Episode 14 – Plain Language & Unicorns

Episode Summary

Mark Miller and Justin Stockton break down three accessibility-focused articles covering plain language as an accessibility feature, the myth of the all-in-one accessibility specialist, and how return-to-office mandates can disproportionately harm disabled workers. The episode connects writing, organizational structure, and workplace policy back to a shared accessibility theme: if you design for real people, you improve access for everyone.

Plain Language Is an Accessibility Feature

Jeff Adams

Will the web accessibility specialist become the next unicorn job?

A11y explained

We Have a Return to Office Problem, and Disabled Workers Are Paying for It

Taylor Arndt

Main Topics:

• In this episode, Mark and Justin discuss why plain language is not just a writing preference but an accessibility feature that supports people with cognitive disabilities, multilingual readers, and anyone who is distracted or tired.
• Mark highlights Jeff Adams’s article as a strong example of the principle it discusses, noting that the piece itself reads at about an eighth-grade level and models the clarity it advocates.
• Justin shares that the article’s large text blocks were still easy to read because the language was concise and direct, even though the visual density initially looked intimidating.
• They talk through practical plain-language tactics such as splitting long sentences, reducing subclauses, and replacing inflated wording like “utilize” with simpler words like “use.”
• Mark recommends using editing tools such as Hemingway Editor and Pro Writing Aid as a way to catch complexity, especially during revision rather than first draft.
• Justin connects the plain-language discussion to his own workflow, describing how AI dictation tools help him draft quickly and then refine the text for clarity afterward.
• The second article explores whether web accessibility specialist could become a “unicorn” job, and Mark and Justin agree the idea reflects a common organizational mistake: trying to hire one person to solve a systemic problem.
• They argue accessibility has to be embedded across roles, training, job descriptions, and leadership, rather than treated as a single specialist’s responsibility.
• Mark and Justin use their own accessibility maturity assessment work as an example of how effective accessibility work already depends on multiple skill sets and multiple people.
• The final article examines return-to-office mandates through a disability lens, with Taylor Arnt arguing that broad policies can become employment barriers for disabled workers.
• Mark describes how remote work dramatically improved his productivity because it removed commute burdens and office distractions, especially given his ADD and dyslexia.
• Justin adds that while in-person collaboration can matter for specific moments, day-to-day work often benefits more from remote flexibility and reduced interruptions.
• They emphasize that accessibility is also a policy issue, and HR and leadership need to consider accommodations before issuing blanket office-return mandates.

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Transcript

Mark Miller (00:06)
Hey, welcome to the Accessibility Breakdown. I am Mark, and this is

Justin Stockton (00:10)
Justin?

Mark Miller (00:11)
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 going to talk about plain language is an accessibility feature. This is by a friend of mine, Jeff Adams. Jeff and I work together on the accessibility maturity model. and this is a a

Really appreciate this article. We’ll get into it. the next thing we’ll talk about is will the web accessibility specialist become the next unicorn job? And this is our second one by A11Y Explained. and then the final one is we have a return to office problem, and disability workers are paying for it. And this is by Taylor.

Pronounce last name.

Justin Stockton (01:05)
Aren’t yes.

Mark Miller (01:06)
Aren’t

Justin Stockton (01:08)
A R N D T, yeah.

Mark Miller (01:10)
A R N D T.

So Justin, it’s been a minute. You and I both were out. I was at a wedding, you were at a vacation in the same state.

Justin Stockton (01:22)
Right.

Mark Miller (01:23)
So Justin and I were chatting one day and I’m like, Hey, I’m gonna be away in Michigan in a few weeks for a wedding and he’s like Minnesota, thank you, Minnesota, something with an eye, something with an eye.

Justin Stockton (01:34)
Minnesota. You had

such a great time, you blamed a different state.

Mark Miller (01:40)
yeah.

You know why my wife keeps messing it up? I want to blame it on her. I probably shouldn’t do that. But it’s like we keep correcting each other back and forth. So we’re all sorts of confused. but then you’re like, what a coincidence. We’re leaving out the day before you flying out the day before you to go to Minnesota, and we both flew back on the same day. I had a better time than you did though, because you got stuck in the airport.

Mm. And did we were a little sleepy yesterday, but today you’re doing good.

Justin Stockton (02:15)
my gosh. Ten hours of sleep and some ibuprofen? Wah. Chef’s kiss.

Mark Miller (02:20)
New person. You’re a new person.

So yeah, and that was in the midst of the one of the radars went down right after we landed. So a lot of guests coming in were affected by this radar outage in Minnesota that delayed flights. It was out for an hour and 45 minutes, which just it’s just a whole cascading mess. But anyways, enough about that. We’re back in action.

And we’re gonna talk about Plain Language is an accessibility feature by Jeff Adams. And Jeff Adams has a great series of blog posts on Discord, am I remembering that right? so go check out all he’s a fantastic writer. and this is about writing, so this is a really good one on brand. And as soon as he posted something on this subject,

like my ears perked up because it was like, okay, if Jeff is if Jeff is talking about this, he’s an authority on writing. so we gotta figure this out. And he’s helping he and I work together on the accessibility maturity model, which is the APA working group with it a W3C. It’s one of their subgroups, where we create a model for understanding an organization’s capability to deliver mature digital assets and where those gaps might be, so that you can create a roadmap.

Close those gaps. That’s all I’ll say about that. But Jeff and I work closely together on that. And we do a lot of writing back and forth kind of stuff. So you hear a lot about the importance of plain language writing. And what I really appreciate about this article is it kind of gives you the why, and it gives you the why in the context of accessibility.

Which you might go, look, well that’s obvious, right? But it’s actually comes up with stuff some stuff that’s not so obvious. So before I dive into anything, Justin, I wanna hear what you thought about this article and what resonated with you.

Justin Stockton (04:32)
it was plain language is one of those areas where I don’t know it kind of like flies under the radar like it’s

Mark Miller (04:39)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (04:40)
requ like it really should be a requirement, but it’s

Mark Miller (04:44)
Right.

Justin Stockton (04:45)
not. it’s or we just don’t pay enough attention to it. but it’s funny because as I was reading as I was reading the article, I I both got a little frustrated with like

the kind of the amount of like you do that thing where like you’re look at something and you’re like, I just kind of want to like maybe like quickly scan this or I want to

Mark Miller (05:12)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (05:12)
kind of quickly read through it. And you as you’re going, you might be scanning down the page and you see like these long blocks of text. And you’re just like, all right, let me let me get through this. But because he inf he used plain language, like and he wrote to a

well the eighth grade level is what you you know typically kind of focus on. He like it be it was really easy to get through those big blocks of text that he had written. and so there’s a part of me that I was that was like at like I would see those big blocks of text and I would see them kind of coming as I’m like visually scanning the page and reading down, and I’d be like, here comes a big block of text, but you’d fly through it. And

Mark Miller (05:57)
Right.

Justin Stockton (05:58)
And you’re just like, okay, and you just kind of reading and so you’re it ups your reading comprehension, but if you’re also a visual scanner, it might also frustrate you. So I was kind of like kind of torn between like kind of these two ways that I read.

Mark Miller (06:16)
Yeah, and I think I think you bring up a really good point here, and that’s that the article itself is actually a really good example of the article’s content, which he discloses in the article. He he says, like, you know, I scan

Justin Stockton (06:25)
Yes. Yeah.

Mark Miller (06:28)
scan this article, it comes in at eighth grade. And I think, you know, for me it’s kind of an interesting the whole thing’s an interesting exercise because there’s a lot of science and a lot of subjectivity when it comes to plain language writing.

It’s kinda one of those it’s kinda one of those things that falls into that category of like I know it when I see it.

Justin Stockton (06:49)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Miller (06:50)
But it’s it’s it can be somewhat difficult.

To describe what it is or what you need to do to get there, although there’s some very specific rules that help you get there. It’s like it’s it’s a little bit all over the place. And so the article has some great practical suggestions for plain language writing.

like splitting like looking cutting long sentences in two, watching your subclauses. the the one of the ones that I really this is probably me right here is swapping inflated words for plain ones.

Justin Stockton (07:31)
Yeah.

Mark Miller (07:32)
And it’s like the word utilize, it’s just the word use. Just use the word use. Use the word use.

Justin Stockton (07:40)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Miller (07:40)
in order to as a phrase to just the word to. And at

this point in time is now these are his examples that I’m that I’m going through. And that to me is just a really you know, there’s a lot of really we’re a lot of really good examples. And then just the way that he goes through and also says like, you know he gives you kind of the bullet point of this helps people with cognitive disabilities, people whose first language may be different than the language that the article is written in. And then my favorite is he’s like, yeah, if you’re distracted or tired.

Which is everybody, right? And this is gonna come back in the next article that we talk about because one of the

Justin Stockton (08:19)
That’s me.

Mark Miller (08:21)
other things or not the next one, but the last one we talk about. I’m gonna tie these two together because it the because they tie together. so he mentions two things in the article that you can use. And this addresses that subjectivity versus rules versus all of all of that. But

There’s two things you can use, and the free versions of these things are really good. One is called Hemingway Editor, and the other one is Pro Writing Aid. So I downloaded these for an article I’m writing right now. I might writing an article on our remediation calculator and the math behind it so people can understand the level of effort, how to figure out the level of effort to remediate.

prior to and after receiving an accessibility audit. And I it was just amazing the things that I didn’t realize that these two writing aides kind of pointed out to me. And but in both cases I w they scored my initial draft as as a eighth grade level.

Justin Stockton (09:32)
Fantastic.

Mark Miller (09:33)
Yeah. So the other great point in here for me was you never get it the first time. You’ve got to and this is I feel like you know the the eighth grade English teacher

Justin Stockton (09:45)
Okay.

Mark Miller (09:46)
here, you know, you’ve got to edit. R there’s no such thing as good writing. There is good editing, right? Good writing comes in multiple editing passes. So you write

Whatever you write, but but going back through reading aloud, I use a screen reader. I listen back with a screen reader. All these things can be techniques for understanding when you’ve kind of made a sentence. It’s too complicated.

Justin Stockton (10:11)
Yeah. Well one of the things that I’m starting to use now are like some tools like WhisperFlow and like that does like AI dictation.

Mark Miller (10:21)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (10:22)
and so like I’m it kinda got me thinking too of around like as I’m dictating like notes or like something like whatever it is that I’m working I’m I’m working on like can I boil that down? Like can I send that off to something like a Hemingway or

you know, some sort

Mark Miller (10:41)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (10:42)
of like reading checker to based on whatever I’m doing. It’s like one of the things that I’ve been working on is documentation for a product that we have not fully released yet, but is coming. And and so I’m working on the documentation for that. And I’m just dictating it through Whisperflow and it’s going pretty well. But now I need to go through back through and you know do plain language on it. But Whisperflow’s

Mark Miller (11:06)
Right.

Justin Stockton (11:07)
so great at kind of like as you’re talking

It’ll like get rid of your ums and ahs and all these little things and it’ll

Mark Miller (11:14)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (11:14)
boil it down to how you know, kind of put it into the box that you designed for it. can I make plain language part of that box? so that as I’m dictating, it’s automatically doing that for me. Kind of a neat idea. It’s not something I had couldn’t really consider, but something I’m gonna look into.

Mark Miller (11:34)
Yeah, I just I just pulled this up ’cause I haven’t heard of Whisperflow. That’s a great tip. So it’s interesting and I does it have a a good free version?

Justin Stockton (11:47)
Free version gets you like so many words per you know. It’s it’s good for like some basic stuff. Like if you need to do an article or two here or there, it’s it’ll probably get you through that. Anything if you’re using it daily, you’re gonna need to pay for it.

Mark Miller (12:06)
You’re gonna wanna pay for it.

Gotcha. all right, well good. Anything else you want to say about Jeff’s article? Plain language is an accessibility feature.

Justin Stockton (12:16)
No only tangentially. When you so when you sent me this article, so over my little vacation that we just had here in in in Minnesota, I picked up

Mark Miller (12:27)
In Minnesota, yeah.

Justin Stockton (12:28)
I picked up book that’s been in my everyone’s been talking about it in my feeds and stuff like that. Dungeon crawl Dungeon Crawler Carl. and so that was my my vacation read. And

Mark Miller (12:42)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (12:43)
I’m just kind of zip like reading through it, reading through it, reading through it, reading through it. And it’s a very fast read. so much, so much so that I looked down at one point and I saw because I I do a lot of reading on like a Kindle or like through Libby or something like that. And I looked down and I was like, I’m 50% of the way through this book. How how big is this physical book? So I actually had to go and look to see how big the physical book was.

think like is it a is it a little book is it a big like what is it and the author Matt Deniman I think is his name I mean it’s it is written it’s not a young adult book or anything like that but the way that he writes makes it such a fast read and I couldn’t help but think of some of the overlaps as I as I was reading that book and then also

about plain language, like it is very, it’s well written, it’s a fun read, but at the same time, it’s not there’s not a lot of jargony, confusing words or things like that in there. Overused

Mark Miller (13:54)
Right. Overuse pros or anything like that.

Justin Stockton (13:57)
prose. It’s very concise. It reads

Mark Miller (13:59)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (14:00)
really quick. And so I I was kind of like I mean, you don’t want to throw like throw an entire book in it anyway. But it did kind of make me wonder like

what was the reading level for for and just yeah, and just see. So

Mark Miller (14:13)
It’d be fun to take a pages here and there and just throw them in and see what yes, yeah, yeah,

yeah. Well, great. I appreciate this one just f as a person with dyslexia, like it it resonates with me and and particularly when I’m trying to read stuff at work, you know, if if I’m reading for pleasure, maybe it’s a little bit different of a thing. but I appreciated the way that this was sort of broken down. It’s a quick re it’s a quick read, this article, and I think it’s one of those things that everybody should read.

So let’s go into will web accessibility specialists become the next unicorn job? And this is from A11Y Explained. And do you remember the I I forgot to look up the person’s name. yeah, Deanna. I don’t know that we figured out Deanna’s last name yet or not, but Deanna has this Substack A11Y Explained.

And does some great content. We’ve talked about some of her other content before. And she speculates about

Web

like web accessibility specialist, Web SME, right? Subject matter expert, becoming the next unicorn job. And the real meat of this article is that because I think of things like Title II, HHS, these rules, and everything else, where people are trying to not only conform to WCAG

But also trying to figure out ways to sustain that conformance. They’re like, well, we need to hire an accessibility specialist, and what’s happening is they’re looking for this person to be a single magic pill, if you will, for the organization. What’s that? Unicorns? Because

Justin Stockton (16:14)
Prefer the term unicorns. We prefer the term unicorn.

Mark Miller (16:22)
the list of skills is like.

It it like it starts to read like the list of roles in the organization. Like they’ve got to be a strategist, a developer, you know, all these things. And it’s a bit of a broken record, and and which is actually why I like this article because it approached this broken record in another way, which maybe will resonate with with folks, but accessibility needs to be baked in.

To all the roles in your organization, you need to as an organization understand accessibility and provide resources, training, job descriptions, all of it. I mean, this is the work that we do with the d it the with the with the accessibility

with the maturity model, right, is understanding where this is. There’s just no shortcuts and these job posts are starting We want Gandalf, please. Can we have Gandalf as our accessibility

Justin Stockton (17:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Miller (17:32)
wizard and he can wave his wand at everything and fix everything? And it’s just not realistic.

Justin Stockton (17:37)
Well, I g I get I get where the companies are coming from. They

Mark Miller (17:40)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (17:41)
are it’s a re it’s a reactionary hire. It’s

Mark Miller (17:43)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (17:44)
we already we already have all of our resources dedicated to these other functions. Let’s bring in someone that knows accessibility and can coach up teams and can do all these things, but also isn’t going to isn’t going to

stop feature development or you know all these any of these other things but can get into the code and can make change the changes that need to be made, but at the same time can be talking to, you know, directors and others about how to inform. Like it’s a big role. And you can’t do like

you look at that type of role and that’s not gonna be your everyday. Like you’re not gonna

Mark Miller (18:26)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (18:26)
be bouncing between all those different roles all the time. But if you have those types of things in your toolbox and you can talk to them during an interview or something like that, then it makes it easier for them to to kind of bring someone in that can kind of like do a little bit here, do a little bit there. You’re you’re really I always refer to them as like smoke jumpers. Like

You’re jumping in to something that is on fire and you’re trying to put out all these little fires at the same time rather than handling like the blaze. which is like if you are just like the accessibility person, it’s a fire all around you, and you’re kind of like you’re just going to like not be able to

Mark Miller (19:12)
It’s a good analogy.

Justin Stockton (19:13)
do what it is. Like you’re not gonna, you’re gonna be put into a position where you’re not gonna be able to.

you know, really make change within the organization. But if you have all of these little skills, like all that and they’re not little by any means. But if you have

Mark Miller (19:28)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (19:29)
if you if you have this wide skill set, then you can come in and you can talk to all these different places. But there’s not a lot of people that can do that.

Mark Miller (19:39)
Right. Well, I look at it like when you and I come in and we do a maturity assessment for an organization.

Justin Stockton (19:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Miller (19:44)
You and I have very different skill sets. We have common accessibility pieces. So it takes the two of us and then w oftentimes we’re even bringing other folks into the mix because

We we you know, there’s so many different things to think of. and we’re working with very specifically working with the different roles in the organization to understand and inform them in terms of how accessibility affects them in their jobs and and the things they need to do. So it’s sort of you know, by design not a single person thing, you know.

So anyways, I I thought it was a really good angle on this drum that we keep beating about the necessity of of integrating accessibility into organization. I agree with you, I understand why. but it’s just gonna take time for organizations to learn what accessibility really takes. And they will. so fingers crossed, right. So the the

Justin Stockton (20:46)
Fingers crossed.

Mark Miller (20:49)
last one we have here is by Taylor Arnt.

We have a return to office problem, and disabled workers are paying for it. And this was this was kind of you hear a lot right now about return to work, right? Because a lot of people in the government are being mandated to return to work after being able to work from home due to the pandemic. And this article argues that.

The pandemic kind of created this opportunity for a lot of people to work from home and was a forced experiment that proved out that pro that that that could be very productive. But now for some for a variety of reasons, and and there’s a lot of speculation in the article. I don’t know, I’d have to look at the research. I don’t know how much I’m willing to sort of commit to those being the reasons. But the things like, you know, like the local coffee shop.

all these things that were driven by people being in an office building, leaving the office building, consuming, you know, lunch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, that there’s pressure to return, utilize these buildings, move things back into these businesses. Maybe that’s the case, right? I actually you know, I’d love to see the research, the actual research on on productivity. I’ve seen some of it and I know that it can be very productive.

But here’s one of the things that struck me about this article is that they it talked about the office distractions. So in 2013, I went from working in an office to working solely from home. With my ADD and my dyslexia, my productivity doubled. No commute, no hey, how was your weekend? How was your night? Nobody showing up to my desk saying,

I messed something up. Can you come take a look at it? How do I fix it? Like none none of those flybys and drop eyes at the desk. No conversations going on three cubicles over to pull my attention. And I became

productive like I had never been in my career.

And it’s funny because in Jeff Adams article he mentions the distractions in the office and why that eighth grade plain language writing is so important because the average person is dealing with those competing distractions.

Right. So two two articles really highlight the competing distractions that exist in an office place, particularly just that cubicle environment just absolutely kills me. And the intention, like if I want to talk to somebody, talk to you, typically I’m teamsing you and are you available? And you can ignore it for a minute, finish what you’re doing, go over to it, you know what mean? And that to me is a much better and more focused.

experience. So

Justin Stockton (24:00)
Yeah. I’ve

I’ve been working remotely since two thousand eight, so before it

Mark Miller (24:04)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (24:05)
was cool. And and even before then we kinda had like a little remote office. But it’s been I while there are days where going into an office, like I remember those days and you know, it’s always there’s a lot of camaraderie, there was you know, there are things that in an office and this is the one of the pieces that Taylor does point out, like

There are times when being face to face in an office setting

Mark Miller (24:33)
Is important.

Justin Stockton (24:34)
is important and it will raise the productivity for that moment. But for the day-to-day stuff, where we’re all churning through, you know, the works as assigned, no, you don’t need to be there. like you don’t the distractions out the the distractions to your day outweigh the cost of having

Mark Miller (24:58)
Right.

Justin Stockton (24:59)
being able, you know, for managers to be able to manage or to see people and their d you know, butts and chairs, that sort of stuff. So yeah, it’s

Mark Miller (25:08)
And it’s for sure job dependent, you know. Like there’s certain jobs you have to be at work for and all that. D Taylor is is a person who’s blind and one of the big points they th the the real purpose of this article, we shouldn’t get too far away from it here, is that for people with disabilities it can be the difference between a job they can get to and not get to. Like just to say it direct and plain. And Taylor gives a lot of really good examples of like

dangerous commutes for a person who’s blind, calling an Uber to get in, having the Uber cancel. I’ve I’ve de b you know, as a person who’s not blind and just used Uber traveling or whatever, I’ve had, you know, I got home one night, I was supposed to be home by like eleven o’clock and I was home at like two thirty in the morning because of Uber canceling and stuff like that. So I can’t imagine having to rely on that every single day and how that might make you

Late to work, late to meetings, you know, all these kind of things. And that’s just a couple of examples, right? You know, from Taylor’s lived experience. but it really did a good job of just highlighting how it can absolutely mean almost the difference between employment and not employment for a person with a disability, and

Justin Stockton (26:28)
Absolutely.

Mark Miller (26:29)
that if you’re making if you’re just blanket making these like everybody back to work and you and you don’t have

sort of a real plan around it and you’re not thinking it through and you’re not talking to individuals that you probably have a lot of people who are polishing up their resumes and trying to get somewhere else because it’s just a non starter for them. So

Justin Stockton (26:46)
yeah, yeah.

Mark Miller (26:49)
Anything else?

Justin Stockton (26:51)
no there was one point that Taylor made.

Mark Miller (26:55)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (26:56)
that Taylor Taylor made. golf yeah. Not that I play golf.

Mark Miller (26:59)
Mm-hmm. Golf clubs. Golf club reference. So

that that will be the only golf reference you probably get from Justin and I, just so that you know. Not a big

golf group over here.

Justin Stockton (27:15)
Yeah, so but so one of the things that she points out in her article is about how accessibility is also about policy and

Mark Miller (27:26)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Stockton (27:27)
making sure that we have accessibility in included in policy, policy conversations, that accommodations, HR is everyone involved in that. and so make just wanted to double you know

point out again that if you are someone who is working on policies for your organization or or is you know if you’re in HR or anything like that, you know, make sure to bring it up next time one

Mark Miller (28:00)
Mm.

Justin Stockton (28:00)
of these mandates gets announced. so that it’s called out, so that it’s you know essentially on the record that, hey, we have folks that are blind, that are

division that may have difficulty getting into the office, how is this mandate to return to the to to to an office setting going to affect them? Like if if someone just brings it up, that’s going to force HR, corporate, directors, whatever to to recognize it. So

Mark Miller (28:32)
Think about it. Consider it. Yeah. Yeah.

I I that’s that’s a really good point. And I would and extend that, right? Like

When you’re thinking about policy, get your get your folks with disabilities and and a bunch of other people into a room and really determine how it’s going to affect them. You know, affect everyone. All right. Well, good job, Justin. Back from vacation, ten hours

Justin Stockton (29:04)
You did a good job too.

Mark Miller (29:05)
of sleep, a couple of Advil.

Good work.

All right, any last minute thoughts?

Justin Stockton (29:15)
Nope. I’m good. Happy weekend.

Mark Miller (29:16)
All right. Well thanks everybody

for listening. Now that we have broken down accessibility for you, we hope that you go forth and keep it accessible.