Mike Calvo talks about blindness and inclusion

Mike tells us about automating accessibility: "as a blind consumer, of content, information, whatever, I don't care where I get it, as long as I get it. Information is what I need." Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcast where disabled people explain their impairment, and what barriers they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcripts for this episode, Tenon provides accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training and tooling to help fix accessibility fast. My guest today is Mike Calvo. Hey, Mike, how are you? Mike Good. How are you? Nic I'm doing pretty good. Really happy to get to talk to you today. Mike As am I. Nic So let's jump right in and ask you what's your disability or impairment? Mike I am totally blind since birth. Well, actually, I had some light perception as a child and lost the rest of it when I was about 18. So I saw enough to get in trouble. Not enough to be usable. Nic Right! What would you be your greatest barrier on the web? Mike I think it's the lack of adherence to web standards and accessibility practices. And when I say accessibility, I don't just mean following WCAG compliance rules and standards. I also mean, usable, make sure that you're taking as many varied types of disabilities into account when you're making your website not only accessible, but usable. The user experience is as important as the user interface. Nic Would you say accessibility is a subset of usability? Mike I would say that they're that they're pretty right there hand in hand, because to suggest that one is a subset of another means that you need that you could possibly have one without the other. And I don't think so i think that I think that they're both one is as important as the other. You can't have a usable website, if it's not accessible. And accessibility starts and making a website as usable as possible. Nic I find no argument which which what you're saying is spot on. If you had a message for designers and developers, what would that be? Mike I think that accessibility is a best business practice. Bolting on accessibility is always going to be more expensive than being as inclusive with your user base. And understanding that we aren't disabled in the way that we can't do stuff. We as disabled users of the web, do things differently. Therefore, if you want to have our patronage, our support, our buying of your products, then you need to adjust your website to facilitate the way that we do things. Whether that be captioning for folks that are deaf, whether that be putting all tags, alternative text tags, on graphics, whatever it takes, but get to know your user. And then you can create an inclusive experience instead of so much focus on accessibility. Let's try and give everybody a chance to play in this great big web of ours. Nic I like that. Let me play devil's advocate here. You said, If businesses want our patronage, do they want our patronage? Mike Well, as a unapologetic capitalists, I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, billions of dollars, billions of discretionary dollars, from basically almost 1/3 of the Earth's people that identify as having some form of disability. I mean, how do you know how do you know which disability is more important? Or another? Should we justify Oh, well, that's just a, there's only a small group that have that disability? No, let's just try and make things work for everybody. And if we just come outside of our little boxes, our comfort zones and talk to one another, and share and say I really love what you're doing. And it would make it so much easier for me as a person with a visual impairment to be able to use your product or service if you could only do this or do that. And I think that by partnering