E43: Digital Accessibility Unpacked: WCAG Updates and Best Practices

In this episode of the United in Accessibility podcast, Michele Lucchini and Giacomo Petri from UsableNet explore the implications of WCAG 2.2 for web accessibility and share actionable strategies for implementation. They discuss the transformative power of these standards in creating inclusive digital experiences and fostering a more equitable online environment.

Transcript

00:04 Speaker

Welcome to the United in Accessibility Podcast. Today, we are excited to host two distinguished leaders from UsableNet, Michele Lucchini, Vice President of Product Management, and Giacomo Petri, Director of Accessibility Auditors. Michele has over 20 years of experience driving innovation in digital accessibility. He plays a pivotal role in shaping the company's product vision and ensuring accessible digital experiences across industries. His expertise spans software development, team management and client success, making him a trusted thought leader in the field. Giacomo, with over a decade of experience in web development and accessibility, leads the auditing team at UsableNet. He is dedicated to ensuring that digital properties meet the highest standards of accessibility compliance. In addition, Giacomo plays an instrumental role in developing and delivering accessibility training programs, providing clients with the tools to sustain long term success. Join us as we dive into their insights on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines updates, best practices for maintaining accessible digital spaces and the future of digital accessibility on the United in Accessibility podcast,

01:24 Christopher Michael Lee  

Giacomo and Michele, welcome to IAAP, United in Accessibility. This is our podcast. We are looking forward to having you today, learning a little bit more about some of the work that your organization is doing, and particularly on WCAG. So, I just want to pause and have each of you introduce yourself, Giacomo. Why don't we start with you?

01:43 Giacomo Petri  

Thank you, Christopher. My name is Giacomo Petri and I am the Director of Accessibility Auditors here at UsableNet. With over a decade of experience in digital accessibility, I began my journey at UsableNet as a mobile web developer with no prior experience in accessibility and through internal training and guidance from the team, I learned how to incorporate accessibility into development. Over the years, I have dedicated myself to studying, researching accessibility, and I continue to stay updated and to research with the latest advancements in the field. And I'm also actively involved in various W3C working groups, including the AGWAG, that stands for Accessibility Guidelines Working Group and defined new standards, the Area Working Group, the WCG to the text Task Force, and the ACD rules community group, which focuses on documenting and harmonizing the interpretation of the W3C accessibility standards for testing purposes.

02:44 Christopher Michael Lee  

Thank you, Giacomo. Just curious Giacomo, you know, in regard to the working group, can you briefly talk about WC3 working groups and your involvement that just from a high level standpoint? 

02:56 Giacomo Petri  

Yes, of course. So basically, there are many groups, as I mentioned, the AGWA, the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group is now working on the new standards, the WCAG 3.0 and is also continuing the effort in updating the WCAG 2.2, especially the understanding documents. Then there are the ARIA which are basically defining the area standards, which are, let's say, improvement in terms of semantics to better expose the elements for assistive technologies. Then the WCG to the text Task Force, again, which is basically improving the current wording of the WCAG. And finally, the ACT rules community group, which basically tries to harmonize the interpretation of the W3C standards for especially testing purposes and for automated, for example, testing platforms. 

03:56 Christopher Michael Lee  

Great. Thank you for that overview. I appreciate that. Michaela, tell us a little bit about

04:02 Michele Lucchini  

Yeah. First of all, thanks for having us here, Christopher. I am Michele, and I am the Vice President for products and delivery. I started UsableNet in 2001. I’m employee number six so and I started as the webmaster, which is a role that I think doesn't exist anymore, but yeah, suddenly I started getting very passionate about accessibility. I can, I can say that probably I dedicated the 20 years of my life to accessibility, and in particular, thanks to the role I played in the organization, my main focus was understanding the impact of accessibility as part of the processes that regulate all the dynamics around the development of the lifecycle of a digital product, such a website or a native app, thanks to the non. Number of clients that we had in usable net. We are exposed to so many differences in terms of size of the organization, so many differences in the way they work, different way they are structured, so team architectures. So, it was very intriguing to try to find ways to help all of them. Because, as we all know, one thing is to do an accessibility test and maybe remediate what the test highlights. Another story is to make sure that from that point or over then, you maintain the accessibility level that you achieve. So that concept of maintaining accessibility over time, means making accessibility a requirement rather than a project, and this is not an easy requirement, so knowing the way the companies work is essential in order to be able to provide the right suggestions to our clients. 

06:00 Christopher Michael Lee  

Wow. Thank you for that. You're right. I mean, I mean companies are you walk into the door, and you go, okay, everyone's different, and their needs are different, and it is a challenge. So, Michele, can you just tell us a little bit about UsableNet and the work that you do for the company, just from a high level standpoint? 

06:19 Michele Lucchini  

Yeah, Sure. So UsableNet has been pioneering digital accessibility since 2000. We started providing tools. We had plugins for Microsoft front page and Macromedia Dreamweaver. There were two of the Webmaster Tools in the early 2000 and our main business development area was the United States of America, because there is where, thanks to the American with Disability Act, there were proper laws and rules that were regulating government sites. So, our TBI client was a government site or companies that were close to the government. At the moment, the guideline that was available was the 1.1 much simpler than the current one. And after implementing these plugins, we started implementing server-side solution that was testing a multitude of pages and providing a report that the webmaster was using to remediate the site. Thanks to this technology that was basically crawling a website in parallel, we started implementing thinking ahead and implementing a new platform. We started implementing a solution that was transforming desktop sites. And again, we are talking about 2001 more or less, into a simpler version. Simpler was the way, or one of the ways, companies were doing web accessibility in the early 2000, so we were taking off the images. We were linearizing the text, linearizing complex information, like tables, and we were presenting an alternative site, but that was not separate. Was a dynamic transformation of an existing site. So, our developers were writing these transformation rules that were robust enough to allow our clients to do all the changes, and we were either re implementing the fixes here and there to make sure that the site, the alternative site, was still in a good shape, or the rules were robust enough that we're already managing these changes in a successful way. So that was the way we were doing web accessibility, not to derail our conversation, but I think is important around the point I made before, and to give an idea on how much information we were able to collect in terms of ways companies work, is that in the 2004/2005 we applied this technology I just described to the mobile space. So, we realized that the pioneers of mobile browsing were very similar to users with different abilities. So, we started implementing not just accessible alternative sites, but also alternative mobile site. And we actually built the very first mobile website that was for one Railway Company in US. And we then proceed in parallel with these two streams, so accessibility and mobile. And very often there were intersections, because our mobile designs were always accessible also. So it was, it was kind of a very interesting journey that then with the responsive web design, kind of remove the deed of us focusing on mobile but allow us to collect so much knowledge and competencies to be one of the best companies in the accessibility space worldwide.

10:34 Christopher Michael Lee  

Michelle, just curious about that, because I think data collection particularly on the mobile aspect, which came about, as you said, much later. UsableNet actually published this work for the greater audience, or is it something that is more used internally to make your products and services better?

10:51 Michele Lucchini  

This is mainly something that we use internally, and it is actually, I mean, your question is very interesting at the moment, we haven't considered in publishing this data, but internally, we are working constantly on, on a, let's say, on a project that is focused on finding the common denominators between the ways companies work and it's not as easy as we thought it was going to be, because small changes in the in the in the processes are determining big efforts, potentially in the way the companies is incorporate accessibility and with processes, I mean not just the way they work, but also technology they use, the way the teams are structured, but yeah, maybe in the future, we might consider to publish something around this.

11:49 Christopher Michael Lee  

Well, definitely reach out to us if you're interested in doing it. Our membership base is very interested in data, like the information that you're collecting, particularly around mobile accessibility. In fact, at the M- Enabling Summit this October, we have a workshop just on mobile accessibility. This is our second year that we're running the workshop, so we left a part down the road. But I know that's we're not here for that, but just keep that in the back of your mind.

12:13 Michele Lucchini  

Yeah, for sure, and again, not to derail but something that we are working internally is on sort of maturity project. While we know that accessibility is important from a technical point of view, at the moment, there isn't any, I mean, let's say tool for lack of better work to validate the ways companies work and if the way they work is adequate to the overall goals, so to have accessibility as a requirement. So, we are trying to work on kind of streamlining even more than what it is right now, our concept of accessibility blueprint, which is our audit of the company processes in order to make recommendation on what they need to change in order to treat accessibility as a requirement. Our idea was to create a sort of guideline to do this and mimicking a little bit of what the web content accessibility guideline does. That is still like an ongoing project, and definitely, you guys will immediately know as soon as we have something to to show. Right, thank you. Okay, so let's drill down a little bit. Giacomo, could you give us a little bit of an overview of our key changes introduced with WCAG 2.2 the way, and what motivates the inclusion of these changes?

13:38 Giacomo Petri  

Yeah, so the web content accessibility guidelines 2.2 continue the work initiated by the previous WCAG 2.1. While WCAG aims to address a wide range of disabilities and combinations of disability, it is important to note that not all the possible disabilities are fully covered. So, it's worth mentioning that there is a sort of ongoing group of which I'm a member, that meets every Friday to discuss and improve the current WCAG guidelines. And this collaborative effort ensures that the guidelines evolve to better meet the needs of diverse users. WCAG 2.2 extends the criteria established in WCAG 2.1 by introducing new criteria. This means that websites and applications that conform to WCAG 2.2 will also be compliant with WCAG 2.1 and 2.0 ensuring backward compatibility. One of the primary focuses of the WCAG 2.2 has been to address challenges faced by users with cognitive and learning disabilities, users with low vision and users who experience difficulties when interacting with mobile devices. This reflects concentrated effort to make digital content more accessible and user friendly for those groups. The new criteria introduced in the WCAG 2.2 include the focus not obscured, minimum. And I'm talking about just single A and double A requirements. Of course, there are also triple A requirements, but in terms of legislation, they are not always called out. So, we will focus on single A and double A. So, I said focus, not obscured, dragging movements, target size, consistent health, redundant entry and accessible authentication, minimum. Additionally, it's important to highlight the removal of the success criterion 411 about parsing, which was the only criterium that could be fully tested through automated scans. This criterium was, let's say, initially introduced to resolve issues that assistive technologies faced when directly parsing HTML. However, with the advancements in technology, assistive tools do not longer require direct HTML parsing, and as a result, these issues have either been resolved or are now covered by other criteria, especially for example, the 131-info relationship. So basically, this criterion has been treated as obsolete and has been removed. 

16:42 Christopher Michael Lee  

The list Giacomo, the list that you laid out like target size, some of the focus areas, I can see what they really you know, would impact, obviously, users on mobile devices and the low vision aspect. But could you speak just a little bit more about how the extension of the criteria is really addressing cognitive disabilities and learning disabilities, just highlighting that a little more.

17:05 Giacomo Petri  

So, I'd like to start by noting that WCAG 2.1 already included success criteria that benefit users with cognitive disabilities. For example, if we think about the 122-caption prerecorded, or the 132 meaningful sequences, or 135 identifying with purpose, or all the success criteria related to the error validation, like the error identification, labels or instructions, error suggestions. While this criterion may not have been exclusively aimed at users with cognitive disabilities. They certainly benefit them. Anyway, one of the goals of the WCAG 2.2 was to expand coverage for cognitive disabilities. However, each criterion addresses specific needs, so not all the new criteria will directly impact the experience of users with cognitive disabilities, and there are specific criteria developed for cognitive disabilities that are basically consistent, help redundant entry and accessible authentication. This new success criteria focus on enhancing usability, reducing the cognitive load, and ensuring processes are as straightforward as possible. However, let's say sometimes criteria designed for specific disabilities can also benefit others. For example, if we think about the new focus not obscured criterion, it is originally intended for users who don't use a pointing device, but it also aids users with cognitive disabilities by making it easier to identify where the focus is and what the user is currently doing. So not all the success criteria that are meant to cover specific disabilities can cover also other disabilities. 

19:09 Christopher Michael Lee  

Great. Thank you for that. Giacomo. So, with these changes you know that are happening. You know, companies have to kind of maybe revamp or integrate these possible changes into the websites and so on. Michele, how does UsableNet kind of address that with some of your clients?

19:28 Michele Lucchini  

There are multiple ways we do that. For sure, education is probably one of the most important. Education in particular when you have the introduction of new success criteria. And as you and Giacomo were discussing a few seconds ago, there are a number of success criteria, and also the declaration of the W3C to focus specifically on disabilities that have been not treated with a lot of focus in the past, you need to create the case, so you need to explain what's the impact on the final user. We notice that this is one of the most successful ways to guarantee adoption. We could probably spend hours talking about which are the teams that need to be sensitized first. Because here we are not necessarily talking about technical aspects. The technical aspects are, I would say, easy to train when you have somebody who is already working on accessibility is more like the aspect related to being empathic with the final user and really understanding the needs that will allow you to understand the severity of not satisfying a requirement. The second aspect is our audits. Now, needless to say, are providing the results of, I mean, across all the success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guideline in its version 2.2, double A. So, our experts are providing feedback on how the website is behaving against those newly introduced criteria. Typically, in our engagements with our clients, there is an annual audit. So, every year the clients, we do an audit for the client, and we have them in deciding what's the right approach, also in remediating those success criteria, there are a couple that might be quite challenging. So, there are a couple of success criteria that might require a deep refactor of the site. So, in that case, we often have conversations around the meaningfulness of doing this. What I mean is that we are not recommending to ignore the criterion, but in case the client is approaching a redesign in few months, it might not be very strategic to invest a lot of money into improving the existing site and make it making it fully compliant with the new requirement, rather making sure that the new site that will be launched in the next few months, hypothetically, will satisfy those. So, we like to not just to be a technical partner, but we like to be a strategic partner. And I think that when we talk about accessibility, this is kind of the key. Because we know how challenging is to satisfy every single success criterion. So, building a strategy and a real plan probably is the key to making sure that our clients can keep the focus.

23:07 Speaker  

With the adoption of WCAG. 2.1 in many countries, there is an increased demand for web developers, designers and other professionals with knowledge of web accessibility standards and guidelines. With this growth comes the need for an objectively verified level of expertise. The Web Accessibility Specialist exam will provide individuals and employers with the ability to assess web accessibility competence, complete the WAS and CPACC exam to earn the special designation of Certified Professional in Web Accessibility,

23:45 Christopher Michael Lee  

Thank you for that. So just, just going a little bit deeper into the criteria. There's two that I want to spend a little bit of time on, Giacomo, maybe you can help us a little bit. One of them is the one for keyboard users, which is the focus, not obscured criteria. And then the other one deals with just improving website navigation and user experience, and that's the consistent help criteria. Could you talk a little bit about those?

24:10 Giacomo Petri  

Sure. So, let's start from the focus not obscured. The purpose of the focus not obscured which is minimum, because we have two criteria for focus not obscured. One is minimum, one is enhanced. The minimum one, let's say, ensures that the element with keyboard focus is at least partially visible. And again, which distinguishes from the enhanced one, which is a triple A requirement, where the element must be fully visible. This criterion is important because when using a pointing device, such as a mouse, for example, its position is indicated by the cursor on the screen. However, when navigating with a keyboard, instead, the only way to determine where you are is by seeing the fox indicator, which is a requirement specified in 247 focus visible. But 247 requires that the focus indicator must be present, not that the element in focus must be visible. Indeed, the element receiving the focus is hidden or covered by other items. It becomes impossible to know where you are. And this new criterion ensures that users navigating with a keyboard can always maintain awareness of their location. For an author, point of view, this means that the author needs to use appropriate CSS properties to ensure that focus elements are not obscured. For instance, properties like raw padding can help ensure that elements receiving focus are visible nowadays dynamic content, such as, you know, sticky adder, sticky footers, side menus frequently overlap with other content, and with this new requirement, it is crucial to carefully manage these elements to ensure they do not block the visibility of the focused content. And about consistent help. So, we can start asking ourselves, how this impact website navigation and the user experience, because those two are crucial aspects of the success criterion. Users with cognitive disabilities often rely on predictable and familiar navigation patterns. Consistent health mechanisms make it easier for users to find assistance, cutting down on confusion and mental effort. Consider users who have difficulty with memory or spatial orientation, having help options always in the same place reduces the cognitive load needed to fight insistence and enhances the overall user experience. I would like to remember that the help options can include human contact details, human contact mechanisms, self-help options or fully automated content mechanisms. And just to clarify, this success criterion does not cover how can call, let's say, interface level help, such as, for example, contextual assistance when filling out a form. And it's also important to note that the criterion does not require a help mechanism to be present, but if one is provided, it must be presented consistently within a set of pages.

27:39 Christopher Michael Lee  

You know, my mind's spending a little bit just around what you just brought into it, particularly around AI. Now AI is going to impact the consistent help criteria. I would think it would be extremely impactful, kind of from the machine learning aspect of it, I guess more. So, any thoughts around that? 

28:01 Giacomo Petri  

Yeah, let's say the AI probably falls under the fully automated contact mechanisms. So basically, for sure, the AI can help users with specific needs. I still believe that users must still be able, at the end of the journey, to ask for a human being to answer their questions, if the AI is not able to answer, but for sure, AI will help a lot in that field.

28:35 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, I agree with you. I think that human contact is so important, and you know, a lot of people don't realize, particularly on the cognitive disability side of it, the stress, the frustration, the anxiety, intention, when it goes to individuals with cognitive disabilities going on the mobile phone or going onto a website on the desktop, and trying to figure out how to navigate and how to read, how to organize their thoughts and retain those thoughts. So, I'm glad to see the constant help criteria expand, and I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, more applications incorporated. Now, just one other things Giacomo before we shift over to Michele. The dragging movement criteria, which was brought into the context of improving accessibility for mobile users. Can you speak briefly about that? 

29:26 Giacomo Petri  

Yeah, sure. In reality, the dragging movement success criterion benefits not just mobile users, but all users more broadly, especially those with motor disabilities. Consider users who are unable to use a mouse to perform drag and drop actions, such as those navigating with a keyboard or using technologies that do not support drag and drop functionality, such as speech to text technologies. For instance, performing such actions on mobile devices is also quite challenging, right? Even more in certain situations, like when we are on a bus, for example. So again, this success criterion does not impact only mobile users, but more broadly, a variety of users. As we know, drag and drop involves a series of specific actions, so clicking an item to set the starting point, then holding down the item, moving the pointer and releasing the pointer at the target location. As we may perceive, not all users are able to perform these actions, particularly holding down the pointer and repositioning it accurately. Therefore, the requirement is that the operation should also be available for a single pointer, unless it is essential or determined by the user agent. For example, consider a price range slider with two terms. Users should be able to adjust the range by, for example, entering numeric values instead of relying solely on dragging the thumbs. Of course, the process starts with anticipating these requirements from a design perspective, and this highlights the importance of addressing accessibility needs at the appropriate stage, rather than resulting in a series of back-and-forth exchanges between departments, for example.

31:31 Christopher Michael Lee  

Great. Thank you, Giacomo for that. Michele, just going back to organizations and how they're implementing the criteria. What challenges do you think there are in regard to organizations that are facing adopting new criteria or expanded criteria?

31:50 Michele Lucchini  

Yeah, the biggest challenges are that in order to adopt a new criterion, you need to make sure that you have collected some competencies right in order to understand the criteria, as I said before, and understand then what you need to do in order to satisfy the criteria. We are still seeing many companies that tend to approach accessibility in a robotic way, like I do a test when I finish my implementation or my work, and then, based on the test results, I decide what to fix. This is a challenge that not necessarily apply only to new criteria coming, in general, is, is an approach that, at the end of the day, will cost more and will not be, I mean, very complicated to maintain. We see many companies where the interest and the focus on accessibility is dropping because of this lack of progress. Because what this approach will lead to will necessarily a lack of process. So, in terms of, if we think about the new success criteria of the guy, of a guideline that you are already considering as part of your requirements, I think that the biggest challenge is, first of all, understanding which is the time the guideline will be adopted. We are seeing many companies that, for, I think for meaningful reasons, are driven by also driven by the legal industry. So that’s often what creates the urgency. And I'm not saying that this is the right approach, but from a purely business perspective, very often the legal threat represents the driving force. So, collecting information of when this will actually it will start being used by the legal industry is definitely one of the questions and one of the aspects that organizations try to figure out why they define the plan. The challenge, then, in particular, with the 2.2 is really understanding the different abilities that are involved and are declared focus of the 2.2. While visual deficiencies are kind of simple to understand is not dramatically complicated to try to be in the shoes of a blind user navigating the web. There are tools, there is technology, there is a, I mean, some training that we also do, trying to teach our customers how to use screen reader and try to have as close as possible experience to the final user. When we consider the cognitive disability spectrum, the complication is a way bigger, because of the number of the multitude of cognitive disabilities that also results into very different ways, not just the web would be processed, but the specific content. When we are talking about emotion, where we are talking about websites, maybe there is the way the website is done that might determine some emotions and drive some behaviors of cognitive disabled individual, maybe the way the colors are used, maybe the way images are used, or animation. So, there are so many factors to consider that is quite complicated, and the complication of this is also confirmed by the amount of work and effort that the W3C is investing in trying to detail in the best way possible, which are the requirements and the techniques to test.

36:11 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, very good point. The cognitive disability. It does add a very broad dynamic because of the different types of cognitive disabilities out there. That's why I think it's so important with all disabilities to make sure that users are engaged and incorporated in all testing and discussions around criteria. So just kind of closing in just a few minutes. But I was kind of curious about how W3C is addressing website security. Another Giacomo, can you speak briefly about that?

36:46 Giacomo Petri  

Yes, sure, Christopher. Are you talking about accessible authentication?

36:51 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, I'm smiling with you, Giacomo, also I'm in the same place with my mom in regard to passwords. It's crazy why we can't get them to use the manager right, password manager. But anyway, so just one final question, just for both y'all and Michele, I'll start with you. Just looking ahead, what accessibility trends and challenges do you foresee with WCAG 2.2 and are there any upcoming projects that you're excited about?

36:51 Giacomo Petri  

Okay, yes, so very quickly, maybe I can introduce the accessible authentication topic, and then we can definitely move to the security aspect. Let's start by saying that some people with cognitive disabilities may have difficulty memorizing usernames, passwords, reentering one time passcodes or solving puzzles. And this criterion requires that no step in an authentication process includes cognitive function tests, unless there are some exceptions, such as there is an alternative provided that enable users to log in, there is a mechanism to assist the user. Object recognition is used, personal content identification is employed, and so on. I want to emphasize that this success criterion specifically targets authentication, so we are not discussing registration processes or any other procedure, just user authentication. And it is also important to note, which ties back our security discussion, that within the mechanisms to assist the user, there should be options for users for using, for example, a password manager tool or simply copy and paste functionality. Now let's address the security implications of this criterion. It is common practice to use password management systems that suggest strong passwords, which are often difficult to remember, and they are built in within our operating system. And from this perspective, there are no significant security concerns. The same applies to quick access systems such as fingerprint scanning or facial recognition. The more sensitive topic is, let's say, allowing copy and paste functionality. But there is evidence which we can share offline from an interesting link provided by the National Cybersecurity Center, demonstrating that enabling copy and paste is not only secure, but also it is a good security practice. This is because it allows users to have unique passwords for each site, and it enables the use of longer and more complex passwords. We know that different longer and more complex passwords generally make them difficult to remember, leading people to revert to using a single, easy to remember password for every website, which is a security concern, right. And right now, I'm smiling because I'm thinking about my mom. Every time she encounters an authentication process that requires a password, she always calls me for help, and since I can't remember, of course, all the passwords, either, I try to get her to use a password manager. However, she usually ends up using "you forgot your password" functionality instead. But this is another matter, right? But, yeah, as I mentioned, there is evidence that enabling the copy and paste enabling the use of password managers is a good security practice.

40:48 Michele Lucchini  

Yeah, in terms of trend, what I think is going to be very interesting is to determine what will be the impact of the technology evolution. So, forget for a minute the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The expectation is that, just to mention one aspect of artificial intelligence, we might see a rapid evolution of assistive technology, such as screen readers or other tools that users with different abilities might benefit from. At the moment is, I think, is one of the probably biggest potentials, that we are facing. The goal of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is to provide a way to verify a site, or a way to make sure that while implementing a digital property, we are considering all the possible needs that users might have. But if you think about the how much the assistive technology or even browsers could do that might really change. Then the other thing that would like to mention is more focus on, let's say, moving from a guideline that as a result, a binary measure, so you are either conforming the guideline or not into a way to measure the accessibility of the site, meaning that a site doesn't necessarily need to be 100% conforming to the Web Content Accessibility Guideline in order to be accessible. A site can be accessible, maybe not perfect, but still accessible without satisfying the entireness of the guideline. And part of the goal of the Accessibility Guideline, 3.0 is also this right. So, to produce ways to classify the impact of a specific issue on the user experience, one thing is to have important issues on a very prominent element of the main flow of the site. Another story is to have an issue on cosmetic information on a very remote page of the site. I'm not saying that we need to simplify the work, but we need to be a little bit more mindful and make accessibility easier to implement for the organizations.

43:47 Christopher Michael Lee  

I appreciate that. I definitely think that your comments around the system technology and the browsers, how you know the rapid changes may happen that especially with operating systems, is something that will be seen more and more as assistive technology becomes more mainstream. So, it does add uniqueness to what we're going to see in the future. Giacomo, any thoughts about accessibility trends or that you foresee beyond WCAG 2.2 and then you know, are there any other projects that you're excited about upcoming? 

44:20 Giacomo Petri  

Yeah, honestly, I would have said the same things Michele said, maybe about the reputable evolution of technologies. I think that will be some challenge in determining the balance between the technology responsibility and the author responsibility, because sometimes they might overlap somewhere, especially with the involvement of the AI. So it would be curious to understand where it goes and how we will determine when it is a technological responsibility and when it is an author’s responsibility. Probably in the future, it will be also interesting to understand how the augmented reality will work in the accessibility space, because on one side, it will probably enable users with motor disabilities to have an amazing experience. Just think about virtual stores, right. There might be people that are not able to access a physical store, but with a virtual store, they may have a very similar experience. But on the other end, an augmented reality might provide a lot of updates simultaneously. So, it will be probably a challenge to determine how assistive technologies, such as screen readers will be able to communicate all the updates, all the changes that are happening within the virtual reality so it will, I think it will be an interesting topic. 

45:55 Christopher Michael Lee  

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, the reality aspect of such a, you know, moving so strong and, you know, 2011 2012, 13 and then it kind of veiled off a little bit, at least in the accessibility arena, from what I could tell different publication, but I'm excited you bringing that into the conversation, because that's something to that we definitely need to take into account. Well, I just want to, you know, just take a moment and thank you both for spending time with us. I'm looking forward to learning more about the work that your organization's going to be doing. Hopefully, some of that data that you're collecting will eventually, you know, bleed out and we can share it with our members. But both of you, thank you so much for today and and your wisdom and your expertise.

46:37 Giacomo Petri  

Thank you, Christopher.

46:40 Michele Lucchini  

Thanks for having us, Christopher. It has been really nice, and we are looking forward to the next one.

46:48 Speaker  

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals Membership consists of individuals and organizations representing various industries, including the private sector, government, nonprofits and educational institutions. Membership benefits include products and services that support global systemic change around the digital and built environment. United in Accessibility, join IAAP and become a part of the global accessibility movement.