Accessibility as a Habit, Not a Hurdle With Maxwell Ivey

Accessibility doesn’t have to feel like a mountain you climb alone. Jackie sat down with accessibility advocate Maxwell Ivey to turn big ideas into small, repeatable steps that make your website and content welcoming to every user. Instead of chasing every rule at once, we focus on process over panic: define the user problem, choose the smallest next fix, and build momentum.

We start with the highest‑impact moves. Headings become navigational landmarks for screen readers, so a clean H1 followed by a logical H2/H3 structure instantly improves flow. Then we tackle readability—plain language, short sentences, generous spacing, and high color contrast—so people with low vision, dyslexia, ADHD, or anyone skimming on mobile can engage without friction. On images, Max lays out how to write alt text that carries meaning, not fluff, and why buttons, icons, and linked images must have accessible names that describe purpose, not just appearance.

We wrap with a mindset shift that might surprise you: smaller, user‑obsessed teams often outpace big brands on accessibility because they iterate fast and listen closely. You don’t need a massive budget to make a difference—you need intent and a habit. Your challenge this week: fix your homepage headings and link text so every visitor, including screen reader users, can scan and act with confidence. 

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Maxwell Ivey’s website and social media links below.

Maxwell Ivey’s Website

Maxwell’s Facebook Page

Maxwell’s LinkedIn Page

Maxwell’s Instagram Page

Maxwell’s X Page

Maxwell’s Pinterest Page

Maxwell’s YouTube Channel

📢 Call-to-Action: Want to learn more or work with Maxwell? Visit The Accessibility Advantage to explore his latest accessibility content and reach out about consulting, training, or support. 

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Transcript

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Framing Accessibility As Good Design

Jackie Pelegrin 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Designing with Love Podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, instructional designers and educators. Welcome to episode 130 of the Designing with Love Podcast. I'm excited to welcome back Maxw Ivey for part two of our accessibility mini-series, Designing for Everyone. In our last conversation, we talked about why accessibility is a competitive edge, and today we're getting practical. We're diving into how to build websites and content that are accessible for all users without making it feel overwhelming. Maxwell, welcome back to the show. Absolutely. I love that. I was just talking to one of my coworkers a little bit about that, and he said, Oh, we're gonna have to have a conversation about that. And I said, Yeah, we will. Absolutely. So let's let's start by making accessibility feel approachable, because like you said, for a lot of people and even for myself for a long time, it can sound technical or intimidating. So when people when people do hear web accessibility, they often think it's complicated or only for specialists. So for you, what's the simplest way to reframe accessibility so designers and educators see it as good design, not extra work?

Process Over Overwhelm

Speaker 1 2:34

Question, you know, these are things that you have to solve on a regular basis as an organizational leader. How would you apply those techniques that you consider that problem-solving exercise? Just apply those same techniques or uh processes to accessibility. And I feel like that's the best place I can I can get them as far as avoiding being uh terrorized or overwhelmed by accessibility.

Jackie Pelegrin 3:01

I like that. So keep it centered on what what problem you're trying to solve, right? And make sure that you don't overwhelm yourself, right, with too many different things to solve at one time, right?

Speaker 1 3:15

Solve anything else.

Jackie Pelegrin 3:18

Right. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, you just have to take it one thing at a time, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 3:31

You know, you went from simple equations to quadratic equations to geometry, but you still had to have a process as far as what steps you would take, uh, when you would do what, and of course, you also had to keep track of your work so you can see yourself whether or not you answered the question you started out to ask.

Jackie Pelegrin 3:55

Right. That's so true. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think it's something that oftentimes uh business leaders or individuals that are working on making things accessible or solving an issue that they have is uh is they forget that, right? Yeah, that's that's so true.

Speaker 1 4:13

It's kind of easy to forget because as a community, people with disabilities do not do a good job of that tend to make things feel more challenging than they are.

Jackie Pelegrin 4:29

Right, that's true. Yeah, I I know I've done that plenty of times myself and make it more complicated than it needs to be, right? So sometimes getting back to basics is is what people need to do. Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1 4:43

As somebody who wants to work with others to solve these problems, the important place to begin is for the person you're trying to serve to be willing to accept some of their all responsibility for the issue that you're trying to address. And when it helps accessibility, many of us with disabilities have made things worse by our expectations, the time constraints we want things done within, and just not making it seem simple when a lot of this stuff it's really not all that hard, you know, especially once you get started. And I kind of think about at one time when I was first starting out online, the only way I could get going was to code HTML and teach myself how to do that. And it was difficult, but after you did it while you realize that there's a farming, and you know, for each thing you want to add to a website here, you decide to do it as long as you follow those same steps over and over again. Uh you can build a really beautiful website with about seven or eight you know, very simple tools within HTML if you're willing to do them over and over enough times. I feel like with accessibility,

High-Impact Web Fixes

Speaker 1 6:00

a lot of things we're gonna talk about today as far as specific things that you can do address are very simple.

Jackie Pelegrin 6:06

Oh, right. That's true. Yeah. So so Max, um I wanted to kind of get a little bit of that tactical part of maybe with websites and and things like that. Um, what do you think are are the top three to five highest impact changes you'd recommend starting with on a website, especially around things like headings, navigation links, images, alt text, uh color contrast, those types of things? What are what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, a couple things before I get to the website websites.

Speaker 1 6:43

Um the things allowed you to jump across is kind of like hybrid space a screen reader or tech user on your website. So when you know those well, and if you keep them consistent across your web page, that really allows us to use the websites almost as officially as a site person or as somebody who doesn't have a motor control issue. So I'd say editings is my number one. Uh two, I think, would be the combination of uh text, uh, which would be the font and the contrast and the language. I as you know, I tend to write and speak in long complex sentences. But when I post to my website, I do my best to break things up into smaller chunks. So for screen reasons, a lot of times if if I've set it to say from the top of a page or from the beginning of a paragraph, if there are long, complex sentences, then it can read and I can mishear words, or I can think things are there that ain't there. Or I'll hear things that don't make sense, and then I'll have to go back and check

Plain Language & Readability

Speaker 1 10:30

them out uh word by word or character by character, which obviously takes longer. And you know, the other aspect of that, which is the font and the color. Um, I used to have enough vision where I used very large screen identification so I can remember the experiences. And this also applies to people with dyslexia. Basically, you want a clean, clear font. You want space between the letters, between the words, and between the lines of text. Uh the clear, crisp text really helps people with dyslexia, but they may have to use some other things along with that, maybe changing uh the color palette depending on whether or not that's an option on your website. But uh in general, the the simple font like simple sites tend to give you the best chance to avoid accessibility issue. And for screen reader magnifiers, as they as they increase the size of the text, if you don't have what I was talking about a minute ago, that you're gonna have glory words on top of each other. So uh I would say that, and then plain language is really starting to become an important thing that it is so much better to make the connection, and this is really beyond technical, more into the emotional. It's really easier to make a connection with the person who has a disability. When you speak in plain language, uh, I'm not talking about uh offensive or trauma citic language, but just plain simple words. Why instead of visually a there's just what sounds right for you when you're writing that sentence? Um and of course for me, since I'm also a writer, I tend to I tend to to to change whatever words I can use from time to time, so I'm just the same expression over and over again, but I'm really concerned by the fact that we are in a time now we're playing speaking in plain language, especially when you're accessibility and disability coming in there.

Jackie Pelegrin 12:34

Absolutely. Yeah. That's great. Wow, I like that. Thank you, Max. Appreciate it. So uh yeah, uh is there anything else you wanted to add to that?

unknown 12:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1 12:46

Well, I don't think we, you know, I don't think we can we can read this without talking about alt text, but I think people uh realize that alt text is just a small part of images, and uh if we're talking about being inclusive, we're talking about having an online presence that code we don't assemble your website. And so the alt text is the is the descriptive text that you can add. It's in the background unless you're using a screen reader like myself, or unless you're somebody who likes to look at people's web code. And it tells my screen reader that there's an image there, and then it will tell it whatever you have told it. So your description is an alternative text, and you can put things in there like the gender of the person, the color it's like, and the clothes that they're wearing. I think in the alt text you sent me for your picture says you're wearing a shirt that has a uh gloves, it's a mixture of pink and blue and purple. So you get to show your uh your understanding of the physical aspect of the image, and I encourage people to try to make the description as compelling as the image was because most people put some time and thought into their photos or into the stuff they're creating for their business. So I don't have any really like hard and fast rules for the alt text, but I would say uh try to compel the message and try to put yourself in the place of the other person. But the images the alt text. And alt text is not only important for images, but also any item that you attach an image to. So

Alt Text That Tells The Story

Speaker 1 14:30

if you attach an image to a button, a link, or a video, then that alt text has to be there. But beyond the alt text, we have uh emojis, stickers, and gifts. And these are widely used even on websites. And so I used to tell people avoid gifts altogether because it's not accessible, and they've got a look more accessible for screen readers, but I also discouraged them because the gifts could possibly trigger people with autism or ADHD or BTSD. But they've now offered a new option on GIFs where you can set them to either stop or start motion when somebody encounters the gift. Now, most people default to having it in motion when somebody arrives in it. I personally think the default should be stop motion because it really can take so little to trigger somebody with a mental or emotional disability, you know.

Jackie Pelegrin 15:34

Right.

Speaker 1 15:35

And that's something we always think about. And then uh the emojis and the stickers, uh the emojis are really accessible because they were created through an independent convention, they have to be discussed and voted on and heard in advanced, and they're mostly simple images that are easy to add descriptions that everybody will understand. Even the ones that are people where I have this word that I want light scan, eight scan, dark scan, well, you're still wrapped up easy thanks to understand. So the emotions it's not really a problem, except for people I find quite often with social media photos, with text messages, and even sometimes with emails, people will use three, four, or five emojis in a row. And the problem with that is less reader has to announce each of them separately. Now, if you did like say three smiley faces, my computer will say three smiley faces, it won't say smiley face three times, unless you put a space between each of them and then it will treat them as individuals. So uh being conscious about how many emojis you're using, what do they mean? Are you even sure what they mean? Sometimes I catch myself about the info and I go, I don't really know what this means to me. What's what's like to be the other person? So speed uh be talking. Every so often I'll I'll run across a social media post, and there'll be five or six or seven emojis in their profile, which means every time I see one of their posts, my computer has to read those descriptions again and again. So uh it's one of those things we don't think about much and accessibility, but it's something we should be mindful about. And then stickers are a little more difficult because people can create their own stickers, companies create them, and so stickers are like any other straight image. It really comes down to the alternative text description of the image. And so if you're creating stickers for your own use, that used with your logo or personal photo, then you want to make sure that those all texts that you add to those uh stickers when you create them uh are accurate.

Emojis, GIFs, & Stickers Mindfully

Speaker 1 18:00

I had to stop using some of the more common uh cartoon-based stickers on social media because people kept telling me, Max, uh, the description isn't matching up to what they're telling you. This is a picture of me. So uh be conscious of stickers. If a sticker is um has a lot of description to it, if your feels like a bunch of them, that could be slowing down the process of the person visiting your website. Um, for example, one of my favorite stickers is one of Snoopy, and the description from the peanuts people that's on the sticker every time I use it is uh Snoopy. Uh shuffling his feet as he guys is down the street. Something like that. And I know I can't use that sticker very often or more like it because it's gonna take somebody else a while to do anything with it. So you know, stickers, emojis, and gifts are things we don't normally think about. They're not things that we generally use a lot on websites. We will use them more often in blogging than we do in site building, but they are an important part of everybody's communication. And as a good friend of mine keeps reminding me, she's like, Max, when you say you can't uh send a message, that isn't correct. When you say you can't send a message, what you're always saying is you cannot communicate them. So these emojis, stickers, gifts, along with all textile images, these are all into the communicating information about our product, service, or ourselves as a purchase or a company to the people that visit our online content.

Jackie Pelegrin 19:50

Hmm. That's important. Yeah, I didn't even think about the the gifts, the emojis, um, yeah, the stickers. Wow, that's and that's a way you're right, it's a way people communicate with each other. So we have to be aware of those too. That's great. I love that. Thank you, Max, for that great insight on that. That's uh I'm gonna think more about those now than before. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 20:32

As long as you're trying to respect for trying to learn something more inclusive, you can't waste those opportunities to learn more visiting website.

Jackie Pelegrin 20:49

Right, that's true. Absolutely. So thank you. Yes, I it's great when we learn those things that we can put in our toolbox, right, to make things more inclusive and more accessible for everyone. So I love that. So as we know, Max, uh most people aren't rebuilding an entire website, right? Not all the time, at least. Uh sometimes they're adding pages or they're posting blogs, maybe updating a landing page or uploading resources. So if you had to give listeners a simple pre-published accessibility checklist that they can run in five minutes before they hit post, what would be on it for you? Yeah, or maybe they're adding a page to their website, um, or yeah, or maybe posting a blog or something like that.

Start With New Content First

Speaker 1 22:16

In some cases, people decide to website a great place to start D just like somebody who has fallen off the wagon with their diet. Okay, yesterday was a bad day, we're gonna start over today. So for some people, you know, same thing. This blog post, this next page of any of my website, these are gonna be good things about accessibility. Um, and they're gonna be a great place, great way to get started and a way to avoid the overwhelm. But before you do that, just look at your home page and you know, make sure your links are properly labeled and that the other story county points going to uh make sure that your buttons are collectible with uh with a keyboard or in the mouse, and then again they're properly labeled.

Speaker 2 23:08

Over time, if you're all metacried, most of the other things follow up. Um I'm using green, I'm using green, white, and black, and as we know, green balls colours.

Jackie Pelegrin 23:44

Right.

Speaker 1 24:14

You're right, with a new site and all site.

unknown 24:17

Very challenging.

Speaker 1 24:20

Accessible. So uh the best way to do that maybe with starting with your newest content.

Jackie Pelegrin 24:29

Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, start start from that uh that approach that yeah, your newest content first and then work your way backwards, right?

Speaker 2 24:50

And you have to be really careful that you've got running mistakes along the way.

Jackie Pelegrin 24:55

Right. Yeah, that's true. Can be easy to get lost in the the

Quick Five-Minute Pre-Publish Check

Jackie Pelegrin 25:00

weeds of it, right? For sure. Yeah. Sometimes what happens to me back when I was putting my website.

Speaker 2 25:22

I don't really want to go back soon.

Speaker 1 25:25

It seems like you pretty much have to force yourself to exactly except some of your old stuff the way it is now. Some that you don't overload yourself, don't paralyze yourself.

Speaker 2 25:39

You can start by making sure the new stuff is just by overtime working, which is something I like to talk about.

Jackie Pelegrin 26:47

Yeah, that's it's a tough thing to yeah, to know where to start and where where you can make the highest impact, right, for for your users as well. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Right, that's true. Absolutely. Yes. So as we know, Max tools can make accessibility feel a lot more doable, especially when you're building this habit that you and I are talking about, these different things that we can do. So, what are your top two to three go-to tools or quick checks you recommend for spotting the most common website accessibility issues?

Speaker 2 28:19

So

Tools That Catch Common Issues

Speaker 2 28:50

we saw me so for service units.

Jackie Pelegrin 29:08

Yeah, so you have to be careful which ones you go with, right? That's true.

Speaker 2 29:23

So I think those two would be good. Uh what I've seen, I don't think the database would be exerted.

Jackie Pelegrin 29:35

Right, right, I agree. I've checked out the wave one. Um, and that's yeah, it's it's accessible, it's easy to navigate, and so that's good. So I think most people would be okay with with using that for their accessibility checker. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 30:05

Especially the future. So the RH corporations out there that one of them tried to shock the coordinator.

Speaker 3 30:25

Hmm.

Jackie Pelegrin 30:25

That's uh yeah, that's kind of surprising that a com a big company like Google would not have certain things like Google Docs and Forums be accessible. Wow, that's surprising. Um I'm glad I I'm glad I don't use those very often. That's good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 30:43

They're not the only ones, but we have quite a few examples of corporations that are doing it very poorly. So we also have examples of smaller uh so much bigger or very small teams-based companies that are doing very much.

Jackie Pelegrin 31:00

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, because you would think that the larger corporations, since they have more uh more of that ability to be able to put money into it, right? And they have larger staff to be able to have that ability to do it, you would think that the larger companies would be better at it than the smaller uh mom and pop shops or ones that are small businesses. Yeah, that's interesting. Just the opposite. Right, right. That's true. Yeah, so it depends on you know what they're like you said, what their focus is and yeah, what they're what they're

Big Brands vs Small Teams

Jackie Pelegrin 31:44

trying to accomplish, right? And so it's true. If they're not customer focused, then they're not gonna think of the things that you and I are talking about as often. Right. Yeah, just do just do what they have to do to get the get it out, right? Yeah. Hmm. That's absolutely that's a great question. I think every business leader needs to ask themselves that. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's true. You want to have a competitive advantage, then don't just do the minimum, right? Exactly. Right, exactly. Can't just do the bare minimum and expect to get an A on on that assignment or receive an A in my class. It's gonna take more effort than that. Yeah, exactly. I don't hand out A's just like you know, teachers probably they shouldn't hand out candy to every student and say, oh, good job. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'm not in the business of handing out A's uh freely, so they have to earn it. Absolutely. Yes. To wrap up, let's make this actionable for someone who's listening on a walk or maybe driving and they want clear, a clear next step. So if a listener takes one action this week to make their website or digital content more accessible, what's the first thing you'd want them to do?

One Action To Take This Week

Jackie Pelegrin 34:51

That's great. Thanks, Max. I appreciate that. And I know my listeners will appreciate that too, especially if they're doing consulting or they uh have a business website. I think they would really appreciate that. Um, because you like you said, the home page is where people are going to go first, right? So it's that first impression, and you want to make sure it's accessible for people. I love that. I appreciate that. Well, Maxwell, thank you so much for coming back. I appreciate it and giving us such a clear, uh, practical way, different ways actually, that we can make accessibility doable because I think it is doable for us. So I really I really appreciate too how you break this down so instructional designers like myself and educators can take action right away. So for anyone who wants to keep learning from you or connect with you, what's the best place to follow you and reach out? Great. I love it. Yes, I see that you're very active on there too. And so whenever I see your comments and everything related to PodMatch or anything related to accessibility, it's great to see that you're active on there as well. So that's wonderful. Yeah, that's true. I agree. Yeah, it's that's uh it's a great way to connect with other professionals and stay up to date on what's going on in the industry. So yeah, I agree with you on that one. Great. Well, I look forward to having you back again. You're more than welcome. The the door's always open, so uh anytime on the podcast. So if you think of something you want to share with all the

Where To Connect & Closing

Jackie Pelegrin 36:44

listeners, uh let me know and and I'd be happy to have you back on and we can dig deeper into any other area that you're interested in. Great. Thanks again, Max. I appreciate it. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review, or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference, and I'm truly thankful for you.