Communication that works for everyone - Lisa Riemers & Matisse Hamel-Nelis (#137)

Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to the Internal Comms podcast. I'm Katie McCauley, and every fortnight I sit down with a leading comms practitioner, author, consultant, academic, and together, we tease out ways to make communication at work really work. Today I'm joined not by one, but two guests, Matisse Hamilnilis and Lisa Remus, who have written a book called Accessible Communications. Create Impact, Avoid Missteps, and, um, build Trust. I'm super excited about this conversation, so let's dive straight in. Welcome. Welcome, Matisse and Lisa to the Internal Comms Podcast. It's a real pleasure to have you here.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having us. I'm really excited for this.

Speaker C: Yes, me too. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: And the Internal Comms Podcast podcast goes on the road. We're in Toronto. How exciting.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Welcome to Toronto as my home.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you. Matisse, what was the genesis behind this book? It's a big, um, undertaking to write a book. Was there a specific moment or a story or something that happened and you thought, our profession really does need this book?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it really stems from when I first started in communications back in 2015. Fresh. Graduate, uh, from Durham College in the PR program, and I was starting a new job. It was my second day at, um, a local nonprofit here, uh, that deals with sight loss. And I was asked to tweet. Uh, and I said, okay. So this was still the days of Twitter being Twitter, uh, and it was 240 characters. So I said, yeah, not a problem. It's a tweet. How bad could I do? And so I put out the tweet with the hashtag DYK for did you know? And some sort of stat and put it out into the world. And then within, uh, ten minutes, one of my colleagues with sight loss called me, and he said, you know, welcome. Um, you're new to the team. I said, yes, this is so nice. Thank you for calling. And then he said, did you tweet? And I said, um, yeah. Do I have a spelling or grammar mistake? And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. It's your hashtag that's the issue. And I said, what do you mean, my hashtag? It's did you know? And he goes, no, no, no. To a screen reader, it reads as dick because it's an acronym. It tries to read it as the full word. So, uh, I was mortified, and I thought, great. To my target audience, this is what I have tweeted. Um, he said, no, no, no, it's fine. There's an Easy fix. Spell out the words and capitalize the first letter of each word. So capital D in did, capital um, Y in you and capital K in no, and you're good to go. And I said, okay, what else don't I know? And he said, oh, honey, sit down. If we're going to talk about accessible communications, there's a lot you don't know. And so that day, uh, I'll never forget it, it was October 21st. Uh, 2015, was, um, the day that changed my life and my career. And so, as I continued to grow in understanding more what accessible communications was and seeing the disconnect between what we should be doing as professional communicators compared to what we actually were doing, because we don't know what we don't know exactly. Um, it came to a point just after the pandemic, where at the 2022 World IEBC World Conference, I met Lisa, um, and we were talking about accessible communications. And I thought, okay, we really need a book. There needs to be a book for our industry that talks about how do we actually make our content accessible. We know we need to do it because of legislation, but we're not taught how to do it. So, uh, luckily, Lisa said, you know, I reached out to Lisa and she said, after some, you know, prodding and convincing, she said, yes. And, you know, we both saw the need for this type of book. And so away we went in 2024, and now we have a book out in the world. But it was really, for me, that moment back in 2015 where I just graduated. You think that you have all those tools at your disposal. You're taught everything, but you're taught the legislation more so than the actual practice of putting it into play.

Speaker A: What resonated for you, Lisa, in that request from Matisse, was there something you thought, oh, I secretly do want to do this?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, um, one of the things about accessibility, is it something from my point of view. I wasn't ever taught it, uh, uh, doing my, uh, qualifications. It's not something that's covered at university. It's something. And actually, when you start learning more about the principles of using plain language and writing for your audience, some of that overlaps with what communicate. A lot of it overlaps with what we're taught in communications. Yes, but not in the same way. Not thinking about user needs. It's more thinking about what the organization wants to achieve, not what the end user needs or wants to happen next. And, um, yeah, I remember when Matisse reached out to me about the Book I was like, oh, I don't know, can I do this? Is this something I know enough about? Because it's something that I have been training people on because I think, um, particularly since I went freelance, a lot of the work I've been doing has been more user centered content design and thinking about end users and sort of bringing some of those good communication principles to content. But then recently it's been more taking some of those, um, taking some of that content design and thinking about users back to communications. People who just haven't had it as part of their um, journey. And it's like, this is the book that I wish I'd had before.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Because I think if it existed when I was, when I was doing my training, I think it would have really helped me be better from the beginning.

Speaker A: Yes, that makes perfect sense. And it really did open my eyes so much, this book. And um, one of the things that immediately I realized that I was thinking about accessibility from a visual impairment or a hearing impairment. But you brilliantly, absolutely show that there's such a wide range of needs and special characteristics. Can you talk a little bit more about when you say accessibility, what are you thinking about? What kinds of people?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I think when I think about accessibility I'm thinking of everybody meeting people where they're at versus M us assuming where we want them to be. Um, and so a big one is a, ah, principal disability, which a lot of people haven't heard of, or there's a bit of a misconception where it's okay if it's a print disability, it's something from a printed perspective. So it's a printed piece of paper. That's what we're talking about from a print disability. But it really expands, um, quite a broad spectrum. Uh, basically a print disability is anybody who engages with content in a quote unquote non typical way.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So if it's a actual book, so our book for example, um, and they have the physical copy, they can't see the page or they can't turn the page.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But when we think of the digital space, it's somebody who can't see the screen, somebody who maybe can't hear what is being said on the screen, somebody who is using different types of assistive technology to engage with uh, navigation. So they're not using a mouse, they're maybe just using a keyboard or they're using a screen reader or sip and puff. There's so many different types of assistive technology out there. But also thinking about somebody who's maybe just tired, they've had a long day at work. Their cognitive load is just above and beyond where they need it to be and they just want something maybe read out to them. For myself, I am not, I am not blind. Um, however, I use a screen reader all the time to read out long, long texts to me. So, like legislation that can be very boring and from a cognitive overload, if I have to read it, I get overwhelmed. Um, and I have ADHD as well. And so from that perspective, I will just say, oh, look, something shiny. That's not this. I'll look over there. But if I'm listening to it, I can still do something el else and calm that ADHD side of my brain while still absorbing the information. But people wouldn't think that I would need a screen reading, um, accessible document to do that. Because they say, well, you're not blind. You don't know who's accessing the content and how they're accessing it. At the same time, you don't know how that content will be shared.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Because the person you're sharing it with may not identify as having a disability. It doesn't mean that then they won't share it to somebody else who does have a disability.

Speaker A: Right, Right.

Speaker B: So you never know who that true end user. So by ensuring that we are creating accessible content from the start and engaging with that, um, notion that everybody has a print disability in some way, shape or form because it's situational, it can be temporary or it can be permanent, we're ensuring that content is accessible for all.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: And I think just touching on that as well, thinking about the situation, a lot of the time when we think about internal communications, we might be working on terrible corporate kicks. Um, you know, things that work, things that look really beautifully designed on someone's Mac at head office, when they actually read it on their laptop and it's like a five year old. Five years. Is that old anymore? I'm not sure. But when you're thinking about the kind of corporate tech you might have been issued, it might not have the resolution. It might be that it's automatically zoomed in slightly so that beautifully designed web page actually doesn't look the same on someone's laptop. Um, if you're designing things that are going to be printed out at a local depot or a site, will it work on the local printer?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: If it's been printed out, will it just. If there's a big block of text, um, you know, color contrast is something we talk about a lot, particularly for digital like social media assets and making sure that um, my favorite is not using white text. In blue sky. You often see graphics that have got white text, a lovely cloudy blue sky and it looks beautiful. But actually for a lot of people that's unreadable.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And if you're trying to print that off to go on a local notice board, there's no way that's going to come out. The color contrast just isn't good enough to show um, to show the difference. I remember going on a site visit once and the notice board, it was just sort of uh, lots of pieces of paper with various gray stripes on it. Like you need to think about the environment that your information is being consumed in. Um, if you're relying on audio because you've got a video, but actually a lot of your staff work out, um, work out on the shop floor or work in a busy station if they won't be able to hear it because of the background noise. So have you got captions in place to make sure that your videos can be still consumed and the information isn't lost?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's. You're making me think so much about preference as well. M. And I love that it can change from one day to one minute to one week from the next. I'm just thinking at home we tend to watch the TV with the subtitles on. We've got to that age I think where we'd like prefer that. So what for me I think you're talking about is effective communication. Really? Would you say that at the end of the day that's what we're talking about?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's definitely that. And it also, you know, I'm currently doing my master's so I'm going to throw in some theory here, right. Uh, Gruenig's excellence theory. When we're talking about excellence in communication, if we're not being accessible, we're not having excellent communication overall because we are um, completely missing out an entire target audience. I always say unintentionally, I never like to believe people, people are excluding others from engaging with content. Um, hopefully I should say. But uh, it's when we're looking at excellence theory that two way communication, um, ensuring that your target audience actually understands the message you're trying to communicate and be able to communicate back to you if need be. When you are creating accessible content, uh, internally, externally, whatever the case may be, you are ensuring that not only are they getting your message, but they're able to engage with it as well, which is what our KPIs are always looking for are people not just seeing the message, but are they actually, uh, doing the call to action that we're asking

Speaker C: M on that as well. We had a little bit of a debate with our publisher because I didn't want it to be called accessible communication. I was thinking, you know, we're trying to make people have more impactful communication where we're trying to make it clearer. And I'm like, but, Lisa, you're talking about accessibility. But that's accessibility. It's like. It is exactly what you're saying. We're talking about excellent, impactful information. We're not talking about it solely from, uh, an inclusion perspective. Like, it's not. Whilst we talk about the various acronyms around DEI and idea, we're not. It's not a book. It is a book about accessible, inclusive communications.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker C: But the end result is excellent communications that work for everyone and a really

Speaker A: deep understanding of the audience. I think that's the thing that you're giving us here. You're walking in the audience's shoes so we can properly think about the needs, the expectations, the preferences of our audience. I'm also thinking that, and I guess we do this a little bit at ab, but maybe we need to think about it a bit more. When we start thinking about collecting content, can we please collect the video, the audio, the images, the words? And I'm probably missing something there along the way, so that when we put something together, there's something in there for everyone, no matter how you want to sort of interact with it.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's this big part, especially with podcasts, given that we're on a podcast, I'll talk about that, where, uh, podcasters will put out their podcast, the audio version, and then say, come back for the transcript. Okay, so let's say I have hearing loss, uh, I'm deaf. Capital, uh, D or lowercase D. Deaf. Or I have a cognitive disability. Or I just need to quickly search what you said in the podcast, because I heard it, but I wanted to Google, I wanted to search something in particular to go back to without the transcript. I can't do that. And if I'm waiting for the transcript now, I've been othered, so in a sense that I've come to listen to the podcast that came out Monday at 11am and now I have to wait and I don't know when it's going to be available to me from my personal preference from a transcript perspective. Uh, and you're just sitting there waiting and hoping and refreshing and maybe coming back. And now I might say, you know what? I'm tired of having to wait and wait and wait. I'm just going to find a different podcast. So now you've lost a listener. And then that listener will tell others, like, hey, listen, if you're going to actually engage, uh, with this podcast, you'll never know when the transcript comes out and this, that the other you're waiting. And so, so it's not really worth your time if that's the way you need it, versus if you're putting out your podcast, put out the transcript at the same time. Um, what, uh, Apple has done is now they have the auto transcripts, but again, it's automated, so they're not perfect. Um, it's something. But things like, um, I'm not saying these are the best tools, but just I know that Buzzsprout, for example, when you upload, um, your podcast, it houses it, but it also has a transcript component. So you can link to buzzsprout if people need the transcript, and it has it there for you. Um, you can upload it, you can write it yourself. And AI comes in handy for as well. Right. To get you started. Because if you are doing an hour podcast, that can seem daunting to try to transcribe.

Speaker A: Yes, tell me about it.

Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. But AI, like something like Otter, AI can transcribe it for you. You can listen to it a double time and then just sort of make the edits as much need be. Right. So it really cuts the time in half to make your podcast more accessible. Um, but it's things like that that people don't think about. They think podcast great. It's video or it's audio, and that's all I need. But there's that extra step that also helps with SEO. It also helps the geo now with, uh, generative engine searches. Um, right. So having that transcript actually helps build your following versus excluding people with disability. So really it helps you in the end, if you want to think of it from a selfish perspective.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: We are going back to transcribing, offering transcripts of every show. We stopped it for a while, but you're making me think, actually, I use the transcripts all the time of the past shows because I think he had a great way of saying that. She said that brilliantly. I know it's in there somewhere. I'm just going to quickly search the transcript. So we're going back to that listener. So you heard it here first. Uh, talk to me a little bit. About something like a PDF, could that possibly be accessible? Something like that?

Speaker C: I didn't think it could be. And actually that's the first conversation that Matisse and I had in New York after talking about our hair colors at the time, because I had neon pink hair in New York and, um, Matisse had just used to have pink hair. And that's, that's how we first started talking. Um, but in the uk, we're normally. So I've done a lot of work for UK government contracts and, um, clients. And with generally it's hard to do and, um, to do it right, you need certain tools to do it. And the general advice we give in, we've given in the, in the UK is avoid PDFs that inaccessible. Put it as HTML first. Make sure that, you know, you don't want this beautiful graphic on page 17 of a PDF. That's an enormous file to download for people, bring it out onto the page so that people can see it. But it turns out you can make PDFs accessible. Um, and Matisse is the best person in the world to ask how to do that.

Speaker B: That's no pressure at all. So I am certified through the International association of Accessibility Professionals as an accessible Document specialist. I was one of the first 50 in the world to get that designation. I'm very, very proud and honored of that. Um, and when it comes to, comes to accessible PDFs, Lisa's right. And the UK government is right in terms of it is very difficult to make it accessible, um, in that people aren't taught how to create the original document accessibly. So what I mean by that is if you're designing an InDesign, if you're creating a document in Word, if Microsoft, uh, word or PowerPoint, you're not taught how to actually make those documents accessible before exporting to PDF. Now, when you export to PDF, there are still a couple of little things that you need to do to meet the ISO standard of PDF accessibility, as well as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or wcag, that I refer to as wcag. Um, it's a combination of the two. Right, so wcag, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Look at your sizing of your fonts. Um, are you using descriptive links, color contrast, things like that in your actual PDF, do you have image descriptions for your photos? Um, but the ISO standard actually looks at the technical side. Can a screen reader engage with it? Does it have tagging structure? Does it have a proper reading order? And that's where you get a little bit more technical. But if you create Your Microsoft Word document to have a heading structure. So the very top navigation in your Microsoft words, um, document you'll see a styles pane that has heading one, heading two, heading three that a lot of people will say, I have no idea what that is, I'm not touching it. We want you to touch it, we want you to. And the reason being is that it provides that structure. So for example, screen readers navigate documents using these headings so they can scan versus. So let's say it's a 50 page document. We who are sighted, or as my friend likes to call us, retinally dependent, m will look at the table of contents, look at the page number, flip through or click through to get to that page. For screen readers, screen ah, reader users in particular who are blind or partially sighted or who are magnifier users who are zooming in in some cases like 18 times to 20 times magnification, they don't have that opportunity to just take a look and then skip to the pages. So that's where that heading structure comes in because they'll listen to all the headings ones. So I like to consider it sort of like a college or university setting. The heading one is your college or university. So it's an overarching what is happening in your document. Your heading twos are your chapters. Right. So from a college or university perspective, your faculties.

Speaker A: Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker B: And then you go to heading threes, which are your subheads. Uh, those would be the programs within the faculty. Right. So the, if I'm navigating, I can hear all the heading ones until I get to what I'm looking for. Um, then I can go and dive in further in the heading twos, um, to say, okay, what is that section of this that I'm looking for? And then get into the real good stuff, if you will, using the heading threes because you know exactly what you're looking for, you've got to it and that sort of thing. But when you make your documents look like they have heading structures, so you're just manually changing a title of a section, uh, to size 18 and you're making it bold, but not using those heading structures. Visually it looks like it has structures, but from a technical perspective it doesn't. So when you export to a PDF, it has no structure, it'll be tagged. Yes. But it'll all be what is called a P tag or your body copy. So there's no actual navigation anchors within your document. So that's why that heading pane or the style, style pane that says heading 1, heading 2, heading 3, normal for your body, copy that sort of thing. We want you to use it because when you export to PDF, it brings that with it. That tech that, um, coding, if you will, that tagging structure that, uh, allows them to navigate properly that way.

Speaker A: We need to be taught this. We're just not taught it, are we? That's the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: And from a. As you're working with documents yourself, if you use these headings, there are benefits to it as well. So while we were writing the book, you know, we made sure that we used all the styles. Um, so I like to. I like to put in a contents page in a big document, even if it's just to help me find my way around it and maybe delete it afterwards. Word has an option, so you can. There's like a navigation pane that you can open up so you can scoot through to. Oh, what was that heading? I'm going to go to page 17 and it's got that heading heading there. Um, also something I discovered in Word while we were writing the book. I didn't know this, that it did. This is. You can also drag and drop from the navigation pane and to move things around.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: So if you want to reorder something, it's easier for you to reorder because everything in that section is seen as a subsection.

Speaker A: Wow. So it's.

Speaker C: It makes it easier for editing chunky text yourself as well.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And if you don't feel comfortable with the navigation pane, for example, and you just create an automatic, uh, table of contents within Word, for example, you can actually see, because it pulls those heading structures to show the actual table of contents. You can see if you accidentally made a mistake in where things are supposed to be.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Much easier to see the like.

Speaker B: Oh, that should be a heading two, not a heading three or whatever the case.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Make that quick tweak because you can click on it in the table of contents and it'll take you right there, fix it, update your table of contents and you're good to go.

Speaker A: A lot of this is making me think about. What you're really talking about is respect of the audience, a real understanding of the audience. And I'm just wondering, while you were talking, it occurred to me, should we be doing proper accessibility audits of our organizations or our audiences so that we can properly understand, or should we make the assumption we should be as broad as possible? I'm just wondering what you think about that.

Speaker B: Excellent question. Um, I'm A firm believer. Ah. And, and you'll hear this a lot, especially from the disability community. Nothing for us, without us. Don't make assumptions. Always bring in that audience that you are looking to engage with to see what they actually need.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: There are so many times when from an internal communications perspective or external companies and organizations think we're going to do X, Y and Z, because that's what we think they need. Yeah, they get it, they put it out. They're very proud of themselves. And then the community they were trying to engage with will say, great, we just needed an accessible Word document. I don't know what this whole new intranet portal part of this is. It doesn't really work for us. But a Word document that would have been two pages would have fit just fine for us. Um, but also there's another notion of it's progress over perfection. You're never going to get 100% perfect when it comes to accessibility simply because it comes down to, as we were saying, the end user. You can't make everything accessible for everybody because There are over 8 billion people in the world, 8 billion variations to how we access content. If you can do that, I need your number, I need to learn from you. Um, but in all reality, because there are those slight variations on how people may get, um, access content, we need to also be, we need to acknowledge and understand that we want. Will not be as accessible to literally everybody. But we are trying our best and we need to look at feedback if something isn't accessible to somebody, not as a negative, but rather a learning opportunity. On how could we have adjusted or tweaked or what can we do now? Uh, to ensure that perhaps somebody with, um, who engages with content in that particular way can also access the information. Um, and that's usually something that people say, I need to be perfect at accessibility or I'm not going to do it at all. Yes. Right. And we're here to say that it's, it's progress over perfection. You're on a journey and things are always changing. Right. If we would be having this conversation five years ago, will we talk about AI Hard? No. It would just be this distant thing that we saw in Terminator at some point in time. Um, but in reality things are changing, things are shifting, things are growing. Companies and tech is getting better and in some cases worse. Um, but it's being adapted and asking questions. And so getting back to the original question about do we need to include the individual, that target audience? Always do as much as possible so you can get the right insights on what you should be doing or what is actually looked for in what you're trying to produce to ensure that they are not only being included, but also we are doing it the right way.

Speaker A: It sounds a bit like co creation, how we would develop a new intranet or something like that. Anyway, we would do that with, in the ideal way. We do that with the audience. I think that's kind of where you're going with it.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I was also thinking those colleague network groups could be quite useful here as well. To test things or troll things. Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker C: One thing I did learn when I was trying. We need to get some people, uh, we need some colleagues with, uh, access needs to test this. Do not try and ask someone for a list of people who have those needs. It is sensitive to category information and if, if you give it.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker C: It's not a good spreadsheet to be sending to anybody. No, I made that mistake once. Don't do it yourself. Yeah, yeah. So there isn't a list, you know, there's not a. That HR might have this information. But, uh, it needs to be something that, um. So with like an employee resource group or those kind of colleague networks. Absolutely. Share it with people. Um, but it's not like you can say it's you. Nothing is going to be perfect either. No, it's good to test with people, but as Matisse said, you know, there's so many different variations and one person with sight loss might have different, um, technical ability. So I remember once we had, um, we were delivering some training on accessible intranet content. Content. Talking to people who are going to be, um, publishing content online. And I think five minutes before the session, uh, we were told that one of our blind colleagues was joining the training session. And I was like, oh, okay. We have designed this training session so it is accessible. I didn't realize that we'd have someone coming in, um, who wouldn't be able to see the slides. The only adjustment we really needed to make on that session was to make sure that we'd really, you know, everybody had access to the slides. I shared them with him. So he was also able to read the slides using his screen reader technology. And we did get some really fascinating feedback from him. When I was like, well, this is good practice with alt text, which is alternative text, the text that you provide, um, on an image. So if someone can't see the image, they still get the information.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: Uh, and there's technically correct alt text, but it's not necessarily good. And I was using an example from the Web aim um site which was like, here's a quiz. What do you think the, the alt text should be for this picture? And the picture was a painting of George Washington. And it was like a historical portrait of George Washington painted in oil paint with a frame. And the. One of the options was, is it George Washington? Is it picture of George Washington? Is it not of this? Um, and I can't remember what the fourth one is. And he was like, well, actually none of them really give me enough information, depending on the context. Like, if it's an art critique, you want to know that it's in. It's got oil paint and is a historical portrait. If it's illustrating the fact that this is an article about George Washington, George Washington is fine.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Actually, I want a bit more description. This is very basic.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And it means that if someone's missing out because they can't see the image, that's also not very fair. Yeah, yeah, but he was also a really, um, advanced person, like advanced technical user. He had, he had lots of screen reader software. He, if he, when he was listening to it, I could hear is the, the speed that the pages are being read at? Phenomenally fast.

Speaker A: Really.

Speaker C: And I've worked with other colleagues who have experienced more recent sight loss and they're like, well, I don't know how to use this. I've been given this, given this screen reader, but I don't know how it works. And to get your ear into it, you start off hearing it more slowly. And she was like, actually, I still prefer using a PDF, Lisa. Uh, because I can pinch and zoom on that and I know it won't mess up.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Um, if I try and do that on my intranet page with this HTML content, it all goes into a different order and I've lost it. It's gone. It's, ah, done the responsive thing where everything's knocked into a column.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And so different people have different needs depending on where they are with their. You know, like Matisse said, There's 8 billion people with different, um. Experiences.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. This episode of the Internal Comps podcast is sponsored by Work Vivo. If you work in internal communications, you know how hard it can be to keep everyone aligned. Especially when communication is spread across disconnected tools. It makes campaigns harder to run and it's even harder to see what's actually landing. That's where workvivo comes in. Workvivo is an AI native employee experience platform that brings communication Culture, knowledge and measurement into one connected space. Helping communicators reach every employee from HQ to the frontline and measure the impact they're making. Join some of the world's biggest brands shaping their culture with Workvivo. To learn m more visit workvivo.com that's w o r k v I v o.com Talk to me a little bit about technology because obviously we live in a world now where I'm thinking of my son who's got severe dyslexia. Uh, he's so lucky that he lives now where he's got the screen readers and he can do voice to text and semi beautifully crafted text messages without any media social spelling mistakes most of the time. So in one way it seems like this is a good thing that we live in this world now with this kind of technology. But on the other hand, what about AI and what's coming and is that going to be accessible? What do you think about the future here?

Speaker B: That's, I love this question simply because being Canadian I'm very proud of this. Um, the accessible standards. Canada recently released the accessible AI standard. It's the artificial intelligence intelligence standard, the first of its kind anywhere in the world. So what it means is it provides a standard on how do you create AI to be accessible to everyone, right? And so it's looking at also bias and inclusion and that sort of thing and what's being provided. But I think you know, I said Terminator before, we're not going down that path. But I think AI could become incredibly useful. It's already incredibly useful as it is now as starting point we still need that human oversight. So for example, um, people will use it to help generate the alternative text, the alt text. That's still a starting point because AI does not understand context, right? It'll just say like cat in a hat and you're like great, but it's really a cat in a Chanel hat for you know, it's a promotional shoot for Chanel kind of thing. Um, you need more context. Um, but also it can help with uh, crafting your text into plain language if you're not sure, you're still struggling with um, can help you like we mentioned earlier with the transcripts, right to get you started but still have human oversight to go in and ah, edit. Um, but there's still that bias component where if you ask it to create an image of for you, it's still going to be very white, it's still going to be very able bodied. Um, and you're still going to you're going to miss a lot of information and the hands are always going to be weird. Right? But um, but things are getting better. Things. Everything's improving slowly but surely because AI is learning. But we need to ensure that we are inputting that information and knowledge so it can get better. When it comes to accessibility versus just assuming that whatever we get, that's all we have. It's constantly learning. So if we can provide it with information, saying actually no, that um, caption or that alt text is incorrect. Um, we don't need to say photo of or image of when we write alt text. And AI will say that people tend to do it, but we don't need to because screen readers will read image of. That's just instantly how it reads it out. So they will read image of, image of. And you're like, okay, get to the point. If you're listening to this. Um, right. So it's. But if it's a sculpture or if it's a, ah, illustration or a comic or something that isn't just a picture, you would want to say, you know, a sculpture of George Washington. So it's an image of sculpture of George Washington kind of thing looking um, stoic or whatever the case may be. Uh, and so I think AI is going to be an incredible tool. Um, and I think it's already doing incredible things for people like myself with adhd, the transcribing during meetings. So I can actually focus on what's being said and not have to worry about am I absorbing it, am I going to miss things? Um, it'll take my notes for me, I can review them after. Like, okay, yes, I forgot that they said that or I got distracted by my dog when they said that because they were barking or whatever the case is. So there's many, many facets. I think anyways that it's a really good, great tool in handy and it's only going to get better. Um, but there's also that fear of, you know, uh, IT people not looking at the standard as being, or not looking at AI as being usable by everybody. Because when we look at even other platforms like Facebook and Instagram and that sort of thing, they are inaccessible or very hard to use by those using assistive technology before they even get to the content. So we can make the content as accessible as possible, but to actually navigate through. And that's where that standard that I was talking about before is saying when you're building your AI, make it so that everybody can actually use it versus struggling to get to It. Even though the content may be great, what that, uh, spits out?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Lisa, are there some blind spots in internal comms that you see over and over again or that you spot now that you didn't before and you think, oh, now I know my eyes have been opened.

Speaker C: I think one of the areas that it's so easy to fall out of the habit of or not make time for is making sure that you've tested, um, how your information lands with users. So, um, you know, this was even sort of 10, 15 years ago. Make. If you're sending out internal emails. You using an email marketing tool?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Um, does it work on mobile? Does it work on someone's web version of the client versus the. If they're using Outlook? Um, does the contrast work if someone's using dark mode? Because a lot of people use dark mode and then if you flip the colors round, then the email is unreadable.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Have you tested. Are you taking the time to make sure you're testing how this lands with the, the devices your employees and colleagues are using it on? Um, as well as making sure that, um. Well, so one of the tips to. So it's like, well, I haven't got time for that. I'll come back to it. And no one ever comes back to it.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker C: So where you've got templates, if you've got a social media template or a content calendar, put in the extra fields for alternative text. What is the caption going to be? Um, put it in as a step so it's not an extra thing. It's when you're doing the titles, when you're thinking about it, it's all part of that content. So you've got the package up front.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And you're not trying to do it just as you're trying to publish it at 3 o' clock on a Thursday afternoon.

Speaker A: Yes. Oh.

Speaker C: And then you end up writing just a couple of words to fill in the gaps. And it's not as good as it could be if you, if you include it from, from the beginning. It's much easier than trying to retrofit it or do it right at the end.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's the great. That's the best point there is. When you try to retrofit. When we think of bottom lines. Right. Money at the end of the day, corporations, organizations, they look at the finances. When you try to retrofit something to be accessible, you're gonna char. You're gonna be. Cost yourself more money. Yes. Than if you actually thought of accessibility from the onset? Yeah, um, the, you know, we see websites that are built, people spend thousands upon thousands of dollars and accessibility wasn't maybe the priority or it wasn't as thought about until the end. And when you try to fix a website that's already built, it's sort of in a lot of cases, like trying to take out the egg out of an already baked cake. A lot of cases impossible, right? You're like, okay, I need to do some quantum physics, I need to figure this out. Um, but if you had thought about accessibility from the onset, if it's a lot easier and so, you know, you might have to make a little tweak near the end because maybe, oh, we have to change this. But the format, the structure, the foundation is there from an internal comms perspective. Look at, we're always pushing out video content now, right? That's a big thing. It grabs people's attention. They want in thinking about videos being accessible from the onset. And so that looks like, um, there's two types of described audio for videos. For example, there's post production described, that's when you filmed everything. And then you add that secondary audio layer at the end. It's like, man walks into room, woman sits down. Um, and so when you do it that way, it's very costly simply because you now have to try to find spots, ah, in between the people on screen talking to describe the important information that needs to be described. Um, and it can be very tedious, very time consuming. You might only have two seconds to describe what needs to be. How am I writing that script to be appropriate? Um, and then there's the captioning and that sort of thing of course as well. But if you use integrated described audio, this is where you're really thinking about accessibility from the onset. So in pre production, you're storyboarding, you know, what B roll you need and you can speak to it so you're visually showing what you're saying in a natural way.

Speaker A: Way.

Speaker B: Right. So instead of, um, you know, man sits down, you'd be like, hey, Jim, welcome.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So it gives that cue kind of thing. And then in production, you are making sure that you're still matching that storyboard. Or if things have changed, are we still. Is it a change that needs to be described in some way in the script? Or is it just, you know, instead of the left wall, we chose the right wall because I had more artwork or pottery or whatever the case is. Um, and then in, uh, production, it's just making sure everything still lines up and if need be making those tweaks accordingly. Um, but again, it's more seamless. So at the end of the day, the video now no longer has that post production described. So that man walks into a room kind of audio. Um, and those from the sight loss community in particular prefer integrated audio because it doesn't feel like it's a special video made for them. Instead, it's a video that is made for everybody.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. I like that a lot. One of the things you're making me think. So Simon Cavendish and I have this event, uh, that we do four times a year called London Unfiltered, where four people, five people speak for five minutes about a personal topic and they're not allowed slides and all the rest of it, not allowed to sell, not allowed to talk about work. So it's very intimate evening. For the first time. When we do it in June, we're going to have a sign reader. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking, I genuinely don't know if people are coming who potentially, you know, have some kind of. Have some kind of hearing impairment. But I was also thinking to myself, even if you don't, isn't it a sign that we care enough to include those people? So what I'm. I, uh, suppose what I'm thinking here is even if I don't feel a member of that community that you're targeting with that intervention, it's still telling me something that I like about you. Does that resonate in any way?

Speaker B: 100%. I look at it, I love that because for me, I look at it as though, um, no matter what, you are included here. It's not that we had to plan for you. We are just planning for everybody. Uh, it's the same with captions, right? Um, live captioning. People think that it's for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. No, no, no, no. Sometimes the mics aren't great or the speaker is using a handheld mic more as a pointer than an actual microphone. Right. And so it helps me see what's actually being said. Um, and so I think it creates a very welcoming environment because also you don't know at an event who shows up the day of and says, hi, I actually want to attend. I didn't know I could. I or I didn't know, um, my calendar would work to attend. But now I've showed up. I also need ASL or BSL or, you know, captioning. Um, you already have it built in.

Speaker C: And I think as you start, um, as people see that and that is something that is offered by your event. It makes it more inclusive and people are more likely to show up. Yes. It's so difficult thinking about access requirements for events in London a lot of the time, um, thinking about, you know, there's sort of physical, uh, access, um, can a power wheelchair fit through? It's all very well being able to fit into the entrance, but is the toilet door behind a very narrow doorway that the chair doesn't fit through?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: You know, there's so many things that people need to think about if they're thinking of attending an event and if they know that BSL is there and that's their way of actually being able to engage with it even if they're not there the first time. If you do it again the next time, you might get more people coming to that.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And I think some of the most gorgeous inclusive events I've been to in London recently, um, thinking about. I went to a fantastic night called Fierce Queens at, ah, the Queen's House in Greenwich. And it was a really beautiful cabaret night with drag performers and singers and, and someone doing a queer history around, um, talking about all the paintings and the history behind it, looking through the museum and they have all of the performers had, ah, BSL interpreters who are really getting into it. There's a real art to it, like dancing. Some of the content was filthy, but they, you know, and it really, sometimes it was actually, it was lovely to be able to hear the content, but actually watching the person doing the signing, it added another layer to it. Yes, it's fantastic. And I just think it's something that if we could all get more into the habit of including it in our events, it opens up those events to people who might otherwise feel uncomfortable coming.

Speaker A: I love that so much. What you're really talking about for me, I think is richer, uh, communication. Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Another layer of communication and I might not even know that I was tired and you've just given me, you know, the ability to hear this article. Actually, the New York Times has published figures on this. So the content, the consumption rates of their stuff goes up hugely, not just because of the ability to hear it, but also the amount of time it takes to read. So when it says five minutes, people are more likely to communicate, uh, to it, engage with it, simply because they know how much time. It's crazy, isn't it?

Speaker B: It just helps, I think just as a human, we want to know where our time is going. So, like, seeing that, it just helps us to say, okay, I have capacity for that or this seems like it's going to be very dense. It's an eight minute read. Do I have the mental cognitive load to do that right now or is it like I'll come back to you or is it I really want to read you or I need to read you but I have three other things to do that don't take cognitive load. But I can't sit at the computer to watch it. I like to actually look at the screen. If I can play it and listen to it, I can still do the other things. And it's that multitasking sort of harmony that some people search for as well. Yeah, right. So yeah, I think it's, it's great to start seeing that more and more. The just offering different formats. Just naturally offering the different formats makes it more inclusive and barrier free because again at the end of the day you don't know who's going to access your content. You have your target audience but that target audience can expand.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Love it so much.

Speaker C: I think something that you both touched on there a little bit. I think um, thinking about video, I know there's been a big pivot to video for communications and many people do prefer it but I hate it when I go searching for instructions on how to do something. It's like here's an hour video and all I want is the one minute here. If there's a transcript you might be like I know in Microsoft Teams and using Stream. If you've got the transcript or and if you're using it on YouTube and it's been set up properly you can go exactly to the point you need to and just watch that little bit and you don't have to sit through it all. Make sure you've got transcripts. You have to some depending uh, on how your site set set up you probably need to go in and generate the transcript for your videos. But Microsoft has it all built in now and you do need to go in and edit it because it can't do, it can't do accents. Um, it might go randomly off on a tangent sometimes but once you've got it there it's much easier to navigate through it all.

Speaker B: And one other thing with video, um, especially when you're using things like YouTube and Vimeo and that's where being housed they now have um, audio options. So what I mean by that is that if you have your video it's your base video but now you can have the post production described audio level. That layer that gets added on if you choose to do so you don't have to go to a different link.

Speaker A: Um, right.

Speaker B: Um. If you have it in French, Spanish, Portuguese, whatever, um, that's recorded as well. You can just select that audio version so, so that the individual can hear it in the preferred language, if you obviously have it prerecorded that way. Um, but that's again, adding that option for, um, choose your own adventure, if you will. From an accessibility perspective, everybody's adventure is a little bit different. Um, and the same goes with captions. On YouTube in particular, if you are using closed captions. So you're either uploading, um, files like an SRT or VTT file, or, or you're taking the auto captions in YouTube and editing them. Don't leave them as auto captions, edit them. Um, it becomes a closed caption. So the end user not only can turn them on or off, now they can change the font, the color, the size and even the location of the caption. So somebody who is deafblind, for example, might be using magnification. Now they can move the captions, um, as they may require them, into that frame of where they have it magnified versus it being stuck at the bottom, versus if you have them burned in, which is called open captions, so they're burned into the video, you don't have any of those changes. If you have it magnified, you lose where the captions are. Um, additionally, you can't change the font, the style, the size or anything like that.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Something you've just reminded me of as well with this. Whether it's video and captions, or whether it's social media, graphics or posts, if you have your text embedded into the image, people can't translate it. If you're dealing with an international audience, you know, you can translate text really easily whether it's built into your intranet software or someone's got it in the browser. If all that text and the key information is in the image and English is someone's second language, or maybe they're traveling from overseas or you're trying to communicate with people in 100 countries. Making the text attached to the image means that, uh, you're adding an extra barrier for people who have to find a way you can use AI for that. Now, when I went on holiday last year to Bulgaria, they had this incredible music festival going on, but all of the content was just in a PDF. Like, well, I can't. I can't read Bulgarian. Um, and so I asked Claude to like, here's a. Here's a PDF. Can you get the text out of this and translate it for me. AI can do that, but that's like a couple of extra steps that weren't needed. If all of that had been on the webpage, Google Chrome could have just done it for me. And it's still not perfect, but it's much better than not being able to read Cyrillic.

Speaker A: This episode of the internal Comms podcast is brought to you by my very own Friday Update. Would you like a short email from me? Never more than just five bullet points long, giving you my take on the week's news from across the world of communications. This might be the latest reports, books, podcasts, conferences, campaigns that have caught my eye during the week. I always limit myself to just five nuggets of news, so you can read it in record time but still feel a little bit more informed, hopefully a little uplifted as you end your week. Now, this is subscriber, uh, only content which was initially intended just for A B colleagues and clients. I don't post this content anywhere else, so you do need to sign up, but that is super easy. Simply go to abcom.co.uk that's a B C O M m.co.uk forward/Friday. We just need your email address and it's equally easy to unsubscribe anytime that email address. Again, abcom a b c o m m.co.uk Friday. Give it a go. And if you do choose to be a subscriber, I very much look forward to being in touch. So should we head over to those quick fire questions?

Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker A: I don't know. Who wants to go first? One of my favorite quickfire questions. What personal trait or characteristic has most contributed to your career success?

Speaker B: Do you think Curiosity? Right. That hashtag was wrong. All right, let's go down the rabbit hole of what else am I doing wrong that I need to fix? And it's to this day, every day I learn something new and I always want to continue learning. So the curiosity is what I would say for. For myself.

Speaker A: Are you still in contact with that colleague?

Speaker B: Yes. And I told him that I share the story all the time and he goes, I'm so proud that I'm the reason you're now in accessibility. I was like, if it wasn't for you, I would be communicating so ineffectively. Um, is how I look at it. So I thank him every day. His name is Jason Fair. He is spectacular.

Speaker A: Shout out to Jason.

Speaker B: Shout out to Jason.

Speaker C: I feel like curiosity is definitely one for me as well, but I think expanding on that, that a little bit, it's not being afraid to ask for clarification on things or asking what something means. Um, I don't mind looking, um, I don't mind admitting when I don't know things in a room. Whereas I know some people won't speak up. And if you don't ask for clarification or if you don't ask that question, people work on this assumption that everyone else knows what's going on. And sometimes being able, and particularly when you work in, across a lot of industries with acronyms and jargon, sometimes you can all be using the same words with having, whilst having completely different understanding of what they mean. So always actually asking for clarification on things I think has really helped me. And that's also something I've learned from many times where we, we thought we were saying the same thing and we really weren't.

Speaker A: Yeah. How often is that true? And then there's this corporate language that gets used.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And no one actually takes any time, as you say, to actually define what we mean by that. And over the generations that changes. I think I've made a career about saying, you know, I'm just going to ask the stupid question. And I can actually see people's shoulders drop, think, oh, thank goodness. She's asked me, what's one misconception about communication that you would love to dispel for forever?

Speaker B: That accessible communications is hard. Yeah, it's not hard, but we understand. I understand that you may not know what you don't know. So going back to ask the questions, I want to make this accessible. How do I do it? There's an incredible accessibility community that are in disability community that are eager to answer these questions because it helps create a barrier free society for everybody. Um, so for me it's understanding that, you know, um, accessible communications isn't hard as many people may perceive, or it's extra work. It's just planning. And so, you know, even starting as something as simple as using Pascal case and a hashtag. So that means that you're capitalizing the first letter of each word in a multi word hashtag. Um, this could have gone really well for uh, Susan Boyle back in the day, um, with her when she released an album, it was all lowercase and it was supposed to be Susan album party and actually got read out as Sue's anal bum party. Not your PR move. It's still considered one of the top five PR mishaps. Uh, wow, social media. But by using that, you know, Pascal case It would have read a Sue's Susan album party instead.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: The intention. So little things like that, pick one thing, get good at it and think, start to grow the power of one in that regard.

Speaker A: Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker C: I think for me it's that plain language isn't about oversimplifying things.

Speaker A: Yes. How true is that?

Speaker C: It's using the language that your audience understands the first time they read it. So there might be times when technical terms are important and understood by everyone reading it. But uh, it needs acronyms, need to be spelled out, jargon. There should be an explanation for it somewhere that people, people can refer to and it's much easier to use for everybody. Even lawyers prefer plain language. And there's now an international standard for plain legalese. Um, this is something. There's so many people assume that technical users really want detail and long sentences and complex words. And that's a real unlearning from how we were taught to, to write at uh, university. It's like, no, you've got to use at least this many words and I want you to use complex sentence structures and show that you understand the, understand all of this stuff. When we're doing in day to day communication, people just need to get on with the next thing.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: By making it nice and clear for people.

Speaker A: Yes. I have a rule. If I've got to read it twice, it probably needs to change. If I've got to read it three times, we're starting again with that sentence. There's too many ideas going on in this sentence. I, uh, love that so much. And a couple completely agree about simplification is not dumbing down. And one of the things I've noticed over the years and years of doing the show, the smartest people communicate in the simplest way because they've really truly understood what they're saying. They're able to do that. So yeah, love that so much. What's the hardest career lesson that we only learn through experience?

Speaker C: When we're talking about accessibility, it's about meeting people where they are. And that's the same when we're talking to people about literally talking to people about accessibility. So sometimes there's things that we know. It's like, well, I, how do you not know this? You know, as we've found out over the years, there's so many things that we're just not taught. And um, there's something about being open to crit. It's not criticism that's a personal attack on you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: It's something that if you can make this Improvement. It's a better outcome for everyone.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Being able to detach your own personal worth from the feedback you get and not being defensive and doubling down on stuff.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Being open to change and being open to improvement. Because it's quite easy. It's quite easy to get defensive if someone's criticizing you. And if you're doing that to somebody else, understanding that they might also be feeling like, uh, this is a personal attack. Yeah, it's not. And trying to be open to helping people with their journey.

Speaker B: It's so, so true. Because tech, typically people have in the past, especially in the accessibility space, would be quick to jump on saying you did this wrong and be very negative. Like, how is it that we keep telling you this over and over again when really now there's been a shift to say, okay, yet maybe you don't know what you don't know. How can we help? We're here to help. Um, so for me, it's going back to your big positive, uh, which is actually being okay to ask those questions.

Speaker A: Yes. Right.

Speaker B: Because we tend to fail when we don't ask the questions for clarification, when we just assume and make those, um, broad stroke assumptions about what we need to create. But when we actually think it through, ask the questions. Um, be confident in sounding silly. If we ask a question, people like, how do you not know this? I've never stumbled upon it in my life. So I'm new to this. Right. Just like you were new to it at some point in time. Um, you know, ah, and meeting people where they're ah at. Because we can't assume that they had the training. We can't assume they saw the video, we can't assume they read the book. We can't assume anything. Because, you know the old adage, it makes an ass out of you and me, the language. Um, but at the end of the day, we want to ensure that we should be ensuring that we are asking questions to become better communicators, whether internal or external. Because if we don't ask the questions and we are at that point, I would say intentionally missing out on our target audience because we don't want to perhaps change what we're already doing. Maybe we think like, okay, no, our plan is perfect the way it is. And then if you ask the question, they're like, actually if you tweak this, like, ugh, to go back. But that tweak could be so beneficial across the board. So not being afraid of the questions and not also being afraid of the answers as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And finally, on the internal comms podcast, we give you a billboard, metaphorical billboard, for millions to see. And you can put on that billboard any message you like.

Speaker C: I our book, Accessible Communications. It will help you have more impact, build trust, and, um, the audience will be pleased. This is it. Was this started off really catchy? Yeah. Buy a book now,

Speaker B: um, for me, because you've already done the book pitch. Um, I would say if your words aren't accessible, neither is your message. So keep that in mind when you are writing.

Speaker A: Yeah, good. Uh, point. This has been so much fun and so educational. Thank you so much.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker A: This is so fun.

Speaker C: Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker A: So that is a wrap for this episode of the Internal Comms podcast. My thanks to Matisse, to Lisa, to the dream team behind the scenes, Joe, Amir and Freddie for keeping this show on the road. And of course, my heartfelt thanks to you for being here. This show would mean nothing without you. Please do hop on to AB's website, abcom ab c o m.co.uk you will find the transcript of this show there, along with the show notes and our entire back catalogue of over 200 episodes. I can pretty much guarantee there's one for every icy challenge you might be facing at the moment. So until we meet again, lovely listeners, stay safe and well. And remember, it's what's inside that counts.