Chax Chat Accessibility Podcast

In this episode, Dax Castro and Chad Chelius talk about the troubles with creating QR codes and reveal the common mistakes people make when trying to make them accessible. They show you how to create them, how to set the placement correctly, and what your options are when it comes to making accessible QR codes for your documents. Chad even shows how you can use InDesign to make your QR codes right...

In this final episode for 2023 we look back at the most frequently asked questions by people just starting out in document accessibility. We also dropped a major announcement about the future of Chax Training and Consulting. So you definitely don't want to miss this episode. Top 5 Questions: Do Span Tags Matter? Do Container Tags Matter? How Long Should Alt-text Be? Can I have more than one H1 in...

In this episode, Chad and Dax discuss the merits of having form fields inside tables. When is it okay? When should you avoid tables as a means of laying out accessible form-based documents? Listen in and you will learn what to ask and how to determine if it is okay to put your form in a table. We also take a quick look at the new PAC 2024 interface and our thoughts on the new release.

You have heard us mention Venngage a few times and have featured it on our podcast. Now we thought it would be great to invite Venngage CEO, Eugene Woo on the program to talk about is journey in creating this accessible online design tool. We talk about the struggles and costs of going down the road of accessibility but more importantly, the cost of NOT going down that path. Eugene also discusses...

Chad and Dax take this session to talk about the possibility of having too much accessibility in the form of multiple patterns in pie charts. They discuss the merits of several approaches to making pie charts visually more accessible. Stick around to hear them give out some secret sauce for troubleshooting tables that just don't seem to want to pass accessibility. Their tip might just save you hou...

Are you using accessible color contrast and colorblind-friendly designs? Chad answers the question: "Does it really Matter if I make my designs colorblind compliant?" Learn some important colorblind statistics and find out who needs to make their designs accessible? We share some things you can do to make your graphic colors accessible and review the WCAG success criteria 1.4.1 Use of Color. Dax g...

Senior UX Researcher, Inclusive Designer and Accessibility Design Lead Sonya Lewis agrees to be our guest this week to talk about how the Reading Order in PDFs impacts her ability to apply for heathcare enrollement, participate in her workplace and overall online presence. Chad and I loved her response when we asked the question "What do you say to people who think the Reading Order in PDFs doesn'...

We stumbled on to an online design tool that is giving Canva a run for their money. We show you our first impressions about the product and the accessibility features it has and a few ways we might suggest improving it. We also reveal the new EASY way to set the PDF/UA Identifier in Adobe Acrobat. Dax mentions the upcoming guest and their struggles with reading order in PDF documents. Finally, Cha...

Listen to Chad and Dax talk about alternate descriptions for hyperlinks and what WCAG has to say about it. We mention PDF/UA-2 set to remove the mandatory requirement for alternate link descriptions. Chad shares a users comment "I want users of assistive technology to have the same crappy experience a sighted person has when reading long URLs." You will get a chuckle out of our "Six Degrees of sep...

CAUTION: Highly controversial accessibility topics in this podcasts: Do we need to set the reading order in my PDFs? 2. Title Tag or H1? We discuss a real-world situation where someone's barrier to information in a PDF is not vision. However, because of a traumatic event this person has dyslexia and requires audio input to fully understand the content on the page they are reading. We discuss how r...

This week's podcast is truly an amazing goldmine of information if you struggle with creating accessible infographics? Chad Chelius and Dax Castro walk through 7 Questions to ask yourself before creating an accessible infographic: What do we want the user experience to be? What is the most important information? Does Content order matter? Does color or line weight indicate additional information?...

In this episode we talk with Recosoft Founder, Paul Chadha about Decks MoveIn. This is a great plugin for creating InDesign documents from PowerPoint slides. We all know that PowerPoint was never meant to be a desktop publishing software. It is a presentation tool. However, there are times when we need to push the content limits. Instead of spending an hour or more fixing your PDF, just move from...

In this accessibility podcast episode, we discuss designing with accessibility in mind when it comes to the covers of magazines and maps in your PDF documents. We talk about the importance of reading order and understanding how a user might want to read the document from both a screen reader and a sighted user experience. This is a really great episode packed with some really interesting ideas on...

In this episode we talk about the difference between barriers, violations and poor user experiences. We review a practice we are seeing more and more of, navigation bars inside PDF documents. We discuss a few solutions using Adobe InDesign to use these navigation bars in a more accessible way. Listen in and Chad will give you a huge time-saving way to incorporate those nav bars in the most accessi...

In this episode we cover the potential risks for remediation professionals concerning the newly released Assembly Bill AB 1757. We also reveal a very important bug in the latest update of Adobe Acrobat. Stick around to hear Chad and I explain the difference between alt-text, actual text and expansion text. Then Chad reveals how to turn off the new switched layout in the latest Acrobat Interface Up...

Join Chad Chelius and Dax Castro as they discuss some great tips for presenting accessibly when giving a PowerPoint (or OneNote) presentation. If you stay til the end you will get the URL to the handout that goes along with their talking points. I bet there are at least a few you hadn't considered!   

Chad and Dax take a look at some interesting new trends from the WebAIM report published every few years. #9 has some really interesting turns in the statistics that we take a closer look at.  

Accessibility Advocate Cam Beaudoin joins Chad Chelius and Dax Castro on Global Accessibility Awareness day (GAAD) to talk about ways to keep your company motivated to take action to improve accessibility beyond the celebratory day.  

Chad Chelius and Dax Castro talk through some of the nuances of the European Accessibility Standard, EN 301 549. Do you know which countries adopted this standard? Some things we found were surprising and others just made sense. Stick around to hear our discussion on Reflow and why it is missing from the accessibility standard.  

In this podcast, Chad Chelius and Dax Castro talk about the top 7 things that usually come up for people just starting their PDF remediation journey. How many of these have you experienced? Not only do we talk about them, we help you solve them! Listen in as we cover the following 7 struggles for new PDF accessibility remediators. What is the correct size for accessible text? My content disappeare...

This episode of Chax Chat discusses what you need to know when transitioning from WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and getting ready for WCAG 2.2 for your PDF documents. We cover: 1.4.10 Reflow AA - Users with low vision who need to make things larger. The content will wrap inside the viewport instead of causing horizontal scroll. 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast AA: Extends 3:1 contrast minimums to important graphical info...

Chad and Dax jump in front of the camera for this episode. You can find the video on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@a11y . In this eposide we cover the steps to making sure your document is compliant and usable. Many people do not understand what it means to be accessible and think that passing the PDF checker is all that is needed to "be accessible." You do not want to miss the key...

Accessibility Podcast: How to use the FREE ISO-32000 PDF/UA Standard PDF Standard ISO 32000-2 is available for free! Chad and Dax peel back the cover of the 1003 page PDF/UA standard. They focus on Chapter 14 and key areas you might find useful. Download the standard at PDFA.org/sponsored-standards and follow along with us. Make sure you are using MS Edge because we found the cart has some compati...

Guests Jeremy Seda IT Accessibility Coordinator and Jacalyn Stallings Vocational Rehab Counselor tell us all about the upcoming Pave the Way for Global Accessibility Awareness Day at North Idaho College April 19th. We talk about creating a culture of change and a few teaching moments related to unintended microagressions. It was great to hear Jeremy's approach to keeping momentum and building a cu...

Should certifications be hard? Chad and I discuss Karl Groves' recent article that discusses the question and why we agree. Chad and I discuss another great question: "Do links always need alt-text?" We take a look at what WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose says and whether it supports, or doesn't support the idea that hyperlinks always need alt-text. You have to listen to Dax's analogy as he compares an ins...