EP065 Diving Deeper: Our Commitment to Accessibility in Services
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[00:00:00] Darin Newbold: All right. Well, good day and welcome to Commerce Today. My name is Darin Newbold, and I'm excited to have a, a guest. Josh is not with us and we have a fantastic guest, our very own from creativity, our director of innovation and technology, Michal, and forgive me, Michal, I pronouncing your last name is just going to be a mess.

So I'll leave that out. Michal, welcome to Commerce Today. 

[00:00:29] Michal Pietrzyk: Welcome, Darin. Thank you for having me on the show. My name is Michał Kaczyk. Uh, I'll make it easier for you. Hello, everyone, uh, listening to our podcast. 

[00:00:37] Darin Newbold: Outstanding. Well, we have a, uh, we have a fun, fun topic for today. And what we want, and this is one of the reasons you're here, is we're diving deeper into Creatuity's commitment around accessibility and, The, how we want to provide this service and help other merchants with it.

So that's what this is all about. And accessibility is often characterized as a 11 Y because there's 11 characters in it and a 11, why it just works out first and last character there. So with that, I guess we help. Maybe just as a, as a refresher, because we've talked this a little bit on this podcast before, but maybe kind of bring us back in.

What is accessibility? What does it kind of mean from a merchant standpoint in the e commerce world? 

[00:01:22] Michal Pietrzyk: So accessibility, actually means availability, availability to, everyone to, not just a selected group. which of course may be a, majority of your, visitors of people who are visiting your website, but they are not all people with disabilities are a big part of, of our society.

And, by making those websites, accessible, so simply available, merchants are able to reach, customers that were outside of their, recent target market simply. 

[00:01:56] Darin Newbold: Excellent. Well, we've really recognized and really have started to see that this is, it's important and in some cases, um, and we'll get to this in just a little bit, there's even legal pieces around this.

But before we do, kind of tell us what's Creatuity's kind of view on this as, as they're looking, the show, as the title even says, um, we're broadening our services. Kind of what does that mean? 

[00:02:21] Michal Pietrzyk: to make the long story short, uh, we as a company with 15 years of experience have, recognized and identified that this is a, peace of the market that needs to be, covered, um, by that, I mean, making the website.

isn't making any website if it's an e-commerce uh, isn't, if it's an e-store or simply WordPress website, making the website today is not the same thing as we would consider this like 10 years ago. Um, reason for that is quite simple. Uh, internet became accessible to others, but to, uh, be available to them.

We need to create, the content of the internet, available to everyone. So we at Creatuity want to help merchants, uh, our customers to reach their merchants and their merchants, by not offering, services to create an, uh, any e-commerce But the e-commerce that will be suitable and available for everybody with, um, any disability or non disabilities, no matter what.

[00:03:24] Darin Newbold: Yeah. So basically, no matter what's happening, if someone, if someone has certain, uh, certain things that make it difficult for them to use a website, we want to, we want to eliminate that. And that's, uh, that's, that we've taken that on as a, as. Actually, you fundamentally one of our company goals, uh, for this year and actually the early part of this year, because we put, uh, we accelerated it and really focused it on the first part of this year.

So as we look at that, one of the questions that I asked you, as we were prepping for this show, and we, we kind of have this as part of our, our show notes here is what are the implications of this A11Y for our merchants? And one of the first things that came up is there are a little bit of some, some legal.

Concerns around this and, and want to preface, Hey, neither one of us are lawyers, we don't play lawyers on TV or anything like that. So please seek, seek the appropriate, uh, legal counsel, but kind of a little bit of what you found, Michal, as you've really started to dig into this. 

[00:04:26] Michal Pietrzyk: according to the data I, uh, read recently, um, there are more and more legal threats.

against, uh, site accessibility problems. This mainly refers to, uh, sorry, I need to check in my notes how is this exactly called, Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA. Uh, most of the legal, legal threats, uh, are really against every site that in simple words, cannot be read as a site. By screen reader. Uh, it's so simple and so complicated and complicated at the same time.

One, one could say that, Hey, why? What's, what's so hard in making this site accessible for the screen reader? Right? It has to only read through the text. No, it's not correct. It's way more complex work. I'll be happy to describe it in in a second, but for now, let's focus on, uh, on legal, uh, stuff. So, it is a field where merchants can really fail and can, uh, which can have really negative implications on their business.

While at the same time, it's, uh, it's the 21st century, uh, of the web of websites creation, taking care of own business by creating, uh, by creating business for others. 

[00:05:35] Darin Newbold: Exactly. We want to be, we want to be inclusive and we want to make sure that, Everyone can, can access, access the site and have the, the experience and be able to transact business, uh, equally as best as possible.

And that's where that a DA can be very, very important. And following that, it can, it can get you to on the other, 

[00:05:57] Michal Pietrzyk: on the other hand. On the other hand, uh, legal problems, legal, legal trouble is one thing. Uh, let's say the most visible one, I would say, because it may have a real impact on, on your finance. on merchants finance.

But on the other hand, uh, it's not only or even not mainly the reason why companies consider, uh, WCAG, uh, compliance. It's their customer, uh, merchants respect their customer, their clients, their customers by showing them that everybody's important, that we do care about creating a website. That can be visited by anyone by creating a store that can be navigated by anyone.

It's even more complicated when you, uh, think of an e-store not as a simple website you have it's not just the description to be read. it's the descriptions the product details like, you know, uh attributes characteristics images even the even the images people with uh, with eye disabilities will have problems seeing exactly the same thing as people without disabilities see on an image.

It's your merchant's role to provide the data the way it can be simply read by ARIA or any other, piece of software. And third thing I'd like to mention here about, uh, uh, implications, uh, is the customer loyalty. and or abandoned purchases. 58 if I remember correctly of UK customers say they did, they ditch a purchase if the site isn't accessible.

And additionally, we have generation Z, just around the corner, which Is soon to become the most influential customer group and simply the biggest group. So the most influential group and believe me, generation Z really pays attention to diversity and inclusiveness. And this may be a deciding factor if they continue to operate with this merchant and with the store 

or not.

[00:07:52] Darin Newbold: Yeah, everything that I'm seeing as well, Michal, is that Gen Z, they have the discretionary income that can really dictate in a lot of ways where, where they're going to spend their money and they can move it in a heartbeat. So, all right, we've talked about these implications. We know it's important.

There's a lot to it. So, Creatuity specifically, it wants to, wants to help merchants really, really move into this. And one of the first areas that we looked at. Starting this process is kind of a, a accessibility audit and wanted to kind of, this is this, I know, I know you're starting this process, you may not have all the details and, and that would be a, uh, a teaser for a future episode possibly, but maybe broad brush.

What are you finding here on this accessibility audit and and a little bit about how and what it might be able to do and perform for merchants. 

[00:08:49] Michal Pietrzyk: So Yes, as you said, I'm at the beginning of this At this road, maybe not the very beginning, but we're warming up with accessibility auditing, however What I already noticed is a couple of Interesting things.

Well, you can get accessibility audit for free Well, everybody says, Oh, for free. I want it. Well, I've checked them, many of free accessibility audits, and either they say the same, which is not a full truth, or even they all say, well, even if your site's accessible, you can be sued. Oh, I guess we were having some technical issues. let's not wait in silence. Maybe I can, share some of the answers with, uh, with everybody here on, uh, on the show live. So, as I started, uh, we can have a free audit, uh, done on one of many websites available on the internet, but that's not really how this should be done.

the real value, uh, that stands behind this, uh, audit is So is the person who, uh, really conducts the audit or the specialist that really conducts the audit and has the recommendations for you? The most important things is recommendations and at the same time explanation. Why is this thing important?

By that I mean, we are able to present you, uh, to present to the customer that, Hey, you on your website, this, this, and that needs to be fixed. Well, okay. That's a very synthetic information. You need to fix this, but really, why? Why should I spend any hour with my agency fixing my website?

Why should I spend, uh, any dollar with third party agency to investigate on my site and apply any fix? that's the case. That if you have, if you receive simple synthetic results, may not be convinced to, uh, go the accessibility way because you have to spend money.

You don't know why at the same time you're not losing anything or you don't feel like you're losing anything by not being accessible. what you really need and what really teases, uh, or. At least light and light. Darin, you're back. Great to have you on the show, . 

[00:10:54] Darin Newbold: Wow. Okay. That was a new experience. So hopefully you, uh, explained everything about our audits.

[00:11:01] Michal Pietrzyk: And I'm in the, I'm in the middle, so if you please allow me to finish, uh, finish where I, for, for our visitors. Uh, so to have the audit, the audit complete, to have the audit saying what it should really say. It's not just that, you get, you get the synthetic results. I've, uh mentioned a second ago. You have to know what the changes for you and for your merchants.

For example, let's stick to the example I had a second ago. So, uh, or the product presentation, uh, you have to present how your product looks like you have to have a photo of this product, Well, this photo will be seen by some of the people that visit your site, but won't be seen by others. So what do you mean?

A description, proper description of this image. And it's not just the description should be an image of a t shirt, for example. For people who don't see, simply, it has to be said that on this image you can see a red t shirt with a logo here above the heart or something like this. With this or that, um, learn how to speak English.

[00:12:03] Darin Newbold: Well, the type of material, the type of, uh, 

[00:12:07] Michal Pietrzyk: it should be descriptive simply, uh, without having that in, uh, in your report with only having said, well, you're missing out, uh, an image tag. You won't know nothing having the information that lack of out tag prevents people with disabilities to see what is the, how this product really looks like.

Well, may lighten up some bulbs in your head and say, okay, so I may be losing conversion just because I don't describe my products. Well, 

[00:12:33] Darin Newbold: All right. Well, that I appreciate it. And again, sorry for, for disappearing briefly on you had some internet challenge here, but, uh, I guess kind of lastly, as we kind of wrap this up, I know we talked a little bit about costs.

You even mentioned that it can be free, but is it really free? 

[00:12:49] Michal Pietrzyk: I'll say this, we shouldn't ask ourselves or the merchants, shouldn't ask themselves the question, can we afford it? I mean, can we afford, rebuilding or readjusting our site to be accessible, to be A11y A11Y compliant? The question merchants should ask Can we afford not being accessible?

So having the, everything that's been said for about the lawsuits, about the loss of conversion, about, loyalty and, abandoned carts in your e-store you should, you should answer yourself a question. Can I afford not being accessible because spending a couple of hundred dollars or thousand dollars on, adjusting your site to be accessible, Compared to to the money that you're not going to earn or you're going to lose.

because of losses or loss of conversion, that's probably a significant difference. So, it's not so easy to tell exact cost, but it's very easy to say what you're going to lose when you're not, uh, when you're not become accessible. 

[00:13:55] Darin Newbold: Gotcha. Well, guys, I've been very excited about this episode and, and really kind of bringing it together and talking about the different aspects of accessibility, how important it is, and the need From a merchant standpoint, uh, taking a look and look at all of the aspects and especially around loyalty and legal concerns and following the ADA.

Accessibility is important and there's an entire group of customers that you want to make sure that you're serving. And with that creativity is really diving deep into our services to be able to provide this. So as always, we appreciate you listening. I'm going to kind of wrap this up for, uh, for time concerns here, but, uh, we appreciate you listening as always.

Please subscribe to, uh, to our page. You can find us on YouTube at creativity as well as, um. All of your podcast providers. So with that, Michal, thank you once again. And with that, thanks everyone. And we'll look forward to seeing you next time here at Commerce Today. 

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