Episode 11 – The Accessibility Giving Tree and Missing Pieces of the Big WCAG

Full Transcript

00:01 — Mark Miller: Hey, welcome to the Accessibility Breakdown. I am Mark, and this is ⁓ every week we pay tribute to those who stand out to us as leading by accessibility by picking three topics ⁓ that strike us in some way. This week we’re gonna talk about ⁓ the accessibility tree is how ⁓ AI agents read your site and it’s breaking. Interesting article here. We’ve talked a lot about AI, and I just ⁓ there’s a lot of good takes out there. This is an interesting take.

00:05 — Justin Stockton: Justin

00:31 — Mark Miller: ⁓ that relates ⁓ so directly to accessibility. ⁓ and then ⁓ as a lot of you are probably expecting, we’re gonna cover the ⁓ last ⁓ two ⁓ in Wilco series. ⁓ what’s the name the series? Do you remember? Design for all. So so part three, all or nothing, and then part four ⁓ Wick eggs

00:49 — Justin Stockton: Designed for all.

00:59 — Mark Miller: I don’t know, patient partner.

01:01 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ Wickex patient partner, yes.

01:03 — Mark Miller: Yes. ⁓ It’s like I don’t know if the word patient throws me off. And I’m like, is it patent or is it patient? ⁓ So I had to I had to pause there for a second. ⁓ so ⁓ and Wilco really nicely, I think, rolls around and wraps these things up. So I’m excited to ⁓ cover that. It’s a really ⁓ if so l let me just start by saying if

01:30 — Mark Miller: You haven’t, if you didn’t listen to episode ten of the accessibility breakdown, you might want to go do that because these two ⁓ parts three and four are gonna make a lot more sense to you. ⁓ we’ll make ⁓ you know, the discussion will be okay anyway, so don’t like pull your car over to do this or anything. ⁓ But ⁓ maybe listen to them after. ⁓ Be safe, drive safe, everybody drive safe. ⁓ but just just make a note that there’s actually two that sort of precede this and it it’s

01:59 — Mark Miller: One of the things Wilco does brilliantly, I think, is just unfold this topic through these three ⁓ through this four series part. Four part series. ⁓ all right, but let’s start off, ⁓ Justin, with the accessibility tree and how AI agents read your site and it’s breaking. This is by ⁓ Slobodan Manic. What do you think? How did they do?

02:13 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

02:27 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ yeah.

02:29 — Mark Miller: Yeah, okay, great. We points for me ⁓ for pronouncing something correctly, out of the gate. ⁓ so I think that ⁓ I I I really liked this article for a bunch of reasons and we’ll get into them, but I think it ⁓ in order for it us to make sure everybody kind of stays with us here, is we probably should explain the accessibility tree and what that is. ⁓ because it’s such an important concept in the way that he

02:58 — Mark Miller: talks about AI and he talks about how AI consumes content ⁓ on the web now and it’s through this accessibility tree. ⁓ And this brings around and brings this whole point home about how important accessibility is ⁓ today ⁓ for more than just its sort of original purpose, which is so that people ⁓ with disabilities could could use it. And we’ve always known that accessibility ⁓ contributes to search engine optimization.

03:28 — Mark Miller: They don’t line up 100% perfect, but they line up like 92% perfect. ⁓ And and probably more so as time gone on, those those two things line up. ⁓ but with artificial intelligence ⁓ and bots ⁓ doing the majority of the crawling on the web today, there’s ⁓ even more of an alignment and the accessibility tree steps in and plays this ⁓ role now.

03:56 — Mark Miller: ⁓ in the way that these that AI is is searching the web. I’m happy to dive into that explanation, but ⁓ you’re probably ⁓ better at it than I am if you want to dive into the explanation of what the accessibility tree is.

04:10 — Justin Stockton: Sure. Well, and ⁓ the Slobodan ⁓ does a nice job of ex ⁓ the article itself does a nice job of explaining, give you an introduction to the accessibility tree, what it is, how it works. ⁓ But essentially, your web browser, whether it’s Chrome or Firefox, hopefully Firefox, ⁓ Edge, whatever, ⁓ whatever web browser you’re using, it interprets the HTML behind the scenes. ⁓ the CSS brings all those things together.

04:15 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

04:20 — Mark Miller: Hundred percent.

04:39 — Justin Stockton: And creates ⁓ a model of ⁓ all of the ⁓ HTML elements and everything within that. ⁓ And that is referred to as the DOM, the document object model. ⁓ That DOM ⁓ is the full relationship of how of everything that’s available on that page, all of the events, everything that changes, all that stuff is in there. What the accessibility tree does is it’s actually created after the DOM is rendered.

05:08 — Justin Stockton: And it makes available only certain aspects ⁓ of the of the DOM ⁓ that ⁓ are ⁓ provide information, ⁓ interactions, ⁓ and ⁓ other elements. So all the all the divs and things that are used for like drawing a box or adding a border or something, those things aren’t important. They’re they’re really just style. There’s no substance behind it.

05:35 — Justin Stockton: So the accessibility tree is the substance, the things that I can interact with and get information from.

05:41 — Mark Miller: So let me let me pull out an al an analogy here. So if you’re non-technical and you’re listening to this and you haven’t ⁓ hung up by now, ⁓ turn turn turned off the podcast by now. Let me give you a ⁓ an analogy here. And you and you rate my analogy, Justin. Let me know if this is it. But ima so imagine you’re walking into a building, right? ⁓ And there’s a receptionist in the building. ⁓ And that receptionist has a big book in front of her ⁓ or or them, right? That that person has a big book in front of them ⁓ that

06:11 — Mark Miller: Is talks about all the different businesses ⁓ in that building. Okay. ⁓ So if you come in and say, I’m here for this or I’m here for that, or ⁓ does this business do that? Does they ⁓ they have this big book and they can flip through and there’ll be like, yeah, you know ⁓

06:28 — Mark Miller: Samantha Jones is the person that does that, and they are here on you know this time, and ⁓ they drive a blue Toyota Camry, you know, like whatever information might be in there. That’s a bunch of detail that that that that ⁓ person might need to do their their job as a receptionist and really ⁓ guide somebody. ⁓ That’s the DOM.

06:56 — Mark Miller: The accessibility tree is when you look over and it lists all the businesses. ⁓ And maybe it tells you what the businesses do and the people in the business, but it’s narrowed down to the most important facts ⁓ about if you go to the suite three on the fifth floor, ⁓ or if you want to go to, you know, ⁓ s ⁓ whatever’s. ⁓

07:18 — Justin Stockton: Mm.

07:22 — Mark Miller: The office that does this, it’s on you know, tells you where it is, but it it this and it’s not a perfect analogy, I know, but it basically is like these this is the most important stuff you need to get where you’re going. Forget about all the other little fluffy details. ⁓ It’s kinda like that, yeah?

07:43 — Justin Stockton: Mm, I’m gonna give that a seven out of ten. ⁓ because it’s not a subset of inf ⁓

07:45 — Mark Miller: Okay, seven out of ten. That’s pretty good. ⁓ It’s way better than the grades I got in ⁓ in school, by the way. ⁓ It wasn’t like a fifty eight and ⁓ I had to take the test again, so ⁓ yeah.

07:57 — Justin Stockton: Right. ⁓ yeah, it’s not a so it’s not a subset of information. It’s the same information, ⁓ but it’s ⁓ pure it’s more ⁓ trying to build on that analogy. Like if if someone had like a complete document of all of the information of everyone available in in the building, ⁓ it’s that same information, but it’s it’s without any of the formatting that that person needs in order to navigate the

08:27 — Justin Stockton: all of the content. ⁓ So it’s so it’s really just the it would be, you know, it’s all the people’s names, the type of car that they drive, all that information, ⁓ the ways that they can interact with them, you know, their phone numbers, all that stuff. It’s all of that information and it’s provided ⁓ in a way that is parsable ⁓ and is ⁓ makes it easy for computers or other things to interact with that information ⁓ so it’s

08:27 — Mark Miller: that’s interesting. ⁓ Okay.

08:55 — Justin Stockton: Just it’s pulling out all of that stuff and none of the formatting of the page.

09:04 — Mark Miller: So the analogy’s close, but because it’s not a subset.

09:06 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. It’s not a subset of information. ⁓ so even inf even in for

09:11 — Mark Miller: Got it. ⁓ Okay, I was trying to think. I was trying to think of a way to clean up the analogy, but I think we’d have to get out of that building to do it ⁓ and start with some ⁓ something else. I don’t know what that analogy would ⁓ if somebody has a good analogy, let us know. ⁓ but ⁓ that’s hopefully struggling to that analogy has given you a bit of an idea of what this accessibility tree is. But the purpose of the accessibility tree is that it’s ⁓ easier for the machine.

09:18 — Justin Stockton: Yeah, thank yeah.

09:25 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

09:41 — Mark Miller: to read and the reason why it showed up in the first place is the machine that we were talking about was a browser communicating with a screen reader.

09:53 — Justin Stockton: Pew.

09:55 — Mark Miller: So ⁓ that the screen reader could kind of get down to this ⁓ the important level of this information versus having to ⁓ deal with kind of the messiness that might exist in the DOM. Yeah. Okay. Good deal. ⁓ So that’s the accessibility tree, ⁓ and the point here that ⁓ Soladen makes.

10:09 — Justin Stockton: Right. Yep. Yep.

10:24 — Mark Miller: I said that right. ⁓ Is that ⁓

10:28 — Mark Miller: AI this is there’s three ways that AI can look at your website. Right? Do you remember these? All right, his I’m gonna quiz you and see if you what you get. What was what’s one what’s the what are the three ways?

10:34 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm. Yep.

10:42 — Justin Stockton: So there’s vision AI, ⁓ so there’s the vision models where it’s basically taking a using computer vision to take a snapshot of the page and look at it and then try to interact with the things that ⁓ it thinks ⁓ are interactable or content that is on the page, and so it’s tries to scrape that out using computer vision. ⁓ There’s the accessibility tree.

10:44 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

10:51 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

10:59 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

11:04 — Mark Miller: Which number one takes a lot of computing power to do. Like when you take an image and you break down the image and you OCR it and you figure it all out and all that, that’s like the most intensive thing AI can do. Okay, go ahead, so it’s number two.

11:07 — Justin Stockton: Yes, yes. you want

11:16 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ mm not most intensive, but it’s pretty up it’s up there. And it’s getting cheaper all the time. ⁓ there’s ⁓ the accessibility tree as a way to to pull that information out. ⁓ and then there’s h I know. It’s like foreshadowing. ⁓ and then there’s a hyb there’s hybrid approaches that kind of like use ⁓ both of those models. Yeah.

11:22 — Mark Miller: Okay. ⁓ Ha hi. Yeah.

11:30 — Mark Miller: We just talked about the accessibility tree, Justin. I know what it is now. It’s a building. It’s a building.

11:39 — Mark Miller: All right, go ahead. ⁓

11:44 — Mark Miller: Use the two together. Yeah. Okay. ⁓ So you know what’s interesting about that? I was I was reading. This is a thought that I had. And it’s that so this vi like we said, this vision version takes a lot of computing power versus looking at the accessibility tree, right? ⁓ And I’m like, there it’s AI’s the opposite of a of a person, of a of a a person who has vision, right? Like most people ⁓ default to vision.

11:46 — Justin Stockton: And and try to overlay.

11:52 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

12:13 — Mark Miller: Right, pictures worth a thousand words, ⁓ all that kind of stuff. It’s almost like this preferred way to interact with the world. So if you say to me, when and I, you know, with my dyslexia, this probably double for me, right? But like, ⁓ consume this by sitting down and reading words, I would be like, ⁓ least favorite ⁓ and the most intense on my brain. Hardest for me. But if you went, here’s two pictures that represent all of it, and it’s all you need to know, I’d be like, sweet, I’m there.

12:33 — Justin Stockton: Yeah, yeah.

12:42 — Mark Miller: Instantly, I’d be like, I’m there, very little brain power. ⁓ And so it it’s it’s interesting to me because if you think of that that this is all put into place for folks who are blind, it’s almost like this role reversal where all this time, the way that people who are blind consume the web is the most efficient way to consume the web.

13:01 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

13:06 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

13:06 — Mark Miller: You know what I’m saying? So it’s like the the vision, the web browser visual interface ⁓ is a crutch for people who prefer and rely on vision most of the time.

13:24 — Mark Miller: Do you see that flip I’m doing there? So it’s almost like have have the people who need the accessibility been the ones to force the web in that direction, and the people who don’t need the accessibility, and this is a weird flip-flop, right? Are the ones that have been saying, hey, write this right for us too, please. ⁓ We don’t need that mess. ⁓ And we’re like, we don’t care how it’s written. We’re, you know, this we’re looking at it. And so it’s almost like this role reversal that I think is very, very interesting. ⁓

13:25 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah.

13:42 — Justin Stockton: Right. Well

13:54 — Mark Miller: But that leads us to this point is that these the most efficient way for artificial intelligence to consume the web is by consuming this accessibility tree. ⁓ And it doesn’t want to deal with your messy DOM. ⁓ It ⁓ doesn’t by default want to deal with your your ⁓ processor consuming pictures. It’s like, hey, this accessibility tree gives us what we need. We want to look at that and move on.

14:19 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

14:24 — Mark Miller: There. Four, if your site’s not accessible, if your accessibility tree ⁓ is not watered and beautiful, then it’s got it’s like late fall, no more pretty colors, so that one ⁓ brown leaf is still hanging on, right? Charlie Brown Christmas tree. If that’s your if your accessibility tree on your website is a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, ⁓ then you’re actually missing out on on.

14:37 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ Yeah.

14:44 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

14:53 — Mark Miller: What search engine optimization looks like today. You’re actually missing out on ⁓ people being able to consume your content because the AI, the bots are skipping over it. And he brings some statistics in here that say more this year, ⁓ 2026, we crossed over this threshold where more bar bots are crawling the web than people. Which was predicted. And who they talk about somebody who predicted it. ⁓

15:10 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

15:22 — Mark Miller: They predicted it would happen in twenty twenty seven. So the prediction came through, it just came came through early, which I think is like a win. ⁓ and by the way, ⁓ I I have to rate you on the quiz. I didn’t rate you on the quiz. I got a seventy on mine. The quiz was the three types ⁓ ways that AI can sue. I’m giving you a seventy two because ⁓ I don’t want you to do better than me.

15:30 — Justin Stockton: Is it? ⁓

15:35 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓

15:48 — Justin Stockton: But I gave you a s I gave I gave you a seventy and you gave me a seventy two. That’s two percentage points. Yeah.

15:48 — Mark Miller: You got a hundred. You got a hundred percent.

15:53 — Mark Miller: it’s two points better. You’re right. ⁓ Math’s hard. No, no, obviously you nailed it. I don’t even know why. I don’t even know why I reached back to that. You just nailed it. You’re smarter than me. Everybody knows it. ⁓ so so ⁓ so there’s that that we’ve got this increase of bots. But here’s the crazy thing that he mentioned, and I didn’t realize this, but it makes total sense, is that we’ve got a decrease in accessibility on the web.

15:57 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ And English is silly.

16:22 — Mark Miller: For the first time in twenty twenty six, instead of having this small uptick, and we’re talking percentage of content on the web, so up recently we’ve had this small uptick every year. The web’s slightly more accessible and now it’s falling again. ⁓ and do you want to tell people why, Justin?

16:32 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

16:37 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

16:40 — Justin Stockton: Well, so he’s leveraging the data from the web from WebAims, ⁓ yeah, ⁓ from their million ⁓ site survey. ⁓ pretty famous if you’re in accessibility circles, pretty famous survey. ⁓ but he their conclusion was specifically with this uptick, was that it had to do with people vibe coding and the introduction of vibe coding, ⁓ particularly like new home pages and things like that. Now, what’s interesting about that

16:44 — Mark Miller: Aim. ⁓ Web aim. Yep.

17:02 — Mark Miller: Yes.

17:08 — Mark Miller: So ⁓ l let me just pause you one second there. I’m sorry. ⁓ but I just wanna s say for a non technical audience, vibe coding is when you strictly use AI to build you an app and it writes all the code. That’s vibe coding. Go ahead. That’s a new term, so I just wanted to define it.

17:24 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ it’s a good good good break. ⁓ what’s interesting and what I’m kind of I wanted to go back through ⁓ was whether or not WebAims survey ⁓ of the million pages ⁓ of the million pages that they scan, ’cause they t there’s all these indexes out there that ⁓ look at the most popular pages across the web and they analyze ⁓ the top one million pages.

17:45 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

17:53 — Justin Stockton: How many of those home pages ⁓ are from sites that are new versus sites that have those like do we have a lot of new contestants this year? Did some drop out? Like how much carryover was there from 2025 to 2026? ⁓ so I don’t that might give us that particular bump. I don’t know.

18:03 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

18:16 — Mark Miller: So are you arguing that maybe it’s not as much because of eye coding as

18:20 — Justin Stockton: I think vibe coding certainly plays a part of that. ⁓ and it could be used to justify the bump, but ⁓ reading the article made me want to go and dig into their data a little bit more to see, you know.

18:22 — Mark Miller: Yeah.

18:32 — Mark Miller: Yeah, I see you. So th the questions being is there is the ⁓ is the change in vibe that exists within this ⁓ administration also part? I mean that’s the thought I had and I actually have another thought r related to that that we can get into, but it could be that there’s less emphasis on accessibility. ⁓ because that except for ⁓ you did have the title to ⁓

18:59 — Mark Miller: and HHS deadlines looming for the first part of the year. So that would kinda like work against that.

19:04 — Justin Stockton: Well it could o but it could also be because it’s looking at the ⁓ million the top pages, like the most ⁓ trafficked pages that are out there. ⁓ So it’s all by traffic. And so is it are you look ⁓ are did we see some pages drop out? The home pages for some sites drop out ⁓ because you know, you know, hundreds of thousands of new ⁓ you know, well

19:12 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

19:15 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

19:32 — Justin Stockton: Not hundreds of thousands, but maybe let’s let’s say like fifty thousand new websites sprung up overnight because they were vibe coded websites. Like ⁓ that would ⁓ unseat some of those because there now there’s this new popular ⁓ tool that’s out, but it was all vibe coded. So that’s the are those new entrants into ⁓ the the million pages what changed it? Or like ⁓ are we gonna see I guess what I would say is are would we see a correlation?

20:02 — Justin Stockton: between the uptick of new entrants in that million pages ⁓ that correlates to the same ⁓ change in slope of the line of the ⁓ the new issues that we s that we saw. Like is there a correlation there? Or you know, is it the same million pages ⁓ and maybe the tooling just got better or like what happened?

20:18 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓

20:28 — Mark Miller: Right, right. But your point is is that it it it it made you curious about the data. ⁓ You’re a geek and you’re like, Okay, I see what they’re saying. This looks like interesting data that I’d love to dig into and maybe try and make some other correlations. ⁓

20:32 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

20:42 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ I don’t think I don’t think it’s necessarily a hundred percent vibe from vibe coding, but I think it’s I think there’s definitely a p yeah. Yeah.

20:47 — Mark Miller: Yeah. I think that’s fair. I mean, nothing’s ever I mean, everybody wants things to be that kind of binary and like this is the reason. And it’s almost never one thing. You know, it’s almost always multiple things or there’s multiple effects from one thing or whatever. ⁓ so the other thing that I thought was interesting in this article is this sort of the AI snake eating its tail ⁓ aspect of this, right? ⁓ And what I mean by that is that ⁓ Slobaden points out that

21:08 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

21:17 — Mark Miller: More of the web is being created through this vibe coding or AI coding. The data set that vibe coding uses to write code is the all the code on the web itself, ⁓ essentially. ⁓ And that’s not great for accessibility. So this is a big problem that we have in accessibility. It’s like, okay, great that people are vibe coding, but they’re ⁓ we’ve been working for years to try and get code that’s accessible. The majority of the code out there isn’t.

21:45 — Mark Miller: And that’s the example that these tools have to go by. So they’re writing tools, websites, whatever that aren’t very accessible. And if people aren’t intentional about building skills, testing the final results, ⁓ fixing it, you got a bunch of stuff that’s not accessible. So the inaccessible code is difficult for AI bots to crawl, and AI writes inaccessible code. So it’s kind of

22:13 — Mark Miller: The snake eating its tail scenario here where ⁓ AI’s ⁓ dependent on accessibility, but incapable without humans ⁓ being strongly in the loop of creating accessible code. ⁓ So to me, that was a really interesting. And if you need a reason not to be as confident in AI today as you were yesterday, there’s today’s reason right there in my mind. Right? We we’re we’re starting to get used to AI, we’re starting not to disbelieve that it

22:14 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

22:41 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

22:43 — Mark Miller: kinda can do everything perfectly. And that’s ⁓ and that’s ⁓ part of the reason.

22:52 — Mark Miller: The other thing I found interesting about this is that ⁓ we do have this de-emphasis of accessibility in the administration, and a lot of that has to do with these sort of business ⁓ reasons, right or wrong, that are being cited, right? That’s why we have Title II and in HHS extending, right? Is the administration said. ⁓ So however you feel about that is how you feel about that. ⁓ But ⁓ de-emphasizing accessibility has

23:09 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

23:21 — Mark Miller: far reaching implications ⁓ beyond ⁓ disability and it also has these far reaching implications ⁓ that may affect your business. So if you’re if you’re not making your website accessible but your competitors are, not only do they open up their content and products to a whole other group of people that you haven’t opened up yours to, ⁓ they also may be getting much better results

23:51 — Mark Miller: period when people are trying to find them.

23:54 — Justin Stockton: Yeah, I can’t yeah, well particularly with the the WebAim stuff, I don’t I can’t see that making of that big of a an issue. I want but you’re it’s a good point and it’s something that you would wanna go in and look at the data. ’cause also that’s the cool thing about WebAIM is that they they do publish all their data. You know, they make you know, s ⁓ they make ⁓ you know, some good posts about it and ⁓ and stuff, but the data’s out there so you can go through and see.

24:22 — Justin Stockton: And you could say, like, you know, show me all of the US government sites in 2025 and 2026. ⁓ And what was the change over time specifically looking at US government websites? ⁓ so might be interesting ⁓ might be an interesting thing for our blog. You’ll keep at ⁓ still after me for

24:38 — Mark Miller: Yeah. ⁓ So you’re saying you don’t quite buy it and you’d like to dig further into the data to see if the data really sp supports something like that before you would you would you would say

24:41 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ I don’t yeah.

24:47 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. I mean we’re two we’re two years into the administration and pages change, ⁓ but you know, ⁓ a lot of those websites are mained by are ⁓ maintained by government contractors ⁓ and such. ⁓ You know, they’re not gonna rush right out and like redo a website. We’re also only looking at the home page of these sites as well.

25:09 — Mark Miller: Well, but do you do you think that the assertion that a more accessible site is easier found by search engines and ⁓ AI bots? ⁓ S statistically significantly ⁓ more easy to find? Or do you think that

25:20 — Justin Stockton: Then

25:27 — Justin Stockton: Mm. ⁓

25:27 — Mark Miller: It has some little effect but not as much as it’s it’s not gonna rattle your business.

25:33 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ I don’t think it’s I think it’s statistically more easier it’s gonna be easier to find. ⁓ but it’s not there are ways. There like there used to be like ⁓ for like single page apps. ⁓ If you built a single page app, then it was really difficult for a search engine ⁓ to ⁓ to send its crawlers through it ⁓ and find the, you know, index information. There’s ways around that and so you can

26:01 — Mark Miller: Okay.

26:02 — Justin Stockton: build spas all day long and ⁓ and ⁓ and have, you know, Googlebot can can search it. So

26:08 — Mark Miller: So you wouldn’t lean super hard into it. All right. That’s good. That’s that’s interesting. I was bu I mean, I I obviously was buying into it a lot more than you are. I don’t know that I am now or not, but

26:11 — Justin Stockton: No, no. ⁓ Now there is

26:22 — Justin Stockton: There is a concerning anti-pattern with this article. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ So an anti-pattern is typically you would ⁓ so patterns are typically like ⁓ good things that you want to happen. ⁓ you know, ⁓ the case is you’ve built an accessible site, it’s going to make it easier for someone using a screen reader ⁓ or assistive technology to navigate that page. That’s the pattern that we want. The anti-pattern to this ⁓ is, hey,

26:26 — Mark Miller: Anti pattern, that’s a cool phrase.

26:36 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

26:51 — Justin Stockton: We all just found out that ⁓ that AI ⁓ is using the accessibility tree to navigate and pull information out of your website. We don’t want the information on our website to be to show up and be indexed by these AI. So we’re going to now not make our site accessible.

27:13 — Mark Miller: That’s happening.

27:15 — Justin Stockton: Well, no, that’s not happening. That’s the anti pattern here. That’s the that’s the that’s the way that if you’re a website and you’re out there and you’re like, well, you know, I don’t want my stuff to show up in these to be searched and to be to show up in these ⁓ to be indexed by these ⁓ these AI models. Well, I’m just gonna I’ll throw an ARIA hidden on my body element and poof it all goes away. ⁓

27:18 — Mark Miller: Mm.

27:33 — Mark Miller: AI butt.

27:39 — Mark Miller: I’d be ⁓ I’d be curious.

27:43 — Mark Miller: what the what the use case of not wanting to be found would be. I mean if you have a secret website, you have a secret website. Like that’s just it, right? But otherwise it’s it’s sort of like and maybe there’s a use case I don’t know about, but to me it’s like so you hang a ⁓ you put a billboard out, but then you drive a truck in front of because you don’t want anybody see it. That’s like what use case is there for that? Like it’s a billboard. ⁓ It’s out there to be seen.

28:06 — Justin Stockton: Right. Well the good news we do have we do have laws and regulations out there ⁓ that are going to prevent someone from doing that. But that’s a that’s a very quick knee-jerk reaction. Like can’t you see some CEO like, ⁓ you know, we don’t want ⁓ we don’t want websites, we don’t want you know our content to show up in in these AI models, like don’t index our our stuff. ⁓ And

28:12 — Mark Miller: ⁓

28:32 — Mark Miller: Every CEO I know right now can’t form an entire sentence without some AI in it in a positive way. ⁓ I’d I’d like for s a few CEOs to be like, Hey, ⁓ we should be a little more cautious about this stuff than we are. ⁓ But

28:47 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Well it’s a little it’s a I mean you c there’s an like kind of a nimble argument there, like index everybody else’s stuff but not mine. Yeah. So that’s my

28:52 — Mark Miller: Yeah. Not mine. Okay. Alright. I’m not li I I’m not imagining the use case for that, but it’s a really interesting thing. And just the phrase anti pattern, because it made me feel like I was in you know, the bridge of the enterprise for a minute.

29:00 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

29:04 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

29:08 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ True.

29:10 — Mark Miller: And I’m like, do we have to worry about the anti-pattern or the anti-matter? ⁓ All right. So check out this article, Accessibility Tree, How AI Agents Read Your Site and It Is Breaking. ⁓ Slobaden, Menic, it’s a really interesting article, really interesting take and breakdown as as you just heard. ⁓ if you have thoughts, like obviously Justin and I are are we’re kind of working our way through this and have different thoughts. If you have thoughts about what we’re saying, feel free to.

29:13 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ Both, actually.

29:24 — Justin Stockton: Yeah, it’s a good primer.

29:38 — Mark Miller: to post them wherever you want on social or or when we post or ⁓ you can post on the page that we on on the inner on the inclusion impact website wherever you want to but we’d like to hear from you. ⁓ so you want to get into Wilco stuff? You ready for that? Okay. I knew you were waiting for that. ⁓ all right, well let’s talk about design for all part three, all or nothing. Why don’t you intro this one?

29:54 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓

30:03 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm. you made it. ⁓ so in this particular article, ⁓ Wilco so continuing on from like part one, so ⁓ just to recap real quick, part one of the series, and this is part three, part one, ⁓ he talked about like different types of standards work, different l ⁓ and particularly started thinking about ⁓ not just WCAG, but like how do you manage accessibility across an organization.

30:33 — Justin Stockton: So that was part one. ⁓ Part two ⁓ he looked at ⁓ WCAG ⁓ and noted that you know while it’s fairly rigid ⁓ and has some very specific ⁓ things that it’s it’s testing, that the ⁓ EN 17161 ⁓ that this that the standard that he’s ⁓

30:55 — Mark Miller: You get a you get an A for that. That’s a solid it’s a solid A plus right there. ⁓

31:03 — Justin Stockton: That he’s talking about, which is ⁓ EN171 E darn it, I did it once, but now I can’t do it again. EN17161 designed for all, that as a standard, it fills in some of those gaps ⁓ left that that WCAG doesn’t address. So here in ⁓ in three, ⁓ he’s talking really kind of more about like WCHG’s.

31:10 — Mark Miller: ⁓ Jeez.

31:33 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ the the it that there’s some unrealistic things about it particularly he talks a lot about ⁓ conformance and how ⁓ wicag is set up to focus really on single pages ⁓ like you can you can work ⁓ you can work you can do a lot of things you can make a page conformant that’s great now you’ve done one page out of the thousand of pages on your site

32:02 — Justin Stockton: That doesn’t mean your site is accessible. It means you’ve made one page out of the thousand pages accessible. Good job. Now you’ve got 999 to go. ⁓ now, you know, through templating and other things like that, you may have solved a lot of things there. ⁓ or you may have you may be able to get your templates accessible, ⁓ but you’re embedding third party content. Maybe you’re c

32:29 — Justin Stockton: content from authors or ⁓ non you know employees maybe you’re on like kind of like a Facebook type site or something like that where people can drop in images and so I can make the shell accessible ⁓ but what about the individual pieces of content that other people are dropping in here? Am I responsible for that? So WCAG addresses that but what the design for all spec does ⁓ is it goes above that. ⁓

33:00 — Justin Stockton: And also makes a way for you to kind of define within your organization what are the gaps, what are the issues, ⁓ and how we go how do we plan to address those? ⁓ So he spends kind of the bulk of the article ⁓ talking about this idea, concept of issue registries ⁓ and having a place where you can identify the accessibility issues that are ⁓ ongoing within your website.

33:28 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ or across your organization. And this is the here are the plan ⁓ to address those.

33:37 — Mark Miller: Yeah. ⁓ So the the really interesting things to me about this, and that was very good explanation. ⁓ and I and you know the first point that you were making about this WCEG is sort of ⁓ one ⁓ one page, one point in time, and it’s a bit all or nothing, right? ⁓ versus ⁓ the EN one seven one six one one six one seven one ⁓

34:05 — Mark Miller: Now you got me messed up. 17161. ⁓ It’s 17161. That’s what it is. And I want to say it’s 17161, but when I try and say the numbers like everybody else does, it messes up. ⁓ But anyways, the ⁓ the ⁓ EN 1716-1. ⁓ I’m gonna say it that way from now on. I hope it catches on. Everybody starts saying it that way, it’s much easier. ⁓ The

34:27 — Justin Stockton: All the cool kids.

34:29 — Mark Miller: ⁓ that is the organization. Let’s looking at the organization. So the I’m gonna go for another analogy here. I’m more confident about this analogy, but it’s sort of like it’s sort of like if you built a car. So you built a car from scratch, and you built we’ll say you built the car perfectly accessible, right? From scratch. That is one car, and that is way different than saying I’m a car manufacturer and I’m gonna manufacturer, manufacturer, manufacture multiple cars.

34:58 — Mark Miller: Different styles of cars, and I’m gonna use the same ⁓ method or the same ⁓ standard or whatever that I applied to building this one car to that. ⁓ And ⁓ if you think about it this way, so you there’s somebody that would turn around immediately go, wait, you can’t do that. Manufacturing a bunch of cars is a process that needs to be managed. It ⁓ we need to build.

35:25 — Mark Miller: That accessibility that you’re talking about into the processes. Why are you talking about individual cars now? Right. And that’s kind of with WCEG. We’re like, WCEG informs how to build a car accessibly, a car being analogous to the page. And we’re going, like, okay, well, let’s apply that to our manufacturing line. And it’s like, okay, well, it’s informing some stuff in the manufacturing line, but we’re having a lot of things come out inaccessible because. ⁓

35:50 — Mark Miller: We didn’t address the process of manufacturing. We tried to apply a standard to e each what is it? We each one of these cars or a representative car from each model. Or like, how do we do this? You took one car away and you audited it and ⁓ now you’re trying to decide how that makes your whole manufacturing line accessible. ⁓ So when you think about it that way, it’s kind of like almost more obvious ⁓ than

36:15 — Mark Miller: And and that’s what it that’s kind of the analogy that formed in my head when he was talking. I was like, that’s a really good way to think about it. It really kind of clears that up. ⁓ and then ⁓ this concept of the issue registry.

36:31 — Mark Miller: Which you do me a favor and explain the issue registry because ⁓ he he’s very careful along the way to be going, like, I’m not talking about just standard issue tracking here, right? Like if you think of issue registry, you’re like, why not just say your JIRA ticketing system or your list of issues or whatever? And and he’s very careful about going, I’m not talking about just a list of issues. ⁓

36:55 — Justin Stockton: Because because I think because the EN stand this EN standard, which tangent seventeen, sixteen. Yes. ⁓ Now you’ve got me double thinking it. ⁓

37:01 — Mark Miller: Seventeen sixteen one.

37:06 — Mark Miller: Seventeen sixteen Uno.

37:10 — Justin Stockton: Though the ⁓ the fact that you can’t just go and download the standard just does drive me a little nuts. ⁓ but that aside. So yeah, so he’s talking about it really from more of it’s not just ⁓

37:29 — Justin Stockton: It’s not just the failures, but it’s issues with process. It’s issues with ⁓ the results from audits. I mean it’s it’s bigger than it needs to track things that are not ⁓ that aren’t directly fixable ⁓ through code. So you need some place where you can idea identify ⁓ at a higher level things that aren’t

37:36 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

37:59 — Justin Stockton: just code but process things, things, results from usability studies. Like how are you going to ⁓ you need a place where you can aggregate all of that information. And you know if you’re using something like Jira, you know, Jira’s got a nice suite of tools looking across products. ⁓ Maybe you’re using Jira for your actual results of your audit and that’s rolling up into ⁓ you know some product

38:26 — Justin Stockton: tool or something like that that Elassian offers ⁓ that allows you to kind of see this overarching issue ⁓ way. ⁓ But then he goes No, no, go ahead. I was gonna jump.

38:35 — Mark Miller: It’s go ahead, keep going. ⁓ I was gonna say it’s it’s it’s kind of like that we tend to look at accessibility issues in this very simple breakfix way, right? Like the color contrast on this page is ⁓ doesn’t meet the color contrast ratio guidelines. ⁓ Therefore I need to put a ticket in place that fixes ⁓ the color contrast. And then somebody goes in there and they change the colors and they go, Hi five, we did it, right, which is great. That’s fine. ⁓ I th

39:03 — Mark Miller: So the interest the the really interesting thing he’s talking about with the 1716 one is that in this ⁓ issue registry is that you would now use that to inform a bigger process issue. So now maybe you look at that and you go, Holy moly, we’ve got you know, five hundred color contrast issues that showed up. ⁓ Why

39:23 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

39:29 — Mark Miller: Why do we keep creating color contrast issues? And then you go back and you go, well, our ⁓ content creators were never taught about color contrast. Maybe w maybe what we need

39:41 — Mark Miller: From an organizational standpoint, is training for our designers ⁓ or for our our content people. Maybe they’re all coming out of content versus coming out of co you know the the SDLC, right? Maybe they’re coming out of the SDLC versus content. Whatever the case is, ⁓ you trace that back to the or to the to its origin in the organization and you fix the process that’s making that thing show up in the first place. ⁓ That is where the 1716-1 pops in and ⁓

40:10 — Mark Miller: I in in w in w or or that’s where this issue registry is more than just that basic break fix. ⁓ One of the ways. One of the ways. In in addition to all the things that you just said.

40:17 — Justin Stockton: Yes.

40:20 — Justin Stockton: And the solution for an issue could be a technic you know a technical thing. You know, ⁓ you know, we’re not we’re not building, we’re not consistently addressing color contrast. You know, ⁓ ways to address that might be, ⁓ you know, spending time in Figma to use ⁓ to use variables and define a pattern library. ⁓ could be downstream defining, you know, a design pattern, you know, ⁓ you’d picking up a ⁓ you know.

40:49 — Justin Stockton: a better way of building your components. There’s lots of different solutions for that. But the issue at hand is we are not consistently building ⁓ you know, ⁓ using colors correctly across our website. So we’re gonna address that as an issue.

41:04 — Mark Miller: So this is one of the things that’s really interesting to me because being talking to organizations for 13 years in accessibility, ⁓ one of the in in you know will be fair. Like a lot of the reasons why you’re on the phone with somebody that says, I need an audit, I need this accessibility thing, you know. by the way, what is it? I just learned about it yesterday, ⁓ is because of a lawsuit, the fear of a lawsuit, you know, all these things. ⁓ So ⁓ there’s this. ⁓

41:36 — Mark Miller: Let’s fix this stuff and move away, right? This this finish line that that that is implied out there that we as accessibility professionals really know doesn’t exist. ⁓ But it’s very, very hard ⁓ to talk to people about that next step, which is how do you fix the organization? ⁓ But the rub is ⁓ in what Wilco is saying here about

42:04 — Mark Miller: 1716 Ian 17161 is that that is the way that you do this. You maintain your risk mitigation, you create efficiency, you make it more cost effective. If you keep circling back around and wadding up the Wikid guidelines and hocking them at your website once a year, it will always be painful and expensive. ⁓ That’s why we work with the accessibility maturity model in the AMM, which is not.

42:26 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ And that’s

42:33 — Mark Miller: you know, shares a lot with Ian ⁓ seventeen sixteen ⁓ seventeen sixteen one. ⁓ Right. ⁓

42:39 — Justin Stockton: And that’s and I liked his I liked his analogy. I can’t remember if it was in ⁓ Article three or four. ⁓ but he makes the ⁓ you know, Wicag is Wicag is the horizon, it’s what we are striving for. EN seventeen sixteen one is the road, it is the path that we are going to to draw to drive to on to get there. ⁓ which makes sense.

42:57 — Mark Miller: Yep. He did that in three. He did that in three. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ Well, and that’s a good ⁓ that’s a good point because we’re ⁓ he’s not at all saying that Wicc is not like, let’s forget Wick Heggs, you know, seventeen, sixteen, one all day long. Ian seventeen sixteen one all day long. ⁓ What he’s saying is is that that Wick ⁓ very nicely satisfies one piece of this puzzle, and that Ian seventeen sixteen one would be ⁓

43:22 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

43:28 — Mark Miller: Sort of the perfect compliment. Are you smiling? Did I screw that up? Okay, you just like the fact

43:31 — Justin Stockton: No, you said it right. I just think it’s funny that we keep saying we should just say like the design like design for all ⁓ or like

43:37 — Mark Miller: No, I got I’m I’m gonna show off to the world that I can I can remember Ian seventeen sixteen one. Yeah. And plus I’m gonna I’m trying to coin Ian 17161 but instead of ⁓ one seven one six one like everybody says it. ⁓ but th so in Wikeg’s important because ⁓ how do you measure? Like just go back, right? Like flip the script a little bit. If you make all these process changes.

43:40 — Justin Stockton: You’re you’re you’re locked in now.

44:06 — Mark Miller: How the heck are you gonna decide that they’re working? You need Wikeg that, right? We need to go like, okay, well now let’s look at our website. Let’s evaluate our website. And what do we evaluate it against? We evaluate it against Wikeg, and we look at it and we go, well, you know, this looks like it worked. This didn’t looks like it didn’t work because these issues don’t show up anymore, these issues do show up, and guess what? We’ve got some new issues that are gonna inform more changes. So it’s all it’s it’s ⁓ all working together.

44:11 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

44:14 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

44:34 — Mark Miller: Yeah. Yeah.

44:36 — Mark Miller: So talk to me about ⁓ four then, the very last one, ⁓ patient partner, and this is where he really s talks about h what it would look like to adopt Ian seventeen, sixteen, one.

44:57 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ Well ⁓ well with this one he’s really kind of getting into like really kind of like what the future holds for it. ⁓ and like there’s ⁓ particularly thinking around like WCAG three, you know, a lot of people in accessibility are like, you know, excited about WCAG three and what’s coming up for it. Well as they should be. ⁓ ’cause it’s gonna

44:57 — Mark Miller: along with a wick is a is a is a standard ⁓

45:22 — Mark Miller: As they should be.

45:27 — Justin Stockton: You know, but the the promise is huge for Wickag three. ⁓ and ⁓ we it’s gonna slice bread and, you know, ⁓ it’s gonna tie our shoes and make me a sandwich and all those things, ⁓ which I’m very

45:40 — Mark Miller: I’d like a cu can it make me a cup of coffee or a or a cappuccino or something?

45:43 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ No coffee. S sorry, they’re gonna make sure that there’s no coffee in it, I’m sure. ⁓ so yeah, it’s supposed to do all these great things and you know, it’s we’re all looking forward to it, but it’s years away. Like ⁓ Wilco says like it’s ⁓ f four to five years away, yeah. ⁓

45:49 — Mark Miller: ⁓ Now I’m not a fan.

45:58 — Mark Miller: Four years, I think he said. Four years away at least. And we know that when we think it’s four years away, it means it’s another eight years away. ⁓

46:06 — Justin Stockton: Well, but that’s the part that he gets to ⁓ is that ⁓ you know ⁓ even though Wiccag three is ⁓ is is you know, four years away, what is it gonna look like to adopt it? What’s it gonna look like to ⁓ bring that into ⁓ US, EU ⁓ laws, standards, you know, to make to update everything so that it’s refer you know, so that references the ⁓ WCAG three. ⁓ and I know our friend ⁓ Nick has a ⁓ an article.

46:36 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ coming out about that ⁓ top topic too. So that’ll be a really interesting one. ⁓ But it’s like we have the E we 301549 today. We have this ⁓ 17161 standard today. We’ve got a lot of standards and things that we can begin using today. We don’t have to wait for ⁓ WCAG 3 to come along ⁓ and save us all.

46:37 — Mark Miller: Excellent.

46:57 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

47:03 — Mark Miller: So this made me think about something else too, which is a little aside from Wilco’s points here, but what are the problems I have with

47:16 — Mark Miller: We kick three point and the four years away, that may be longer than four years, and who knows, is that everything’s changing so rapidly, right? So what this group is sitting there contemplating today, even if they’re trying to guess what’s in the future, the future’s gonna be some that maybe they guess kind of accurately, maybe they don’t, you know, whatever. ⁓ But by the time I worry that by the time we’re ready to roll about out something like three.

47:46 — Mark Miller: Point if it’s already going to be antiquated. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, right? But ⁓ that’s what I worry about. And the one thing I really like about his emphasis on EN 1716 and 1 is that ⁓ that’s a little more future proof. In other words, if you’re looking at these processes. ⁓

48:13 — Mark Miller: Mm-hmm.

48:14 — Mark Miller: you know, in these sort of general categories of processes, that’s a little seems to me like that’s gonna hang on ⁓ more than ⁓ do we care about color contrast? What if we don’t aren’t using that anymore? Or it’s very small and the way we consume the web because of AI is completely changed and we’re all ⁓ downloading thoughts through a chip on our head. I don’t know, you know, like ⁓

48:42 — Justin Stockton: In the next four years? ⁓ probably not. ⁓ It is moving fast. ⁓ Well but

48:44 — Mark Miller: Dude, stuff’s moving fast. Like it could happen. We were talking about the other day. They’re like, Are you ready to are you ready to put the web the AI web chip in your head? ⁓ It’s

48:53 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. But historic so but historically like you look at Wick like Wik two launched right around the same time that mobile phones hit the market. ⁓ and ⁓ that’s why Wik two, you know, it was ⁓ it is technology independent, but it is ⁓ it is very focused on a desktop laptop based browser system, ⁓ not a mobile device. ⁓

49:19 — Mark Miller: Well and I think the phone versus desktop, it was like a portal size change that ⁓ that created different ⁓ UI requirements.

49:31 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

49:33 — Mark Miller: So it’s like ⁓ we could sort of shh ⁓ sh sh shift wickeg over there a little bit and it still kinda works, you know? ⁓ I don’t know that we’re gonna be that lucky again because of how rapidly ch things are changing.

49:38 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Yeah. Well ⁓ and that’s why

49:44 — Justin Stockton: I well

49:47 — Mark Miller: True, but I think the the direction that they’re taking, what I’ve seen so far with WCAG 3, ⁓ where it’s more focused on how people interact with technology ⁓ and meeting and being more per pe person focused ⁓ is ⁓ I think some of that is going to ⁓ mitigate itself. But I also a lot of people look back at WCAG 2 and when it was launched and go,

50:13 — Mark Miller: I still think it’s

50:17 — Justin Stockton: We don’t want that same mistake again. Let’s ⁓ as things are changing, particularly in this time of AI, ⁓ you know, it may be that

50:26 — Mark Miller: What if four years from now it’s minority report, right? Like what if what if my whole web experience and my job is done through this set of glasses? I don’t have a ⁓ a a physical keyboard in front of me because I can lay out whatever I want in front of me, I can move it around with gestures, I can customize that to work for me. I can turn off the vision part of it, do it with sound, like what what if the way we ⁓

50:33 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

50:46 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

50:53 — Mark Miller: And and that’s me being able to imagine that because I saw the minority report, right? ⁓ What if the way we interact with technology ⁓ so fundamentally changes? I mean, we can they can put a you can put a hat on and control a cursor with your thoughts now. You can drive a wheelchair with a ⁓ with a by clicking a a ⁓ retainer in your mouth and moving it around with your tongue. You can ⁓

50:57 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

51:09 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

51:11 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

51:22 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

51:23 — Mark Miller: Use a word board by looking at it with your eyes. ⁓ Right? ⁓ All that stuff is possible today. ⁓ How the heck are we gonna be interacting with technology four years, five years, ten years from now? And by the way, this comes out four years from now, but it’s gotta last. So think about 10 years from now. I mean, we’re gonna be in 2030, ⁓ Justin. 2030. ⁓ We’re gonna be

51:43 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

51:49 — Justin Stockton: Mm. ⁓

51:53 — Mark Miller: I we’re gonna like we’re gonna be in a flying autonomous car. ⁓

51:58 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

52:00 — Mark Miller: Right? I’m not even gonna be driving the car anymore. So the way I interact with the car is gonna be to tell it where to go. Right? I’ve been in a Waymo in Austin, Texas, man. It’s unbelievable. ⁓ It’s I d I told you my Waymo story. I I was reading my phone while this thing was going and this was at almost midnight, ⁓ and it breaked all of a sudden in the middle of the road. I’m like, my gosh, here we go. Here the technology’s gonna gonna ⁓ I’m done. ⁓ Right.

52:01 — Justin Stockton: Okay.

52:06 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓

52:14 — Justin Stockton: Yeah.

52:28 — Mark Miller: I look up for my phone and I’m like, why did this thing break? There’s nothing there. And then a beat later, I saw a person ⁓ all in black, in the middle of the road moving, and I’m like, I probably would have hit him. The Waymoo saw that. I couldn’t see that. So ⁓ how are we not gonna rapidly move to self-driving cars? How are we ⁓ not gonna rapidly move to

52:56 — Mark Miller: not using a physical keyboard anymore, not ⁓ looking at a monitor, not ⁓ n not everybody doing it the same way. Like right now, predominantly we’re keyboard, monitor, mouse, and we’re trying to adapt that ⁓ to people who ⁓ maybe can’t use a mouse, can’t see the monitor, right? ⁓ I we’re gonna ⁓ I I think we’re all gonna be ⁓ doing our own thing.

53:05 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

53:13 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

53:20 — Justin Stockton: Well, we are. ⁓ And I think the technology that we use to interact with we’re getting way off topic now, but thanks, Wilco. ⁓ But yeah. Yeah. Well, true.

53:27 — Mark Miller: Not really. We’re talking about WCEG three point ⁓ and the way and the reason why EN seventeen sixteen one might ⁓ be a better thing to adopt. Or not a but but ⁓ maybe needed an addition at this day at this stage and may have more longevity. ⁓

53:34 — Justin Stockton: But if you

53:37 — Justin Stockton: Well, yeah.

53:43 — Justin Stockton: But the from a future like a from a future standpoint, like the way that we interact with computers ⁓ is going to likely fundamentally change. ⁓ but the how that computer ⁓ but the well that really s kind of solves a lot of things. ⁓ if you just had a chip in your head that did all the interactions. ⁓ But the ⁓ well except for the scarecrow.

53:54 — Mark Miller: Brain chip.

54:03 — Mark Miller: inject it through the eye socket. ⁓ You gotta it’s gonna just gonna be in there.

54:15 — Justin Stockton: If ’cause he didn’t have a br ’cause he didn’t have a brain. Yeah. ⁓ that’s true. ⁓

54:15 — Mark Miller: Maybe it goes into the air. He didn’t have a brain. But he did. In the end he did. Yep.

54:25 — Justin Stockton: But with WCHE3, if you focus on how people interact with technology, ⁓ if that’s what they’re if that’s ⁓ really where ⁓ WCEG3 as a standard ends up going, ⁓ then you can say things like, ⁓ you the technology must support these types of ⁓ of methods. And so when colors are presented, that they’re presented with this much contrast, that when ⁓ images are

54:54 — Justin Stockton: presented ⁓ that they are described, you know, correctly by the person that created the content. ⁓ that ⁓ that if gestures are used, that it supports these different modes. And what that does is it it now begins to ⁓ like painting a picture, like it’s starting to, yes, it’s starting to narrow your options on what you can build. ⁓ But at the same time, if you had infinite options,

55:23 — Justin Stockton: And you’re just staring at a blank canvas. Like, ⁓ and that’s harder. If you start to say, well, you’re gonna use these paints and this size canvas, ⁓ and you’re going to use like these ⁓ specific constraints. Now here’s your subject. ⁓ And this is how you’re going to interact with that. ⁓ So and this is how we’re going to determine whether or not everyone can interact with that piece of technology. ⁓ then I think WCEG3.

55:50 — Justin Stockton: then begins to really scale and become technology independent.

55:55 — Mark Miller: I think they’re certainly gonna try. And you know more about

56:00 — Justin Stockton: Only a little bit. Yeah.

56:01 — Mark Miller: I still ⁓ I still worry about not not I have a lot of confidence in the group that puts Wicked three together. It’s more that like are are we gonna need to come up with a way where our standards change more in line with when the technology changes that it’s just a difficult task to really understand. I mean, like I said, these

56:21 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

56:32 — Mark Miller: Different versions have had long ten, fifteen year longevity cycles. ⁓ Things gonna change in ways we can’t predict to where Wick three’s gonna be obsolete really quick. You know, maybe even before it hits the street, but ⁓ they gotta try.

56:37 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

56:46 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. ⁓ I mean if you’re

56:49 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. I mean if they’re building th like where I would be concerned would be like, ⁓ well, ⁓ well, we have to make sure that s ⁓ the Wictag 3 specifically calls out screen readers. Like I think that would be like we don’t know where technology is going to go and screen readers themselves may become obsolete. ⁓ There may be wholly different ways ⁓ for someone who is blind to interact with technology. ⁓

57:18 — Justin Stockton: across devices, across ⁓ brain chips. ⁓ and ⁓ so like that’s where you don’t want to make that type of a of an assumption. You might have some helpful guidance and things to help bridge the gap. ⁓ but yeah.

57:19 — Mark Miller: Brain chip.

57:38 — Mark Miller: It’s hard to predict. ⁓ I mean, if we just take something like metaglasses and we’ll we can wrap up after this, but if we take something like metaglasses, if you said metaglasses to me five, ten years ago, I’d be like, Well, we gotta be really careful about these because you know, we’re talking about something that’s vision based and how are people blind metaglasses came and blind people were like, Yeeha, this is what we need, right? Because the functionality was so holistic that they’re like, No, this thing can look at something and describe it to me.

57:46 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

58:00 — Justin Stockton: Right. Mm-hmm.

58:07 — Mark Miller: You know, like like Orcam could or whatever. And then if you’re low vision, there’s other implications and blah blah blah. It’s like this w it was really a well-rounded ⁓ device ⁓ and ⁓ it can do so much. And it so, anyways, I mean it even even even integrating with Braille devices and ⁓ forget about it, right? It’s just a ton of stuff. ⁓ So it’s the ability to predict. I would have been so wrong about.

58:18 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

58:22 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm. And it wasn’t this

58:36 — Mark Miller: The implications of smart glasses ten years ago. ⁓ You know.

58:38 — Justin Stockton: yeah.

58:40 — Justin Stockton: Yeah. Never ⁓ that’s one of the things that I learned a long time ago and I always keep coming back to is you are you will never fully ⁓ understand how someone is going to use a new technology. ⁓

58:53 — Mark Miller: Yeah, that’s my point. So ⁓ if I wrote a standard for smart glasses ten years ago, five years ago, it it would have to be rewritten already. I mean that’s me with a bad bad predictions, but ⁓ all right. Any any last minute to wrap up?

59:00 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

59:09 — Justin Stockton: No, I will say that in in ⁓ I keep ready to say episode four, ⁓ article four of Wilco’s Things, ⁓ down towards the bottom there’s some action items. I like that he ends his series with some action items. ⁓ So go and check those out, particularly if you work in procurement. ⁓ the yeah, the EN stand this EN 1716 one ⁓ may be very useful for you from a procurement standpoint. ⁓ so go grab the company credit card, go and buy the standard.

59:25 — Mark Miller: Found those interesting.

59:38 — Justin Stockton: ⁓ and ⁓ and read through that ’cause it may be it may be useful s something for ⁓ for you to start ⁓ implementing today.

59:48 — Mark Miller: I like your last pronunciation. It’s like E N some of the other O one.

59:53 — Mark Miller: Yeah. Ian ⁓ sixteen, seventeen, sixteen, that was just seventeen one.

60:00 — Mark Miller: All right. There’ll be a quiz everyone. Everyone, ⁓ when you see it as at Seasun next year we’re gonna point at or enabling when you see it as eminent we’re gonna point at you and you have to say EN seventeen sixteen one.

60:00 — Justin Stockton: Mm.

60:11 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

60:13 — Justin Stockton: Mm-hmm.

60:16 — Mark Miller: Everybody practice. You got from now until October to practice. They’re not gonna do it. All right. ⁓ Thank you. ⁓ now that we have broken down accessibility for you, we hope you go forth and keep it accessible.

60:22 — Justin Stockton: They’re not gonna do