All right. Well, welcome everyone, to unlocking tomorrow's opportunities and navigating accessibility in 2024. We are so excited to have our Forrester team on the call and walking through not only some of the opportunities we have today as it relates to accessibility and digital accessibility, but also what those possibilities are moving forward. So we are very excited to review with you today the landscape of accessibility, as well as some of those burning questions that we will have. So just at a very high level. Um, first of all, uh, we'll go through introductions here in a second, but I'm Ashley Barker here at Crownpeak. And just a quick overview of Crownpeak peak is really we're a global provider of cloud based digital experiences. Um, and that really includes a very diverse customer base all across, um, the world. Uh, can notice that we have a really interesting spread between, uh, America and EMEA. We also have a really strong financial profile, financial growth profile, and in today's uncertain times and economic, um, uncertainties, it's really important to have a strong, um, partner. And then, of course, Crown Peak is backed by one of our uh, industry leading investors, K1, um, and they really focus on B2B. So we're really able to jump in, um, in our digital experience platform and focus on digital accessibility. And I will allow Christina to introduce herself, but quickly. I am Ashley Barker, solutions engineer here at Crownpeak and I have the opportunity to both work with prospective clients as well as existing clients, to really understand the accessibility landscape of the company and potentially building a very successful digital accessibility program. We are joined by Gina, a principal analyst at Forrester. Gina, would you like to -do a quick intro? -Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ashley and Crampy for having me. I'm a principal analyst at Forrester, where I lead our coverage of the digital accessibility space. So I spend my days talking to organizations around why they're prioritizing digital accessibility, what steps they're taking to implement a successful, sustainable program, as well as understanding the challenges that they're grappling with. And so I'm really excited to be able to share some of what I learned through my research with you all today. Perfect. And thank you so much Gina. And we're going to kick this off. We've got some really great information to really set the stage on. What is that digital accessibility. Why is it important. And then we'll dive into some questions. All right. Sounds great. So I'll go ahead and kick it off now. Um, again with a short presentation just to tee up the conversation today. So first I just like to make sure that we're all on the same page with all of you in the audience around. What do we mean when we say digital accessibility? So this is how we define digital accessibility at Forrester. It's the extent to which customers and employees can get value out of a digital experience, regardless of variations in their abilities. And note that I say customers and employees. Everything we talk about today is important both to ensure that your employees are enabled to be successful at work, but also that your customers are able to access and have a great experience with your products and services and ultimately do the things that you want them to do, like purchase more products from you, for example. Now, what's really interesting, I've been looking at this space for about six years at Forrester, and I'm really seeing accessibility is no longer viewed as a nice to have by organizations. It's really essential for any business that wants to remain competitive going into the future. And more companies are recognizing that and beginning to take accessibility very seriously. To elaborate a bit on that, we recently ran a survey where 59% of businesses told us our executives mandated their commitment to creating accessible products, and the work is happening. That's higher than I've seen in my six years covering this space. And while we see very high level of commitment in really every region of the world that we focus on, there's a few interesting regional differences with this data that I'll point out to you on this next slide. So specifically, if we just break the world down for a moment, you know, if we focus on North America, Asia Pacific and Europe, we see 62% of businesses in North America saying accessibility is a priority. We're doing the work to make it happen. 63% in Asia Pacific. And then significantly lower is Europe, with only 55%. However, that is about to change. There is new legislation coming in Europe. So if you are either based in Europe or you do business with, you know, citizens in Europe, you are going to need to be accessible. So we expect that percentage to be going up pretty quickly in the next couple of years. And we'll talk more about that legislation a little bit later. So this brings us then to the next question that I wanted us to answer together, which is, okay, all these companies are committing to digital accessibility. Why is that happening? Um, what's driving these commitments and why should everyone in the audience today make sure that your organizations are committing as well and creating those accessible experiences for your customers and employees? And the first reason why digital accessibility is it's required by law, which is a pretty good reason to get your organization to act here. Um, and this is the case in many regions of the world, I'll share a few examples of legislation that has been really pivotal, pivotal in getting accessibility on the map. Uh, one if you're in Europe, you've probably heard of or you should have heard of the European Accessibility Act, the EEA. Um, this is a really important piece of legislation. It's very progressive and that it attempts to create a standard approach to what we mean by accessibility. Um, for the private sector, a lot of previous legislation focused more on the public sector. So it applies to a range of digital products. So not just your websites and mobile apps, but things like banking services, ticketing machines, ATMs. There's a lot of different things covered under this particular law. So that's having a big impact, uh, for companies based in Europe or doing business in Europe. Similarly in Canada, um, which had deadlines a couple of years ago, there's the accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, which really prompted businesses there to get things in order as it related to accessibility. Um, here in the US, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act. Um, interestingly, this particular act says nothing about digital accessibility. It still has not been updated to reflect that. However, um, if you're in the US or you do business within the US, you're probably aware that there's still a lot of lawsuits where consumers and organizations are suing companies under the ADA for having inaccessible sites and doing so very effectively in getting those organizations to to act. And then in Australia, um, the Australian Disability Discrimination Act, another, uh, very significant kind of more progressive piece of legislation as it relates to requiring digital accessibility. And those are just a few examples. There's many more as well. Now, what's interesting here, though, is yes, it's required by law, but compliance is not the primary driver that many of the companies that we work with at Forrester or large enterprise organizations are saying is the primary driver behind their commitment. Um, let's take a look at what I mean by that. So I'm sharing. To hear data. When we ask people, what's that primary driver behind your commitment? The things that popped were actually delivering on our firm's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, recognizing we can't just say we're all about Dei and we're all about inclusion. We have to reflect that in the experiences that we put out in the world, in our websites and our apps. For example, many companies also telling us this is about creating better experiences for all of our customers. We'll talk a little bit later about the curb cut effect, but this notion that when we create accessible experiences, it just makes it easier for everyone. So there's a lot of benefits there. And then also attracting and retaining new talent. So this has a couple elements to it. One is accessibility helps you attract employees who want to work for companies that value inclusion and that actually reflect that in their products. And then also in terms of attracting talent with disabilities, a large kind of untapped talent pool that more organizations are recognizing, you know, presents a huge opportunity. So the takeaway here is there are a lot of different reasons why businesses are making accessibility a priority. And that kind of brings us to, you know, this next piece that I wanted to share with you, which is, all right, what what if we have to distill these benefits down into like five key things that you can unlock by doing the things we're going to talk about today. What are those things? And the first, as we just talked about in depth, you know, meeting existing and coming regulations, reducing your legal risk, um, definitely something to be concerned about if you're doing business in the US, lots of accessibility lawsuits are happening. And then also if you are a B2B organization, this is a great opportunity to win contracts with these companies that are required by law to procure accessible technologies and services. So that's the first benefit. That's a big one. The second one that I want to dissect a little bit here is accessibility brings more customers in the door. And I'm going to illustrate exactly how big of an opportunity I'm talking about when I say bring more customers in the door. What I'm sharing here on this screen is an image of a globe. I'm just using this to represent our global population, estimated at about 8.1 billion people. And I'm highlighting at the bottom of the globe a tiny sliver. Right. So when most of us here accessibility, we probably assume, okay, that impacts a few people, like a small percentage of the population who have, you know, severe physical and cognitive disabilities, like they're the market I stand to lose, but it's actually a much bigger segment of the population than you may be thinking. So now I'm highlighting on the globe, we're actually talking about 1.3 billion people that have a permanent disability. And that could be physical or cognitive in nature. And these individuals need experiences to be accessible in order to do business with your brand. But it's important to recognize that people with permanent disabilities aren't the only ones that you stand to lose as customers, or not gain as customers. If you're not accessible. You also need to consider things like how the demographics of our population and therefore your future customer demographics are changing right now. Um, the specific change that is probably most notable as it relates to accessibility is the fact that our population is aging very rapidly. So currently it's estimated that well, as of 2021, it was estimated that there were 761 million people in the world over the age of 65. Um, we know that, you know, when people get past the age of 65, they're even more likely to acquire disabilities, right? As part of the aging process. That in itself is a pretty big number. But what is more interesting and kind of mind boggling is that when we look out to 2050, it's projected that that number will be 1.6 billion. So essentially double what we have right now. And so if we go back to our globe here, then for a minute and we add in that current but growing aging population of individuals, we're now talking about a lot more people who also benefit when we create accessible experiences. But we're not done quite yet here. There's also the fact that there's been a lot of studies done where we've talked to, you know, friends and family of people with disabilities. They want to give their dollars to brands that aren't shutting out their friends and family members. So they're also looking at how serious our businesses, you know, taking accessibility. And are they creating good experiences for the people that they care about. So that's another aspect of, you know, segment of the population that you stand to gain if you focus on accessibility. And then the last thing I want to mention I alluded to this earlier is there's also this notion that accessibility helps everyone. You may have heard this referred to as the curb cut effect. And that, you know, metaphor comes from the fact that these curb cuts that you see, you know, in the sidewalk were originally created to help wounded war veterans in wheelchairs move safely from sidewalk to street. But as all of us know, they benefit so many more people, right? Those of us who are caregivers pushing strollers, children on tricycles. Anyone who might be temporarily on crutches. You benefit from curb cuts as well, and we see examples of curb cuts all around us in the physical world. A really famous example is that OXO Good Grips kitchen Utensils. Sam Farber, the creator of these, actually created it initially as a vegetable peeler for his wife, who had arthritis, which essentially had a disability. Um, but it turns out everyone was like, wow, that's a much more comfortable kitchen utensil than the ones that we have available today. And so now you find these in most home kitchens. And oh, by the way, he sold his company for 273,000,000 in 1992, which was pretty sizable sum at the time. So, you know, clear business benefit of creating accessible products. And then you see curb cuts in the digital world as well. I recently opened a bank account with Monzo Bank based out of the U.K., and when I read the terms and conditions associated with my account, I actually understood them, which was a first for me, I think, for a financial institution. And so when I started reading more about this bank, it turns out that they have a whole initiative around being jargon free, creating, you know, clear, accessible content that's understood by everyone. And you really see that reflected in the experience. So a nice example of, you know, something that is critical for people with maybe cognitive disabilities, but helps anyone have a better under experience, experience understanding the terms of the account that they're opening. So going back to our globe here, when we add in that notion of the curb cut effect, everyone else benefits from accessibility. You can really see it's the entire population who benefits here, um, and who you stand to gain if you launch accessible -experiences for your brands. -And that. So that's. -Attracting is just. -Stunning. Sorry that that visualization is just stunning to really see how impactful -this is. -Absolutely. Yeah. It's uh, it I think it really helps make a clear case. And, you know, I always encourage organizations, talk to your executives, use that visual if you want. I encourage people to use it to help explain how big of a market opportunity we're talking about here. Absolutely. Thanks, Ashley. And then, you know, three more benefits that I'll highlight here real quickly. One, this is a way to deliver on your commitments, specifically commitments around inclusion. Also, in a lot of industries, there's just not a lot of companies getting accessibility right yet. So there's an opportunity to improve the overall perception of your brand by taking a leading stance here. Also, as we touched on, accessibility helps you really adapt to those changing demographics. And I like to talk about this as you're increasing your resilience as an organization, right? You're thinking to the future. You're not just thinking about who your customer is right now. And I think that's particularly important. And then lastly, Ashley and I are going to be talking a bit later around, you know, how do you take a more proactive approach to accessibility? We find when companies do that, they actually save a lot of money. Right? So instead of, you know, waiting for that lawsuit that's going to cause you to try to bring your website into compliance, taking a proactive approach now it's going to help save you a lot of money in terms of remediation costs. Site remediations are incredibly expensive. So, you know, taking a proactive stance to this now is very beneficial. All right, so hopefully I've convinced you if you weren't convinced already of the benefits of digital accessibility. But the next question that we need to answer is, okay, so I'm convinced or my executives are convinced and committed, what do we actually need to do now to get started? And the first thing I'll mention this is like baseline. What you need to do is get familiar with the Web Content Accessibility guidelines. This is the globally recognized standard for digital accessibility. And regardless of where you are in the world, this standard applies to you. Many laws point back to this as being the standard so globally recognized. It also applies to all digital experiences. So the name is not great maybe because it says web accessibility, but it applies to all types of experiences. So, you know, native mobile apps, software applications, PDF documents for example. As well. Most organizations have the same goal, quite frankly, as it relates to the standard, and that's complying with the standard at level AA conformance, which means you're essentially meeting all of this success criteria. The standard lays out that are level A, which is like kind of the most important high, highest severity. And then the double A as well. And then it's really important to be aware, even if your organization is already working towards compliance with wcaG, you may or may not be aware that there's a new version of wcaG that is now a formal recommendation that was made formal recommendation in October, and it brings with it nine new success criteria that organizations should meet. So it's important to definitely refresh, even if you're already familiar with the standards. So that's the first thing is, you know, make sure you're aware of the standards and that your organization is aware and is integrating the appropriate practices to meet them for your experiences. From there, you also need to and I wanted to use this quote from someone I interviewed for my research who leads accessibility at Capital One, Mark Penicuik. So he summed up really well what needs to happen from there, which is you need to create an engine that builds things to be accessible to the standard every time. Easier said than done, of course, but there are some proven steps that you can take as an organization to get started doing that. And I like to use a simple, easy to understand kind of people process technology model here. So first, there are people that you need to put in place and within your organization to implement your accessibility program. The first is you need to appoint a lead. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of things to think about as you're beginning to embed accessibility into how you develop experiences. So having someone lead that is critical, that could be someone you're hiring outside of the organization, or appointing someone internally to really lead and manage the program. Also, making sure that you are focusing on your people and developing the right skills in them. So here I'm talking about your product teams. You know, the people that are designing your website, building your website, the QA teams, testing your website, the content authors. Right. Putting content out on your website, um, doing awareness training with them so they understand what accessibility is, why it matters who's impacted. And then also more specific role based training. What do you as a marketer, what do you as a content author, need to do in your day to day work to make sure that we are meeting the required standards here? And then third, you know, defining roles and responsibilities internally, you know, what is the responsibility of each designer, of each developer? What is the standard you're holding them accountable to? And then also, ultimately, it's a great idea to be building a network of champions in your organization. Find people who are passionate about this. You probably do have some people that have a bit of this skill set. Maybe they brought it from past companies, and how can you use them to help sort of evangelize and institute these practices in their particular area of the organization? So those are a few things to think about, you know, as it relates to people, as it relates to process. You know, first thing to do is to establish a policy. What are you really trying to do here? What is the standard? You know, that you're holding yourself accountable to? As I mentioned, for most companies that's wcaG, um, level AA, version 2.1 at the moment is is what most organizations are focused on. Uh, from there, you know, and also defining as part of your policy what experiences are in scope, and also how are you going to consider accessibility when working with external vendors? It's also very important from there also evaluating your existing experiences. You know, you can't really act until you know where you stand. Um, so taking a look at, you know, those most important task flows, you know, doing evaluations to identify what needs to be addressed and then beginning to to, you know, fix those experiences. And then the last piece, which is probably the hardest one, is integrating accessibility into every phase of your product development lifecycle. Um, and there's some good, you know, open source resources out there, like IBM has an equal access toolkit, which is a great blueprint for how to think about that. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel here. There's there's definitely proven best practices to follow. And then last but not least, technology plays a critical role in helping you scale the necessary practices to achieve accessibility in two ways. One is enabling your teams with tools to test for and fix issues upstream, right? So are you enabling your designers with tools that are going to help them catch, you know, contrast issues and other design related issues? Or are you enabling your developers with tools to test their code and, you know, remediate those issues while they're in there creating the code in the first place? Things along those lines and then equally important is having a digital accessibility platform in place, like those offered by Crownpeak, where you're continuously monitoring your experiences and identifying those opportunities to improve. So that was a lot. You know, we could probably spend hours talking about each bullet on this slide. But I think hopefully that, you know, it gives you some things to think about and also sort of tease up some things that Ashley and I are going to talk about next. So Ashley, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. Awesome. So I completely agree with everything that you said. And I think something that's really interesting is some of these emerging, emerging legislations that we're seeing slowly pop up, not just in the US but globally. And I wanted to, you know, ask you what's kind of your view or what is the best way that we can really stay engaged with some of these legislations? And, you know, following through with the wcaG guidelines, you know, are we able to really focus on those wcaG guidelines, no matter the legislation that comes -into play? -This is a great question and very timely question, Ashley, because there are some kind of emerging pieces of legislation that are putting this on the radar. You know, for a lot of companies, if you are based in Europe, the European Accessibility Act is going to be huge and it has deadlines. You know, coming in June 2025 is when member states, you know, are supposed to begin actually enforcing this act. So, you know, there's a time period here, you know, by which you need to be getting the right practices in place. Um, and making sure that any new experiences you're marketing after that date adhere to the standard. Now that law is interesting, it doesn't actually specify wcaG within like the details of the law. But wcaG, as I mentioned, is the globally recognized standard. So, you know, when it comes to what you need to do to make sure your website is, you know, compliant and that you're not going to get in trouble under that law. The wcaG standard is the one that you want to be looking at. There's also a new bill in California, which is really interesting. Um, it's currently going through a lot of amendments and sort of on hold right now till 2024. But it's really interesting because it would actually make conformance with wcaG level AA 2.1, a requirement for any company that is doing business in California, which is like most companies, essentially, most websites can be accessed by people in California. Um, so that would be an incredibly progressive piece of legislation. Um, it also gives basically consumers the right to like, sue developers of experiences that that aren't accessible. So it could lead to a lot of lawsuits, which is a whole kind of other topic of conversation. But it's good to be aware of these things. Um, because I still talk to a lot of organizations who say, yeah, accessibility is something that we know is important. But, you know, we're just we're just not able to make it a priority right now. And, you know, now is the time to make it a priority. Um, because, you know, these things are coming and you want to be ahead of the game here. So, uh, so what should you be doing now to prepare? You know, the biggest thing is starting to embed this in your product design and development process, if you can, you know, create a system whereby you are introducing fewer accessibility issues in the first place. You are going to be very well prepared, um, you know, in the future to, you know, avoid the negative ramifications of some of these new pieces of legislation. Absolutely. Um, yeah, I appreciate that insight because it does feel like we have legislation in North America, legislation in Europe, and it's kind of coming from all sides in Australia. So really being able to understand those wcaG guidelines and I think it's absolutely key. Um, so I think this kind of brings up an interesting question here, Gina, is that oftentimes when we talk to people, um, they've had websites or their website, they've had it for years. Um, it's been out there. Um, and, you know, they're nervous and they, they feel a little bit confused as to, okay, if I already have a website up, what are some of the things that I can do as a business, um, to help mitigate some of those maybe higher risk issues on an older website? That's a great question. And if you are in that situation and you're listening to this webinar, you are not alone. Um, most companies, when they're getting started with digital accessibility, there's a lot of like debt there, right? I mean, you've been spending years introducing accessibility issues into your site. So there's a lot to think about. It can be quite overwhelming. So the key is how do you make it a little less overwhelming. And I like to say, you know, bring a user experience mindset to how you think about this, right? So your first track of work is okay, what are the top tasks? Um, is a good way to think about it. What are the top tasks that users are coming to our site to do? Most websites might support 100 tasks, but there's really 3 to 5 things that matter the most. You know, if you are an e-commerce, uh, site, you know, browsing for products, uh, checking out, you know, these are your top tasks. So focus on those task flows, audit those task flows so you understand where you are today. Um, and then the issues you uncover, it's important to know, okay, which of these are showstopper issues like barriers that would prevent someone from even getting through the checkout flow. You definitely want to address those first because those also happen to generate a lot of lawsuits. Um, and then, you know, what are the issues that maybe are, you know, creating a frustrating experience, not necessarily showstoppers. And then what are maybe, you know, kind of a those lower priority issues. So getting that sense of, of where you are, um, is the first step, uh, and then, you know, starting to actually have your teams chip away at those issues, again, focusing on those top tasks first. So that's like track number one that I would take. Um, track number two then is to say, okay, that will probably be pretty painful fixing all those issues. How do we eliminate that pain going forward. So yes, we may have a website that's been out there, you know, for ten years. Um, but for all the new content, new features that we're pushing out to that website, how can we make sure those don't have issues, you know, make sure we're just building accessibility into them from the start. And that's where that people process technologies that we talked about becomes really important. And I would say first thing to do there, you know, to make that a little bit more manageable is give your designers, your content authors and your developers, the makers of these experiences, tools to test their work upstream, right? You want them catching their work or catching accessibility issues and fixing them upstream so they never make it into the product. So your testers are never finding those issues in the first place. And, you know, of course, you can't just give people tools and expect they know what to do with them. So accompanying that with training, um, why why accessibility matters. Make sure they know why they're even doing this work. Um, that actually could be really great from a motivation perspective, right? No developer wants to think they're writing broken code that's preventing people from disabilities with using the product. That's not a good thing to hear if you're a developer. So help them come to that awakening and then, you know, give them that role based training on how do you actually adhere to these, you know, wcaG standards that Ashley and I have been talking about? Um, those are the steps that I would take to get started. And you can make a lot of headway by by doing those things. Yeah. I love what you said about. You don't want to create new content, even if you have a website that's been there for a long time, at least create the new content, accessible and usable. Um, and I think something that we've seen and I'll be curious to see if you've seen it as well, is we've seen a lot of progress with customers being able to integrate, uh, accessibility and digital quality early within that journey. And really, um, like you said, in the design process. But something we're seeing with Crown Peak is being able to really integrate that within your CMS so that whoever's creating your content at the time can have that real time of here are the excessive potential accessibility issues as you're creating content, hoping that we can take that mentality of if we can find the issue early shift left, then hopefully we can create, um, accessible content as we go. And so one of the things that we sometimes hear is oftentimes regulators are looking for progress rather than perfection. Is that something? Would you kind of agree with that as well? Yes, I would absolutely agree with that. It is actually not realistic, and I don't think I'm the only person that holds this point of view. I think most people who know anything about accessibility would hold this point of view. It is impossible to have 100% accessible website. You're never going to achieve it unless you never touch your website, essentially. Right. Um, and most organizations, you have so many people creating content, you know, it's not like you just have one person in that CMS, right? Like pushing content. No. You know, many people. Um, and so there's always going to be the opportunity to introduce issues. And so that's actually a really good point, Ashley. I've had a lot of companies tell me actually, that they are being very thoughtful about how they document their progress, like having that evidence that this is something we're working on, having that documented policy, having a documented roadmap as it relates to embedding accessibility in your organization when these things are very, very important, um, to be able to produce, right, if challenged, essentially. Um, and they're also just really helpful in terms of making sure organization is thinking through things in a, you know, detailed, thoughtful way and, you know, all aligned on what we're trying to do here. So I would say, you know, that's the other reason why having someone in your organization leading this work is important because they can really help with that, that aspect of how do we make sure that we're documenting our progress here? Um, and I think, you know, content quality like tools, like what, you know, you offer at Crown Peak, Ashley, are are so important in terms of, again, supporting that content author workflow. Because, you know, typically the number of content authors a company has like outnumbers any other role as it relates to like, website development. And so it's such an important place and maybe a really good -place to start actually. -Absolutely. And especially when we think about the cost between a content author or a designer making an update versus the cost of a developer having to go back in once it's published on that site, I think really can help us streamline that -process as well. -Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that you mentioned, and I wanted to dive into this a little bit, was, um, talking about e-commerce and accessibility. And we have seen this really jump up. And now that we're of course, in the holiday season, it seems like this is coming up even more. And I wanted to see if you could, you know, talk about some of the challenges that we're seeing when it comes to e-commerce and accessibility and maybe some examples, um, of successful e-commerce that you've -seen. -Sure. Yeah. There's a few examples that come to mind, and I think the first one I'll share is so, so one, one common challenge, right, is the knowledge gap. Um, so the designers, the developers, the content authors, you're hiring into your organization, there's probably a good chance they don't know a lot about accessibility. It's not, you know, required part of like university curriculums yet, for example. So there's a knowledge gap that that we need to to grapple with. Um, how do you get all these employees who aren't accessibility experts and it's not reasonable to expect them to be accessibility experts? How do you help make this, you know, easier for them? And so one example I've seen, there is a large outdoor, uh, apparel retailer. Um, the way they tackle that challenge is they had a design system, right. So they had, you know, agreed upon like brand standards. They had reusable component libraries that their developers were using across, you know, their various properties. And they said, okay, if we can integrate accessibility into this design system, into these standards, and to these assets that these teams are using, then they're getting some accessibility for free, essentially. And so what they did was they made sure everything in that system was accessible. Um, you know, their components for, you know, your header components, your form components, all these components you're using across your sites, they're already accessible. They already meet the web content accessibility guidelines. And then within the documentation around, you know, those various assets, they provided guidance for teams like, you know, okay, by using the design system you're already getting accessibility in these ways. But there's some extra things that you have to do as part of their role. So they spelled that out very clearly. But again, took a lot of that lift off of the teams by building it into, you know, these existing standards. And so, you know, a lot of companies have design systems these days. So I would definitely be asking around, you know, talking to the team that manages that and saying, how can we make sure everything in that system is already compliant. That's going to get you, you know, quite a ways there. So, you know, that I would say is the first example. And actually, interestingly, as it related to context, we were talking about that a moment ago. Actually, they the way they tackled that problem was they sort of codified some best practices that they had developed around, like how to write clear content. They codified that into like a simple set of guidelines that they also included in that design system so that all their content authors knew, okay, what are the like ten specific things I need to do to make sure this content on publishing is going to be clear, um, and easy to understand, you know, for people with disabilities, for example. So that's one example again, around like kind of how do you address that knowledge gap? Um, which we see as a pretty pervasive challenge. Um, another challenge that comes up a lot is just the sheer volume of people that you have creating content. And how do you make sure that they're all following, like a common set of, of best practices is? So, you know, one approach you could take there is say, okay, we're going to, you know, try to train up all of our teams, uh, every content author and how to write great alternative text for images. You know, how to write. Uh, so we have a high readability score on our content. And I think those are actually really good things to do, but things are going to slip through the cracks. I mean, going back to our comment about no website is ever 100% accessible. So I talked to a major clothing retailer who really focused on on that. How do we make sure that we know the things that are slipping through the cracks and that we're quickly able to address them? And so what they did was they set up a process where they regularly scan their websites using a digital accessibility platform so they could quickly identify and remedy the issues with the site. And they focus on the quick fixes, right, the things they could flag through automated testing, um, you know, images where alt text was missing. For whatever reason, the content author didn't put alt text. Let's make sure we fix that right away. So they use technology to help them really just keep that pulse on where the site was. Um, and, you know, they immediately put those issues into JIRA to be worked by the team. Uh, so really integrating it into, you know, kind of the, the team's backlog and, you know, their existing workflows and technologies that, that they're using. And then in parallel to that, they also developed training for content authors on things like how to write good alt text, how to write specific link names. You know, some of the things that are important when we think about -content. -And it sounds like all of those items, they can scale as well because they're writing them down and they're training their teams so that it's not just with one person, but they can replicate this moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. And to that point, you know, if you're establishing such training, whether you're developing it, you know, in-house or, you know, maybe you're working with an external provider like you all actually to create that training is to say not just how are we going to train our existing people, but how do we make sure this is integrating into onboarding, for example, like the onboarding experience for any new developer? Accessibility training should be part of that going forward. Um, so I would definitely be, you know, considering that that aspect as well. And then if I could share one more example, Ashley, if you don't mind. Um, so one of the things that I still see a lot of companies not getting right is they do a lot of the things we've discussed so far, but they're not actually talking to any people with disabilities as part of their accessibility work. Um, and this is really important, right? Because at the end of the day, you want to make sure your website is compliant with the guidelines, but you also want to make sure it's a good user experience for the people. Those guidelines, you know, are intended to help. And so I spoke recently with a, um, electronics company that sells like electronics, and they were doing a lot of the things that we shared a moment ago in these other examples. Plus, they also set up a regular cadence of doing usability testing with people with disabilities. So actually having people with disabilities, you know, go through those top tasks on their websites, um, reacting out loud as they went, sharing what was confusing, what was challenging for them. And through that, they identified additional issues that wouldn't have gotten picked up by like a site scanner, for example. So I would also encourage everyone to think about that as is. How do you make sure you're bringing that voice of people with disabilities into your product design process. Into the organization? And I think Gina, I think I know we said this point a couple of times, but I think it's just bears repeating that with everything that companies do that we do with accessibility, not only obviously is it impacting our customers, but if 20% of the world, let's say, is suffering with a disability, is 20% of our workforce, as you pointed out as well, and oftentimes you don't want to, you know, speak up because you think it's just you. Or maybe it's just, you know, just me. Um, but having those with disabilities on your team so that they can really, truly understand that experience, um, I absolutely is critical. And we're seeing the exact same -thing. -Yeah. And that's a I love that that point actually. It's like you can bring in that external voice of customers with disabilities, but within your team as well, you know, making sure you have a diverse team, you will create better, more inclusive experiences for your customers. So great point. Thank you for mentioning -that. And that's yeah, that's. -We say, you know, of course with Crown Peak we practice what we preach. We scan our we scan our sites, we utilize um, Crown Peak CMS and DXM to really, uh, look at that pre-publication. So it's something we're definitely pushing and something we're seeing a lot more in the market as well. So, Gina, I know we haven't talked about this so far yet, but I know something that has come up over and over again is AI and the use of AI as it relates to accessibility and digital accessibility. So I wanted to kind of open up the the can of worms here, and I wanted to just kind of get your view on how do you and Forrester, how do you guys see in AI, um, being utilized to potentially enhance accessibility? And then, you know, maybe some future developments that we might anticipate in the -space? -Absolutely. I mean, I think it, you know, if you know Forrester at all, you probably have gathered that we're very bullish on, you know, the opportunities as it relates to generative AI and that, you know, very much holds true as we look at the digital accessibility space. Um, this is going to play a critical role in advancing the state of digital accessibility, which that state is not great at the moment. I mean, there's, you know, a study from Web Aim that showed 97% of websites have critical accessibility issues. So there's a lot of room to improve. And I think AI is going to play a critical role in helping us, you know, reduce that number going forward. Um, so so how then is the question and I think the biggest thing here is we talk a lot in accessibility. I know you do at Crown Peak as well, Ashley, about the importance of shifting accessibility left, um, you know, enabling the makers of the experiences to address issues, you know, early and often. AI is going to play a critical role in helping power that shift left that we're seeking, um, in a couple of ways. So, for example, um, using generative AI to offer remediation suggestions. So, you know, a designer is in that design file, creating that asset discovers there's some contrast issues with their design, not just flagging there's a contrast issue, but saying here's a better color combination to use that we know aligns with your design system. Um, so providing that remediation advice, uh, for developers, um, this is I mean, huge potential here. So a developer is writing that piece of code, you know, it's not accessible. Issues are being, you know, flagged as they're in their, um, in their, you know, authoring environment, not just flagging those issues, but saying, you know, generate a piece of code for me that is accessible. Um, and being able to, like, copy and use that piece of code, um, that's huge as well. Even writing prompts on, I want to write code to XYZ and having that prompt, you know, return not just code, but code that is accessible and, you know, adheres to the appropriate standards. So, you know, we're we're already starting to see features being released, um, related, you know, to these particular use cases, uh, other examples of what I've seen, um, as it relates to creating accessible content is using, uh, generative AI, you know, providing it with a block of, of content, maybe from your current website and saying, summarize this content for me, or, you know, put this content into plain language, put this content, you know, into an 11 year old reading level. These are things that humans aren't very good at doing. Um, but with AI in their toolkit, you know, to at least get to that starting point of content that meets those requirements, um, huge potential there. And so I think particularly as it relates to generative AI, we're going to see significant advances very quickly. But then there's other types of AI as well. So for example, when we think about how can we detect more issues using automation. This is something every company wants to do is like, I don't want to do a lot of manual testing for accessibility. I just want to like run a scan and have it catch as many issues as possible. Um, so we're seeing, you know, organizations use computer vision to be able to detect issues that we couldn't before. So, you know, if you have a banner on your home page and there's text on an image, a lot of scanners wouldn't actually pick up that. There's a contrast issue with the text on the image because it doesn't know it's text. It just thinks it's an image. But using computer vision, you know, we can start to pick up more, you know, concerns like that and be able to return that, you know, to, to the, the makers of those experiences and saying, hey, you know, you need to you need to take a closer look at this. And so those are just a few examples. Um, and I think here though, you know, any company who's. Deterring using AI as it relates to accessibility. And you could probably say this about any domain, but, you know, proceed with caution right now. Um, like, yes, embrace these technologies. But, you know, always remember, it's like we're not going to have AI solve accessibility for us. It's more AI is going to help humans make better decisions as it relates to accessibility. And so, you know, making sure that you're kind of grappling with like, what is the role of AI? Um, and how does it help enable, you know, the makers of experiences, not replace the makers of experiences is, you know, the healthy way. We need to be thinking about this right now. I've loved the way you laid that out. Um, that was great. Um, well, I really appreciate. I know. Um, we've gone through a couple of questions here, but, um, Gina, I just wanted to stop and say, uh, thank you so much for going through not only kind of the landscape of accessibility and visualizing just what an impact accessibility can have on the world, but also, um, diving into some examples and, um, you know, providing from, from your point of view what you're seeing in the industry with AI and with accessibility. We really appreciate your insight. And, uh, answering all of our kind of crazy random questions we throw at -you. -Of course. No, thank you for having me, Ashley. I really I was enjoyed talking with you, and, uh, it's great to to speak to a, a company that's also very focused on this. -So thank you. Okay. -Thank you.