Okay. Good morning. Good afternoon. Depending on where you are joining us from, welcome to today's webinar, Mars' Journey to Scalable Accessibility and Compliance. We are thrilled to be joined by Stefanie Rojas, Digital Assurance Senior Analyst at Mars, and Ashley Barker, Solutions Engineer here at Crown Peak. Before we kick things off, just to confirm, today's session is being recorded and the recording will be sent to you by email tomorrow. And I would also just like to draw your attention to the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. If you have any questions at all during the session, please pop them into the box and we will answer them at the Q&A at the end. Without further ado, I will hand it over to Stefanie for -introductions. -So my name is Stefanie Rojas. I've been with Mars for ten years and I've been working in the space of digital assurance for our web and social sites for the last four years, including accessibility. Awesome. And I'm Ashley Barker, solutions engineer here at Crownpeak, and I work with our prospective clients as well as our existing clients, to really understand how DQM is being used and how we can go to the market. All right. So for today's webinar we're going to cover a couple of areas starting with really who is Crownpeak? Who is Mars. How did Mars implement an approach, digital accessibility, some of those performance insights and of course, more importantly, what's next for Mars? And then we'll wrap it up with how Crownpeak is approaching digital accessibility overall. So to begin, uh, who is Crownpeak? We are have roughly 800 customers, over 1100 brands. As you can see, we are a global company with teams in multiple areas for that coverage. Um, and Crownpeak supporting the world's brands over multiple products for multiple years. And Stefanie -Mars. -And a little about Mars. I think a lot of folks know us for our candy. Um, but, uh, not many people tend to know that we have a stake in the food space. So, like the Ben's original rice and a big stake in petcare, uh, Royal Canin, Whiskas Pedigree or some of the big ones in addition to, uh, veterinarian health. So Banfield -as well. -A very varied portfolio of well-known household names, especially obviously the M&Ms. We can all relate there. So, Stephanie, we know that Mars has always valued accessibility, but can you talk to us a little bit about how Mars prioritizes -accessibility? -Yeah. So accessibility has always been important in general. And you know, something we've put a focus on. But, um, a few years ago, we started receiving demand letters on some of our larger brand websites. So it kind of became apparent at that point that we needed to not just tell people that this was important, but we needed a way to be able to track it, um, -going forward on all the websites. -Absolutely. And with that, uh, can you tell us a little bit about the accessibility team and the web stack that Mars is using? Yeah. So, um, we, the accessibility team, uh, is. Uh, where our stack is internal. We have about 450 sites. So, uh, previously we were just instructing people that they had to, uh, it was important to do it. And like, you see, our tagline there, the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. So it's always been important. And it was it was just getting, uh, it's scalable was -becoming the issue. -Right? Absolutely. And I love the world we want. Tomorrow starts with how we do business today. I think that is such a critical point, because Mars has been thinking about digital accessibility for years before it was mandated, before some of these regulations came out. So I love to point out that, you know, Mars really does look to the future and implements that in their day to day businesses. So a lot of times when we are talking with clients or talking with people, the landscape can be very daunting and it can feel very overwhelming. And so I wanted to just ask you a little bit about that landscape and some of the challenges that Mars faced thinking about digital accessibility. Yes. So we have, um, a thousand brand websites at this point. Like, you know, we have a lot of brands. And while the demand letter is highlighted, the need of why we needed to do this and why it was important and had to be tracked. We're an international CPG. We've got over 200 brands. A lot of our brands are billion dollar brands. They're very visible. It becomes a very high risk. A lot of e-commerce sites, things like that. It just the the challenge of reviewing everything on that scale was just it's easy to become a little overwhelming. But, um, so it became apparent we needed a -solution. -Right. That could help, uh, manage the hundreds of brands and the, you know, 1000 websites and something that I think is pretty interesting to bring up is that we have really seen a substantial impact from demand letters, um, rather than from state and federal regulations. And the other really interesting part is that almost 82% of the demand letters that we've seen over the last year have really started focusing on e-commerce sites. And so it's one of those items that it is really critical to think about this when you have consumers coming in, um, and again, being, uh, billion dollar brands, we know that it takes years and years to build up that brand, but one incident to completely destroy it. So we talked a little bit about the need for a scalable solution. Um, can you talk to us a little bit about how, um, you guys are managing some of this data within -DQM? -Sure. So, um, we won. We went with Crown Peak because we have, as I mentioned, a thousand websites, 200 brands. It's a lot of assets to manage. Um, and the demand letters, you know, when they start coming in, it becomes a high risk and corporate, um, brands that just at stake. Um, and a lot of our sites have a lot of pages. So the more manual solutions that we were looking at are great. If you have 1 to 3 websites, you can go into all those, you know, 1000 plus pages to see what's there. But it's was never something that we were going to be able to make work for us. And the scope of websites that we have in our portfolio. Absolutely. And I think that's a really important point of, you know, we can often implement for one to a handful of websites. But when we think about the global reach of someone like Mars, the hundreds of different brands, um, manual going page by page is not, um, the way to do it for sure. So thinking about the digital quality management and digital accessibility, oftentimes again we hear we don't even know where to start. How do you do this? Do you do it all at one time. And one of the things we found is that Mars has a very interesting approach to how they're rolling out DQM. And so, Stephanie, I wanted you to see if you could go through a little bit of the thought process behind this two phase -implementation approach. -Yeah. So the demand letters that were coming in were for US sites. So it was very obvious to us to start with US sites. So we had the uh, the URLs loaded into the tool. It was about 120 sites at the time. Um, and we, you know, set a goal like this is where everybody, you know, should aim to be. Um, so we, over time, familiarize, like me, my team, the assurance team. We familiarized ourselves with the tool and how it works. We were able to train the people in the business to be able to read it and see, you know, what they should be prioritizing and things like that. Um, and now our next phase is we're going to be rolling this out to our EU and Canada sites, which is about four times the amount of websites in the US. Um, but with all of the training that we've already done and familiarizing ourselves, I imagine it's going to go, uh, very smoothly, even with that, uh, but huge scope. Yes. And that's, uh, and that's a really good point to when you think about familiarizing your team with the tools and being able to train the teams, it's critical to have something that is easy to use, easy for the teams to train up on, not something that they have to go through a long process to learn. Um, and the other thing to point out here with this phased approach is starting with that smaller amount of websites allows us to take all the learnings from that first phase to make sure we make that second phase even better. And again, I think Mars has proven that a slow, phased approach in is the way to go and the way to really create those high quality sites. Now, I know you mentioned, um, briefly about a threshold, but one of the things with, um, accessibility is it can feel very daunting of where do we even start? Uh, and I wanted to see if you could take us through some of the thought processes of finding those starting points. Um, throughout the business with -Mars. -Yeah. So, like you said, I mentioned it a little bit, but, um. So. so DXM specifically has a scale of 1 to 10 for the scoring. So we picked a number like here's, here's where we're going to start at. Because, you know, we we need to we need to get to this point at least, um, to the point that we've since improved it. Um, so we started there. Uh, over time, people's habits have improved. People know what to look for. Um, our more stringent in choosing certain content and things like that. Um, so how we use the tool was, um, we were identifying the issues that were going to move the needle the most. So things that were showing up a lot or, um, there were multiple places, multiple pages, things like that, that were really going to, um, make the whole site more accessible. And then from there we will give access to the developers, the business owners, um, to get into the tool, since at this point in the process, they're they're trained and familiar with it, they can get into the tool and see those issues and remediate on -their end. -That's perfect. And in the next slide, we'll take a look at one of the reports that the developers can use. Uh, one of the things with assessing the sites that I want to just touch on that you mentioned was the ability to level up your teams, the ability that as your teams are understanding what some of these issues are. You know, maybe an image doesn't get put on the site unless it has that alternative text and it's a descriptive one. And what you guys have been able to do is really start to level up the teams internally, which is obviously not only great for the employee, but for the company as well. And Stefanie, we were just talking about how the developers can use DXM or digital quality management. I wanted to see if you could take us through how how they're utilizing it and maybe their day to day. Yeah. So, um, I mentioned a little bit about our stack, uh, our website stack internally, but we have, um, a couple of teams that support, uh, a, I'll say a big handful of sites. Um, and they have as part of their process that they, um, know exactly what the most common pain points that they've seen over time, um, are and what to look for in the development process. So, like you said, alternative text on an image. Now it's at the point there. Um, no. Exactly. Like, oh, it can't just be like a one word like dog. Like it has to be something a little more descriptive. Something has to be there. Um, one of the really helpful pieces in DXM is that when there's an issue, you can dive deep into it on the page and see where in the source code the issue is drawing. So you can see exactly what line of code it is. The developer can then go in the back end, fix it, push it out, -and then see it resolved. -And I love that you mentioned that because it really can be a one stop shop for you and your teams, you know, being able to identify the issue, see it in line with the website, and then be able to go in and identify the exact line of code. And that's all within DXM without having to hop around to multiple places. And something that we are really big on is let's go, let's be more proactive. So instead of constantly putting out fires, let's make sure those fires don't happen to begin with. And I think that's something that Mars has really been successful with. And so, Stephanie, I wanted, um, for you to go through a little bit of that shift from reactive to -proactive. -Yeah. So one of the things that I find to be, uh, very helpful for my end as someone who monitors accessibility for our websites, our a lot of our dev teams notify us of sites that are about to go live in their pre broad stage so we can review everything in there and before it even hits production, if there's any, uh, issues that need to be resolved, any funny things going on? We know about it before the consumers ever even see it. So that's, um, a huge boon to to what we do. Um, we don't. Yeah. We don't launch sites unless they're at an eight out of ten. Um, that that's the minimum. And then, you know, we review it over time as content gets added to keep it at that, that threshold at that department. And one of the interesting things that happened last year, uh, one of our major, um, e-commerce brands replatform their website onto a totally new ecommerce platform. Um, and because we had been talking about accessibility so much and saying how important it was and things like that, when they onboarded their developers and support teams, They actually had a couple of resources dedicated to accessibility on the site. So it wasn't even like, oh, we'll see the site in pre-production. They had accessibility people with the developers from step one monitoring everything along the way. And so it launched and is still like almost a ten out of ten every day. Yeah. Which if for everyone on the line, a lot of times we'll see average scores sitting at about 6 to 7. And again, Mars has really set the bar to say, hey, not only do we want to set a standard, but it must meet this standard prior to publication. And Stephanie, I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things we talk about quite often is, uh, you know, once that information is out there, once it's hit the consumer to go back into to make those changes can really cost the company a lot of money. And so if we can catch some of these issues prior to publication, which is exactly what you're describing, we know we can save money on those resources prior to publication. So it almost has some of that shift left mentality of introduce accessibility and quality as soon as you can into the process. Um, which again, really helps your teams throughout the, throughout the digital accessibility. So one of the things that I think is really interesting within the DXM platform, um, that's quite unique is something called customized checkpoints. And these are, um, specific tailored, uh, checkpoints that can support a multitude of a multitude of needs. So outside of accessibility on page SEO and usability, uh, we have the ability to customize checkpoints. So I wanted to see Stephanie, if you could take us through a couple of the ways that Mars utilizes, um, custom checkpoints. Yeah, we utilize the custom checkpoints. Um, there's a lot of requirements on websites based on data privacy and things like that. Um, so some of our requirements are having specific links on all of our websites. Depending on the country, there may be different links required. There may be, you know, the privacy choices for the US sites has to have the icon, things like that. So what we did was we worked with Crownpeak to create the custom checkpoints around that. So now we don't have the resources on our side going to each of the websites and opening the links and making sure they work, making sure required icons are there, things like that. They can just go into Crown Peak, bring up the report, see if there's any issues and reach out right away. It's saved, you know quite a bit of time and resources on our side. That's a really good point on the resources. If we can automate some of those items that people are manually looking for. You're absolutely right. We've kind of removed the noise of having to go through all the data. Um, a couple of interesting ones that we've also seen is when we you mentioned some of the regulations and regulatory compliance. We've also seen a lot of custom checkpoints around branding and having, you know, ensuring the company name is written correctly. So a lot of those branding and style guidelines that we want to make sure we follow, those can also become custom checkpoints within the system. So Stefanie, we of course have talked about lots of different things within today's presentation. Um, one of the things we mentioned was, okay, we can get lots of data, but data means nothing unless it's actionable. And again, um, Mars utilizes a really interesting, um, feature of Crownpeak So I wanted to see if you could talk to us a little bit about how reporting works between Mars and Crownpeak -Yes. So we leverage the Crown Peak API to connect to our power BI dashboards, which is the the standard dashboarding tool that we use at Mars. So now the way we break out our website into different chunks, uh, like, you know, there could be anywhere between like two websites in a section, or there could be 50. And going through one by one can be a little overwhelming. So by using the API tool, we just pull it into power BI. I can filter on a certain if it's a score number, if it's a group, a country, I just filter on that and I can see at a glance what's going on, if there's any, you know, trends that I need to address -and anything else. -That's a really good point with the API, because what it allows companies to do is still continue to utilize the reporting methodology or the reporting system that you're utilizing, but be able to pull in the insights from Crown Peak so that again, we can look at the bigger picture of the website, including, um, digital accessibility and quality. So what's up next? What, uh, what are the things that, uh, specifically, I would say, what are some of the things that Mars is, um, looking at or thinking about as it relates to the EAA or the European Accessibility Act? Yeah. So this is going to be the, uh, the the hot thing for us through uh, and go live end of June next year. Um, we have over 400. I think it might be close to 500 websites that, uh, sit in the EU and UK jurisdiction. So, um, it's a lot, but because we've already been using this for a long enough, and a lot of people, um, in the business have already seen it in the US, and we're kind of familiar with it and things like that. I think the journey, while the numbers sound big and scary, the journey is not going to be reflected that way because we're in a much better place and we have the ability we can be really proactive this time. We're still a year out. And, um, our journey from accessibility from the beginning is so much more advanced now that I think we'll be in really good shape for when EAA goes live. And, uh, -next June. -Yes, less than a year. We're about a year away now, and something to mention is we're starting to see a lot of the US regulations starting to pop back up within states, um, within a Department of Justice ruling. So with regulations. Um, these are only going to continue. And of course, as the SAS, as a SAS based platform, Crownpeak ensures that those new regulations are review and assessed so that we understand the impact it will have on our customers. Uh, and as Stephanie mentioned, EAA is going to be a major, um, push for, uh, companies, especially, uh, doing business in the EU. Now, we've talked about a lot of the process, the phased implementation approach on digital accessibility. But I wanted to see if you could provide us just some of those tips. Uh, best in class. Again, we know that Mars is really, uh, put together a great digital accessibility program and team, and I'd love for you to share some of those, uh, best in class, uh, -advice, if you will. -Yeah. So, uh, the first thing education of the business is very important. Of course. Um, and it's getting to the right people from the, the right messaging. So, um, some of the things, you know, accessibility can affect customer retention. It can affect brand reputation. But also improving accessibility will improve your SEO and up your rankings in SEO. Um, so it's that kind of education to the other people in the business. And also, just at the end of the day, this is the right thing to do for people who are using assistive technologies on websites. We want everyone to be able to use our websites. Um, another thing that we've been recommending, uh, to people if they're onboarding new agencies or support teams is to include accessibility in your SoC or your contract. Say it needs to be Wigig 2.2 AA compliant, whatever you choose, like put it there. So this way, not only does it impact the site when it launches, but then over time, as you add new content, things are going to change. So you have in your contract, we agreed on this. It needs to be brought back up. This is missing. This is missing. And then something go ahead. Uh, now the, uh, the last piece I just wanted to touch on was after seeing, uh, some of our, our common, uh, broad reaching issues, um, I created we have an internal portal, and I made a couple of articles for, uh, development teams to refer back to for the the big issues that tend to cause the most -problems. -So basically, an ongoing resource that no matter who's in the position, they can utilize that resource moving forward. I love that. And one of the things I just wanted to mention that you brought up, and I think it's such a good point, is when you are thinking about those third parties and the agencies you're working with, as Stefanie mentioned, it is critical to ensure that you're including some of these things within the contract, or at least bringing it up, because the last thing you want to do is spend a lot of money on a third party resource, only to get the information that could put your company at risk. So I wanted to take just a couple of minutes to review Crownpeak's approach to digital accessibility. Um, we've heard from Mars and specifically Stefanie, on some of their approaches to it. And really, at the end of the day, in a nutshell, Crownpeak simplifies digital accessibility by providing all the necessary tools and guidance to ensure a high quality and accessible website. Now, one of the things that we think is pretty interesting, that we feel like we preach and teach a lot, is that accessibility is a continuous process. And, you know, as Stephanie mentioned, by making sure our teams are aware that digital accessibility is important, understanding that digital accessibility impacts multiple areas of the business. So one bad image not only impacts digital accessibility, but now you're impacting your on page SEO and your indexing. And so knowing that accessibility is continuous, um, we ensure companies are up to date in the loop on upcoming regulations. We also know that 97% of websites are not accessible, especially to those using assistive technologies. And, you know, and I think you mentioned this, Stephanie. But when we think about our consumer expectations, those same expectations are also, um, from employees as well. So having an accessible website, having an accessible accessibility team not only helps our bottom line and our top line revenues with consumers, but it also shows the employees and gives the employees an accessible, um, site to review. And of course, uh, software and services must work together. So we know that an automated scanning tool such as DQM can cover a percentage of some of those guidelines, those WCAG guidelines. But it is critical that you realize that there's another piece to this, which is manual testing and remediation. Quick example of a manual test would be to ensure that the subtitles actually match what is being said in the video. Um, so Crown Peak is really one of the only providers in the market that covers both areas internally. And our DCMS system system covers the automated digital accessibility. And then, of course, our Expert Accessibility Services team covers the rest, such as Figma, file application testing, and of course, manual testing. And finally, kind of, uh, our last piece to this is to kind of to talk about what Crownpeak DXP is, which is a composable best in class portfolio and really what we do. We have four main products to the business a content management system to orchestrate content from any data source, transform it into a highly engaging way, and then deliver that content across any digital channel. Digital accessibility and quality platform, which we talked about today DXM. Of course, this helps to drive revenue growth by ensuring content is more discoverable and protecting that bottom line cost. We also have a product discovery, which really helps with recommendations, help improve that average order value, and then of course some privacy and data privacy and regulations. So all of this really comes together to be a very composable DXP, so that you can pick and choose certain pieces of the Crownpeak portfolio that best suits your needs. All right, so I know we have several Q&As. So, Maddie, if we could go through a couple of those questions, uh, that would be fantastic. Yes, absolutely. So we do have a few questions, so we'll cover as many as we can. Um, so the first one, Stephanie, I think you did touch on this after the question came in. Um, but the question was, is this something that Mars have already rolled out on all websites, or is it just with some brands, um, -and regions only. -Currently the main the ongoing monitoring is just the US sites. We're rolling out EU and Canada in the next couple of -weeks. -Yeah. Awesome. -Um, the next question is. -Do. These accessibility parameters apply only to owned websites or -also to paid advertising? -Um. -Uh, do you want to start with that? -Yeah. So the what we're talking about, uh, currently is on the website, we do have the ability to scan, um, certain ads that pop up or pop ups. So that is something we definitely, are able to do based on how it how it's coded basically. So the short answer is yes. Awesome. Thank you Ashley. And I think this question um, is regards to um, generic guidelines. But when starting the process of building and updating websites in the future, is there a document of guidelines and requirements for accessibility to reference? So, um, I would start with the, uh. You can Google it. Or if you're a smart person, you can I can send it to you. Um, but the, uh, the biggest issues are always going to be things like, uh, adequate alt text on images. Um, when a link opens in a new tab or window, you need some kind of Aria label or a float over or mouse over float saying that that's the action it's going to take. There's definitely some, uh, hard hitting issues that come up a lot that you can easily, uh, check out. If you really want to dig into the details, you can check the, uh, wcaG website, uh, World Wide Web consortium.org I think, um, that has all of the issues. Uh, but as a high level, I would honestly start by searching the, the biggest, uh, accessibility issues that -come up. -That's a great point. And that's something just quickly to add on to that. Um, as you, as you and your teams and companies kind of mature through this process, One of the things we find very helpful is, as Stephanie kind of created some of those, um, what great looks like, if you will. So before you add a picture onto the website, here is a list. Or here's a checkpoint of five things that must be covered. So to kind of add on to that, every company will end up kind of creating their own list based on the different thresholds of that company. I guess this next question actually probably ties in quite nicely. What is your advice for someone who is just starting to build out an internal team focused on accessibility? Where would you -begin? -Um. I would say that buy in from your important stakeholders is a really good starting point. So things like the lead developers or the managers of the developers and platform teams, uh, marketing your legal data privacy, because infusing accessibility into the culture, so to speak, is going to make your journey that much easier. So that would be my starting point. And then come up with some like measurable goals, whether that's if you're, you know, websites, accessibility at scale like Mars, then, you know, maybe it's a couple of high priority websites, maybe it's certain issues that you see across all websites, like take a couple of goals and start there. And then once you have that, you know, a good idea of what's there, then it's becomes a lot less overwhelming to be able to expand. Yeah. Makes sense. Um, and we have two more, I think, at the moment. Do you have any examples of the main issues that have been fixed across the websites that have had the biggest impact on your customers? Yeah. I already spoiled it a little bit, but the, uh, missing alt text, uh, on images or the alt text that isn't, uh, descriptive enough on images and, um, the, uh, the labels, when links open in a new window, they, um, they usually go across the whole website. It's usually at a template level. So not only does it become something that's relatively simple to implement and push out across the whole website, at the end of the day, some of the easiest fixes are the most impactful because it goes across a whole website and it improves being able to use the website as a whole, because you were able to make 2 or 3 changes, and it makes a consumer's day that much better because they're able to use it a little more -easily. -To navigate it. Exactly. And that's one of the things that DXM and Crown Peak can do, is to identify those items that are template level versus content related, so that we really can focus and prioritize those fixes on ones that will impact every single page to really move that -needle. -Brilliant. And I think you touched on it just when you were talking about kind of the team binds, but what other internal teams are important to closely collaborate with when it comes -to digital accessibility? -Yeah. So the ones that I've been mentioning, I think for the last half hour, dev team, support teams, platform teams, marketing, uh, one of the teams that we work with a lot that I haven't, um, mentioned enough is our data privacy office having their buy in, um, helps to be able to get people on board and scale out accessibility. Because if we you have your data privacy, your legal team saying, hey, you really need to do this. It becomes that -much easier to get the messaging out. -Awesome. And we have had just one more come in and then I think we can leave it there. Um, if making a website compliant requires a change, who approves that? Um, does that need to also go through brand teams? Um. A technical change would just go through your development team if it's like a major website redesign, because the actual function of the website isn't accessible, then. Um, it would probably be a discussion within the brand team and with whoever you support partners are. Awesome. I think we can leave it there. Ashley. -Right. -Well, we just want to thank Stephanie again. We really appreciate your time here and walking us through some of Mars' -success. We really appreciate it. -Thank you for having me. Thanks for letting me share this story. It's been a long journey, but I'm happy to share any insight that I have. -Amazing. -All right. Thank you.