Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Ronnie here. I'm a partnership manager at Accessibi, and today I want to talk to you about web accessibility and how, by installing just a single line of JavaScript code, Accessibi can make your website ADA and WCAG compliant, and most importantly, genuinely accessible to people with disabilities, all within 48 hours. Web accessibility is a set of rules, behaviors, code standards, and design guidelines that are meant to explain what accessible websites should look and operate like for people with disabilities who, by the way, comprise 20% of the world's population, which is over 1.5 billion people. Not a small number, right? These sets of rules were created by the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, and are called the WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The WCAG 2.1 at the AA level has been adopted as the web accessibility standard by governments all around the world. Examples of such legislations include the ADA Title III and Section 508 in the US, the AOD in Canada, and the EN 301549 in the European Union. What's unique about Accessibi is that it takes a lengthy, expensive, and complex process of remediation and fully automates it using AI, making it effortless and affordable. Before diving into how it works, I want to let you know that Accessibi was developed side by side with people with disabilities and leading experts in accessibility as well as assistive technologies. Today, we already power tens of thousands of websites from small businesses to industry-leading enterprises. All right, let's move on to how Accessibi actually works. Accessibi utilizes two components that work simultaneously to achieve compliance. The first is our accessibility interface, which addresses about 30% of the WCAG requirements that are related mostly to adjusting the UI and the design of the website. The second is our AI application, which is responsible for handling the other 70% that usually require manual work, including screen reader and keyword navigation adjustments that are needed by visually and motor-impaired people. Let's take a look at AI application first. The AI scans and analyzes your site using a contextual understanding process that learns the purpose and function of each and every element before fixing it. This process happens automatically every 24 hours, ensuring every change or update made is instantly remediated, making your website compliant at all times. People with motor impairments activate Accessibi's adjustments by clicking the tab key, the universal key for keyword navigation, and then the Adjustments button appears. When Accessibi is installed, keyword navigation adjustments are activated by default. Blind users using a screen reader will hear an announcement from Accessibi inviting them to turn on Accessibi adjustments by clicking Alt plus 1 on their keyboard, if they have not of course already been activated automatically. Let's start navigating the website using the tab key. See the skip links appearing when I navigate with the tab key? These allow me to quickly get to different sections within the page, like the menu or the footer, without having to tediously tap through each and every link of the website. When passing the skip links, you'll notice that a checkmark has appeared on the Accessibi icon, signaling that Accessibi has identified a keyword session and has automatically turned on keyboard accessibility. The next element, after the skip links, is the Keysight map page menu, which allows me to simply select the category or the page that I want to visit in a matter of seconds. Moving forward, you can see how easy it is to navigate all the links, forms, buttons, menus, and even drop downs, which are now fully accessible using just the keyboard. Take a look at the code. Here you can see that Accessibi automatically adds all the necessary code modifications to indicate to people using screen readers that it is in fact a menu, which has a submenu, and whether it's expanded or not. This is achieved by utilizing what is known as the ARIA attributes, which Accessibi automatically adds if there aren't any already available. When triggering pop-ups, Accessibi lifts up the keyboard focus and lands it back down within it. To close the pop-up, I can simply hit the escape key and then continue navigating from where I left off, just like that. To cater to screen readers, Accessibi utilizes the previously mentioned ARIA attributes in this scenario as well. To remediate forms, Accessibi uses AI to learn the validations, labels, and purposes of each field, and uses the browser's already accessible validations API alongside ARIA attributes to display and announce field requirements, errors, and messages. Another important area that Accessibi covers is ensuring that icons and buttons are not only operable using a keyboard, but also provide full context to visually impaired users. Here's a code example of how Accessibi added the social media names to the icons at the top as a hidden screen reader only text. Another quick example is the cart and favorites icons to the right that also receive the proper hidden text alongside an ARIA role that equals a button. Without these modifications, the cart and favorites are completely ignored by the screen reader, and these social icons are being read as link, link, link, link. By the way, drop-downs, pop-ups, forms, and icons are some of the biggest accessibility challenges which Accessibi excels in remediating. There are many more areas that Accessibi covers, such as the next and previous carousel buttons, the review star icons, price adjustments, and others. Now, let's dive into one of the most exciting capabilities of Accessibi, the automatic creation of alternative text or alt text descriptions for images. To achieve this, our AI uses Iris and OCR image recognition technologies. Take a look at the console and note that this image has no alt text. Now, see what happens when clicking alt plus one to turn on accessibility just as a blind person using a screen reader would. Did you see the code changing live? Look at the immediate alt text Accessibi has created for the images. Extra 30% off shop now, woman in long-sleeved shirt folding clothes. And for the GIF on the right, travel shopping 50% off, wood, retro, and luggage. With alt text, a screen reader user can now get the full context of the website, including text and objects of promotional banners. The last piece of the puzzle that completes the compliance process is our accessibility interface, which allows people with various disabilities to adjust the user interface and the website's design to their individual needs and enjoy a personalized accessibility experience. This interface eliminates the need to compromise your website's design in favor of accessibility and allows the design and UX professionals to stay creative. Users have the choice between accessibility profiles, standalone adjustments, or both. The profiles at the top of the interface bundle together common accessibility combinations that address a specific disability, such as epilepsy or visual impairments. The user just chooses the profile that's right for them. Once the profile is chosen, all the relevant accessibility features will be activated at the same time. The user will be able to go right back to the website and start browsing without having to make any more adjustments. So for example, an epileptic user who wants to browse the website safely without the risk of seizures, enables the seizure safe profile, and then all colors will be immediately dulled, and any blinking or flashing GIFs and animations will be paused. Further adjustments can be made by choosing the singular features in the rest of the interface, either with the profiles or without. A visually impaired user can click on dark contrast or light contrast, which will then adjust the colors depending on their preference. This can be done in combination with visually impaired profiles or not. In the end, the user has a choice in the combinations of features that best fits their needs. All these options are what we like to call accessibility on demand. It delivers the digital experience that your users are looking for without making any permanent adjustments to your sites. By the way, everything that accessibility does is also supported in over 16 languages. Okay, that's about it. You should now have a basic understanding of how accessibility's AI is constantly ensuring that websites are protected from costly litigation, and will also be fully accessible to people with disabilities. Thank you so much for your time. I'm looking forward to seeing you and joining us soon.