Rob Mineault
Hey and welcome to another episode.

Steve Barclay
banter, banter,

Rob Mineault
Whoa, what?

Ryan Fleury
double cowbell!

Rob Mineault
You know what that was? That was not a double cowbell. That was a nothing cowbell. Nothing came through.

Ryan Fleury
What really?

Steve Barclay
Yeah, not a thing.

Rob Mineault
Nothing .

Ryan Fleury
Really? You can hear me okay.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, but give me a bang.

Steve Barclay
Noise Canceling

Rob Mineault
Yeah, you know what?

Ryan Fleury
I bet it’s the noise cancellation? Yes. Seems probably canceling it out suppressing it.

Rob Mineault
Wow, I don’t like that — Zoom suppressing our cowbell. They’re weak.

Steve Barclay
I don’t know what’s going on.

Ryan Fleury
All right, no cowbell this week. Well, moving on.

Rob Mineault
What? How about no Zoom suppression this week?

Ryan Fleury
While we’re getting rid of Zoom here pretty quick.

Rob Mineault
All right. Okay, well, you’re in charge of that. Well, okay, fine. Hey, my

Ryan Fleury
Insert electronic cowbell here

Rob Mineault
I’ll have to build one in, right?

Ryan Fleury
Yep.

Rob Mineault
Hey, my name is Rob Mineault. Joining me today Mr. Ryan Fleury.

Ryan Fleury
With no cowbell.

Rob Mineault
And Mr. Steve Barclay.

Steve Barclay
You just reminded me I need to inventory my cowbells.

Rob Mineault
Really? How many do you have?

Steve Barclay
Like 10

Ryan Fleury
How many have you sold? like 12 or 13?

Steve Barclay
See the count is wrong already

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, I thought you had like two dozen.

Steve Barclay
Yeah, I don’t think I put them in an inventory though

Rob Mineault
How are you fellas today?

Steve Barclay
Oh, just Jim dandy.

Ryan Fleury
I’m sad.

Rob Mineault
Why are you sad?

Ryan Fleury
The cowbell didn’t work.

Rob Mineault
Well, it’s funny, because you were just telling me how you’ve adjusted all your zoom settings.

Ryan Fleury
So no, this is this hasn’t changed. This has been like this for months yet. The cowbell worked yesterday, so I don’t know what’s happening.

Rob Mineault
Well you have to reach out to zoom support.

Ryan Fleury
No, goodbye Zoom.

Rob Mineault
Poor, zoom.

Ryan Fleury
zoom, go. Bye, bye.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, I’ll be interested to see what happens to zoom after the pandemic. Yeah, once things go back to normal. Alright, but it’l still be a thing. It’s still it’s still in a good position. I mean, we needed a Skype killer anyways, because Skype is terrible. So sure, people will still use it to, to do video calls and stuff. So, What’s new and exciting? We’ve It’s been so long…

Steve Barclay
new and exciting…

Rob Mineault
Is this thing on? Hello, hello?

So, you know, I saw an interesting article online about, about accessibility, which I feel like it that ties in fairly well with what we’re doing today. So but before we launch into that, then let’s tell the fine people what we are doing today, Ryan.

Ryan Fleury
Today we are speaking with Mike Gifford. Now, Mike has a few different hats that he wears. And so what I’ve decided to narrow his title down to is accessibility specialist.

Rob Mineault
Shouldn’t you ask him that, like can you just do that?

Ryan Fleury
No, I didn’t ask him. I’m just doing it.

Rob Mineault
Okay, wow. Okay.

Ryan Fleury
Well, if I say he’s a Drupal, Drupal core accessibility specialist, nobody’s gonna know what Drupal is, or Drupal is for the most part. Or if you say he’s a what was the other one something analyst or something? That means nothing to me either. So, to me as an accessibility specialist

Rob Mineault
I love it. Come on AT banter, we’ll just change your title.

Ryan Fleury
That’s right.

digital accessibility specialists

Rob Mineault
You’re gonna be whatever we say you are dammit.

Ryan Fleury
That’s right. Or it could be a fish farmer

Rob Mineault
He’s not a fish farmer.

Ryan Fleury
You could be

Rob Mineault
I could be.?

Ryan Fleury
Anybody could be if I changed your title. They can be whatever I want them to be.

Rob Mineault
Please don’t make me a fish farmer because

Ryan Fleury
fish farming.

Rob Mineault
I don’t like fish. That seems weird.

Ryan Fleury
Alright, you’re a cow herder.

How do you herd fish?

Oh, I have no idea. Steve. How do you farm fish or herd fish?

Steve Barclay
Well, first you get yourself a small fish. You put the fish in the hole and you cover it over in your water. Eventually, you’ll get a fish bush. And you got to wait for the berries to ripen on it. Orange, then you take them and you put them in a stream and they hatch into salmon.

Ryan Fleury
I think I just peed a little.

Rob Mineault
Make that a lot. My Well, okay, we’re off to a good start.

Ryan Fleury
This is .. you should write some of that stuff down.

Rob Mineault
We should do a podcast.

Ryan Fleury
Steve’s quotes. Yeah.

Rob Mineault
Shit Steve says. Wait, SSS.

Steve Barclay
Wow. The SSS section. There you go. We can add that to the podcast, we’re looking to change things up anyway.

Rob Mineault
That’s Triple S. I like it. All right. Well, yes, so … What are we going to be talking to Mike about?

Ryan Fleury
Pretty much mainly online accessibility, digital accessibility. So websites, standards, the digital domain.

Rob Mineault
Well, you know, it’s funny that we’re going to be talking about that because the article that I’m talking about speaks specifically about that. And this really, this really underlines why digital accessibility is important. So this is something that’s going on right now down in the States. The title of the article is “vaccine websites violate disability laws, create inequality”. Many COVID vaccination registration and information websites at the federal state and local levels violate disability rights laws, hindering the ability of blind people to sign up for a potentially life saving vaccine. An AKN investigation has found across the country, people who use special software to make the web accessible, have been unable to sign up for the vaccines or obtain vital information about COVID-19 because many government websites lack required accessibility features. At least 7.6 million people in the US over the age of 16 have a visual disability. It goes on WebAIM a web accessibility organization checked COVID vaccine websites gathered by k h and from all 50 states and the District of Columbia on January 27. It found accessibility issues on nearly all of the 94 web pages, which included general vaccine information, lists of vaccine providers and registration forms. In at least seven states blind residents said they were unable to register for the vaccine through their state or local governments without help. Phone alternatives, when available, have been beset with their own issues such as long hold times and not being available at all hours like websites. Even the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Administration Management System, which a small number of states and counties opted to us after its rocky rollout have been inaccessible for blind users. So then the article goes on. And it cites a bunch of different examples of of different blind and partially sighted people all over the country that, you know, they’re basically having the same experience which is there, they’re just not able to either register for a vaccine or get vital information without any sort of sighted help. This goes back to the dominoes lawsuit that we talked about last year, right. You know, this is where digital accessibility goes from something like oh, well you know what, just phone in order your pizza to this really highlights what can really go wrong when digital accessibility isn’t baked in. At thedevelopmental level, and it’s leaving these people, you know, they’re they’re essentially unable to register to actually get the vaccine there. They’re all eligible for it, but they can’t actually make an appointment because they can’t access these systems and online is the only option.

Steve Barclay
Yeah, this is so stupid, you know, we’re supposed to be past this, particularly for government, like, What? What on earth? How? How do they drop a ball that large?

Ryan Fleury
Well, and, you know, I, my first thought was, we were faced with this pandemic, early in 2020. And as soon as they heard that, you know, there were companies working on a vaccine, there had to have been somebody thinking about, okay, how are people going to? How are we going to roll this vaccine out? How are people gonna register? You know, by phone? Sure. Websites? Sure. Why wasn’t this thought of?

Rob Mineault
Well, I mean, you know, it’s, it’s not like, it’s rocket science, we’re talking literally about web forms, we’re talking about drop down menus, we’re talking about text fields. And there, they’re just they’re not labeled, or the drop down menus, like JAWS isn’t reading them, because they’re not, they’re not, the coding isn’t, isn’t right. Like, these are all really simple coding errors, that absolutely can be fixed. But because there’s no real rock solid accessibility built into building these, these forms online, all this stuff just falls through the cracks. You know, they just rush these forms out, they put them up. Because, you know, obviously, time is of the essence, but they don’t go through that, that accessibility pass to make sure that everything is accessible. I mean, it’s just, it’s this is just going back to the same old thing that we’ve been fighting for, like 20 years.

Ryan Fleury
Well, even if they were to have the forms up, and roll it out to some testers through the NFB, or a AFB for a week, just to throw your screen readers at it through your assistive technology at it, give us your feedback, you know, what, seven days, you know, do some, do some testing, get some focus groups, I’m just really surprised that didn’t do any of that.

Rob Mineault
The sense that I get is that this whole vaccine rollout and especially in the States, but like, let’s be honest, I don’t think that it’s going to go necessarily any better here in Canada, but it’ll completely chaotic. You know, you’ve got all the different states that are that are doing their own things. Some of them are using, you know, the Federal tools, some of them are using state tools. So it’s all over the map anyway, anyways, there’s, there’s no real one portal that’s dealing with all this stuff. So, you know, your mileage is gonna vary depending on where you are anyways. And, and that’s just, you know, the vaccine in general, but then this accessibility aspect of it, like nobody’s paying attention to that, because everything is just a complete and utter cluster F, right. Like, I don’t know it, but you know, again, what frustrates me is that yeah, it’s chaotic and stuff, but accessibility and making sure that people in the disability community have access to this stuff always seems to fall to the bottom of the pile.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, and I’m sure both like you mentioned, we’ll start hearing some shouts and screams I would think relatively soon here in Canada now that they’re, they’re getting people ready, ready to register online and by phone as well. You know, I think we’re gonna face the same situation up here.

Rob Mineault
I think so it’s it’s so frustrating.

Ryan Fleury
And they know better down there. They know better. How many lawsuits are in play right now? Like, they know, what has to be done. yet they continually get sued and they just don’t seem to get it.

Rob Mineault
It’s crazy. And for this, that’s something that’s literally life saving.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, this isn’t pizza for dinner.

Steve Barclay
That’s right,

Ryan Fleury
This could save your life

Rob Mineault
And a lot of times, like these online systems are the only way to make an appointment. Like there, there is no other option. And so, you know, I guess everybody just thinks that, you know, well, if you’re blind, you know what, somebody around you that can see just get some help.

Ryan Fleury
Like, what not always like, if I didn’t have my wife here, it’s

Rob Mineault
It shouldn’t even matter if you do or not

Ryan Fleury
exactly if I didn’t have my wife, then it’s “Steve, can I take a couple hours off because I might be on hold trying to register for my vaccine”. You know, like, not everybody has that ability or has someone near them that they can rely on to give them the assistance. So you got to have these, these tools in place that are accessible.

Rob Mineault
It’s just it’s not hard. It’s especially

Steve Barclay
at a time when you’re not supposed to have people coming over.

Rob Mineault
Right? Exactly. Yeah.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah.

Steve Barclay
You’re locked down restriction, invite somebody over.

Rob Mineault
So again, you know, I really think that accessibility really needs to be a much larger component of web development that it is. Like it should be day one, when you’re learning how to code and when you’re learning how to how to develop apps, whatever it is, I just think accessibility needs to be a topic that’s, that’s near the front of that content.

Ryan Fleury
Let me ask you this question, Rob. Because you’ve done some web design, that tool, such as Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver, was that was called Dreamweaver.

Rob Mineault
Yep. Yeah.

Ryan Fleury
Do they have like an accessibility checker and accessibility?Ttools built in that you can access?

Rob Mineault
They’ve gotten better in recent years? But not really.

Ryan Fleury
Okay.

Rob Mineault
No, it’s usually left to to whoever’s doing the development…

Ryan Fleury
…to know about accessibility and what’s available and how to do it.

Rob Mineault
That’s right.

Steve Barclay
Yeah. But typically, something like this, that kind of work gets put out to, to a contractor. Right. And all they have to do is say that it’s got to be accessible as part of the contract.

Rob Mineault
Yeah.

Steve Barclay
You know, and then do some basic, basic testing. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s not rocket science to make this information accessible.

Rob Mineault
But I mean, I do like, I think that this is a direct result of people not taking like lawsuits like Domino’s, for example, seriously. Everyone is just like, you know, what’s, what’s the big deal? Well, here you go. Here’s the big deal. This is what happens when digital accessibility, you know, falls falls to the wayside. People die. like the, you know, never probably never before this pandemic, have we ever had a situation where there were such vital systems that were exclusively online that people needed to access butnow we’re seeing all these holes, and this is the result, and it’s, it’s scary.

Ryan Fleury
Well, and I’ve said before, I think that’s one of the pluses of going through this pandemic is it is exposing all the holes in the systems.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, but I don’t know, man, but you know, it just makes you go well, you know, if they don’t give enough of a shit to fix this, they’re certainly not going to, you know, do it for you know, when you’re on the other side of this when they’re talking about fixing retail,

Ryan Fleury
Oh, absolutely.

Rob Mineault
Retail stores or something. But yeah, it’s it’s aggravating man. So I feel free I feel for people down in the States, but man, I just don’t think we’re that far away here. I think, Ryan, you’re absolutely right. I think that I don’t know that our rollouts are going to go any any smoother, because we struggle with the same things the same web accessibility issues that everybody else does.

Now I’m mad.

Ryan Fleury
Yay, it’s not me this time.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, first, our cowbell fucks up and now this

Ryan Fleury
Right

Rob Mineault
Goddamn goddamnit

Steve Barclay
I think we’d be I think we’d best get a guest on before we die of frustration here.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, that’s right. Well, maybe Mike can cheer us up.

Ryan Fleury
All right. Why don’t we bring him on? Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. I am the one, the only Ryan Fleury. Joining us in the room is Mr. Steve Barclay.

Steve Barclay
Not the British one.

Ryan Fleury
Mr. Rob Mineault

Rob Mineault
Hello.

Mike Gifford
Nice to be on AT banter. Finally, it’s been it’s been great listening as as a as a subscriber and happy to be part of the conversation.

Ryan Fleury
Yay, we have a listener

Steve Barclay
You listen to us and you agree to come on anyway?

Ryan Fleury
We must be doing something right.

Mike Gifford
Well, you guys are always having a lot of fun. So it seemed like a good place to join in

Rob Mineault
Too bad you weren’t here. A few weeks ago, we could have we could have waxed nostalgic about the 80s

Mike Gifford
was definitely listening to that one. And it was like oh, man, like such an era. Era.

Steve Barclay
It was indeed. Fashion wise. We have a lot to apologize for, but it’s awesome.

Rob Mineault
Some of it? Let’s be honest.

Ryan Fleury
Anyways, we digress.

Steve Barclay
Immediately.

Rob Mineault
That’s a bad sign

Ryan Fleury
That’s AT Banter

Mike Gifford
it’s hard when you’re following an 80s podcast. I mean, it’s just it’s it’s it’s it’s a hard act to follow.

Ryan Fleury
It’s it’s funny because we talked about maybe doing a 90s or 2000s or 70s. And they just aren’t weren’t the same. The 80s was like the big decade. For us anyway,

Mike Gifford
for the important generation.

Rob Mineault
Why don’t we start off with maybe just giving us a little bit of a snapshot of who Mike Gifford and what you’re up to these days.

Mike Gifford
So, so I for 21 years, I ran a company called Open Concept and I got involved in accessibility about 12 years ago, with the Drupal community and started, I thought it’d be able to make a simple easy fix and in, in Drupal six that would make it easier to sell in government. Apparently, accessibility is a much more complicated thing that I had initially thought when I was trying to fix the fix the problem. And so here I am, 12 years later, still finding more bugs still fixing bugs, but also really appreciating the complexity and the the the wonders of of how much how much people interact with with the the web in so many different ways. And how much there is to learn and appreciate about people’s contributions and how, how difficult it is to fix a wicked problem. But what a worthwhile challenge it is to try.

Rob Mineault
So let’s just step back for just one second, because there are going to be a bunch of people who aren’t web geeks that may not be familiar in with what Drupal is. So can you just give us a bit of a rundown on on what that actually is?

Yes, but before I do that, I have to to also say that in November, we were acquired by Civic Actions, which is another Drupal Drupal shop that does does work with governments and nonprofits in the US. So as of November onward have been working with with this other great group of open source enthusiasts, but but Drupal is a content management system. It’s a database backed school system that allows you to create content and manage content. And it’s it’s, it’s quite popular, it runs about two to 3% of the internet, that’s over a million websites. So the chances of you using Drupal are really high like the CNIB uses Drupal the NFB uses Drupal, the RNIB uses Drupal, AbilityNet uses Drupal. So does the Queen, so does the Governor General, NASA and and so many other organizations that are, are are looking at at trying to have a robust system for managing and organizing their content. It’s also particularly useful in the education sector. So many universities have standardized on it. So Waterloo, all of the Waterloo websites are, are managed to Drupal. Same with Gil Berkeley does a lot of work with, with Drupal, as does MIT. So there’s a lot of institutions that have have invested in Drupal as the, the platform to help manage how they they they they deliver their websites.

So can you give us an idea of then how does accessibility sort of factor in the process in terms of what you guys do at civic actions,

We’re trying to actually, well, we have successfully baked a lot of it into Drupal. So Drupal is is is already one of the most successful content management systems out there. So not only is the the the front end trying to achieve dedicated 2.0 compliance, but we’re also trying to go off and do that for the backend. So we want to make sure that you’re able to, to use the the two as if you’re a blind user, a person with a disability, that you should be able to not only view the content, but edit the content, administer the website and develop on the website as well. Now it’s not perfect, but but we’ve gone a long ways. We’ve also tried to implement the the the a tag spec, which is the authoring tool accessibility guidelines. So we’re trying to do that in Drupal core. Because if we can fix it in core, yes, we help to fix our own websites, but we have to propagate these these fixes and actually make sure that that a significant chunk of webs of the web is more accessible by default. So if the web a million study comes and rolls across Drupal websites, they’re generally more accessible than other other sites simply because we’ve, we’ve incorporated a lot of things into the content management system that that that just makes it easier to be be accessible by by default. So one of them is is requiring alt text. So you can override this but in Drupal 8, you need to to have all text by default as as part of your your process of uploading images. So just that that reminder that that effort to try and make it just that much harder to go into to not do the wrong thing. Because it’s about trying to build incentives in place so that that users are able to their authors are able to to make it as easy as possible for them to make content accessible. And I think about accessibility.

It’s so interesting too from a development standpoint. We had sort of had our own little experience with we’ve been trying out a few different recording platforms to record this On and wondering, um, that we that we recently tried out, Ryan was able to sort of, you know, use the interface and it was fairly accessible. And then literally, they did a huge update, and it completely revised the UI. And from, you know, overnight, it went from being somewhat accessible to pretty much inaccessible. And it’s, it’s really interesting to me how developers, when they, when they don’t look at things through the lens of accessibility, they can really just shoot themselves completely in the foot.

Ryan Fleury
Well they lost me as a customer.

Mike Gifford
But it’s one of the things that if it’s not baked into the culture of the organization, if the organization isn’t thinking about it, then it’s something that’s going to be overlooked. There was a large controversy a few years ago with with WordPress, which generally has a strong accessibility community around WordPress. WordPress is another content management system that a lot of people have heard about. But when Gutenberg came in, it was more important for, for them to to launch Gutenberg, with an inaccessible authoring interface than it was for them to, to sit down and make sure that the new authoring interface was accessible for users. So again, they they created a rift in the community. And they they really had a long term damage, because they weren’t considering the impact of users with disabilities, not just on the, not just as as as as, as viewers as as users of the system. But as, as authors and editors.

Rob Mineault
Yeah. And I feel like the whole back end system is something that is often overlooked. I mean, when we talk about accessibility, we’re always sort of talking about, you know, the actual content, the end result being accessible. And we don’t really think too much about, yeah, like all those really cool, shiny content management tools and gimmicks, that all these that all these sites have, just how accessible are they? And is that a priority?

Mike Gifford
And it’s something that that needs to be maintained as well. You need to be make sure that leadership is is talking about accessibility, and that there’s enough momentum around accessibility and culture. So that, that there there that issues don’t fall back. And I also think there’s a, there’s a challenge with with, with trying to make sure that you how do you see accessibility issues? Is accessibility a feature? Or is it a bug? If you if you run into a problem? Is it is it a matter of a, if the website doesn’t meet WCAG? specifications? The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Is that a bug that should be it should be addressed as a sign of bad code? Or is it just a nice to have feature that you want to to implement? And especially in the authoring interface people, most content management systems, most learning management systems? See the the often interfaces a nice to have. But you’ve done a little bit of work talking about the Accessible Canada Act?

Rob Mineault
Yes, we have. And actually, that is something we wanted to talk to you about. Because I’m curious to get to hear your thoughts about it.

Mike Gifford
Well, it’s it’s, it’s an interesting act, but but one of the interesting things about it is that the it’s not just about the accessibility for citizens, they also are trying to, as part of the Act, make the the make the public sector, the most accessible and most inclusive workforce in the world. And that’s one of the goals that there the of the Accessible Canada Act. So all of the the, the government websites right now, if they’re, they’re not really thinking about on the inside how accessible it is for the users have talked to people in government departments who are blind to basically say that 90% of the software that that comes across their their desk, they can’t use because it’s not built for blind users. And that’s, you know, so there’s going to be a huge shift that’s necessary in order to to, to transition so that that the public sector is is actually able to to usefully employ people with disabilities in all sectors of the organization, not for a crew well for creating the public facing content, but also in terms of making sure that the the internal systems themselves are able to be as inclusive as possible for for staff in the public sector.

Ryan Fleury
So why do you think it has taken Canada so long when the US has had the ADA for decades? And even with the accessible Canada act? You know, we’ve heard that the government themselves have the right to exempt themselves from this act. So what’s the point?

Mike Gifford
Yeah, I mean, the challenge with the the Accessible Canada Act is that it requires so much of the authority comes down to the the chief accessibility officer, the chief accessibility accessibility Commissioner, and the Chief Information Officer of the government, Canada all making it a priority. And right now two of those three roles have not been filled. So that’s a huge issue that we have have this act that there’s a lot of fanfare around, but ultimately that they haven’t, they haven’t done the due diligence to actually fill, fill the positions that that really should have been, they should have been thinking about this back in 2019, when the the Act was was was implemented, and there should be people in there being advocates for change within the public sector with with the the authority to be able to provide funds and, and and other types of enforcement with within the public sector. And also all of the the federal agencies that are regulated by the government, Canada. So that includes the mining sector, the airline sector, like there’s a lot of organizations and companies outside of the public sector that are impacted by the accessible Canada act. But it’s different from the US, because we’re a different country, we have we have just just the the realities of our federal provincial relations are such that, that so many of the responsibilities fall on to the provinces, and to some extent in the municipalities, but that that’s now from the Constitution. But it’s it’s that federal provincial challenges. It’s something that that has has made it difficult. But we also don’t have the the quite the history of the of Section 508 and eight and the ADA, I think that the the US as we generally tend to trust our governments here in Canada, which which they don’t have that, that tradition in the United States, as much anyways. So so I think that our inherent nature to trust government to do their best is something that that I think has, has often left people with disabilities behind, unfortunately, here in Canada,

Ryan Fleury
I guess one of my fears is that if we’re relying on the public sector to learn about being accessible or becoming accessible, who’s educating them? And if we start levying fines? Is there going to be a lot of litigation like there’s in the US?

Mike Gifford
I don’t know that like most, most of the world doesn’t have the litigious culture that the United States has. There’s really interesting work on accessibility that’s happening in Europe, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, that there there are different ways to approach it rather than than litigation. And I’m not sure that that by with the government’s creating fines, either through the AODA or through I mean, BC is coming up with an accessibility act as well. Manitoba has one, Nova Scotia has one. If if the start finding finding organizations for for not meeting the accessibility guidelines, I don’t think that that will be become a court issue generally, because that’s not generally how we do things in Canada. But I could be wrong about that.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, but I’ve also, I’ve also heard you mentioned, Mike, even if you are, you know, WCAG, compliant, doesn’t mean you’re accessible. So we’re going to spend the next 20 years working on accessible accessibility standards and really not getting anywhere.

Mike Gifford
Well, I think that the the, I mean, the standards are changing. And the technology is changing. And, and there’s, there’s a lot of good in that. But it also means that, that you really have to transition how you think about accessibility from being a checklist to say, yes, it’s accessible, to to be more of something where you actually have a, you see it as a journey. And that, that it’s, it’s the importance of organizations to be on that journey and to, to, to be to set up the culture and the processes and the systems in place to see that, that their, their, their websites and their digital properties are more accessible today than they were yesterday. That should be the goal. And when we’re looking at achieving WCAG 2.0 double a compliance. That should be seen as as the, the floor for the minimum requirements that we’re we’re achieving. Most people still see that as as, as a, as something to attain is more like a ceiling than the floor. But that’s because we’re not really thinking about this in terms of delivering good customer experience. And we’re also not thinking about the about people with disabilities as being we generally tend to think of them as a small portion of the population, but it doesn’t it’s it’s about a fifth of the population has a permanent disability, one or more permanent disabilities. But then if you you layer in temporary and situational disabilities, you’re dealing with 100% of the population. If you’re looking at seniors, we’ve we’ve got a the baby boomers now are basically all in situation where about half of the baby boomers are have some form of disability. Just baby on aging, so so I think that we have to think about this differently than we have been. And and help people realize that that disability isn’t something for for those poor other people, it’s actually an inherent part of being human. And something that we’re even if we’re not necessarily concerned with with, with supporting blind customers today, none of us know whether or not we will have have our vision, you know, a week from now. So it’s really about preparing for that, that future self for that potential future self.

Rob Mineault
And I really do feel like that is, I don’t know if it’s part of being human. But you know, I’ve said it so much when I when I talk about accessibility or assistive technology in the sense that people don’t want to think about it until they have to because but you’re absolutely right, building these systems in actually benefits everybody, because you don’t know whether or not, you know, two weeks from now, you might be low vision, or you might be blind, or who knows what’s going to happen, or eventually it could happen to you. So having these systems in place, you’re not just servicing one small community, you’re actually building a platform that is going to work universally across the board. And that’s the, you know, that’s universal design. But it’s, it’s like, you have to drag people kicking and screaming into that for some reason. And it seems really counterintuitive, but I guess that’s just it’s just human nature.

Mike Gifford
And it’s in so much of how we’ve been looking at technology and looking at things. But it boils down to what is what is the shiny thing that I can get to the lowest price. And if that’s how your procurement is structured, if that’s how your your consumers are orienting themselves around products, then yeah, people with disabilities are going to be left out, the environments can be left out of security is going to be left out, like all that stuff is going to be forgotten, because it it costs more to do it right. And to to think about these products and to think about the long term. But if you if you’re able to, you invest the time to go off to build a better product and actually use the you’re thinking accessibility, security and sustainability as as things of building a quality product, then then you’re you’re going to be better in the long run. But it is about trying to convince customers that they they can’t just go for the the the the cheapest thing now and so much comes down to to government procurement as well. So many government it or say government procurement drives so much of, of the economy in Canada and in countries around the world. And if if rather than simply having a bullet point in contracts that said, this, this, this technology, this website, this the service must be Wk 2.0 double a compliant, if it was if it moved from being a bullet point, to actually being a much more comprehensive survey to go off into to engage with the vendor to make sure that they actually do understand what they’re talking about an MCs on accessibility, if they’re looking to to identify, you know, how accessible It is not just on the not just how accessible it could be or how accessible the salespeople say it is. But like, let’s actually show up, show the procurement officers the list of accessibility issues for your product. Let’s have open issue queue. So we can talk about this in the open and not guess about how accessible a product is based on a vpat statement that was written by the salespeople in order to go off and get a contract two years ago.

Rob Mineault
So do you think that like some of the problem here is just the word accessibility itself? Because it is a little bit of a loaded term and it can have an incredibly large amount of gradient in there. Do you find that there’s a lot of misconception about what people even conceive accessibility meaning?

Mike Gifford
That there is I mean, even just from the basic of, you know, can you access it. Right? I mean, that’s, that’s one use of the term accessibility. People also are asking, you know, people will say, well, it’s accessible, but but that it’s accessible doesn’t really mean anything, it’s not really a it’s accessible to who with what tools doing what task, that it’s, it’s not necessarily a trivial issue to to you just to define something as being accessible because because it’s you need to understand when you’re when you’re talking about technology, you need to understand what spec are they meeting and and how are you achieving and maintaining that that spec and and If you if you don’t have a technically sophisticated audience, then then it’s it’s really difficult to, to have a meaningful conversation about about technical specifications. I wish I had a happier answer than that. But I think that’s part of the problem,

Rob Mineault
You brought, really brought the podcast down, Mike.

Mike Gifford
But there’s, there’s lots of hope, though. I mean, it is, it’s amazing what, what progress is happening with, with Civic Actions, where we’re trying to compile lists of, of accessibility at open source accessibility tools that are out there that are available for people to use. And I just keep running into more and more great open tools that allow people to, to try and, and, and identify accessibility issues and to to resolve them as quickly as possible. I’ve been really impressed with, with the with DTS, x and the the whole community around that Open Source Initiative. And, and, and the ways that people are using x in in really creative ways. We’re using the, the Singapore government went and created a, an open source website crawler that uses X to to, to identify the accessibility problems with with any page that a crawls, using X was it doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t cover everything, but it covers about a third of the accessibility issues that generally happen on a website. So it’s a it’s a good measure of identifying sort of the low hanging fruit on on a website. But, but you can, you can now quickly identify like, you know, hundreds of 1000s of errors with with, with websites that you would otherwise be able to pick and choose which which which pages are accessible or not the stuff that’s happening in Europe around the the extent of the web accessibility directive, and the the European Accessibility Act is also really quite impressive. And I think that that will have a much bigger impact on on the on global technology and, and the and on both both the web, on government, setting the standard for government, but also, because the European Accessibility Act is geared towards private sector companies, it will have a huge impact on on the accessibility of many technologies that want to sell into Europe. So again, I think companies are going to be stepping up their game in order to go off and to deal with, with this large economic shift to to require an accessibility and to to, to helping to monitor review it in a more, more significant way.

Ryan Fleury
So what I hear you saying is, we’re still living in the wild west, we’ve got apps, we’ve got web apps, we got iOS, we’ve got Android, we’ve got Windows, Linux, and Mac, we’ve got all these smart devices in our lives now. Are we are we getting ahead?

Mike Gifford
Oh, you forgot to mention the the voice interactions like Siri and Google Alexa and virtual reality. So you’ve got Mozilla hubs and spatial and Oculus. And so are we going forward or backward? I, I think that that, I tend to think that they’re like, if you look at the web, a million study, in the next, the next iteration will happen in March, they’re gonna be doing it now for three years in a row. And the second year was worse than the first. And I would be surprised if it’s much different in year three, that I don’t imagine that there is, is much going to be much changed between year two and year three, except if if it goes the wrong way. But I think that’s partly because our focus as a community has been looking at at at training and education at at doing better audits, finding more bugs. But we haven’t actually looked at how do we fix the problems at the source? How do we remove the libraries that we’re all using up so that they are more accessible by default that we’re thinking about accessibility? When when people are learning how to program in react or Angular or with Gatsby or whichever that they’re, that accessibility is built in. and best practices are there for them to learn as they’re, they’re coming to this new technology? I think that that we’re still at a stage where, because of the the way that we’re training people to use JavaScript that, that so many people aren’t even learning HTML properly. So a lot of the semantics and HTML that that we, we use, which older sites benefited from because because they were built with people who understood HTML, they’re not getting that now because they’re there because developers are are trying to do it all with with Dibs and And then then throw area to try and provide whatever semantics they see that seemed fit at the time. So I think we are still in the wild west. But there, there is hope that there are our new patterns that are creating or they’re coming about whether that’s with with tools like Joomla, or WordPress, taking accessibility more seriously, or whether it’s collaboration on a bigger scale we’re involved with with a project called the the weafer authors cluster, that that FOCA, which is a European Organization has has, I’ve got a grant from the European Commission to, to do a study on offering tools and to try and make suggestions about the How to Improve offering tools to make it easier for authors to to produce successful content. It’s essentially a take part beef if you’re following the Debbie cake standards, or the Web Accessibility Initiative standards. But But there, there are initiatives that are, are making it better, but it is going to take a little time before before they’re widely adopted here in Canada.

Rob Mineault
And yeah, you know, it’s interesting, too, that, you know, most web development these days does usually happen in the form of using a content management system. There’s not many people out there that that code, just using HTML anymore. That’s just not where, where web development has gone.

Mike Gifford
But if you look at things like Shopify, and they’ve got a really terrific library of accessibility patterns and themes and and examples that that store owners are able to use that that would make it much easier for anyone who has is has a Shopify website to make their site accessible, compared to somebody who was trying to build something from scratch, you know, a decade ago.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, so in a way that it actually makes it easier, because if everyone’s using the same tools, and those tools have accessibility baked in, then we’re golden.

Mike Gifford
Yeah, exactly. And there’s a lot of good tools out there and and there was, I think that the the 30 letters podcast Did, did an interview with with, with somebody that was talking about the the impact of on Wix about an Israeli law, or something about about accessibility and Wix went off. And because they were they heard from customers, and they heard customers were concerned about accessibility. And they were going to lose some customers, they’re very customer focused organization, they they introduced a whole lot of accessibility issues in order to go off and satisfy a few 100 customers in in Israel that were worried about some new legislation that was coming into effect. So organizations who our customer focused and who hear from their customers that there are that accessibility is a priority, are going to react to that eventually. And I think we don’t do enough to, to make sure that we’re asking about accessibility in every opportunity, whether that’s when we’re thinking about buying a product, whether that’s after we bought the product, whether it’s it’s publicly on Twitter, or in other other forums where you can you can ask questions about the the accessibility and the commitment of accessibility of that product and more that that’s done in the open, and that other people can see it and build on it, the stronger it is.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, really, because it’s really there, there’s a large component of this that I feel is is education. And it’s having, having the conversation, like you said, in the open, where people can see it, and people get used to it. I mean, even see this in the in the actual build environments, you see, buildings being constructed that are brand new, that barely squeaked by in terms of, of accessibility. I mean, it may have, you know, wheelchair entrance, it may have ramps, but then it doesn’t have Braille signage on the bathrooms, or even architecturally, it’s built in a way that doesn’t make it easy for say, somebody who’s visually impaired to actually navigate that space, whether it’s angled staircases, or all these things, just because they look neat, but yeah, they’re not necessarily accessible. And I feel like that really translates into the digital space as well. Because so often, developers will just will develop something that looks great. Or like you said, that caters to a certain small niche community within their customers and lock a lot of other people out in the cold because it’s not accessible.

Mike Gifford
Yeah, absolutely. And, and it’s, it really needs to be a understood that that accessibility is a blocker, just like security would be a blocker. Yeah, and that, that needs to be be drilled home to to, to in the developer teams and says that it’s not something that is forgotten about. But but that takes customers to asking for it on all the levels and making sure that that, that the the, the people making the decisions within the organization, the businesses that are making these products are really aware of that. We can’t assume that that developers are going to have the time to, to research accessibility best practices, we need to try and build it in by default, so that they’re the packages that they’re using, that they’ve selected, are already including many of the accessibility defaults that they would would need in order to go off and produce a reasonably accessible site.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, and you know, when I want to be like you, I think I want to be optimistic about this, because I do really think that the conversation has really come a long way in the last five years, I think people accessibility is is much more at the on people’s lips these days than it ever used to be.

Mike Gifford
Yeah. But but it’s also been a huge transition. So I was was so just just you know, dealing with with we’ve got a cabinet we’ve had, we had two cabinet ministers in the last term that had had disabilities. Now Carla, Carla Qualtrough was still a minister, in the Trudeau cabinet with with a disability. And as I understand that, she needs to view PDFs in a large print format in order to be able to read them. So she has some sight but needs to be in large print to be able to to access the content. But the whole mechanism of the Government of Canada is built around, you know, PDFs, that is the it’s it’s we haven’t fully digitized our processes we’ve taken, we’re basically looking at at, we’ve taken the paper documents that we had 100 years ago, and we turn them into electronic facsimiles of that information in the PDF. And then then we’re wondering why these aren’t accessible, it’s like, well, you wouldn’t expect paper to be be able to be scaled and wouldn’t be able to to be be managed. And we haven’t taken a jump to have digitally native documents that we’re using, we’re not looking at, at how to how to build in systems that are able to take advantage of the technology because PDFs are a crappy format for storing and organizing information. They’re, they’re a legacy throwback system that doesn’t work well on mobile phones, it doesn’t. It’s not secure. It’s not. It’s not any, it has the advantage, the biggest advantages is that it’s easy for people to produce, but it’s really hard to make sure that they’re accessible. They’re it’s hard for machines to read them if you’re looking at trying to create a machine readable system that then organizes and collects information. So it’s not future compatible, either. But but we could transition to going head and having a government that is that is digital native that that is is moving beyond paper, facsimiles, and looking at at supporting more inherently accessible digital formats.

Ryan Fleury
I just hope we don’t get to the point where the government says or any entity using, you know, inaccessible PDFs or documents of whatever sort, you know, I hope they don’t come and say, Well, you know, your screen reader now can scan OCR, a PDF or a file and import it into Word, and now you have, you have access to that text, or, you know, whatever the case may be, you know, both JAWS and NVDA have that ability now, so and you know, iOS has the screen recognition, you know, it’ll try to identify a picture or image on the screen. So is that kind of letting people out of their responsibility to make things accessible,

Mike Gifford
Artificial intelligence is, is a, I think that it’s a is both a real hope, but also a real potential challenge. And but I think we’re thinking about it the wrong way, we’re thinking about it as how can we use this, this machine learning algorithm to go off and replace human effort. And I think if we, as long as we’re thinking about that, we’re not going to, we’re not gonna we’re gonna be doing a disservice to people with disabilities. If instead of that approach, we look at intelligence augmented the idea that we want to go off and to make it as easy as possible for the content to be high quality content, and we’re going to make it we’re going to replace a lot of the drudgery of creating this this information. So that the, the the author can can focus on creating good quality content, then I think we’re in a different situation, if we can make that transition about how we think about machine learning. In terms of old text, you there’s never going to be a a an A program that’s going to be able to provide good quality, alt text for for users and in situations because so much about about machine about good old text is actually putting it in context. And you’d have to understand what the author’s intentions were. And how do you try and present the the intentions of the author to a way that would be meaningful and add add, add flourish or context to the story you’re trying to tell. And artificial intelligence does not work magic? It is it’s an algorithm it is math. So it can it can look at the the the pictures and and try and make judgments based on the pictures based on on on images of previous pictures that have come beforehand. But it can’t read an author’s mind and interpret what what that content should be.

Rob Mineault
I could see how something especially going to the PDF example, it’s a great example to use because PDFs have been around for so long. And now they’re just used across the board. They’re ubiquitous amongst businesses. So even if tomorrow, somebody developed a format that did the same thing as a PDF accepted it built a differently and built it so that it was completely accessible out of the box. Well, then you have the problem of Okay, well, how do we roll this out? How are we possibly going to get people to stop using PDFs? And did you use this new format, so I can really see that how that can be a real issue, as well, even if we do develop the tools?

Mike Gifford
Well, I mean, the technology is already there. I mean, Epub is a pretty solid format, there’s there’s some, the biggest problem with the pubs is that they’re that the browsers don’t open them natively. So you have to add an add on in order to go ahead and to to open an Epub. But it’s just encapsulated HTML. So that works just fine. There’s, there’s the idea of taking, having having a single like HTML, mobile HTML files, or HTML files. So you can save a web page as a single HTML file. And it’ll encode all the information together into a single HTML file that’s accessible. Because it’s HTML, it has that semantics built into it. So we don’t mean for that matter, we’re looking at at Microsoft Office, or the the Open Office, Open Document Format, both of those are reasonably accessible document format. So we’re not waiting for some some new technology to come about, it’s about setting up political priorities to say, we’re going to make it inconvenient to put PDFs up there, we’re going to go up and publicly dissuade people from using PDFs. Because otherwise, we’re just we’re, we’re throwing, we’re going to be throwing a lot more money at a problem. And the longer we wait to go off to, to stop producing PDFs, the more the bigger technical debt we’re going to have, because the accessibility challenges, the legal challenges that we have around PDFs are not going away.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting, you know, and not only that, I mean, Epubs are HTML, I mean, the file sizes of those compared to PDFs are pretty major, like, there’s so much smaller, and you can you can cram so much more information into a smaller file size. It just, it makes sense, right across the board. But, you know, it’s just making that switch getting people on board is what the challenges,

Steve Barclay
Yeah, how to convince people to transition that much legacy documentation?

Rob Mineault
Yeah.

Mike Gifford
To some extent, you need to triage the the, the information and be able to say, for the the information that’s already out in a PDF format, then you How do we prioritize that information and make sure that the the legacy content is dealt with in a in a in a way that that is it provides the most value, because I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to go off and to make documents from 1990 that are in a PDF format accessible, that that is a will be it will be a long process to to do that. And it would be something that that if we’re going to try and digitize everything that would take a huge, a huge budgetary commitment to do. But if you knew that you could ask for any document that the Government of Canada had, and get it in internet accessible ePub format within a you know, a one week process that would probably be just fine. And I mean, it’s not like PDFs are bad format for everyone. For for a lot of I mean for printing, which is what they were defined for. It works quite quite well for for other things, it doesn’t work so well. But but it is still is quite a useful format for archiving information for for providing a if you want to print it out, it’s useful if you want to just look at it on your screen and see it in there. Pretty format on your screen with with like you would a magazine, your PDFs are still quite useful. But But I think that there’s there’s reason to hope, but it does still require collective action and still does require us building on, on the commitments and promises that governments have made, and holding people to account for, for what they’ve promised to do. And I think that there’s, there’s so much, I mean, we’re now in a position where we’re so many people are working remotely, and that’s, that’s really good for some people with disabilities, it’s really been a wonderful thing. For other people, it’s been much more of a challenge, and whether that’s based on on disability or based on, you know, just the, the, your personality type. But but I think we need to be thinking as a society, how do we, how do we try and, and keep the good parts of distributed teams that are for people who are able to work remotely, but but also try and find ways to, to have people have that type of in person encounter and engagement use some sort of hybrid method to allow people to engage with each other? Post COVID?

Rob Mineault
Right. Mike, can you give us a bit of an idea of what you guys do over there at Civic Actions?

Mike Gifford
So I’ll just give a quick, a quick summary of Civic Actions, it says a lot of work with the with government and nonprofit agencies, they acquired open concepts assets back in November, and are beginning to do work in Canada, both with the Governor of Canada, but also with with other organizations, civic actions has been around for I think it’s for 17 years, I think. And there’s over 100 employees that are are it’s a it’s a distributed workforce, everyone works in a distributed fashion. And, and so it’s, it’s, it’s a neat team that that that works with with open source software and collaborate and contribute back to to a number of different open source communities. There’s, they’ve done, done a lot of work around agile and agile, procurement and agile software development. So that’s another area that they’ve they’ve they’ve built is one of the core core elements of the team. But they they realized that, that accessibility was something that they, they needed to, to do more of, and that there was was an opportunity to, to, to bring on the expertise of, of open concept into the, into the company in order to to, to be able to, to position themselves better for government contracts, but also to be able to, to be to have a bigger impact, because because the impact is there, they’re very much an impact driven company and want to to make the world a better place. And by by making software more accessible, and by helping our clients work with with build more accessible content, and then it’s something that that that is is, you know, is really quite quite useful. We’re building out a new, a new service offering, that’s that’s looking at, at trying to increase accessibility confidence in organizations, and to to help organizations not only look at the, the accessibility errors, that that, that might be on their website, but also look at the processes and policies that they have internally in order to, to find ways that they can, can improve and to to build more confidence as as a team and to to to make better choices about about their their about software vendors that they choose and looking at how to build in more more accessibility expertise into their, their own team into the various different roles of that any material organization has to maintain digital properties.

Rob Mineault
You are fighting the good fight. Good, sir.

Mike Gifford
Thank you, Rob.

Rob Mineault
All right. Well, this and where can people find civic actions if they are so interested in looking you guys up?

So you can find civic actions at civic actions calm and it’s also on Twitter. It’s at civic actions. You can find me at at m Gifford on Twitter. And it’s Mike Gifford at civic actions calm if you want to send me an email. So it was great chatting with you all.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Mike for taking the time. Much appreciated.

Mike Gifford
Okay, guys,

Ryan Fleury
Take care

Rob Mineault
Wow, what a cool guy.

Steve Barclay
Why didn’t the government hire him to do the COVID websites?

Rob Mineault
That’s right. They didn’t talk before they launched them.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, exactly. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are qualified to do it. They just didn’t. They threw up some forms and there you go.

Rob Mineault
Ah, but it’s always nice to talk to somebody who’s a listener. I had no idea that he actually listened to the show.

Steve Barclay
Yeah, we know for sure we’ve got at least what two listeners now.

Rob Mineault
Wait, what? Who? Your mom, who else listens to this show?

Steve Barclay
Now, that Shan guy.

Rob Mineault
Oh, Shan Yeah, sure. Right, right, right. Shout out to Shan

Steve Barclay
Our other listener.

Rob Mineault
See, we’re just we just want an email from him next week. We always know when we give a shout out to him. We’ll get an email. Email Ryan, Shan, he’s lonely.

Ryan Fleury
I read all emails sent to cowbell@atbanter.com.

Rob Mineault
Is that you so? I don’t know if that’s a promise or a threat?

Ryan Fleury
You decide.

Rob Mineault
Oh, Lord, what a day, man. I’m I’m bushed. You guys. Like this is after getting angry earlier. And then that really great conversation with Mike man. Crazy. Ready for a nap. Hey has anyone heard from Rick lately?

Steve Barclay
Hey, send a couple of messages earlier. I think we usually get a “Hello” from him in the morning. But that’s about it.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, I saw those but I just thought I thought maybe one of you guys had actually talked or interacted with him lately.

Ryan Fleury
And I dropped my computer off earlier this week. Fixing and replacing the fan in there. Uh huh. So it sounds like he’s doing all right. Yeah.

Rob Mineault
It will be nice. When this pandemics over, to go get some breakfast one morning. I do have to admit that I do, miss.

Ryan Fleury
Well, we’ll do it before the pandemics over but at least we’ll do it once where you’re vaccinated. The pandemics not going to be over for years. Just because we’re vaccinated doesn’t mean the pandemics gone. Yeah.

Rob Mineault
You know what? That’s true. Actually, I was thinking about that. And thinking about just once this vaccine does roll out just what is that gonna actually mean? Because it’s going to be weird. It’s it’s going to be –

Ryan Fleury
it just means your chances of dying are a lot less likely,

Rob Mineault
Well, still, like, you’re still gonna want to do things not all that different than what we’re doing now. Right? Because if I understand this correctly, so you’re vaccinated, that means that you you won’t get sick from COVID. But you can carry COVID, right.

Ryan Fleury
I think you could still get sick?

Or like, it’d be it’d be like the flu symptoms. I think

Rob Mineault
You just won’t get as sick. Right?

Steve Barclay
Yeah, there’s it’s supposed to, if it does, nothing else is supposed to at least reduce your symptoms.

Rob Mineault
Right. But you can still carry it either way. Like even if you’re you’re asymptomatic or you just have minor symptoms. You’re still carrying COVID. So you can still spread that to somebody who isn’t vaccinated. Yeah, so it’s not like we’re just gonna get a shot in the arm and then just go right back to living normal.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, no, they’re still on people. Even once you get back saying that, you know, they still recommend wearing masks and yeah.

Rob Mineault
Yeah, so it’s gonna be really weird. That’s gonna be a really interesting thing to see what people do.

Ryan Fleury
Once while I keep in mind, there’s the anti vaxxers and the anti masters and, you know,

Rob Mineault
so well, and even I look at it, I was looking at the vaccine rollout schedule, and like, you know, us, you know, us old bastards. Like, we’re still not due for vaccines until like

Ryan Fleury
like, late July,

Rob Mineault
Late July I think is when we would our that’s all going well, which I don’t think it will. But let’s say by like, that still means like, everybody below us is still not going to get vaccinated until probably like next Christmas. Like September 40s 30 year olds. I mean, they’re all and they’re, you know, ironically, those are the people that are the problem, right? It’s those 20 year olds are the ones that are spreading it, and they go last. So by the time everyone gets vaccinated, it’s gonna be time we’re gonna have to get vaccinated again.

Ryan Fleury
But on my theory is once the four of us have both of our shots now. I’m game to get get back together for breakfast again. I’m turning 50 this year, so I’m having a party once we’re all vaccinated. So that it’s gonna be before my birthday cuz we’re not having a party. At the end of December. It’s gonna be September, October. So yeah, you know, if we’re all vaccinated, have both of our shots and we’re having a party, okay.

Rob Mineault
And we’re gonna livestream it.

Ryan Fleury
We can do that. Let’s see where we’re all see where the situation lies at that point in time. But that’s the plan.

Rob Mineault
Cool, that sounds good. Sounds good to me.

Ryan Fleury
Tired of four walls, but you gotta get back to some sense of normality right at some point. Just for your own mental health. Yep.

Rob Mineault
And nothing says,

Steve Barclay
Yeah, I figure I’m gonna start going back to restaurants and stuff after my first shot. Yeah, I think so. I went, they’ll still have safety precautions in place.

Ryan Fleury
But yeah, my big concerns.

Steve Barclay
My first one. I’m good to go.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, I’ll have to discuss that with Linda. Her big concern is because she’s diabetic and she doesn’t want me to bring it into the house. And she’s more vulnerable than I am. So we’ll wait and see. And that is true.

Rob Mineault
Yep. pancakes and bacon. It’s all I want.

Steve Barclay
Bacon.

Ryan Fleury
Yo can get bacon for home. You know, the other thing is called frying pan and eggs.

Rob Mineault
I’ve actually been having a lot of bacon at home. I’ve actually been cooking hashbrowns and bacon quite a bit.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, it’s funny, you know, we’ve eat note or ordered. Ordered takeout. I think once since this whole pandemic started. So we’re not eating out. We’re not ordering in. We’re doing all of our own cooking and stuff. And it’s it’s interesting, because I still have cravings for fast food or, you know, pizza from Pizza Hut once in a while or whatever. But yeah, I’m looking forward to the day where it’s just like, Okay, I’ve got both shots in me now. Look out because here I come gets I’m gonna have a gastro party for sure.

Rob Mineault
Well, that’s interesting. You say that? Because I’ve kind of been the same way like, now Not really, because I don’t think it’s because I’m freaked out about ordering in. Because like it really Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes and stuff. It’s really easy to do. I just don’t I just it’s just easier to just you know, you do grocery shopping and you. You just grab whatever you need for the weekend. Yeah, I just don’t bother with it. But I have to admit that twice this week, I actually walked up to my local Subway and got got my old footlong pizza sub order from the day. And it was delicious. It was amazing. I don’t think I’d had subway for like a year. And it was like, I had it on Monday. And I was just like, oh my god, this is so good. And Tuesday rolls around. I was like, Man, I’m gonna go do that again.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, I’m looking forward to my Teen Burger and my Baconator and my poutine and

Rob Mineault
Right, poutine, oh yeah.

Ryan Fleury
Yeah, of course. And of course seeing you guys again, because, you know, we’ve had nobody in the house other than Steve’s son Mike to do some electrical work. And we haven’t been anywhere. So like, I haven’t had fellowship with anybody outside the house.

Rob Mineault
It’s crazy. Yeah, he’s crazy. It’s been a year.

Ryan Fleury
Good thing I’m an introvert.

Rob Mineault
That’s what I keep saying. I feel bad for the extroverted people. Because man like Yeah, because even for me like the first six months was kind of a cakewalk. But after that, it starts to be like, Okay, this is like not all that cool as I thought it was. So yeah, it’d be nice to get all this shit or with instead just peek. I’m sick of you know what I’m sick of. I’m just sick of people. Like the conspiracy theories and because all that stuff was funny at first, but now it’s just getting really annoying. Everybody has an opinion on what they think the science should be. And it’s really pissing me off.

Ryan Fleury
Well, you’re in quite the …

Rob Mineault
I know. in a bad mood, I’m sorry. Turning it into the rant show. All right, let’s let’s cap this off before somebody gets hurt.

Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Fleury
Yes, Rob.

Rob Mineault
Hey, where can people find us?

Ryan Fleury
ATbanter.com

Rob Mineault
Hey, they can also drop us a line if they so desire at cowbell@atbanter.com.

Steve Barclay
And they can also get us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Rob Mineault
We want you to join us on the Facebook. Except for Steve. Steve is not on Facebook.

Ryan Fleury
Yes, he is. Oops, right. Sorry. No, he’s not. That was before.

Steve Barclay
That’s just that’s just to admin, the Canadian Assistive Technolgy page.

Rob Mineault
Yes. He will not argue with you. So don’t even bother reaching out and baiting him. Don’t you dare tell him that the earth is flat or that vaccines don’t work?

Ryan Fleury
Or how to farm fish.

Rob Mineault
All right, well, I think that is going to do it for us this week fellows. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. A big thanks to Mr. Mike Gifford for joining us and having a rousing conversation about digital accessibility. And we will see everybody next week. Fix that cowbell.