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Free. Inclusive Starter Key Webinar | Otter.ai

Free. Inclusive Starter Key Webinar

The Resource Key36min

Jourdan Saunders

00:04

Welcome to Inclusive Starter Key session.

Jourdan Saunders

00:08

So today's session we'll be talking about inclusive and accessible social media.

Jourdan Saunders

00:15

My name is Jourdan Saunders, my pronouns are she/her, my visual description is I have brown skin, my hair is half up, half down, and I am wearing a black and white striped shirt, I am sitting in a black and white chair.

Jourdan Saunders

00:34

And in the background on top of my white desk is a stack of books, and a gold reindeer.

Jourdan Saunders

00:42

Thank you for joining me today, I look forward to sharing all the information about how to ensure your social media is inclusive and accessible.

Jourdan Saunders

00:53

Now keep in mind, this is just a shorter version.

Jourdan Saunders

00:58

So we have a longer version, as well, that will cover more in detail about other ways to make your social media inclusive and accessible.

Jourdan Saunders

01:09

These are just reference keys.

Jourdan Saunders

01:11

So you will be able to continue to reference back and to get started with actionable ways to ensure everyone is included.

Jourdan Saunders

01:22

So to give you a little bit of background information about me your session host, I have been a Speech Language Pathologist for over 11 years.

Jourdan Saunders

01:35

And I switched to start my own business as the CEO of The Resource Key, which solely focused on inclusive and accessible marketing.

Jourdan Saunders

01:48

And my journey really started after listening to all of the children and adults that I worked with over the years, as well as observing and how each individual felt like they were not included in the community.

Jourdan Saunders

02:08

As well as I observed that with a lot of different children and adults that I work with, with different disabilities.

Jourdan Saunders

02:14

Marketing, I feel like has a huge impact on how we perceive things.

Jourdan Saunders

02:19

And that is why I found that The Resource Key to really change the narrative surrounding how people view people with disabilities, as well as ensuring inclusion and accessibility in marketing.

Jourdan Saunders

02:34

So, fun fact, I've worked across seven different industries over the years, ranging from hospitality to the funeral home industry.

Jourdan Saunders

02:44

And through those different experiences working in different industries, I feel that a lot of my perspective, and just how I view the world, and even from a business perspective has helped me to continue to grow.

Jourdan Saunders

03:02

And also utilize my experience in those different industries to contribute to my business.

Jourdan Saunders

03:10

I have Aphantasia, which, if you're not familiar with it, I am not able when I close my eyes, and if you say to visualize a horse running, I'm not able to bring those pictures up to be able to visualize that.

Jourdan Saunders

03:30

So that's the best way to be able to explain that a lot of people are able to close your eyes and visualize.

Jourdan Saunders

03:39

So they really, whenever anyone references Aphantasia a lot of times the definition would be image free thinking.

Jourdan Saunders

03:48

So I'm not able to create pictures of familiar objects, people or places in my mind's eye.

Jourdan Saunders

03:54

So like when I close my eyes and not able to bring up a picture of something.

Jourdan Saunders

04:01

I would definitely say I'm in program builder.

Jourdan Saunders

04:04

I love to build things. And so I think that carries over into a lot of the work that I do as well over the years and also at The Resource Key.

Jourdan Saunders

04:19

Alright, so here pictured on the screen are two different images. So one is a picture of a single key. And the other picture is a picture of multiple keys.

Jourdan Saunders

04:32

And I love these two different images because it really describes how I view accessibility.

Jourdan Saunders

04:41

A lot of times we think that accessibility would be from one angle so if I am able to get this then everything will be accessible.

Jourdan Saunders

04:56

And I would say my perspective was like that.

Jourdan Saunders

05:00

Based off of when I was doing direct speech therapy, a lot of times, depending on the individuals that I was working with, I would think from more of a single minded perspective.

Jourdan Saunders

05:14

So from the one key where, alright, if this person has these types of accommodation support, then that's it, and they may not need anything else.

Jourdan Saunders

05:27

And that's not how it is, in reality.

Jourdan Saunders

05:32

So really, just stepping outside of the therapy room has allowed me to shift my perspective as well.

Jourdan Saunders

05:38

And to see how many different keys that's why I love the image of the mailbox keys, and some of the mailboxes are closed, some of them are open with the different keys, because I really think accessibility.

Jourdan Saunders

05:53

There's so many different layers of accessibility in so many different aspects, and so many different types of disabilities, and no one disability presents exactly like the other.

Jourdan Saunders

06:05

And I think that's the same for accessibility, even though you may implement one area of accessibility into your business, if you go into maybe a different industry, you may have to adapt, or it may look a lot different.

Jourdan Saunders

06:20

So these are the keys, I like to call them.

Jourdan Saunders

06:25

Alright, so the Inclusive Keys.

Jourdan Saunders

06:29

So now we're at the image with the multiple piece hanging from the different mailboxes.

Jourdan Saunders

06:37

So the four areas that I always like to look at when I think of inclusive keys are alignment is number one.

Jourdan Saunders

06:46

Number two is access.

Jourdan Saunders

06:49

Number three is accountability.

Jourdan Saunders

06:50

And number four is attached.

Jourdan Saunders

06:53

So why did I choose those?

Jourdan Saunders

06:56

Well, the first one is alignment. So if you can think of a key, you really need to have it aligned with where you're unlocking, in order for that, the door to open or whatever you're trying to open.

Jourdan Saunders

07:11

So I think of that, as well as with accessibility, because everything is aligned.

Jourdan Saunders

07:18

So you can go into one area, and maybe you can have something be accessible.

Jourdan Saunders

07:24

But in order to truly have accessibility, you really need it embedded in every aspect of everything it needs to be aligned.

Jourdan Saunders

07:33

I like to think of it from a business standpoint, let's say if you go to a website, and the website is accessible, but if someone goes to apply for a job, and you send them to a external link for your job application site, that maybe he's a third party vendor, and that website is not accessible, then we have a disconnect in your processes not aligned.

Jourdan Saunders

08:01

So that's why I really think alignment is a huge key when we're talking about accessibility, because it really equates to how things are aligned.

Jourdan Saunders

08:14

Access. You know, that one goes without saying, in order for you to really ensure all people are included, they need to be able to have access to trainings at work, access to your social media posts.

Jourdan Saunders

08:32

Let's say you're posting a job opportunity on social media, and you don't include alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

08:40

If someone is, let's say, blind and uses assistive technology, screen reader, screen readers are a form of assistive technology, if they they get to an image of your job posting and the alternative text is empty.

Jourdan Saunders

09:00

Well, it's going to scan that picture and there's not going to be any information for the person to know what exactly is included in that post.

Jourdan Saunders

09:13

So they're going to miss out and they're not going to have access to that information.

Jourdan Saunders

09:18

So access really, we have to look at all different components in all different areas when it comes to access.

Jourdan Saunders

09:29

The third one is accountability.

Jourdan Saunders

09:33

We really have to be accountable.

Jourdan Saunders

09:39

It's one thing for someone to tell us. Right?

Jourdan Saunders

09:44

You have to you know, do this by the end of the day.

Jourdan Saunders

09:48

But it's another thing for us to take the initiative and take the accountability to say hey, you know it is just as much as my job to be able to contribute and ensure that no one's left out.

Jourdan Saunders

10:00

And taking on that accountability, in the smallest of ways or the biggest of ways.

Jourdan Saunders

10:08

The fourth one is attached. So this one, a little bit goes back to alignment.

Jourdan Saunders

10:13

But when I think of attached, I think of just, it's ongoing, it just reminds me even of accessibility journey that you're always learning and you're always attaching something else.

Jourdan Saunders

10:30

To make an experience successful, or product accessible, whatever it may be, so you're, you're learning and attaching.

Jourdan Saunders

10:38

Nothing really ever is necessarily disconnecting, or you're not really taking something off, typically, a lot of times with accessibility, or at least in my experience, I've learned something and attached it on learn something, attach it.

Jourdan Saunders

10:57

So I continue to attach these different knowledge points to be able to continue my journey, learning and ensuring accessibility in all areas.

Jourdan Saunders

11:08

As well as I think that can go for maybe other areas too.

Jourdan Saunders

11:15

When we think of from a business perspective, you're trying to ensure at the end of the day, everything is attached with maybe your your best practices that you're using, or, or products or different areas that may be relevant to your business.

Jourdan Saunders

11:38

Great. So the social media keys that we are going to discuss today.

Jourdan Saunders

11:43

And they are pictured on the slide are hashtags, image descriptions, alternative text, color contrast, and by each word on this slide, there's a icon that represents each area of the social media cues that we'll be talking about.

Jourdan Saunders

12:04

So the first one, and I mentioned it before, but you also have your outline.

Jourdan Saunders

12:10

And there's some other resources that will be helpful when you're referencing the different areas to further your journey.

Jourdan Saunders

12:21

So for hashtag, today, we're going to talk about camel case.

Jourdan Saunders

12:25

And with CamelCase. It happens when you CamelCase something you're capitalizing the first letter of the word in a phrase or sentence without spaces.

Jourdan Saunders

12:40

So we'll separate the word when, let's say, the screen reader, which I know I described earlier, is a type of assistive technology.

Jourdan Saunders

12:50

So if someone that's using a screen reader, it could be someone that blind or has low vision, dyslexia. A lot of different individuals may use it a screen reader, but if the screen reader is you're using it, if someone's using the screen reader, and you have hashtags that are all lowercase, it's going to read as a run on, run on words.

Jourdan Saunders

13:17

So you want to be able to separate that out.

Jourdan Saunders

13:20

So how you do that is by utilizing the camel case for the hashtags.

Jourdan Saunders

13:25

And so that would be capitalizing the first letter of the words in a phrase or sentence.

Jourdan Saunders

13:31

And I'll give you an example of this, as well, by referencing a post on The Resource Key mentor demo Instagram page.

Jourdan Saunders

13:54

So here you can see on The Resource Key mentor demo page, I'm going to there's The Resource Key hashtag is used.

Jourdan Saunders

14:06

And as you can see, everything's lowercase.

Jourdan Saunders

14:09

So if that was a screen reader, were to read that it would all be a run on.

Jourdan Saunders

14:15

So that's an example of me not using camel case for hashtags.

Jourdan Saunders

14:22

So if I go and click out of here, and go to this next post, on the demo Instagram page, you'll see the hashtag The Resource Key again, but this time, the T in the R in Resource and the K in Key is capitalized.

Jourdan Saunders

14:44

And so that would be a good example of camel case.

Jourdan Saunders

14:47

So now when the screen reader is reading that aloud, to the person that is utilizing the screen reader, it will have everything as separate so read it correctly,The Resource Key.

Jourdan Saunders

15:02

That's an example of using camel case, for hashtag.

Jourdan Saunders

15:09

In the next area that we are going to look out for the social media keys are alternative text, also known as alt text.

Jourdan Saunders

15:31

Alt text provides the most important details of a picture.

Jourdan Saunders

15:37

I'll show you in this example, we are on the demo page. And let's click on this.

Jourdan Saunders

15:47

So if I click on this first post, and I click on the three dots in the upper right hand corner, I click on edit.

Jourdan Saunders

16:01

Accessibility, I'm going to click on and then if this you can see where you can add the alt text.

Jourdan Saunders

16:10

And keep in mind I'm doing this from a desktop computer. But and this is on Instagram.

Jourdan Saunders

16:17

So if there's no alt text, when a screen reader goes to read aloud what is pictured on this photo, the alt text, or the alternative texts will be read as empty.

Jourdan Saunders

16:34

So the person using the screen reader technology will not be able to know what is pictured on this Instagram post.

Jourdan Saunders

16:43

So it's important, it's been really beneficial, so that no one gets left out of your social media to use all tests and make sure you add it.

Jourdan Saunders

16:53

So this is the area that you would add the alternative tests and like I said, keep in mind, I'm using a desktop computer from your phone, I have a one Instagram, I'm pulling it up, just so that I can explain as well.

Jourdan Saunders

17:12

So on your phone, if you're accessing Instagram, and you look at the pictures, there's three dots at the top right hand corner on there, and you can press Edit, alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

17:27

And there's a place where you can type in your alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

17:32

So I'm going to go to a post that has alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

17:35

So this post has alternative text and look alternative text, click on the three buttons, the three dots at the top right hand corner.

Jourdan Saunders

17:47

And here I can see accessibility I scroll down.

Jourdan Saunders

17:51

And remember like alternative text, when you type it in, it's usually if you could summarize the picture, what's happening in this picture, that's the best way to describe it.

Jourdan Saunders

18:01

So for this picture, a person is pouring milk into a mug, preparing a latte with a heart.

Jourdan Saunders

18:07

So that was the alternative text that I use for this image.

Jourdan Saunders

18:12

And keep in mind, it's a journey with all this but just if you get started, it's very helpful, because you'll learn different beneficial techniques for writing alternative texts along your journey.

Jourdan Saunders

18:27

Great and then for this image, I have alternative text as well.

Jourdan Saunders

18:34

So if you can think of alternative text is like the summary of whatever the photo is, is representing.

Jourdan Saunders

18:44

So giving if someone needed a quick summary of what was in the photo, that's what you would want to include in the alternative text or alt text.

Jourdan Saunders

19:01

The next social media key we are going to discuss is image description and image description.

Jourdan Saunders

19:12

What is the difference a lot of times people ask between image description and alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

19:19

So the best way that I can that I always describe it is image description describes the images within your content, but it is a longer description of images and just present it with more details and alternative text.

Jourdan Saunders

19:36

So in if I go to the resource key demo page again on the Instagram, if I click on this image, the same image we use for the coffee mug, the image description I put in brackets.

Jourdan Saunders

19:55

Sometimes you'll also see the image description as ID as abbreviation I always write it out just because I always assume that this could be the first time someone interacting with my social media.

Jourdan Saunders

20:10

And they may not know what Id mean, in reference to what my social media pages.

Jourdan Saunders

20:19

So I always like to write out the image description instead of abbreviating it, but some people do do ID.

Jourdan Saunders

20:28

And there's nothing wrong with that either, because then you have a description after that.

Jourdan Saunders

20:34

The other thing is here, I have the, whatever I wanted to post the message, and then I add the image description underneath.

Jourdan Saunders

20:46

So if you have something you want to write, prior to putting the image description, then you can do that here.

Jourdan Saunders

20:54

So for this image, I put person holding stainless steel milk frother in the air with one hand, pouring trough milk into my to make latte with art.

Jourdan Saunders

21:05

And the other hand, the person is holding handle of the mug, behind the mug as a table.

Jourdan Saunders

21:11

So you can, you can hear the image descriptions a lot longer.

Jourdan Saunders

21:16

The alternative text was just a quick overview of what the photo was about.

Jourdan Saunders

21:22

The other thing I want to mention is sometimes if you do not have enough room to put custom images, image descriptions are a lot longer.

Jourdan Saunders

21:33

If you don't have enough room to put it in your caption, then you can include it in the comment section.

Jourdan Saunders

21:40

So you may see that a lot of times on social media posts as well, where the image description is included in the comment sections on maybe on some of the different platforms.

Jourdan Saunders

21:54

And like I said, you'll continue to learn more and more about different things.

Jourdan Saunders

21:59

But this is just how you get started. I do both alternative text and image description because I never know what a person is utilizing in terms of if they're going to use turn of text or the image description.

Jourdan Saunders

22:17

So for me best practice, I always just include both.

Jourdan Saunders

22:23

When you learn more about the different platforms, you'll you know, learn more about how you can add in different places and how everything is set up.

Jourdan Saunders

22:43

This is a tool that I use to check the color contrast for all my social media posts.

Jourdan Saunders

22:52

And like I said, accessibility is a journey, I don't always check every one now just because I have in mind sometimes what is a good color contrast, based off of the different social media posts.

Jourdan Saunders

23:10

Alright, so I this is called Webaim.org.

Jourdan Saunders

23:16

I included it on your outline.

Jourdan Saunders

23:24

So you can just click on the link, if you want to play around with the tool later.

Jourdan Saunders

23:29

So here what it has is contrast checkers. So the foreground color the color that's in the front.

Jourdan Saunders

23:38

And it shows you an example here as well.

Jourdan Saunders

23:42

That is the color that I use for the post that was difficult to read.

Jourdan Saunders

23:50

So that was the text color that I use.

Jourdan Saunders

23:53

And then the background color was this purple color.

Jourdan Saunders

23:58

And it will tell you the contrast ratio here underneath those two boxes.

Jourdan Saunders

24:05

It so this for this one, it's 1.28 it tells you the ratio of it and it will tell you if it passes or fails.

Jourdan Saunders

24:16

And WCAG is the abbreviation that's here WCAG AAA and that is the stands for Website Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Jourdan Saunders

24:27

The A's are the conformance success levels. So this is what it's aligned to so it has would have been as the double A and triple A.

Jourdan Saunders

24:41

And so it's telling you that based off of those website content accessibility guidelines and so this color contrasts that would be insufficient and would fail as a very low contrast ratio.

Jourdan Saunders

24:59

You now have the numbers for the other color contrast that I had that was sufficient.

Jourdan Saunders

25:08

So I'll enter those numbers here.

Jourdan Saunders

25:10

So the color in the front for the text was I'm entering it now.

Jourdan Saunders

25:20

So bear with me oops All right, so that's the first one and then the background color was.

Jourdan Saunders

26:07

Alright, so as you can see, this would be the contrast ratio was 8.91 for this one, and it passed.

Jourdan Saunders

26:18

So a lot higher contrast ratio, then the previous color the colors that I had before.

Jourdan Saunders

26:31

And if you're wondering, Where do you get the color numbers from?

Jourdan Saunders

26:35

So that's a great question.

Jourdan Saunders

26:37

So if it's a post that has already been posted, and maybe I want to check the color contrast, I use an app and I have an iPhone, called Color Picker AR it's free.

Jourdan Saunders

26:51

And pretty much upload the picture and then lock the picture in and then you can use a cursor to scroll over the colors, and it will bring up the color number.

Jourdan Saunders

27:04

And that's what you input in for the background color and the foreground color.

Jourdan Saunders

27:11

What I like about this too, is it shows you how it looks as well, for this website, tool, right.

Jourdan Saunders

27:21

So that's how you can get the number if you already have maybe posted an image, I will show you in Canva how you can do it.

Jourdan Saunders

27:36

So I'm going to stop sharing, and then go into Canva and show you for anyone that creates their own content.

Jourdan Saunders

27:45

Alright, so here we are in Canva. And as you can see, I have a demo page up here.

Jourdan Saunders

27:53

So the background is this purplish color, and then the key is pinkish color.

Jourdan Saunders

28:00

So if I want to change that, then I would click on the color.

Jourdan Saunders

28:04

If I have a background color in mind, I'm going to pull the background color that passed for the contrast checker.

Jourdan Saunders

28:15

So I will copy the background color.

Jourdan Saunders

28:19

And I would insert it where it says try blue or number, so you would insert it in the search bar and then paste, right click and paste.

Jourdan Saunders

28:31

And then it will pull up that exact color.

Jourdan Saunders

28:33

So that's what's nice about this tool as well.

Jourdan Saunders

28:37

Now I want to change the foreground color for the key.

Jourdan Saunders

28:42

So I'm going to go back and you're only seeing the Canva. But I'm copying the color number for the foreground color.

Jourdan Saunders

28:52

And then same thing, I'll paste the color number in.

Jourdan Saunders

28:58

And there we have it.

Jourdan Saunders

28:59

So the background now is black and then the foreground color for the key is like a lighter purple.

Jourdan Saunders

29:12

So that's how you do it if you use Canva.

Jourdan Saunders

29:14

And then that's how you'd be able to use those numbers that past the color contrast from the tool that we use to be able to put it into Canva for your posts.

Jourdan Saunders

29:28

Alright, so we are going to stop there. That was the last social media key that we were going to repeat to them.

Jourdan Saunders

29:38

Since we are wrapping up I want to go through the last few PowerPoint slides.

Jourdan Saunders

29:43

So one of the quotes that I absolutely love, especially when it comes to accessibility, journey, inclusion, diversity, all of those different things is this quote by Kat Holmes.

Jourdan Saunders

29:57

It's an excerpt from this mismatch by Kat Holmes. And the quote says, and include exclusion habit.

Jourdan Saunders

30:07

An exclusion habit is the belief that whoever starts the game also sets the rules of the game, we think we don't have power to change a game.

Jourdan Saunders

30:18

So we abdicate our accountability, we keep repeating the same behaviors over and over.

Jourdan Saunders

30:24

And I love this quote, because it just reinforces the power of no matter how small or big in terms of changes regarding implementing inclusion and accessibility.

Jourdan Saunders

30:40

You can start today you don't have we have the power, each one of us has the power so we can change the game by taking accountability and just starting and doing something small, and then building on that.

Jourdan Saunders

30:56

Thank you for joining me today.

Jourdan Saunders

30:59

So by now, you may be thinking, all right, I want to take the information that you gave me and start to implement it.

Jourdan Saunders

31:08

And I think that's a great start.

Jourdan Saunders

31:10

And this session, I provided four different ways that you can make your social media more inclusive and accessible.

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