[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 376 entitled exploring typography and accessibility with Piccia Neri. It was published on Thursday, the 6th of June 2024.
Before I begin my conversation with Piccia, a few bits of housekeeping. The first thing to mention is that if you want to subscribe to what we do on WP Builds, which is typically a podcast like you're listening to now, which comes out on a Thursday, but also the this week in WordPress show, which is recorded on a Monday and then comes out on a Tuesday. Well, head over to wpbuilds.com forward slash subscribe. And give us your email address and we will send you emails about those bits of content and pretty much nothing else.
If you would like to advertise on the podcast, we are very happy to hear from you. wpbuilds.com forward slash advertise, and you'll hear from a couple of our happy sponsors in just a moment.
Another thing to say is that Piccia has very, very kindly given us a coupon code for upcoming accessibility masterclass. It's running between the 18th and 20th of June in 2024, so not too far away. And you can use the coupon code wpbuilds13, to get yourself a discount. Find the links in the show notes at wpbuilds.com. Search for episode number 376, and scroll down to the bottom where all of the links are housed.
The other thing to mention is that I'm going to be at WordCamp Europe into Torino next week. So there won't be a podcast episode. I'll be busy there. But if you find me and you'd like a chat, that would be really nice. Come and say hi, as you probably know, I'm fairly good at talking. So it wouldn't bother me in the slightest, if you came and tapped me on the shoulder, love to get into a conversation with anybody that happens to listen to our podcast. See you there.
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Right. What have we got for you today? Well, as I said, it's an episode with Piccia. She's talking to us today all about accessibility and typographic. And how in her opinion, typography is one of the first things that you need to worry about on your website and how it directly links to accessibility. We really get into that, but also of great interest maybe is a brand new show that I did with Piccia Neri. We're calling it U & I, check it out. You know, she talks about UI, U & I.
And if you had to wpbuilds.com. And you search in the menu at the very, very top. There's an archives menu, and if you search down for U & I archive, you'll be able to find the very first show that we recorded, and Piccia really gets into the weeds of this topic and why she thinks it's not only the right thing to do to treat accessibility as an important thing, but a profitable thing to do as well. Because of all of the new legislation, which is coming down. And also the fact that you're tapping into a giant market, all the people who have some kind of accessibility need.
Anyway, we get into all of that, Piccia gives us loads of data about why this is important, and she binds it all around the subject of typography.
So I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Piccia Neri. Hello Piccia.
[00:04:47] Piccia Neri: Hello, Nathan. Thank you so much for having me. Not for the first time.
[00:04:53] Nathan Wrigley: No, we've had many chats, actually. We chat a lot. I'd say one of the, one of the people that I chat to most online, is you, we chat in all sorts of ways, slack and video calls and all sorts. But, it's been a while since we've had you on the podcast, but you're back. And, we're gonna talk a little bit about accessibility and typography in particular.
Before we do that though, for those people that don't know you, can I just give you a two minute slot to give us your bio, tell us a little bit about you, your background, your interest in typography and web design and all of that. So you've got two minutes, the clock is running. Go.
[00:05:30] Piccia Neri: Two minutes is almost too long. I am a designer who started. who learned how to design by designing books a long time ago. Therefore, typography was really my main focus, and I absolutely loved it. And this was before the, actually before the internet. We ki, which kind of ages me, but I was famous in my very small company that I founded with a group of friends.
We were doing arts publishing, catalogs and art books. And I was famous for being able to identify a typography. type A typeface. Anywhere, and I always got it right. We had this book, big huge book, thick with tight Faces and I loved it. I wonder who has it now actually. So that's where my interest in topography started, and then a few years and then I pivoted into design with WordPress, quite a few years ago now.
At least a decade or longer actually. Scary. I think my first blog was 2009 and then I had to. Adapt my skills to the internet, obviously, because it's, even though design remain the same, but it's a different skill set entirely and above all, it's a very different mindset. When I was a book designer and a successively, a creative designer creating. Images. I never thought about accessibility and I'm not even ashamed to say that. It just didn't come into it with books. Yeah, you need to make your books legible, obviously, but it was a very different mindset. And then a few years ago I started realizing that if you wanna talk about UX user, good user experience and teach good user experience, you can't bypass accessibility.
It's fundamentally. An essential part of a good experience because everybody should have a good experience on the web regardless of ability. So that's where we are now. I dunno if I filled two minutes
[00:07:34] Nathan Wrigley: No, I think that's, yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. That's great. So, we've got a little bit of a background on you, just apropos of nothing, just segueing just for a minute. So do you, ever wish that you were still doing, I. Like print and books. Is there a part of you which regrets at any moment stepping into the web and dropping the print stuff?
Or has the print industry become, I don't know, just has it dwindled as the internet has grown.
[00:08:01] Piccia Neri: If anybody here in the audience has a book project to give me, can I please have it right now?
it so much. It was so much easier.
[00:08:12] Nathan Wrigley: oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:14] Piccia Neri: don't move, do not move you. You set it and that's it. That's the way it looks. There's, oh my God. But the thing is that I, I don't. Clearly I don't miss it enough to actually get back into it because I could, I have still have a huge portfolio. I ha I did books for big, I for, cultural institutions of the caliber of the National Gallery, the take gallery. I worked with big publishing companies. I could presumably do it, but I don't know. Maybe I would get bored now, I'm not sure. The creative design, yes, please. Again, that's something that would probably merit its own podcast. Maybe we decide that we change the subject. But
[00:08:58] Nathan Wrigley: Halfway through. Yeah.
[00:08:59] Piccia Neri: because one of, it does have to do with accessibility because of my, the last talks that. I presented at UX Copenhagen and Beyond Teran, which is a conference in Berlin and Dusseldorf.
Mine was in Berlin and it was also accepted at, ally Toronto. But I didn't, I wasn't able to go. In the end is precisely about how to balance creativity and accessibility, and there are two things that happen on the web that mostly seem to equate. Animation with creativity, and I completely disagree with that because I have a vestibular disorder and anim reckless animation makes me, literally makes me sick.
And that's the crux of my talk, which is available online
[00:09:47] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:09:47] Piccia Neri: on the UX Copenhagen YouTube channel or on Beyond Tolerant. If you look for pary, you'll find me.
[00:09:54] Nathan Wrigley: We'll put those links in the show notes, by the way. We'll, make sure that we get those off you before the end of the, before the end of the recording. Okay.
[00:10:00] Piccia Neri: It's a, it's a fun talk, I think, because it's very out of left field and people laughed when I delivered it, so hopefully it's nice, but, so it's a real thing for me because I think one thing that I do miss in the way that I see web design being done, or product design as well, which is something else I'm involved in, is. That creativity isn't deployed very often and I have many ideas on how to use creativity online in a way that I hardly ever see. I see. Done. So again, if anybody's listening and
[00:10:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:10:36] Piccia Neri: project that could do with a creative mind that also knows the web very well and knows UX design and accessibility, I am here.
Let's talk. I would love to do that.
[00:10:47] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice. Yeah.
[00:10:49] Piccia Neri: that. because for a while in my life I used to watch films for a living and come up with concepts for pot, film, season campaigns, film posters. it was fun.
[00:11:04] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, nice. Yeah, I, I.
[00:11:06] Piccia Neri: who wouldn't
[00:11:07] Nathan Wrigley: I, I used to love getting magazines and things like that, but honestly, my consumption of paper-based media has just, it just dropped off a cliff really since the internet came along. I have this expectation that, everything's gonna be available online, and so my, ignorance supposition is that.
The internet hollowed out the opportunities for people who were into book design and magazine design and all of those kind of things. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's work there. But anyway, let's get onto the, let's get onto the subject of today. oh, please do
[00:11:40] Piccia Neri: sorry to interrupt. But we always do that to one another,
[00:11:43] Nathan Wrigley: let we do.
[00:11:44] Piccia Neri: We do, I think that, print is like vinyl. It will come back. It's not gone. It's different, but it's not gone.
[00:11:54] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:11:54] Piccia Neri: I'm gonna say.
[00:11:56] Nathan Wrigley: the magazine shelves in my local post office are full. There's no difference today with the amount of, content that's available. It's just that in my unique case, I don't tend to dwell there and buy it anymore. But then I am habituated to doing everything on the internet. So maybe I'm a, unique case.
But anyway. Okay, great. So when we decided to do this podcast episode, I reached out to Piccia and we had a little. Tiny back and forth about what we do. And it came up with this interesting, interesting sentence, which is gonna be the thread, which runs through this whole episode. And the sentence goes like this, want to get started with accessibility?
I. Start with typography now, just to paint a little bit of a background into that. accessibility is probably more important now. It's certainly more talked about now than it ever has been on the web. if we rewind the clock like five years, I feel oh, I don't know. SEO was all the rage. And then core web vitals was all the rage and all sorts of different things.
And at the minute it feels like accessibility. And sustainability are two topics which are of, real interest. Now, this isn't just driven though by curiosity or a moral obligation to do the right thing. This is also being driven by, by legislation. And I'm gonna read, because you provided me with this 'cause I probably would've butchered it.
the eu, directive or act, the accessibility law, which is gonna come into force, on the 28th of June, 2025. dear listener, at the time of recording, you've got just over a year, to get this, into place. this is compelling us. To take accessibility seriously. So any, and I don't know what the caveats are in terms of, if it's a, I dunno, a government based website or a mom and pop shop website, if there's any difference about, the audience or the amount of employees that a company must have in order for that to take effect.
Nevertheless, the train is in motion. Legislation is coming into place to make accessibility, important. And your sentence, which you provided me, want to get started with accessibility. Start with typography. That kind of felt a little bit counterintuitive. I wouldn't have made the leap to straight to typography, okay.
I'm, laying it out for you. The what? I'll give you the floor. Why, is typography the first piece of the jigsaw puzzle when we would think about accessibility.
[00:14:25] Piccia Neri: Okay, so let's say that you have still, you're still serving clients, Nathan, and a client comes to you and they need a new website and they hire a, which would be amazing. Clients usually do that, but they hire a copywriter and someone to. Write the content. You are a good web designer, so what you do tell them, that's great that you did that because the first thing that you need about when you build a website is the content. That's where we start from, isn't it?
[00:15:00] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, typically. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:02] Piccia Neri: or in the best case scenario, that doesn't always happen, but that's the way it should happen in what's, what is content made of?
[00:15:13] Nathan Wrigley: do you mean in terms of text it? Yeah, it's text on the screen, I guess in most cases. Yeah.
[00:15:17] Piccia Neri: it's taxed and it's also images. But I have actually, in the past few years, I have designed quite a few websites that actually had virtually no images.
[00:15:29] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it feels like the default would be, oh, the default would be text. And a bit of images and most of the time at least text, very rarely just images. I can't actually bring to mind a website where there's only images. There must be some, but it's a combination of text and images. And text is the big brother in the room if you like it the images go to qualify the text, not the other way round sometimes.
Yeah. Okay.
[00:15:56] Piccia Neri: Not the other way around, and therefore, what is text expressed by if not typography? That's the first thing that you need to think about. Also, when I say start with typography, I take the concept a little bit, into a, an area that people don't think that much, which is. The fact because if you, what?
What is typography for you, Nathan? Actually, I'm gonna turn it around.
say typography, what do you
[00:16:29] Nathan Wrigley: I am literally thinking of the shapes of letters. I'm thinking of the way that the capital T looks in a particular font and how it would differ from a capital T and another font, and whether it's, got bits at the edges. And I know there's technical vocabulary around that, but you know how it shaped how I, if I was to draw it with on a, with a pencil on a piece of paper, what would I, what would be the outline that I'd have to trace?
So that's what I think when I'm thinking. Font, but not just the letter T I'm thinking about the, that there's some duplication of that, that the style is represented from the T to the A to the B, and there's some consistency there, but also there's like a, there's like a feel to it. There's like a, there's a fun one that's a serious one.
That's, oh, I don't know the kind of thing I would see in the Times newspaper, and that's the sort of thing I would see in a comic book that there, that's what I think when I'm thinking typography,
[00:17:29] Piccia Neri: And you wouldn't be wrong. I
[00:17:30] Nathan Wrigley: no.
[00:17:31] Piccia Neri: that. 'cause also if you look at the, the etymology of the word, that's what this, the suffix, graph. Graph, comes from Greek and it means, sign this, anything that is expressed with a written sign, therefore, yeah, you are right. It does mean that. But when you look at it from. The content perspective, which I always do because I am a firm believer in the content first approach. When you design anything, not just a, website, I think the content dictate, dictates everything. Content dictates the design, it dictates the visual style. it dictates the user experience. That's where you should start from. So for me, that's where typography start from and I'll demonstrate why that is true. Because when you start from content, what's the first thing that you do in terms of actual website structure and markup?
[00:18:32] Nathan Wrigley: Are, you asking me?
[00:18:34] Piccia Neri: I'm asking you because you're always my, you
[00:18:38] Nathan Wrigley: You are, Yeah. We have this thing where, yeah, you pass it over to me, so repeat the question. I want to just encapsulate that perfectly in my head before I answer it.
[00:18:47] Piccia Neri: When you start from content, that, and that we ascertain that In this case we're talking, we consider content as text because usually, that's where you start from. do you approach writing your content and structuring your content when you do it for the web?
[00:19:12] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, that's.
[00:19:13] Piccia Neri: that.
[00:19:14] Nathan Wrigley: That's really interesting 'cause I'm immediately jumping because I'm a WordPress user. I'm ime my, head immediately goes into a theme. So I'm thinking where does the, heading, let's say it's a, single blog post. So it's a, like it could be a news article or something like that.
I'm thinking, where does the heading go? What font would I choose for that heading? Where would it sit? What would the font size be and how would I separate it? I don't know. Maybe with a different font for the body of the text or something like that. So I'm trying to visually put it on the page.
I'm trying to see it, and I don't know if that's where you are going, but that's what I'm, in my head, that's where I'm going.
[00:19:55] Piccia Neri: it's it is, and it isn't, because to me, and actually interestingly, I'm doing a webinar series for. one.com for Group one and one.com, and it's for three available on YouTube. I'm doing it in Spanish and in English where I talk about
[00:20:13] Nathan Wrigley: Huh. Nice.
[00:20:14] Piccia Neri: and we start from content.
And what I tell people is that actually you don't get into the visual design until much later. That's my approach, even though I am a thousand percent a visual designer, but I, that's my approach starts from the structure first. And it only gets into visual design much later because visual design is much faster if you've sorted out the content and the structure first.
So what you are saying is correct, but I wouldn't, I only, I, recommend that you do your, that you lay out your content in a Google Doc for instance, because that way you can create. skeleton structure using your headings correctly. So to me, typography, it starts way before you actually choose a typeface because you are setting, you are structuring your content using headings correctly.
[00:21:11] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:21:12] Piccia Neri: first step towards accessibility.
[00:21:14] Nathan Wrigley: can I just rewind then? So if I, so in, in the scenario that you are describing, I open up a Google doc and I'm just laying out. What my, in this case, I said a news article. Let's go with that. I'm laying out the headings and the main text and I'm just getting all of the different pieces.
So it might have a heading at the top, an author underneath that. It might then go into, the main paragraph text with, I don't know, an area at the bottom for a bunch of links and you are trying to structure that so that the headings are in the right place. You've got an H one at the top, and then there's no other H ones, and then there's an H two and there's no other.
H two's nested with inside that H two. If you want another one, it's gotta be an H three or an H four or whatever it may be. So it's about putting a typical article in this case on a Google Doc, laying out the structure. You don't care what it looks like, you just use the default Google Doc font, whatever that is.
I'm sure but then, and then once you've got that structure, you then take it over and you overlay it onto the template of, the visual side of things. I see. Got it. Huh? Okay.
[00:22:21] Piccia Neri: what I mean, because to me, Ty, you described what typography means to you, which the visual side of it. And like I said, you're not wrong, but for me, typography goes. Way deeper, and it goes into the structure first. So there's the unseen part and the seen part, and on the web this is absolutely essential because if you don't start from that, you don't have an accessible website.
A website that doesn't have its content structured in the, right way, fundamentally creates problems from the point of view of accessibility. And as, because, and I'll
[00:22:56] Nathan Wrigley: Actually c Can I just interrupt? Sorry. we're gonna do this, aren't we? can I just interrupt there? Because the, audience for this podcast is fairly broad. I'd imagine there's a bunch of people listening to this who've heard the word accessibility a bunch of times, and they know that's a thing.
But, maybe they're using WordPress with a tool like a page builder, which enables them to structure the content, without any regard for the way that they're using their H ones and h twos and paragraphs and, all of that. They're just making it look right and, so they'll put a paragraph text in where the heading should be and increase the font size.
Now that looks like a heading, but it's a paragraph. Now, why does that matter to somebody with a screener? I know I'm asking you to explain something, which is self-evident to you? But given the nature of the audience of this podcast, just outline what a, person with, for example, a screen reader.
Or any other accessibility concern, if you wanna drop them in as well. What, are the difficulties that are presented by that kind of cavalier approach to laying out your webpages with the incorrect, HS and PS and whatever
[00:24:03] Piccia Neri: The main
it is that, by the way, I completely agree. I never take anything for granted. There's no reason why anybody should know what, accessibility means in terms of the, correct HTMR structure. And the thing is that a screen reader is. a screen reader is a tool that reads web pages for you.
There's an art. It's not that easy to use it. you have to learn using it. So it's it's interesting and it in and of itself, but one, one of the things that it does is that it uses h TM L structure to make sense of a webpage. So what you, so therefore if a, someone using a screen reader lands on your, page or on your article, your blog post, whatever, they are going to first of all, scan through the page using the headings. if you are cited and use a site to scan through a page, then your, that your, the visual hierarchy, that you should set with the headings you to scan through the page and decide whether. It's in of interest to you and which bits of it are particularly of interest to you. A screen reader does that this by listing and reading the headings. It's like a list of con a content. yeah, it's a
[00:25:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Like a table of contents almost that you might yeah, yeah.
[00:25:29] Piccia Neri: It's a table of contents, so if you don't do that correctly using HTML markup the way it was meant to be used, then you are giving a big problem to the person who lands there and doesn't know how to make sense of it, because they don't have the time. To read the whole page. That's not how we read on the web anyway. Most of it's proven by research that we all really just scan a page. We don't read all of it. We only read the bits that we are interested in, so that's what. Correct. HTML structure and it's really not that difficult and it has numerous side effects.
The first one is it's accessibility obviously, but it's also SEO because using correct HTML structure and using your keywords in your headings and so on, and, organizing your content in a way that makes sense to Google when he reads it is, I'm not an SEO expert, but I am told that it's very. it's one of the things that you need to do, for SEO. and then it also helps hugely to organize your thoughts and. It makes it so much easier to write your content. And to me that is typography as well, because once you, that is the invisible side of topography, it's like we all have a skeleton.
Without our skeleton, we can't exist. So to me, the ty, the typography, the way you see it. the external side of it.
It's the clothes that we wear. It's, that. But the HTML structure is the skeleton and I, you cannot separate the two. If I teach typography, I can't not teach. Correct. HTML, semantic, HTML structure. And also what, how to. Use it and how to not use it. And I even go as far as considering other interactive elements of a webpage as part of topography, like how you should style your links or how you should even write your links. So I take it a little bit further because I really firmly believe that in the same way that we have to take care of our insights as well as our outside, if I know it doesn't quite. not, not correct English, foreigner,
you cannot have a good typography if you haven't sorted these things out, if you only care about the visual aspect
[00:28:06] Nathan Wrigley: okay. I'm just gonna interrupt there a moment 'cause I want to, just lay out what I'm thinking here, and that is that if you are. So if you are a sighted person like me, I rock up to a website. Let's say it's a news website and I do exactly what you've said, right? I'll take in the headline, I'll read that, I'll scan it with my eyes.
I'll take it in and I'll make a judgment about whether I want to continue. At that point, I might begin the article and then have an intuition that this little bit is of gonna be of no interest to me. So I'll flick through and then I'll see a heading, and the heading will tell me what's coming next.
So I'll have an intuition then. Okay. I, wanna read that, or I don't wanna read that. Maybe I'll take in a few of the headings and then back out of the article altogether, or just di dive deeper so I can take that in with my eyes. But if you are using a screen reader, if you haven't got those things structured and nested correctly, then the screen reader doesn't know where to put the person.
it, so in my head. I've taken a paper news articles, I've bought a newspaper. I've put the article on my table and I've cut it to pieces with scissors. I. And then I've taken those bits of that and I've just jumbled them up. I've just thrown them on the table and now I've said to a sighted person, read that article back to me.
And that person just cannot, because there's no structure. It doesn't begin in the way you're expecting. You can't find out, what comes second? What's the third bit? And is that kind of it? If you don't structure things. Then the person with the screen reader doesn't know where to go next. They're misdirected.
They're not directed at all. They just can't get to what they want. It's a mystery.
[00:29:48] Piccia Neri: Exactly. Exactly. fundamentally you have it. I think it's hard for those of us who do site guide us to understand what it goes, of
it goes way further than that, that it's very interesting. it's so interesting to start working with, blind people who use a screen reader and see how differently they conceive the web to us.
And even when you've done things that you think are completely accessible, maybe because you thought in, in visual terms anyway, because you do, it's difficult to think, difficult to completely pretend that you don't have eyes. Then they may actually interpret your content in a different way.
And it has happened to me a few times and it's always so enlightening and, it's, but you are are. I don't wanna say half the way there because there are, there is so much to take into consideration, about if you wanna really build a compliant website. And by the way, it's, there's no such thing as a fully compliant website because the guidelines are not even ENT entirely clear. And. no such thing as building a compliant website, which is then compliant forever. These are the things about accessibility. We can only do our best and we can only keep trying. But the point is that if you start by building your content excessively in the way that we have very summarily described, then you are very much on the way there.
And to me, the content design is. Part of typography. I know maybe not everybody sees it like this, but I see it like this because ultimately, if you are going to style a link, you need to know why. Why you should style it in a certain way and what that certain way is in order to make it accessible, you can't separate the two things.
So you also need to know how you should write a dis a link in a way that's descriptive, because another thing that screen readers do, or also other assistive technology, like for instance, if you are using a keyboard and you're not using a mouse, which is something that a lot of PE, a lot of people do, and a lot of assistive technology. Relies on that. so links are essential because they need, where you can navigate to. And if you use a link such as Read More, taken outta context, it could, it doesn't mean anything. It could be relating to anything. So your links should be. Written in a way that's descriptive, and when I teach typography, I also teach this because I don't see how I can teach you what it should look like if I don't teach you also what the assets should be and why
[00:32:58] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I'm starting to, yeah. I'm beginning to get a handle on it. I, must admit, when you, when we began this conversation, I was a little confused, but I am getting it. I'm, you've got this sort of foundational layer that the web enables you, unlike print, where there's no H one, there's no H two, it's just, it's bigger.
So it's a headline and it's at the top. Whereas on the web. There's this, whole component layer underneath. you've got these HTML tags that you've gotta put in. And if you don't do that right, you are basically messing the website up for yourself because Google won't particularly like it, but also a proportion of the population who can't access that kind of stuff.
So yeah, there's this foundational layer underneath a question I've got actually from this is. Obviously if you are a designer, if you're a web designer, let's just use that term, website builder, something like that, you can, learn this kind of stuff and you can, you can ensure that your, theme layer, if you like, in enforces that.
So the title will always be in an H one, and it will look like this, and the paragraphs will be in a PT tag and the headings will be in the correct, da. All of that. But then you, hand your website over to, the client and you let them rip. I guess there's a conversation to be had more and more with them because in the modern.
WordPress editing experience, just like there was in the old editing experience, but more so in the new experience. It's, it's easy to not get that right. You just, you put in a heading and, oh, it's a heading. Great. Next one. Oh, I'll put in another heading, but it's underneath that one and there's another one.
You've got to educate your clients on this as well,
[00:34:42] Piccia Neri: and I think you, we should all see that as an opportunity because have, I deliver workshops to my clients on how to. write content excessively and how to even write posts excessively on social media, on Facebook and on LinkedIn and so on. Because like I said earlier, and thank you for mentioning it again, accessibility is not just done and dusted.
You need to keep at it. And especially with clients, that's an educational journey that we need to get them on. And I. Never like to lead with fear, but the thing is, it's not even fear, it's a reality. There is a deadline looming. And unless you're a micro company with, less than five people, I think, is what the act, the European Accessibility Act says, you won't be affected. But whereas before it was only governmental or other types of websites that were affected by. accessibility laws. Now any website will be, if you'll have a an e-commerce website, you will be affected by that. And, anybody can. Report you. So the process usually is that the first port of call, if someone decides to report you because they can't use your website because it's not accessible enough, they speak to you first.
That's usually, that's the first thing that they would do is reach out to you and say, look, I can't use your website. Can you please help me out? And that's a great thing. 'cause then you can go, okay, great, maybe this person will gone. from you. By the way I'm doing, I'm researching all of this because I am giving a talk in September at, hatch Conference in Berlin, September, 2024.
We are in May right now, about the European Accessibility Act, and I always want to make sure that. I don't just scare people into it, I just say, look, it's an opportunity. Accessibility is an opportunity. It's not a limitation. that is about creativity as well, by the way. But again, that's a different episode, I am researching and I am constantly, consistently finding out that companies that invest in accessibility make more money
their accessibility markets, the is huge because also there's no such thing as, we are, sorry, I'm gonna phrase it again. We are only ever temporarily abled. We are only a slipping on a banana, away from having a broken arm and not being able to use the mouse, for instance.
if you're a young parent holding a child. There are so many situations in which accessibility, we need accessibility and there's so much research, that proves that everybody is. benefits from accessibility features. There are so many examples of that, but mostly for online businesses, it's insane to not go accessible because you are missing out on a, I think I read recently that the revenue, it's like the, internal revenue of China that globally what the, which, it's a lot of money.
It's like billions that, that are. Hidden in the accessibility market. So why would you not want to, to, make money outta that? It's crazy not to. So
[00:38:32] Nathan Wrigley: so it's not just the skip.
[00:38:34] Piccia Neri: we're sorry.
[00:38:35] Nathan Wrigley: I was just gonna say, it's not just the, it's not just the sort of, it's not just the, it's carrot and stick. The, stick is the legislation, telling you that by June, 2025, you have to be mindful of this, whether or not you are able to do everything all in one go or whether you just embark on that journey.
But there's also the carrot. And the carrot in this case is that you are making the web. Morally, you're making the web a better place for those people who would be enabled by your accessible website, but also your bottom line potentially. If you are a shop, for example, or you are selling something, trying to attract visitors, grow an email list, whatever it may be, you are, you're gonna be affected by this in a positive way because there's this, and you, I think you used the word hidden.
Hidden kind of market. That you will suddenly enable you like a brand new audience that can consume your stuff that couldn't consume it prior to you making your website accessible. Okay.
[00:39:37] Piccia Neri: The percentage that I hear a lot is 25%. You are potentially expanding your audience by 25%.
are a web design agency or a web design professional in any shape or form, selling services to clients, it's a really big opportunity to improve your service and to sell new services, such as, for instance, educating them on how. To create accessible content and how to the bare minimum to make sure that your website is accessible. And it really hit a, it's hitting a nerve at the moment because I see clients that had a, website that was as accessible as can be when it was launched. And now, I see them, creating blog posts or even. Social media material using the colors in a non-accessible way, even though at the time of the guidelines being issued, they, there was lesson on how to use them excessively, but now they have a new member of staff in that
[00:40:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yep.
[00:40:46] Piccia Neri: pale green text with what, background with white text on it because it looks pretty.
And I'm like, yeah, no. So it's an opportunity. For you to, say, listen, we need to have another conversation about that, that you obviously charge for, but I'm not saying that you wanna milk the clients. You want to make sure that also they deliver that content in a way that everybody can use it so that they can make more money.
Ultimately, it's always the bottom line. And for another reason. For, this client as well. Actually, I was looking. two, because then it, to me, UX and accessibility are a one and the same thing. You cannot have a good user experience without having an accessible user experience because are. Because you are excluding a 25, the famous 25% of the audience from that good experience. And how is that good ux? It just isn't, you can't call it good UX if it's not accessible. And like I said, like everyone, I do my best and. I get people to check that I know that use screen readers or other assistive tech to pages and say what works and doesn't work. and feel, never feel like it's personal and it's, we're always, we're only ever here to get better. Like I said, perfection doesn't exist, but we can do our best. And honestly, starting from typography is the absolute first thing. And if you only have accessible typography. Including the hidden part, including the skeleton of topography, which is the H TM L markup. are already much on the way there, and then when you get started, it's hard to stop you start.
[00:42:36] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:42:36] Piccia Neri: really is really, hard to stop and you start getting more and more into it and getting even excited by
[00:42:43] Nathan Wrigley: You get habituated and Yeah. It's interesting you were saying there about, there's this ongoing education opportunity for your clients where, you know, if they onboard a new member of staff, they'll probably, there'll be an SOP for that. And part of that will be, have your photograph taken, sign these documents, and it maybe is.
And now go and have an hour with somebody at the agency to teach you how to use the website correctly in an accessible way. And there's an opportunity to, to sell that as a service. And like you said, it's not milking the client, it's actually helping them out. Yeah. I, feel a segue coming on, and my segue is.
Peter, you obviously are deeply into this. You create training materials, you create courses. Is there anything that you've got out there in the web, a course that you are promoting at the moment that would help people to do this?
[00:43:36] Piccia Neri: I have three things because obviously we do need to think about the visual bit as well. That's an important part of the bit, so we, need to learn about that as well. So starting, I have a free accessibility primer, which is a very, basic course that's more for those who really need to educate their clients or their own team or their own bosses. As to why we need accessibility and how and who and so on. It's very simple and it's, doesn't pretend to teach you. It's just the base, the basics of it. Then I have a, an accessible typography 1 0 1 course, which is cheap. It's below th $30. I'm saying that because I can't remember the price,
[00:44:23] Nathan Wrigley: It's around there.
[00:44:25] Piccia Neri: but it's cheap and it. Honestly, you just follow the advice to you in that course, you are, you will. You will be doing much better than a lot of other websites currently on the internet. Because according to the Web a million, which is an annual report on the top 1 million websites on the internet, 96.3% of the top 1 million websites have accessibility issues. And 67% of them or thereabouts, are about visual design. Visual design is, it's typography. And the advice that I've given in that cheap and cheerful course is really quite valuable in my opinion. Obviously, mine, and then I have a much more in depth, workshop that is, going to happen in June, together with the UX guru, Jon Na Toley, who I am converting to, accessibility.
And he's great and he's gonna be in the workshop with me and is gonna be, three sessions on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of June. But knowing myself, I sat there with all this. All this enthusiasm and, confidence and I am gonna check my calendar right now to say that I haven't said something that is completely wrong yet.
18th, 18th and 19th and 20th of June. So it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday week in June,
[00:46:05] Nathan Wrigley: GI given that this is a podcast and it can be consumed at any point in the future as well, would, do you have an intention to make that content available after you've done the, sessions on those particular days? Do you have any thoughts on that?
[00:46:20] Piccia Neri: Yes, I think it, recordings will be available for anybody who signs up for it.
and, and, There definitely there will be a recording. I probably, I might make the recording available as a, to be bought separately from the workshop, but I don't know what the value of that is because I think the workshop, you just need to be there.
Basically. That's the value of it, that you get the live access. However, the plan is to run it three, four times a year. which, is probably which I would like to do because as happens with all my courses, there's always new things that I've learned and new things that I wanna add or that I want to concentrate on. and that also come from the feedback that I get from the students that say, okay, that was great, but it'd be nice to maybe go deeper into this side of it. So that's what's going to happen.
[00:47:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So e even if, yeah, even if you've finished the live sessions and somebody listens to this, we'll stick a link in the show notes, which will enable you to at least get an orientation of what's, what Piccia's decided.
[00:47:33] Piccia Neri: be WP WP Builds discount.
[00:47:37] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, okay. that's great too. Nice. Thank you. We'll, we'll embed that either at the beginning of the post or, we'll put it somewhere. it'll be available to you, dear listener. okay, we're closing on the 45 minute mark. That's the kind of sweet spot for me. Piccia, just before we knock it on the head, as we say in the uk.
Where can we find you? What's the best social media email address? Whatever it is. Where? Where's the best place to find you if people wanna take this further?
[00:48:07] Piccia Neri: LinkedIn is
the most active and I'm pie and is P-I-C-C-I-A. And you can't go wrong.
[00:48:17] Nathan Wrigley: there's only you, isn't there? There's only the one Piccia area.
[00:48:21] Piccia Neri: on Twitter and my handle is pie,
[00:48:24] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:48:24] Piccia Neri: like having Jack as your
[00:48:25] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, you're not gonna get Nathan, that's for sure.
[00:48:29] Piccia Neri: No, I joined a long time ago, but I'm not that active on it.
I might, I don't know. I'm
[00:48:36] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe check once in a while, but okay. Go, to LinkedIn and, search for Piccia again, links in the show notes, as best we can. We'll dig those out. And, but, yeah, Piccia, thanks for chatting to us today all about typography and accessibility and how the two, relate, collide, whatever the right word is for that.
I really appreciate you chatting to me today. Thank you so much.
[00:48:56] Piccia Neri: Thank you.
[00:48:58] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I hope that you enjoyed that. An absolute pleasure chatting to Piccia about that subject. Don't forget that if you head to wpbuilds.com, search for episode number 376, you will be able to avail yourself of a discount. If you use the offer code WP builds 13, you're going to be able to get yourself a discount off Piccia's accessibility master class, which is running from the 18th of June, 2024.
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Okay. That's all I've got for you today. Just to say, if you're in WordCamp Europe, please come and say hi, be very nice to catch up with some of the people that listen to this podcast. There won't be a podcast episode next week. So we're taking a week break and we'll be back the week after that.
But have a good week. Have a good two weeks. Stay safe. Here comes some cheesy music. Bye-bye for now.
