Breaking Barriers: Making Your Podcast Accessible with the Blind Blogger

Welcome to Podcasting Tech, a podcast that equips busy

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and join us on this exciting journey to unlock the full potential of your

podcast. Gonna talk about something that we

not a lot of podcasters really address, and it's something that more of us

should be thinking about, the idea of accessibility with

our digital content. And joining us to talk about that is

Maxwell Ivy, known as the Blind blogger.

He also runs the accessibility advantage. You can find out the accessibilityadvantage.com.

And for as long as I've known Maxwell, which has been a few years since

we first met at a Map Con here in South Jersey,

maybe 5 years ago, He has always been out there trying to

help podcasters make their content more accessible so

that everybody can enjoy what it is that you were doing, and

we are excited to chat with him about that today. Maxwell, thank you for joining

us. Oh, thank you, Matthew. I'm happy to be here. It's always

great when I get to spend time with one of my one of my favorite

leaders of the podcast industry, so thank you. Oh, is that person here?

I don't see them. Well,

I I I wanna definitely talk about accessibility. I wanna talk about all the different

things that podcasters can and should be doing, but, you

know, the blind blogger is such a unique moniker for

someone to have. Tell us a little bit how you started with

that and where you're at these days with your with your digital media,

adventure. Right. So you know that I started

life as a car loaner. After my dad's death I

transitioned to brokering used rides on the Internet,

as social media came along I was building a community

there and as a former shorthand, people on LinkedIn and Facebook just

referred to me as the blind blogger because in 2009,

'ten, along in there, there weren't a lot of people with

disabilities period on the Internet and very few of them were putting

themselves out there as openly as I was. You know, I like to

tell people I wasn't the the most talented, most

prolific, or most consistent, but I was the most shameless. So people knew

me and they hung that name on me and it stuck and when I decided

to start a second website to talk more about being a blonde entrepreneur, it was

the natural choice and it stuck with me and, you

know, the only thing I regret about the blind blogger is,

in some cases, it's a little limiting, but I think I've finally found the

right balance with the old and the new. I just tell people, Hey,

I'm the blind blogger of Maxwell Ivy. Now let's talk about accessibility,

because the truth, the truth is I've been

talking about accessibility for years. It's just I'm

surprised you and everybody else didn't tell me that that was what I was doing

while I was doing it because up until 4 years ago, I really didn't

realize just how much of an impact I was having, how big an advocate

I was for making the Internet and content on the Internet

more inclusive. And it was only as I started to get work

thrown at me, basically, in the area of writing on the

subject of accessibility that I realized, wait a minute. I've been doing this stuff for

17 years now and I am the expert. And it's

about time I lean into that role and start to

be recognized for it more directly and get paid for it, of course.

We always wanna get paid for our good work. Before we jump

into the the work of accessibility specifically and and what you've been doing over

at the Accessibility Advantage, because we do like to talk about technology and

equipment and tools, I'm wondering what has been some of

the best innovations, specifically in

podcasting as far as equipment that allows you to

have a show and and be successful with your content creation journey?

Well, I hate to to spoil such a great question, but,

I am not a high-tech person and even living vicariously

through my friends with disabilities who are high-tech persons, there

haven't been a lot of of big time innovations that

have made having a podcast easier. I do

have one thing that I'm using right now that I really love, although it's not

as smart as it advertises itself to be. I have an interlink 360

video camera, and it uses artificial intelligence

to stay focused on my face and keep me centered in the camera

view. Now, it took over an hour with a sighted person

to configure it where it actually knows what it's supposed to do and when it's

supposed to do it, but it does work really well now. So I can

move forward and back and side and it'll still have me in focus. And

this is important because I don't have complete

control of my space. And as a blind person, one of the most

important things to you is consistency. How do you create a

consistent workspace or a consistent routine? And so

I can't guarantee the furniture will be in the same place every time,

but now I have a camera where I don't have to worry about that anymore.

So that's that's an innovation. I would say

that some of the new microphones that I haven't gotten to try yet are probably

using artificial intelligence, and, I would

also say just more people getting involved and becoming familiar

with accessibility so that I don't have to

spend as much time getting them up to speed as to what I need.

And, you know, speaking of technology, I think you were there at the

event where I won that, that very nice,

microphone at Joe's event. I took it home and I used

it twice, and then it broke, and a

while after I posted those 2 episodes, people said, you know, Max, we loved your

interviews, but the audio wasn't synced. The volume

we'd have to raise the volume to, hear your guest and then

we'd have to lower it so you didn't blast us out of the room.

So, sometimes technology can be very challenging if you have a disability,

but I feel like, Zoom, Google Meet, and the other

meeting platforms have done a good job of helping

the the novice and the disabled balance their

their sound quality so that people can really enjoy the

audio and concentrate solely on the message. And and,

certainly, there's a lot of post production tools as well that will fix a lot

of problems, that might come up with, when you have difficulties in

recording your your content. So let's let's talk about accessibility in

the podcasting space. And, you know, I I think

people are gonna hear this and they're gonna think, well, podcasts are an audio

medium, you know, what is the big challenge for a blind blogger

to listen to a podcast? Tell us what

are the biggest hurdles that you come across when

either you're trying to find specific content or

you've landed on a specific show or network or

program, but, you know, there are other things that

would be done better to make your your experience

enjoying it, a little bit smoother. Right.

So I'm gonna come with this from 2 points. I'm gonna start with

the positive, what podcast hosts can be doing

that will help them take advantage of accessibility to build

a better connection with their audience. One of the

big trends in podcasting is people recording in

video and then outputting the audio. The problem

is, is depending on who you ask, anywhere from 70 to 85

percent of your audience is only going to listen to your

podcast. So they don't have the advantage of your video.

So the one thing that would really help your audience

is if you would do what is called an audio description. That's

where you tell them a little bit about what you look like, your background,

what you're wearing, what your set looks like. If you have a dog or a

cat that thinks it's part of the show and will make an occasional appearance

describing them, but more importantly, if there are head shakes,

if there are facial expressions, if there are things that happen during the

video recording that you think to yourself, if I had

seen that happen, it would have affected me emotionally,

or it would have entertained me, or made me laugh, or something. If I had

seen that, it would have affected the way I,

experienced this show, then you want

to describe those things as they happen as best as you can. Sometimes you'll have

to describe them afterwards. Sometimes you may wanna put it in the in the post

production show notes, but these are the kind of things that your

audience who, by the way, they're just as blind as I am, most of

them, they can't appreciate what was going

on on screen while you were recording this audio that you're outputting

to your player. So I highly encourage people to do an audio description.

If at the end of this recording you want me to do mine for you

to give them an example, I could do that. That's one thing I would say

because it allows you to build a stronger connection with your audience, which leads

to more loyal listeners, which leads to downloads,

reviews, and, hopefully, email subscribers are people who will buy

whatever it is you're selling the next time you have something to sell. So that's

Let's let's not wait. Let's let's get a sample of an audio description now so

that while we're thinking about it, people can understand what it is that you're referring

to. Well, I was hoping you would say that, but you being the host, I

didn't wanna step over. So

so I am a 59 year old white Caucasian

male, and I say that because I'm a pale person. I have medium

length brown curly hair, brown eyes. I'm

wearing a white blue button down dress shirt, black tie. I'm sitting in a

generic office chair, in my bedroom, which also

doubles as my recording space. I have my back background

blacked out or blurred out, whatever the big kids' term for it is,

so there's nothing back there. No dogs, cats,

children, etcetera. No, no monograms

or, logos on my clothing, no visible tattoos.

Those are the kind of things you would want to describe for people in the

beginning of your introduction. And, of course, for me, since I have a disability,

at the end, I would mention that I am almost totally blind

having retinitis pigmentosa, otherwise known as RP.

Okay. Thank you for sharing all that with us and and

explaining what a good visual, what a good audio

description is for a podcast, something that maybe more people can be, thinking

about in the future. So what was your your second point on this front

as far as trying to enjoy podcasts, you know, with accessibility

challenges? Right. So the the most important thing

is your player and where they're gonna find your player.

So if you're using one of the top podcasting

platforms, the odds are their players' buttons are going to be accessible.

I have not been on any of the majors where that's been the

case. It probably will be more likely to be the case with

a with a free hosting provider or

with somebody who is new to the industry as a hosting

provider, but you do want to check and see if the

buttons are properly labeled. It's easier if you have

access to a screen reader or if you use a product like WAVES

or the free checker at audioeye.com. Either of those can help you determine

if your website or your player's website is accessible,

at least for the most part, probably about 70%, 60%.

It'll sell you, you know, at least that much of it whether it's right or

wrong. So your podcast player being able to pause,

stop, fast forward, rewind, being able to share your

content by clicking the buttons, or by subscribing to

whatever their favorite platform is, those things need to be tested.

And then the website where you locate it. You want to make

the podcast player on your website. I would

say it should be the only thing on the page, unless

you're using a plugin that allows you to embed

your player on your homepage and then have it display the

latest episode within that player, which I understand a lot of people do that now

as well. In that case, you just want to make sure that there are as

few elements on the home page as possible alongside

the player. So when people use adaptive

technology, whether it is somebody who is slightly

visually impaired that has a screen magnifier,

or somebody who's more impaired like me that uses a screen reader, or you're talking

about hearing impaired, or people using automated switch devices

because they have a lack of limbs or motor control,

regardless, it takes people like me longer

to navigate your websites. So

the simpler design that you have, the fewer elements that

you use on any one page, the better, because

the the fewer things I have to pass through in order to find the one

thing that I came to your website to do, which as a podcaster,

that one thing should be your podcast. So if

I have to navigate through 3 different pages

or if I have to navigate through 25 links before I find

the link to this week's episode or the player for where I can listen

to any of your episodes, that's just making things harder for

me and for people like me. So that's why I was was talking about

adaptive technology and

in some cases the adaptive technology

also can can lead to some some help

for, people that are are wanting to bring more

traction to their website. Because after you talk about

navigating a website and focusing on a simple clean design

with a minimal number of elements, one of the next things you're gonna

talk about is image. Because as podcasters, we've all got

artwork for our shows, we've got artwork for our episodes, we've

got artwork for our profile on our home page, and all those images

need to have the alternative text tag that describes the image for

people using a screen reader, but those descriptions are also

indexed by Alexa, Google, Siri, all the

major search engines are indexing those

and the only problem I have when I tell people about that

is they want to stuff keywords into their image descriptions.

So I tell people you have a 150 to a 180

characters depending on the search engine that will actually be indexed. So let's

try to split that in half and have half be the name of your company

and what you do and the other half be what's

actually in the image, and that way you get the best of both

worlds. You can drive traffic, and I am sure

that you probably spent a lot of time, effort, stress, and

maybe even a fair bit of money into creating the images that are on your

website. So why not make sure that everybody

visiting your website can appreciate them? You know,

you were talking about what our page should look like.

Is it best practices or would it be

advisable if somebody has the resources to almost make, like,

a separate page that would be more accessible

friendly versus their main podcast listening page? Just because,

you know, there's there's something about the design and form and function that

people look for when they want to create a website.

But also, you know, what is best for the entire audience so

that everybody can enjoy the content and not get bogged down in, you know,

tons of details and and, you know, tons of these,

accessibility features kinda overloading our circuits with all

the different things that we have on the site. Right. Well,

I personally don't believe that anyone

should be creating a second version of your site. I know that

the larger corporations like, like Audible

and Amazon, I know that they do it, but I often

find that the version they've created specifically for people using

adaptive equipment turned out to be not all that

great and some of that's because they don't have the right

people providing information to the developers on their

team and some of it is just lack of time or

funds or lack of care. I also don't

believe that people should have to install a plug in or a

widget on their website to make it accessible. The truth is, most

things, other than the alt text descriptions and the audio descriptions for

videos and audio files, other than those, everything you

do to improve accessibility is stuff that you should be doing to improve the

user experience of everybody else that visits your website anyway.

Okay. That's that is fair. What

about when it comes to transcripts? How often do you find yourself

using those? I don't personally use them

that much unless there's something in the episode that I plan on using

in a later talk or presentation of some

kind, but they are targeted to me. Transcripts

are great for people that have a hearing disability,

but transcripts and closed captions are one of those things

that have a large benefit to the able-bodied

community. Here's a statistic that I recently found

where people under the age of 35, that

37% of that group will not

watch a video on any platform unless that

video has closed captions. Now, we both know that's

because they're most likely gonna be watching some of those videos when they

shouldn't be watching those videos, and they don't want people

overhearing them. But that's the truth. There's a large part of

the society that is depending on closed captions because it just

fits their lifestyle and the same thing applies with audio

descriptions. I have sighted people who will tell me, you know, Max, if I have

a good audio description during a movie or a TV show, once they discover that

they're there on their TVs, if I have a good audio description, I don't have

to look at the TV. I can go do other stuff. I can follow the

plot and, in some cases, can even follow the plot

better because the narrators will tell about stuff on the

screen that maybe you missed because your focus was not

totally on the screen for that 1 or 2 seconds where

you needed to see something in the corner of the screen or whatever. So,

I would say that those types of things,

they make life easier for a lot of your people who don't have

a disability. Another good example is the text,

size, font, color contrast on your website and on

your on your website pages.

If you take a, if you take

a high contrast color, like say black on white or black on

yellow, and you give the user the opportunity to invert the

text so that you have a white text on black background,

that becomes much more easy to read and to

navigate in very bright or very dark light for

people who don't have a vision issue. That is absolutely

fair. And I do see a lot of folks who are, switching over to dark

mode often when they're at their computer. And so I could see why that would

just be something good for people to think about even if they're not necessarily thinking

about full accessibility, you know, concerns

and whatnot. So what is it like to work with you? If somebody's hearing this

and they're thinking, you know, man, Maxwell's got a great point. There's a lot of

these things that we should be doing, but we just don't know how to. How

do they work with you? What does engagement look like? Well,

it starts with reviewing their current

platform, whether that's a website, an app, or their podcast, and seeing where

they're at now, giving them a

breakdown of where they stand on the issues, and

giving them a prioritized list of what needs to

be done right now, you know, what are what are things that are

basic necessities of accessibility that have to happen,

or what are things that we can work on later. I'm

definitely a big fan of doing this at

the the speed that the website

owners team can handle as far as time and money.

And sometimes what we have to do is we have to say, okay, these things

we can't fix now, but what we can do is we can come

up with workarounds that we can teach to

users who have a disability, and we can make those available either on the

website or put a post a note that if

they if they send us an email or click a button, then we can make

those available to them so they can navigate the accessibility issues

in the short term while the owner works on that.

Then once those are corrected, then we can go

on to something else that needs to be done. We can also reevaluate things that

have been improved to make sure that later additions to the

website haven't compromised the accessibility that we just built.

I firmly believe that accessibility is a progress and not

a perfection, and so it's, it is,

it is one of those things where you're gonna work through it and

hopefully get to the point where you're in the high 90s

percent of accessibility. And thanks to my education,

you understand how adaptive check users will navigate

the Internet, so you'll be able to maintain it and avoid

causing problems to it going going forward. One other thing I

do that most people in this field, I feel

like they're they're dropping the ball for their clients is

the disability community, we love to support businesses that are making

effort to be inclusive, but most business owners, for some

reason, are reluctant to

proclaim, announce, share with the world the

efforts that they're putting in to being inclusive. I don't want I don't

I don't have any idea what their reasons are, but I just know that they

just don't feel right talking about the work they've done or the work they've

had done. So, during the process I'll do

blog posts, social media posts,

we'll do podcast episodes for some clients because it isn't just

about improving the accessibility because, you

know, part of the point is making it accessible because it'll make it

easier for everybody else that will visit your website or your or your products or

services. But a big part of this is improving the

lives of people with disabilities, and it really doesn't

improve their lives if they don't know about it. So

evaluation, advice on correction, reevaluation,

promotion, that's what it looks like to work with Max. And if you would like

to do so, the accessibilityadvantage.com. We are chatting

with Maxwell Ivy, the blind blogger. Max, before we

let you go, I have a couple questions that we like to ask everybody on

the show. And, of course, this first question is basically the main

topic of our entire conversation.

Podcasting space where we

could improve upon? Are there things that you would like to see done

better, whether it's on creation, distribution, marketing, anything like

that? I think it's the same answer I would give if we

were talking about the broadcast media. We need more

people with disabilities in front of cameras and microphones. We need

more attention and more spotlights being placed on

those people because there are lots of

blind, deaf, hearing impaired, paraplegic, quadriplegic,

lots of people with disabilities out there who have podcasts or are in the process

of starting podcasts, but there still

aren't a lot of, what's that expression, faces that look like

mine are out there in the podcasting world.

So I think that would be something that would be an improvement. More

people with disabilities on stages at conferences would help,

but there again, that's part with the event organizers and it's part

with the disabled people because y'all can't say yes to us if

we don't ask, you know? So I would say those would

be the kind of things I would think about and, I just want

to drop in a short little plug here for the for Chris Krivitsas and

his team at FOD Fest Expo including Nick Bad with us because,

they invited me to record a video they will be posting shortly to

help their presenters understand how to create more accessible and

inclusive slides and QR codes. And as part of that, I also

told them about doing audio descriptions. So Podfest in

January, there's a organization that's making the effort

to have their event be inclusive, so I wanna get their name out there if

that's okay. Absolutely. I love Chris. I've

always been a fan of his and the work that he's done, and I've

always enjoyed my times at Podfest Conferences and

actually hoping that I got my chance to go down, this year in January to

go, check out the the latest one that they are working on. So,

always happy to give Chris and his team a shout out. They do some

really, really great work. Alright. This one

is, a little probably gonna be a little bit trickier as well, but is there

any technology that you would like to get your hands on that

would help you with podcasting? Whether it's whether it's

something that exists that, you know, just might be out of your budget or

something maybe that somebody needs to create for you?

I think there are 2 things I wanna get my hands on for different reasons.

The number one thing on my wish list is a digital braille

display and what the way they work is you connect

them with your your desktop or your mobile

devices by bluetooth and they use a series

of magnets and metal pins to simulate

braille characters, and the reason I want one is because

when I record my podcast, I have to memorize all this stuff. I

have to create tricks for myself so that I can remember all

this stuff, But if I had access to a digital braille

display, I would be able to read whatever I needed to read

to refresh my memory on while I'm interviewing or being

interviewed without the screen reader, that computer voice,

getting in the middle of the conversation. So that's like my number one thing,

and then my my second thing would be I

would really like to to find a,

a camera that would allow me to do

better as far as recording events when I'm away from my

house. I've spoken at a couple of

conferences where I don't have videos of great talks because they

weren't recording and it's not really easy for me to set up to

record. So having a mobile ad source for recording

video and or audio would be the second thing on my list.

You know, I'm gonna have a nice chat with you right after this conversation

about just such an idea, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully, we can help you

out on that front. Alright. I like that. I I hope you can. And,

lastly, is there a podcast in your

playlist right now that you are listening to that, you know, no matter what is

happening, when the new episode comes out, episode comes out, you're stopping what you're listening

to or dropping everything to go check it out? It can be more than 1

podcast, too. Okay. The easy one is one called Your Own Pay.

It's done by a good friend of mine named Michael Babcock from Oregon.

He's been in the disability space for probably 35

years or more and the reason I like it is because he's

got all the scoop on all the latest technology

and how that can be used or not be used by people

with disabilities. He's the only guy in my community who is

also an expert on Android as well as iOS when it comes

to accessibility, and so he's continuing to be in my

ear telling me, Max, you know Android's almost there, you need to start thinking about

switching from your iPhone. So, your own pay is one of

them and then, I would say

the, for I can't think of the name of the podcast, but I

always listen to Alex Sethilippo's podcast. Oh,

yes. Alex is from PodMatch,

Success Stories or ah, man, what is

this podcast? You know what? Yeah. I know. It bothers me, and I I deserves

to hear, he deserves the credit for his podcast. And pull

his name up on LinkedIn. It's right there in his profile.

Yeah. Oh, podcasting made simple. There you go. So Alex

Sanfilippo at Podcasts Made Simple. He's he's been a

mentor and a friend, and his podcast always

includes such great guests and they they share stuff that you're like, okay,

this this should be a good interview. And then you listen to it, you're like,

wait a minute. That was so much more than I ever thought I was gonna

get from this particular guest. I mean, he, he just rings them

dry or they, they come in and empty their, their, their brains for

them. I don't know how it works. I just know that, you know, that you

just you just get so much every time you listen to one of his guests.

Yeah. Alex is someone who, is doing a lot of very

interesting things in the space and already chatting with him,

trying to make sure we can get him on the show. So very glad you

brought him up as well as our buddy, Chris Karmitza. So I'm I'm trying to

get him on my show too because I've I've been the accessibility adviser

to PodLottery at PodMatch now for a few years. And,

you know, the, in his case, it's been longer than it probably would have

been because they're continuing to grow and build upon what they

started at, but, the thing about PodMatch is,

I'm really impressed with the, not just the work they've done to make it

accessible, but the the point of their heart as

far as they really want this to be the best thing for

podcasters, including podcasters who just have a disability and people with disabilities

who want to be guests. So, you know, I've been I've been

helping him out for a while now and,

I want him to come on my podcast to talk about accessibility on his

platform. And he's like, Max, check back with me in December.

What? Okay. His, his tag guy is a gentleman

named Jesse, and I don't know Jesse's last name. I'm sorry.

But but I I I spend a lot of time back and forth with Jesse.

I've been trying to get him on my podcast as well to talk about Pod

Match and accessibility. And so far, I'm still in

the, you know, just keep checking back with us, Max. When our schedule's

open, we'll come. You know? So He is he is

a rather busy guy, and the next

chance I get to chat with him, I'll I'll nudge him to, you know, go

on your podcast as well and, you know, make an

appearance there. Once again, we've been chatting with Maxwell Ivy, the

blind blogger, also an accessibility advantage. You can go to the

accessibility advantage .com to check out the great

work that he does. And just, you know, think about

Max. He's out here trying to enjoy content, and he's not trying to

make you pay an arm and a leg, you know, for your content to

be more user friendly. He just wants it so that everybody

can can enjoy it and, you know, share with the rest of the world. So,

Max, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us and for doing

what it is that you do. Well, thank you, Matthew. I appreciate you

making a spot for me on the show and for understanding the value

value or the prevent the potential value of accessibility to your

audience. So thank you for that. Thanks for joining us today

on podcasting tech. There are links to all the hardware and

software that help power our guest content and podcasting

tech available in the show notes and on our website at podcastingtech.com.

You can also subscribe to the show on your favorite platform, connect with us on

social media, and even leave a rating and review while you're there. Thanks,

and we'll see you next time on Podcasting Tech.