The ADA Online Rules and Tools | Tony Caggiano

   Today on the show, we talk about the ADA compliance online and how Tony has a sass software that can help more than 98% of the Internet be compliant with all the online rules that handicap and visually impaired, and so much more interesting insights on taxes.

Website
https://adacomplyguy.com/ada-comply-intro

my social medias

https://twitter.com/JRBolton_
https://www.instagram.com/jrbolton_
https://www.tiktok.com/@j.r.bolton_


*~# rate and review on podchaser #~*

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/josh-bolton-show-1573605?utm_source=podcaster&utm_medium=feedcta&utm_campaign=jrbolton_

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Hey, let me grab my camera get set up here. How's it going? doing pretty good. Actually, I just got off work and I have tomorrow off. So Excellent. Well, I appreciate you having me on your show. It's, it's great to be on it. I appreciate you reaching out because I didn't even know about this whole ADA compliance with the websites. Yes, yes. And you know what you are not alone. So that's, that's my mission, to educate and help people understand about it, what they need to do about it because of the laws and how they can totally benefit from it financially for their businesses, all different kinds of businesses, actually. And we can go into that I can explain all about that if you want. Absolutely, yeah. Then just Other than that, any other topics in particular you don't want to go into? Um, no, the two things that I usually talk about is, you know, my ad a business, but also I've been an entrepreneur for 30 plus years. And so, you know, I like to give back and help entrepreneurs any way I can. So I have my own podcast and a Facebook group where I do that and I, I help entrepreneurs, you know, by introducing them to others. Wonderful, then, actually, since you came in early, let's get right into it. Okay, sounds good. So before I even start, your last name is kaegi. Only right? Caggiano Caggiano. Okay. All right, thank you. Oh, to butcher that and then be like, Look, sorry. No worries, no worries. All right, today on the show, we have Tony keji. Oni I think I just butchered it again. Great, man. He's all about ADA compliance for websites, which honestly, I didn't even know this thing existed, and about helping the entrepreneurial mind. Go forward. He's been at this for 30 years. Here is Tony. Hey, thanks, Josh, for having me today. It's great to be here. pleasures mine. How are you doing? I'm great. Yeah. So actually, let's get right into it. Tony, can you tell me the layman's of the Add for websites? Absolutely. Yeah. So back in 1990, the ADA became got signed into law, which is the Americans with Disabilities Act and that we're all familiar with it. Even if we really don't know that we're familiar with it. We've seen handicap parking we've seen handicap access and bat in public bathrooms in stores, you see ramps and accessible features for people in who have disabilities in brick and mortar businesses. But about four or five years ago, the first case came about where a supermarket called Winn Dixie down in here in the south, was actually sued by a gentleman who said that their website wasn't accessible to him because he was he had a sing disability. And so he said, It was hard for him to utilize their website. So the court deemed that Winn Dixie had to go back and make these changes to their website to be exit accessible to him and to others who had disabilities. And that became the precedent of the rest of what's been happening ever since. And so since then, and ADA, compliance or accessibility options on websites have been around for a lot longer than that. It just hasn't been in the forefront and the precedent of people making an example of it. And it's, it's long overdue, actually, you know, the internet's been around for, you know, over 20 plus years now, and less than one or 2% of all websites have any kind of accessibility options. So over the past four to five years, the number of lawsuits have been rising against businesses who aren't accessible. But the thing in my mind, and the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing to build awareness about it is that these businesses haven't been informed properly, they haven't been told that this is a new, this is a law that they have to follow. They haven't been informed of how to do things until it's too late. A lot of times, they get these letters and they have to go to court and defend themselves against something that they didn't know about. So my mission is to help make the internet accessible to people of all abilities and to help not only as an advocate for the disabled community, but be a presence to help businesses become aware of this before it's too late, and also show them all the great benefits that that they can have. So that's that's a lie in this is gonna be an awesome interview. One thing I did want to add in before we actually go into the nuances and details. One of my entrepreneurial friends, I do martial arts, okay. And so his buddy started his own restaurant right before the lockdowns. Sadly his restaurant did not make it but during the heat of it like I was able to get in, sneak in and get a nice burrito and leave kind of thing but He jokingly told me I've had these again, a little worried that the ADA is going to come after me for not having Braille menus. And I'm like, wait, that's a thing? Yes. Oh boy, like is one of those. I didn't know like, you actually had to have a Braille menu to. He's like, he's like, even if it's just one, you're supposed to keep one within reach for a client and like, Oh, I see, I'm not an entrepreneur in the restaurant food industry. I didn't know this. Right, right. And so there are so many different things, not only just on websites, and not only that a lot of it is built into building codes for ramps and accessible bathrooms and things like that. So like a business is building out a brick and mortar present place where people can go, those are the things that have to be done in order to pass their building codes. But there are a lot of things like the brand menus or, you know, your website being accessible, that people don't realize that also needs to be done, as well. And so this is why we're trying to bring awareness. So, so actually, I've had, I had a blind guest Come on, and I have a blind Podcast Network host coming on soon. And the viewer told me how matchmakers actually makes it harder for them to navigate, because there is no interface for them. And I told him, like, you know, I don't know that experience of having to bounce around the internet without seeing I have to like hear it. Yeah. And that's for the first one, her name was gal said, she said, Can you email me because I can use my interface and understand it better. I'm like, okay, so when the other guy messaged me say, Hey, I know that matchmakers having trouble keeping the blind community involves I'm like, I'll email you kind of thing. He's, I think, you know, people don't understand him. Like, I didn't know that until a gal told me. Yeah, and it's really crazy. Because, you know, you think of people with disabilities, that people who have you know, are legally blind, or totally blind or deaf, or you know, any of these, you know, extreme disabilities that people usually think about, but people all over the world, almost 25% of the entire population of internet users have some kind of disability that hinders their use of most websites, which is huge. That's a billion dollar market each year, that's, you know, millions of people out there, that if you're a business, on the doing business, on the internet, you're missing out on a whole population. Think about it, our aging population is getting older. And as we get older, our you know, things happen, you know, we lose, you know, our ability to see the way we used to when we're younger, even myself, I wear glasses, I can see the screen right now. And I can understand that you are there, Josh on the screen, but I can't read, you know, anything on the screen without my glasses. And to me, this is a tool that I use in order to be able to do things easier and more efficiently, because without my glasses I couldn't see. And so again, if you think about things like that, these are the tools that we use, to help us do the things that we need to do. And we have to be aware of, you know, people who have all kinds of disabilities from seeing and hearing but not only those cognitive and learning disabilities, and even physical disabilities, dexterity to use mice or to navigate, you know, websites with our hands or whatever we need to do. Right. So those are the types of things that we're trying to help businesses easily and affordably add to their websites into their digital real estate, to become compliant with the ADA, but also reach more people with disabilities. And also, you know, we'll talk about in a second, how they can reach more people even without disabilities by adding accessibility and assistive technology to their websites. So that's actually interesting. At one point in my life, I thought about being a drop shipper. And I was gonna buy a nice like square or Wix. That's a subtopic within that one need to get to. But then that's where I never thought about it. I'm like, oh, like there's a whole demographics. It's true. They're humans they want to buy, even though they can't see and maybe a nice soft, like, squirrel, plush dog. And I think they just know by the feeling it's a squirrel kind of thing. I never would have thought about that. Yeah, that is that is an impressive market untapped? Almost. Yeah, there. There are lots of people out there that need these these types of things. And so just to go into it a little bit deeper. So more people understand it. You know, I like to tell the story about filberg. You know, filbert is a builder, right? So Phil goes on to the job site one day, and he's got three different houses three different job sites he can choose from. And so he goes and he looks at the first job site and all the materials to build the house are there but no tools. And this really equates to a website where you would go to somebody with a disability and to utilize that website, and there's nothing there's no accessibility or assistive technology on that website to be able to use it. The next job site he goes to he goes in all the materials are there and he's given just a hammer. And so he's given a tool to do the job but not he's not gonna be able to do this job efficiently or effectively or cost effectively. So You know, this also equates to another type of website where somebody, you know, makes the website accessible to a certain type of person. You know, there's two ways you can make a website accessible both statically and dynamically. And statically was the old way where you had to hire a web designer to go in and change the code and make it a certain way. So that a certain subset of people with disabilities can utilize it dynamically now is the new way where they would use software kind of like my ADA compliant guy software, where we would put it in addition on top of the website, so that they can go and change a lot of different things on the website. Like, we have a screen reader, we have contrast changes, we can change it to black and white for people with color blindness, all the different things that each individual user of the website can change dynamically to meet their specific needs. So with the second house site, by giving just a hammer, it's like going to a website where it's statically changed just for a certain subset of people with disabilities. And yes, it is ADA compliant. But it's not dynamically adjustable to a lot more people with different types of disabilities. Now the third job site Philbert goes to, he has a choice of all these different types of tools, a pneumatic hammer, he's got screws, he's got nails, he's got all these types of tools. So he can go and efficiently and quickly build this house easily to how he likes to utilize, or to build the house. And this equates to a website where not only does it have assistive technology, it's also you know, able to be adjusted by the people who want to utilize that site, the way that they can their special needs for that site, whether they're colorblind or they have a reading disability that, you know, they need the sight read to them with a screen reader, they can go and utilize that website efficiently and effectively for them. So so that's actually interesting. In your your three part story, I was just thinking about that. Okay, let's say like, the second part I want to bring up was like Wix, do they have a type of ADA compliance? Or is it would be like, I'd have to, like, get an add on from you from my website to change up our software works with, you know, almost all of the platforms that we've tested with and Wix is one of them. I don't believe Wix currently has a built in accessibility toolbar. It's probably only a matter of time before a lot of places do because everybody's becoming more aware of it. But you know, it's really up to the business owner now today in 2021, to do something to be able to do it. And, you know, by utilizing a service, like what we have we we go with the hybrid approach, you know, no, no software is going to be able to make you 100% compliant or give you most are all of the tools that you're going to need on your website. So we utilize a hybrid approach where our software will get you 80% of the way, it'll get you mostly compliant, it'll give you a lot of the tools that people can utilize. But then we go a step further. And we help you with services like making your videos closed caption for people who are hearing impaired, or even people who don't have a disability that want to read the videos in case they're on the train going to work or in a noisy environment, or in a library where they can't utilize voice sound. We also go in and help with alternate text, which is the underlying description of all of the pictures or graphics on a website. So if somebody is on, say, a Shopify site, you know, we can help them with all text, where if somebody hovers over a picture of a green bathing suit, rather than a red bathing suit, it'll show up on the screen green bathing suit or red bathing suit. So somebody who's colorblind can actually know this is a green one. And this is a red one, or somebody who's hearing impaired, the screen reader will say this is a green bathing suit, or this is a red one. So those things I never thought of like that. I never, I personally never had the problem. So I never thought it was going to be a big deal kind of thing. But I should have known better. But I was young and dumb. I grew up in a very special needs system. Long story short, I guess in the 90s they didn't understand what ADHD was. So they labeled me bipolar instead. So I've got through sent through the this special but not the super special group. It was the blind, deaf, the mentally slower, but not gone kind of thing. And I've just always grown up with them. And it's just one of those. I would always assist them but I never realized from a business point of view how much you just you do you put on the side and just be like, Thank you figure it out. Yeah, I completely understand actually, you know where you're coming from too, because I have two sons. One is high functioning autism. And the other is, you know, ADHD, has ADHD. And so we're dealing with that right now but our older son being on this on the autism spectrum has He's He's really smart. But he has a hard time comprehending things that he reads himself. So when he reads something, it's hard for him to process it and then think about and comprehend what he's reading. So sometimes a screen reader actually helps him by if something's read to him, then he can think about it while it's being read to him and comprehend it much better. And so one of the tools that we have is a screen reader. So if he goes to a certain website with these tools on it, someone like him who has, you know, a need for somebody to read something to him, then he can utilize a screen reader to have the screen the website, read him and better understand it. That's interesting, actually. Yeah. For me, it was I just always thought it was me how I processed information. Actually, today, I was reading a book, and one of my friends are like, oh, but you see, you don't read books. I'm like, if it's a visual problem, like math, I have to read it got anything, said Other than that, like, I'd rather listen to someone because I can process it better. But if it's visuals, and I just, it's like a switch, I understand I have to read this kind of thing. Right? That's interesting. Yeah, it's something that we learned, you know, having, you know, our boys with special needs, we wanted my wife and I wanted to make sure that we understood them better, and how they learned so we can give them the tools that they needed. And, you know, we learned that, you know, his need to have something read to him is just something the way his brain processes information. And it doesn't make him you know, in our minds disabled, you know, he's different abled, he just processes and learns differently. And so, you know, by listening to something, he's able to think about it and visualize it better. Rather than reading it, processing it visualizing. It's just an extra step that he has to go through in his brain in order to understand it. So that's so fascinating. Yeah, I've recently because I was trying to learn trading, but then I realized, Oh, wait, trading is about business than a business. I realized, wait, business is just psychology became this whole rabbit hole now. So as I've been studying psychology, like reading, thinking fast, Thinking Fast and Slow. And then now I'm reading, it's gonna be a long one. It's the Gulag archipelago. Okay. Essentially, if you read the first one, the Thinking Fast and Slow. It's the two systems the emotional and logical, and how they can override each other. But then I'm trying to ignore all the gory details that because it's a prisoner of the communistic lockdowns. But he's telling explicit details, and knowing the previous of how emotions can override logic, just hearing the stories of what they go through on my own. They're using, like fear against them kind of thing. And they just the people don't realize that kind of thing. Yeah. So in all that, that's where the the spiral of it, I've come to realize it just in general business, it's the emotions of like, be compliant, like for yours, or this, compared to, we just got to call Tony, and then we're good to go. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that we can do, you know, my company at a company guy can do to help businesses understand, you know, what they can, what they need, specifically, and how we can help them, you know, with our tools and our other services. But just recently, you know, I've been able to work with a lot of businesses, because some businesses come to me, you know, a lot of the larger businesses like that have, in the past gotten letters from the ADA, like chick fil a and Home Depot. And even Kylie Jenner and Beyonce have gotten, you know, sued, because their websites weren't ABA compliant, but they have the on site staff, they go back and like, okay, we're gonna change, you know, things, we're gonna make sure that it's compliant. statically. And so, to me, that's the minimal viable content that you can do to make your website compliant. There's no tools available to a lot of these websites that allow somebody to dynamically adjust them. So they go, and they can do it, because they have the staff to do it. But a lot of the smaller businesses, you know, now that they're getting picked off, because what they're doing is there was over 11,000 lawsuits last year in the US, and that was all from like, 3500, the prior year. So I mean, it's growing astronomically, you know, and what they're doing is, are these lawyers are spraying, you know, businesses that they go and they they search the internet for businesses that don't have any type of ad a compliance and say, Okay, here's a letter, you know, in there, they're doing that. So we're trying to bring awareness to the little guy, but a lot of the people, you know, when I started this business a little over a year ago, people were like, Well, yeah, we'll have to take our chances because we can't afford it. Well, I went back to the drawing board and I said, Okay, how can I make this not only easy and efficient for people to add to their websites, but also cost effective? And so you know, what we were able to do is find out that the US actually has more money they want to give businesses in order to make their websites compliant. And so in the form of a 50% tax credit, any business that makes under a million dollars a year in revenue, or if they make over a million dollars has less than 30 full time employees, which is a large portion of the businesses that we're targeting, targeting. They can apply for and qualify for up to 50% of anything that they spend on accessibility for their business. So if they have a website, and they come to us directly, and they utilize our services, anything that they spend on our services, they'll get back 50% each year, because our services an annual subscription each year, they'll get back 50% of that as a tax credit or refund. That's impressive. Yeah. So I do have a question. So let's say like a hobbyist, like me, I'm not making money. It's just a passionate love kind of right now. I know, it's gonna be more later on, but it's like, how much would it run for me, if I wanted to attend to that community, we have our basic package, it's$597 a year. Okay. So that equates to, you know, about half of that you'd get back in your taxes, if you were to just fill out a simple form that we can give you it's a tax form just says, This is how much I've spent on, you know, accessibility products for my business. And then we would give you the invoice to attach that and then boom, you know, that would be an instant 50% back of anything you spent for that. Most businesses opt for our pro plan, which is 997 a year. But that includes up to two URLs, which is you know, to website addresses. But also, we would help you with up to 10 minutes of closed captioning of videos as well as your alternate text. So we can make you even more compliant with the ADA, but also help you reach more people. And the real big thing is, when you're adding alt text tags to your photos on your website, your website will actually rank higher on Google's SEO. So you're actually going to be reaching a lot more people because you're going to be ranked higher, even people who don't have disabilities will be able to find you and see your business much more. So you're going to be able to reach a whole nother group of customers who may not have otherwise as well. So those are some of the things that we are doing to to help businesses. But to go a step further, one thing that I've done recently, I've been working directly with web design firms, with Facebook and other Google Ad firms, as well, as you know, let's say we're working with a coach, so coaching programs, or any other type of business that do online marketing. If we work directly with them, and they purchase our licensing to include in their platform, then not only will then their solution, let's say a web designer includes this, and now his Web Designs, his web services are accessible. So he's providing accessible web design, they become eligible for the tax credit. So not only will his customers be able to get the tax credit on just the software portion, or if they they came to us directly, they'd get, you know, 50% of our pricing. But now let's say the web designer charges 20 $500 for a website. And now they'll be able to get 50% back of the 2500 not just oh yeah, the purchase of our services. So we're trying to go more direct to these businesses to help them make their services more accessible so we can reach more people, because that's our main mission is to reach as many websites and many businesses possible. And by working with web designers who have many clients, we can help their clients get a lot more money back for their marketing budget, through this tax credit, by adding our services to theirs, and offering it to their customers. So it's really a win win for everyone involved. So you mentioned something earlier that I've been looking into the SEO ranking, having more words and more definitions, helps you rank better. One thing a guy recommended He's like, are you ready? Because even if it's poor like structure, you just run it through otter.ai get your transcript and posted He's like, I'm like Okay, I get it like ranking he's like but also the people who rather read. He's like it's better for them on my wouldn't they notice the period He's like, it's a transcript, they'll figure it out kind of thing. And then now I'm thinking about that actually would explain cuz some of my posts are doing fantastic and I'm like, I don't understand. Like the actual podcast itself is tanking but the post is doing fine kind of thing. But that makes more sense neighbors or communities. I don't even know I'm reaching. there helping out Exactly, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of any of anything that you have digitally can be made more accessible to people, whether it is like you said, like a podcast, if you include transcriptions, you know, those will be able to be used as in your SEO to reach more people, but also people who may not be able to hear as well, they want to go read your podcast, they can go and they can use see the transcription and read through it, you know, so there are also ways to make your your PDFs or anything that you have, as your blog sites or whatever more accessible by adding things to those as well making them easier to see contrast changes or the type of fonts that you use. Some of the tools that we have, like one of the tools is is really cool that we include it in our service is a button that you press and it makes the the font change to a more readable font. So somebody who wants to have really good design in their website for, you know, making it look really nice. But somebody who can't read the font because it's you know, one of those really cool fonts, you press this squiggly once exactly, you know, this button will change it right to like a times new roman or an area, which is a super easy to read font that I want to see that night Even just for the ADA. For me, there are some words like it's a very crafty woman to cool hand calligraphy style, but I'm like, is that? Is that a cue? Exactly? If she had that button, I'd be like, Oh, I get it. It's zoo. Not something else kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a lot of these tools can be used by people, even if you don't have a major disability, you know, just for, you know, situations like you were just saying, you know, it's they're really amazing things to have on your website for many, many different reasons. So it's really, you know, I love doing it, because I love educating businesses. And I love seeing their aha moments, you know, like you had today you're like, I didn't even know about this. And still, most of the people that I talked to are like, Wow, I didn't even realize this was, you know, so big or so needed, you know. And so that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. So I'm curious, you were talking about lawyers earlier, and Google scouting people out and getting out kind of thing. So I was working for a very shady security company, but pretty much any security company shady. But they there was a curb where I was working with truckers. So I had to step down to go get their driver's license thing go back up. Well, I've rolled my ankle like, five times on the job site. So eventually the Yeah, it was not fun. I still have problems with it. But the head security guy like the head, I guess he was like, pretty much the equivalent of the CEO for a site. He wasn't, but it was like, he was making the 20k a month kind of thing. And he essentially is like, yeah, I've told your security company, you need to cut steps into that curb. Yeah, he's like, because it is he's not even just ADA. He's like, that's the three foot step down, you're going He's like, it's, it's just rough on the knees. But then that's where after so many injuries, I guess a lawyer caught wind of my report for HR. And so it was just one of those. It's they were saying he was also not wheelchair accessible. And this accessible, and I'm like, What is it? It's your truck gate? Like, why, wait, why would you need it? Because it's too small kind of thing to put a wheelchair and but I'm thinking Oh, wait, now, from what you're explaining and say, it doesn't really matter. You just have to do it. Yes. You know, I mean, it has to be, you know, accessible to everyone, you know it and that's really what the law is all about to not discriminate against people with disabilities just because they have a disability. And it really goes, you know, all over not only websites, you know, it's like you said, that curve right there probably should have had a ramp built in built in. So that way anybody could either walk down it or, you know, if they maybe not a wheelchair, I mean, maybe just somebody with a cane, it would be much easier for them to walk up a slight incline than it would be to go upstairs or even step up a three foot curb, you know, so just those things you have to think about not just the things that instantly pop in your head, but a lot of the other things that you know, people deal with on a daily basis and most disabilities are invisible, you know, and what I mean by that is, you know, you may not know somebody has tunnel vision or glaucoma or even colorblindness, but that's something that they deal with on a daily basis. And they have to, you know, adjust for those things that they deal with. And if the tools are there, then they can easily do that. Because if somebody with a disability goes to your site, and the tools aren't there, that it's like hanging a sign on your front window saying your business isn't welcome here. You know by by giving them the tools that they need to come into your website. You Get the information they want or even make a purchase, you're allowing them to, you know, come and become a customer just like anybody else. And that's what you that's the main goal of doing business is to bring in people and offer them your, your products or services and make sure that they can, you know, get them easily just like anybody else would. That's interesting. Yeah, this is this is the aha moment, like so many ideas are firing off now. Because it's like we just said, boys, man, you have this ADA compliance kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, there are, like I said, only one to 2% of all websites out there are compliant with the ABA. And unfortunately, in my mind, and this is, this is my opinion, a lot of the big sites like subway and Domino's and all them, you know, they, they have fixed their sites to be minimally compliant with the ABA. And some people say that, you know, becoming a statically adjusted, accessed accessible website is the only way to do it, because that's the way they've been doing it since the beginning of the internet, building websites with HTML and changing the code and making sure it's built into the website. But, you know, in my mind, you know, it's really a balance of static and dynamic ways of doing doing this. Because, you know, by doing a statically, you're limiting the amount of people that can use that site, because you're saying, Okay, this site is accessible to this subset of people with disabilities, but by adding more features and dynamic ability to adjust the site to your specific needs, if you have a disability, then you're giving more options to more people with other kinds of disabilities as well. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to run right now to my head as you're talking is the Okay, let's see, for me, I paid 500 ish dollars for the year. Is it a widget like an unseeable widget that's on the site, or it would be like a certain logo that everyone in the community would know, oh, click this kind of thing. It is a winner, it's a little icon that we can put it in any four corners of the website, or either left or right in the middle. And I prefer to show people to put it in the left hand corner in the middle, because a lot of time in that the left hand corner, the left hand side in the middle, because a lot of times you'll see other widgets or help desk icons are things like that pop into the left in the bottom right, and can sometimes cover it up or hide it or make it not as easily to see, I usually put ours on the left hand side because we usually in the US we read left to right. And so it makes it very easy for people to see and click on. And once you click on it, you know, a fourth of the website, you'll see a little toolbar open up. And it's very, we've designed it to be very simplistic by design, because there are other website tools out there for accessibility that I've seen, you know, they do similar things, but a lot of them are harder to use because their buttons are smaller, or they have to you have to click little, you know, slide bars or F to actually slide things over. And so by making it more difficult to adjust the site that hinders somebody with a disability from the start, ours are big square buttons that you just click on it once, twice, or three times. In order to change the features that you want like our contrast, our color changing button, you click on it, once it changes it to a grayscale for people with colorblindness, you click on it again, it will highlight in high contrast all of the headlines of the website. And if you click it once more, it takes the whole website and changes it into a negative contrast kind of like an X ray for some people who have seen disability that can see better in that way. So that way, it makes it very easy for them to be able to click on the different options that they want and adjust accordingly. That's just absolutely fascinating. Because Yeah, like earlier, like I never knew this was the thing I didn't like, like I said this this podcast right now it's lever love, but I know eventually it's going to be a thing and like potentially make me income. But I don't want to be like breaking the rules, because no one told me this. Yes. So I mean, I know you have a small website to for the podcast and to connect with people and things like that. And people don't realize that Oh, well. It's just a small website. Well, I mean, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, or, you know, wanted to utilize that, you know, either it's a sales funnel or a website, and they can't read it or they can't see it or whatever, for whatever reason. You know, by having this widget on there, you're not only protecting yourself from a lawsuit, it would be horrible to get a lawsuit based on just a small website that leads into your podcasts, you know, and these are the things that people don't realize they're still needed as long as you have a URL address or something connected to the internet, even SAS products. We're working with some SAS product owners that you go to a website and you could utilize their their their software like All over today most software products are subscription base software as a service where you go online and you utilize like Gmail or things like that, instead of the old days where you got a desk and you installed it in your computer, most things are browser based. So even things like that people still need to be able to utilize something that's on the web, in in software form or website form. So that's why you know, this can be utilized in so many different formats, whether it's a sales funnel, a website, business website, or SAS products or anything like that. So this is just absolutely impressive, like, completely blew the gate of everything. So, no, I'm curious. So there's two apps that keep coming to mind for me, because the gal lady said she paid like $500 for an interface to read for sure. She's like, she, like I personally don't need websites to be compliant. But she's like, but for some reason, matchmaker does not work with my software kind of thing. And I'm like, okay, but I'm thinking, does YouTube is YouTube compliant? It's like Uber compliant. Because like, she's told me, she had to use Uber. And she actually had to have someone order the car for her. Because she can't use it. That's from Mike. Wait, now we're getting the phone power. How does that work? Yeah, so I mean, there are a lot of the larger companies, you know, like I said, are in I would, I would guess that a lot of the larger companies are compliant, like I said, to the minimal viable need for the ADA, you know, because they have their website designers go in and add different things. And they can, you know, make the contrast a certain level between different brightness and things like that to get them to that ADA compliance level. But it still doesn't give them all of the adjustability that some people do need, as was actually what I was gonna say, because I know the they introduced closed captioning for ranking reason, but I think it would be the ADA. But just thinking from what you said, other than light and dark theme, I don't think there's anything I can actually switch or an active button to say, Hey, if you're colored impaired, you can't see green and red, because that's my uncle. Exactly, yeah, that's how I say click this kind of thing. Yeah, so a lot of the big sites, they don't have those types of options. And so, you know, my main focus is on the smaller guys that really need the help, you know, the small businesses, the medium sized businesses that are out there, the mom and pops that really need our help these days, because of everything that's going on right now to help them the restaurants that help them stay in business. You know, we want them to be able to reach more customers, we want them to be able to protect themselves from, you know, any other legal issues that that may come down the pipe, you know, so that's really where our market is, you know, I feel for the big guys, I hopefully that they also do what they need to. But we really want to make sure that we get this message out to all the little guys who who really need our help. Yeah, and they do actually, now I'm thinking about it. It's one of those, my martial arts instructor, he has a website, and he sends a lot of people to it. Most of them are visual. So that part he's okay with. But he also like me is like, I wouldn't want to exclude a customer or potential customer, because my site is built a certain way kind of thing. So how would, let's say I send him a referral, you kind of thing. Like most of his work is not actually on websites. But it's it's a key marketing point for him. Yeah. So how would he be, let's say martial artists not really tech savvy? How would he go? How would you go about helping him? Well, first and foremost, if you sent me a referral, we have a, an affiliate program where we would help you monetize your website, your podcast by Okay, now, if you wanted to do referrals. So that's one way cuz I want this when I can't gotten a business 30 plus years ago, became an entrepreneur, my main goal was to make sure that whatever I did to help businesses, also helped someone else, you know, so I've also been involved in philanthropy and giving back. So by having a win win situation, I've always built it in a way where anybody that I've worked with or gave me referrals, you know, I was able to help them as well. So that's why I created the affiliate program. So that that's, that's the first part but depending on, you know, the business, let's say, let's take the martial arts business as an example, if he had a web designer, somebody who built his website, I would talk to him to try to get in touch with his web designer, because if we can get his web designer to incorporate my service into his website design, then the martial artists company can actually get a larger tax credit, because they're going to be able to get their tax credit based on what they're paying the web designer, not just my product, but if I let's say the martial artists, you know, the gentleman who owns the The dojo, built his own website, let's say he went to Wix. And he's like, Okay, I'm going to be crafty, I'm going to do it myself, that's fine too, because then he can come to us. And we can help him install this. And basically, to install it, we, we build a custom script, it's it's small JavaScript code, right? that sits in the footer of your website, we can help you copy and paste it in there. If you need to a lot of places like Wix or clickfunnels, they have a place where you just copy and paste it in there. And that will automatically point back to our servers, and the toolbar will show up. But if he's building his own website, then we can work directly with him to put that on his website with him. And he'd be able to get going in that way and get the tax credit based off of our services as well. So let's go with the theme of him. But I know works because I've been working with it. So let's say he puts you in as manager and says, Go for it. Like you helped me out and I pay you whatever, it is still the same 500 for the basic or would be a little extra because you're going and kind of thing. Well, the the five, the 597 is for one website. It's just for the toolbar solution. And so yes, we would if he needs help copying and pasting the code, we can help if he gives us access to the website, one of our team members will go in and help them copy and paste it. It's very simple. It's a five minute process. Yeah, like for mine, I have one for my speakpipe so you can message me, but also my actual podcast, super easy and usually everyone's like, Oh, just copy here paste yours kind of thing. Exactly. Like him, he's not tech savvy, he barely understands his Apple phone. Okay, well then, you know, any customers like that we're happy to help get that installed and set up for them. The the pro plan would go a step further and help him you know, if he does have a video on his website, or if, you know, he needs the alt text in there as well to become a little bit more compliant with the ABA. Then those are the types of things that we can help them with as well and in case maybe he has a you know, whatever it is his dojo COMM And maybe he has a his dojo dotnet or another website that's kind of affiliated with this company, then he would get to URLs as well as you know, as well as the video closed captioning and other services that we do provide. That's interesting. Yes, so actually, the whole studio, he has a franchise so he told me for him for insurance, it's easier to pay the franchise fee then figure it out on its own. But so I actually know the actual owner of the company too. And he would he would absolutely jump on this because we I personally I was teaching once in my lifetime martial arts and actually some of my best students were the the blind and deaf, the mentally slower I don't know any other appropriate word sorry. So those were my best but they all most of them so they got it through the website. But this was back in like 2011 so they couldn't really be smelly. They could be slamming down doors and be like How dare you kind of thing but now thinking about it, because they were they were very good clients and they were very loyal for a long time. He would not want to give up those kind of clients if his websites a hindrance. Same with the the main studio this is fascinating. leering now. You I think you hit mute. You I think you hit mute. It's on the front, the red one. No. I'll cut this out. Nope. worries about that. But he I think when you move it cut it off. Yeah, I hear it is there it is. Oh, you can hear me now. Yeah. Okay. I'm not gonna move my mic. Perfect. All right. Something I think is a shortening of the cord or something. Because all I did was push it forward. So yeah, there was a you saw that and then suddenly, you were quiet like, Oh, alright, I'll cut that out. Here. I'll cut that all out. Where do we leave off? Um, oh, gosh. We were talking about, you know, how many there's a lot of different avenues that we can utilize to help people you know, not only the directly to the businesses, but you know, helping franchises help all of their franchise owners and things like that. So awesome. Yeah, this. This just is still basically to this day. We're like gal told me like, I had to ask someone to order me at Uber because I can't use their app. And then now it's just a way how like how many new like startups don't even know this rule. They could utilize a lot of weight. Now that's the extra one. What if a SAS incorporated the whole thing? Like, let's say they, they paid the $1,000 for you to incorporate to theirs. And it has engineers figured out how to code it in. So but they mean everything they spend on their software, we also 50% off, because it's ADA compliant. So so we have a program where a SaaS company can utilize our services. And so what happens is, you know, they would incorporate it into their software. And so let's say they charge, you know, $100 a month for their software, prior to incorporating it, they can, you know, their customers would pay the $99. But if they now offer an accessible product, then that product now becomes eligible for the tax credit. So let's say somebody's paying 12 $100 a year for their product, you know, they could probably begin if it's a business expense, they can deduct it, and they deduction is different than a tax credit, and I'm not a tax attorney. So all I know, is that a deduction if you deduct something, it, it lowers your amount of taxable income, but a tax credit as $1 for dollar credit back in your pocket. So. So let's say they're paying 12 $100 a year for their SAS service. And now they're now it's an accessible service, because the SAS company incorporates our software into it. Now somebody can get $600 back. Now they're paying half of what they were before for the same product, because the SAS company incorporates it. So every one of their customers is now getting the same amount of service. But they're also getting, they're pretty much paying half out of pocket each year for that same service. So it's interesting. So let's like the analogy of me buying your software again, because I bought it and I cooperated it. And let's say I had a nice sales thing. Finally, would that mean I, as the owner get the credit, or how I interpreted the client to get the credit? both get credit. So interesting. Yeah. So so let's let's go back to the web designer analogy, that's, that's one of the the, the agencies that I worked with the most are web designers or ad agencies and things like that. So the ad agency would purchase our software licensing, they would purchase the license to use our software to resell or resell license to their clients. And so let's say they they spent, you know, they bought 10 licenses, and they spent $5,000 with us for the year. They can take they can get a tax credit on that $5,000. So they would get back 20 $500 back from the government that year. So out of pocket really is 20 $500. We also have grant programs we're working with, for web agencies, which is another side conversation to help them get involved for even less out of pocket. So that way, we can help even more their clients. But that's a separate topic. So now they incorporate our license resell license into their web design. And so now their web design, it's not an option, it's just included in their web design for their clients, their clients go and they purchase their this website from them for$3,000. Now because it's accessible, now their client can go and get a tax credit of the$3,000 that they paid for that website. Back in just an accessible website, because the way that the tax credit reads is anything that you purchase, or any expense that has to do with accessibility for your clients qualifies for this tax credit. So whether you add a ramp to your store, or whether you add accessibility or any type of assistive technology to your website, or anything to do with offering accessibility to people with disabilities qualifies for this tax credit. That's so okay. Now I'm curious, is, let's say for podcasts, like I didn't have a website, like I've just bootstrapped, I only did an anchor, how would I get in trouble? Let's say Vinci, if I'm making money that is not accessible for whoever or because it's just audio? Would that be an exclusion? Um, one thing that we've been working with is, you know, if you if you purchased a transcription service from somebody or something to and you can show on the invoice that it is a service that's adding accessibility to your podcast, you know, like if you paid somebody to transcribe your, all of your episodes, then that expense would, in my mind, the way that the tax credit is written would be a an eligible expense to get back. So there is a little not a caveat, but the way it's written is you will get back most up to 50. You will get back 80% of everything you spend over your first $250. So the larger the expense, the more you're actually going to get back. So if you're if you only spent $250, for the year on, say transcription services, there wouldn't be any tax credit because you have to foot the bill for the first 250. But if you spent $3,000 on a website, then you would be getting back 50% of most of that, because$250 is just a small portion of it. So you'd be getting back, you know, everything above $250. So So is it still, let's say, cuz I've, I've bought transcriptions, but I just know from ranking it, it's better to have it because of that I made it accessible, right? Yes, exactly. It's otter.ai. It's like 100 bucks for the year I did their annual instead of monthly. So then I would not get the full credit for that, because it was only 100. Right? Correct, because it's less than$250. But if you, you know, if let's say that transcription service was included, let's say, you know, you purchased our package, and then you add it on transcription, which is one of the services we're looking to add to, because we do closed captioning. So it's just a natural, you know, progression of doing transcription of audio as well. Let's say you bought our complete package, and it cost you $1,000 and included, you know, X amount of transcriptions, and then you added on more and then later in the year, you spent another couple $100 on more transcriptions, because you had more things for the services. And so let's say for the year total, you spent 15 $100, okay, and so you can get back 50% of 12 $150, because you take the 250 off the top, and 12 $150 is left, you can get half of that back, which is what is it like$675, or something like that, you would get back as a tax refund tax credit, at the end of the year for your business. So it makes sense. Because if you're going to be if you're going to like especially with somebody who's doing web services, if some if you're a web designer is going to charge you 20 $500 for a website, and then if he adds on these services, and let's say even if he charges you $3,000 now, because he's adding in the cost of the accessibility and everything like that, your out of pocket is still going to be less than it was before, because you're going to get back, you know, almost 15 $100. So your out of pocket is going to be like 1500 or 16 $100 instead of 2000. So by adding accessibility, the web designer or the web agency is actually going to be making money because they're going to be adding this accessibility into their services. But the end customer is also going to be saving money, because of the tax credit and and how it works. This is definitely like a lot of small businesses wouldn't mind. Like he said, she dropped 3000 now, but you know, you're gonna get half of it back next year kind of thing. Exactly. And one of the great things is, you know, I've been in the digital marketing space for a little over a year now. And I've gotten to know a lot of great coaches, and course creators that help people, you know, grow their business or help them with a lot of different things. And, you know, some of them are high ticket offers, you know, some of them charge 234 or $5,000. And a lot of them, I have one of my mentors when I first got started. He's a business coach that teaches affiliate marketing. And he and I are talking about incorporating a training on a DA compliance and our software into his program so that when people build their websites for their affiliate marketing business, it's accessible. And by doing that, his $5,000 program now just got cut in half, for the people who buy it. So instead of paying$5,000 out of pocket for the year, they pay him the $5,000. But they'll be able to get back almost 2500 in tax credits for the year. And so it just helps him close more business helps him get more people into the program to help them start their business. And it's just a win win for everybody around and on top of that and the licenses that he buys from me, he can apply for and get the tax credit as well, because he's helping his customers with an accessible product now, I would assume like let's go with the affiliate marketer because he's doing a sales with the actual sale be the same where would that be credited to? I think that was the offer what the ADA for him. So like, would that be go against his income, but he's still the DA kind of thing. And this is probably tax person question now. Well, I'm in simple terms, you know, when I when I sell a resale license, I sell them in, you know, bulk packages, so they buy either 510 or 25 or more. So they get a discount, it's a wholesale rate. And so whatever they purchase from me at that wholesale rate, they can utilize and apply for the tax credit on those because they're purchasing a service that will help their customers with accessibility. Okay, that's what I was thinking for each city. I was thinking also the second part where like once he sells it in, he gets his income, he could also get a type of credit deduction, because of selling the ADA, but that was it that might be more of a tax person thing. Yeah, I mean, everybody it's not, it's not really double dipping, because they're buying a service from us to offer to their clients, which will make it accessible. So he's helping his clients with accessibility, and his clients are helping their clients with accessibility. to different, that's awesome. Yes, it really, and people are like, well, I can't really afford it. Well, there's no reason to not afford it anymore. We've we've been making it extremely lucrative for your business to be able to invest in accessibility and make, you know, make it accessible to more people. And as I mentioned before, I'm working now with different nonprofits like the Lions Club, their mission is to help people with blindness. So I'm working with them to be able to get grant money to help web agencies do, you know, cover that $250, or a little bit more of the other 50% that they have to put in. So if more web agencies can get involved, then we can reach all of their clients, which would help us reach a lot more businesses than me going one on one to businesses, we can go one to many by bringing more web agencies into the fold, helping them increase their business and reach more websites, and therefore will be able to make the internet accessible a lot faster. So I'm actually curious now with this whole thing, and you've hinted on it, but it's wasn't a full gesture. So let's say like Google, most of their ads are visual. How would they be compliant? Google, that, that is outside of my realm. Okay, how? How is Google compliant? I don't know that that's Oh, no, it's just like, I'm thinking like, let's say, like, I'm watching YouTube, they had to close captioning. But they have standard color, there's no option to change it kind of thing. And that's it. Yeah. So there are still a lot of parts of the internet that are not accessible to people. And, you know, if, if, like you said, you know, you go to YouTube's website, and you go to watch a video, if you if the font isn't right, or if it's, you know, if they can't see it, there's no tool on there for them to be able to adjust it accordingly. So you're right there, there are a lot of the larger companies that but in the back in the background, you know, in their code, their fonts are probably adjusted to the right type of font that's, that's compliant with the ABA standards. And the ADA goes by a set of rules put out there by the the W three C, the worldwide Consortium. Design. And this is a this is part of it is you know, it's a worldwide standard for accessibility. And accessibility is not just the US, the ADA governs the US. But Canada has the W. What is it the ACA, which is the accessibility for Canadians act, and they have another one for Ontario. And other countries also have different regulations that for their websites, for people with disabilities as well. So yes, we have the tax credits in the US. But accessibility really goes worldwide with the internet since the internet is worldwide, I wouldn't say especially with 2020, essentially forcing everyone to do more commerce online than they would have normally. Absolutely. It's definitely a big problem. That's why 2021 is the year that everybody really needs to know about this. And that's why I'm out there spreading the word far and wide. And hopefully, you know, and I know that we can't help everybody, you know, being one company, we can't help every single website, the bazillions of websites that are out there. But we want to be able to do our part to help you know, as many as we can to become accessible. And you know, even if they don't utilize our services, the ADA compliant guy services, if they go to somebody else, as long as they're getting their website to be more accessible to people, that's really what we're all about and my mission to help spread awareness about accessibility on the web. Well, Tony, I actually have an event coming up, I definitely am going to have to get you on because this is just fascinating. I'd like to pick your brain more maybe in like six months and be like, hey, so what's new, what's different kind of thing. I would love to do anything I can to help you and your listeners. Wonderful. I'll shoot you an email later for some links and all that and yeah, thank you again, Tony, for coming on. This is just truly an eye opening day. Oh, thank you, Josh. It's been great being on here. It's been a great time. conversation. Great to meet you. Same here. I appreciate you and everything you're doing. Thanks buddy. I