Chax Chat Accessibility Podcast

Who knew there were this many facets of Bookmarks for Accessibility. Listen in as Chad and Dax dissect the nuances of accessible bookmarks! I guarantee you will learn at least one thing you didn't know.

• Accessible Bookmarks • Keyboard Accessibility Gymnastics • Benefits of Bookmarks • When Are Bookmarks Required for Accessibility? • Do Headings Follow Bookmarks? • Designing your Documents with Bookmarks in Mind • WCAG SC 2.4.6 Heading and Labels • Leveraging AI to Detect Headings • Create Bookmarks on Export • Creating Bookmarks in the PDF • Styling and Properly Nesting Bookmarks • Setting the Initial View of the Bookmarks Bar

Listen in as Chad and Dax talk about some creative solutions to using color coding inside tables while still meeting accessibility. Be sure to catch us at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim this March! This eposide includes the following:

• The Stoplight Syndrome
• Using Symbols to convey color in a table
• The Legend Matters for Accessibility
• When Size Doesn't Matter
• Actual Text for Blank Cells no-no
• Accessibility Roulette
• "Accessibility at the End" has a Cost
• Presenting Alternatives instead of "That's Not Accessible"
• Be the Solutions Person

Start out the new year right by setting your accessibility goals for 2022. Listen in as Chad and Dax talk about how to set your goals by evaluating where you are in some key categories of accessibility and how to set a game plan for growing your accessibility skill set in 2022. Score yourself from 1 to 10 in each of the areas we talk about. Then develop a game plan to improve in those areas and re-evaluate yourself every 3 months to keep accountable.

In this episode we cover ways to increase productivity when assigning alt-text for large libraries of images. Topics include: • Automating Alt-text • How to make writing Alt-text easier • Storing Alt-text in Meta Data • Creating Alt-text in bulk • Alt-text Object Styles for InDesign • Alt-text Headline, Title and Description • Three ways to set Meta Data • Importing Accessible Styles • Setting default styles for every document

Join Chad Chelius and me, Dax Castro as we unravel the question "What standard to do I follow?" Learn when should I aim for AAA Compliance and the difference between WCAG and PDF/UA. Find out how to know the document is really accessible? We discuss some tips on writing alt-text vs providing alternate formats and be sure to stick around and listen to my first call with Be My Eyes and how it completely failed!

This week Chad and I take a look at the roles companies are hiring for in the field of accessibility. We talk about:

• The skills they are looking for
• Certifications you should have
• The responsibilities of the roles
• The salaries being offered
• The future of accessibility roles in the workplace

We also talk about choosing a company with accessibility as a core value and the importance of properly training your accessibility teams. 

Bonus Content: The Validity of PDF as a format in Higher Education

Guest Jeff Lawrence, Senior Program Manager of the Creative Services Team at the World Bank talks with Chad and Dax about his journey in implementing accessibility for his team. We discuss the reasons for starting, the struggles along the way and the great progress he and his team have made. Don't miss the our tips for accessible bullets and end notes and I bet you will be surprised at the answer Jeff got when asking the Client to pay more for accessible documents. You definitely want to listen this week!

In this week's podcast Chad Chelius and I talk about being part of the IAAP - International Association of Accessibility Professionals Accessible Document Specialist Exam group. We discuss why Accessibility isn't Black and White and the Benefits of PDF/UA with WCAG. We mention Callas PDFgoHTML as and inspection tool for dealing with frustrations of the Table Editor in Acrobat. We take a deep look at accessible Footnotes inside Tables and how the table editor deals with them and finally we shed some light on the fact that Adobe is listening and cares about future improvements to Accessibility tools.

This week we take a closer look at some of the questions we received during the accessibility session at Adobe MAX: L200 Learning the Fundamentals of PDF Accessibility Step by Step. Chad was there during the live session were we had more than 3200 simultaneous attendees listening, watching, commenting and asking questions. Now that we have a few minutes we answer some of these questions with a bit more depth so be sure to listen to the end where Chad and I make a special announcement about an upcoming project!