedIn, and we'll include our links in the show notes, and our LinkedIns are on the website at beyondalttextpod.com. And make sure that you are engaging, because the best way for us to be able to address your questions is for you to let us know what those are.

Nicole L'Etoile: Yeah, and of course, we want to become, like, huge, you know, podcasters out there, right? Don't we want to be, like, you know, top 10 podcasts? So help us out a little bit. Give us… what is that? How does that work? Like our stuff? Like, like, like?

Jacob Wood: Like, subscribe, yep.

Nicole L'Etoile: Like, subscribe, retweet. Cool, cool. All right, so next episode, we're going to get into it. We're going to talk about leadership. Check in where we've been at. I think, I still have, I have a fun project that I keep telling you is starting. And every day, I get a… we have to keep revising something, and so we were supposed to start… Contracts. We were supposed to start in September, and here we are in October. So, I'll share a little bit more about that one. Hopefully, it'll get started. So, we'll, we'll keep you posted. Alright, so…

Jacob Wood: That sounds great.

Nicole L'Etoile: Do we have a catchphrase on the way out?

Jacob Wood: We don't yet.

Nicole L'Etoile: All right, help us figure out one.

Jacob Wood: Yeah, let us know in the comments or, you know, hit us up. Tell us what our catchphrase would be.

Nicole L'Etoile: Over and out, over and out.

Jacob Wood: That's right, over and out.

Nicole L'Etoile: That's how I'm ending it. That's it. All right, bye.

Jacob Wood: Right.

[Beyond Alt Text theme music]