Accessibility fosters trust. Communications should be designed so that everyone has access to the information they need in a way that’s clear, respectful and human.
My guest is Matisse Hamel-Nelis, ADS, CPACC, an award-winning accessible communications and marketing consultant, trainer, professor, speaker, and co-author of the new book, Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust.
Matisse and I discuss her book and how to make your work more inclusive without feeling overwhelmed by the rules and regulations around accessibility.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant, author, and writer, interviews her guest Matisse Hamel-Nelis, PR consultant, trainer, professor, and speaker, to discuss her new co-authored book with Lisa Riemers on accessible communications in PR, created to help practitioners “create impact, avoid missteps, and build trust.”
Hamel-Nelis shares how a Twitter hashtag mistake at CNIB introduced her to digital accessibility and revealed a gap in PR education despite accessibility laws and WCAG standards.
The conversation covers practical starting points like plain language, PascalCase/camelCase hashtags, alt text, captions, accessible Word styles, and the complexities of PDFs and reading order, plus vendor support.
They emphasize progress over perfection, leadership buy-in using audience and revenue impact, building accessibility into projects early to save costs, and examples from Microsoft, Apple, and NASA.
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:42 Book Launch Journey
04:00 Teaching and Consulting Updates
05:04 Why Write the Book
05:41 Hashtag Accessibility Wakeup
09:43 Acronyms and Screen Readers
12:18 DEI Acronyms and PDFs
15:24 Start Small Progress Over Perfect
22:51 Emojis and Alt Text Pitfalls
25:58 Accessibility Laws and WCAG Basics
28:01 PDF Standards and Structure
30:06 Word Styles and Tagging
31:54 Social Media Accessibility Rules
33:37 Prioritizing Fixes and New Content
37:02 Captions Done Right on YouTube
39:41 Winning Leadership Buy-In
44:15 Designing Accessible Video Audio
47:47 Accessibility Helps Everyone
49:58 Brands Doing It Well
55:55 Start Now and Keep Learning
Show notes:
Learn more about Matisse Hamel-Nelis: https://matissenelis.com/
Get Matisse’s book, Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust: https://matissenelis.com/accessible-communications-by-lisa-riemers-and-matisse-hamel-nelis/
Follow Matisse Hamel-Nelis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matissenelis/
Follow Matisse Hamel-Nelis on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matissenelis/
Full transcript:
Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust
Michelle Garrett: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to PR Explored, the PR podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations.
I’m your host, Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant and writer, and today my guest is Matisse Hamel-Nelis She’s a consultant, trainer, professor, speaker, and she has a brand new book, and I’m so excited to have you back, Matisse.
Welcome.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Michelle Garrett: Yay. You have been busy, since we last, did this a year or so ago. And I just wanna tell you, how excited I am about the book. It’s a huge accomplishment. I wanna say congratulations, and I would love to hear… I want you to tell us about, you and your background, but tell us how things are going with the book and how your experience was with that.
Matisse Talks About Her New Book, Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. thank you so much for the kind words first and foremost. the book [00:01:00] and, the launch and getting to the point of having a book to launch has been an incredible journey. lots of laughs, lots of tears, lots of late nights. my co-author, Lisa Reimers, who is based out in the UK, we had the most random hours of writing together, where one of us might write half a chapter or a full chapter and the other person would then review it at, the other person’s 2:00 AM and we would still be up ’cause we were just excited to see what the other person thought.
So it was definitely an experience, and I’m so honored and blessed to have had Lisa by my side the entire way. I couldn’t have done it without her. but, seeing the book now out in the wild, if you will, and people’s reactions and knowing how needed it was for our industry to talk about accessible communications in a way that was easy to understand, and also really, living up to that tagline that we have for the book which is, “Create impact, avoid missteps, [00:02:00] and build trust,” right?
And how accessible communications does that and having our baby out there, if you will, has been just… I have no words. I’m starting to just go on a tangent because I have no words. It’s been amazing.
Michelle Garrett: No, I have been seeing all the great buzz about the book and of course I, I would trust anything that you would have your name attached to.
And so I would recommend everybody, rush out and, get a copy of the book. congratulations. it’s a big, milestone.
It’s funny how you, you hear people say that, and then when you actually write your own book, you’re like, “Whoa.”
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: I get it now. Like I, I understand,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: more than- Yeah, and with our publisher, Kogan Page, it was really interesting because you don’t submit a manuscript at first.
You submit, basically a proposal as to what you want your [00:03:00] book to be. And Lisa and I thought, “Oh yeah, no problem. We’ll have two years to write it or, maybe even three. Who knows? ‘Cause then we write the manuscript.” Once we signed the contract, they were like, “All right. Your first three chapters, six weeks and go.”
And we’re like, “Oh.” Whoa. “Okay, we’re actually writing a book.” Like we’re on this. So 18 months turnaround and bam, we have our book.
Michelle Garrett: That, that sounds like a long time, but if you’ve ever worked on a book, you know that it really is not. Yeah. Because even after- It’s not … you get done with the manuscript, you’re not really done.
I mean you have to- No … go through the edits and there’s just- Yeah … all kinds of steps involved. Exactly … and
it,
takes a while. So that’s actually, that is pretty fast.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. But it was so much fun. I would do it again. if Lisa is listening, I would do it again. Maybe in a little bit, but I would totally do it again.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, you need a break.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. it was an… Like I said, it was an incredible journey through and through
Matisse Tells Us About Consulting and Teaching
Michelle Garrett: [00:04:00] Good. that’s, I’m sure that’s been the big thing keeping you busy. But what else have you been doing? I know you, you said you teach. I know you teach.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. I teach at Durham College.
Right now I’m teaching, Sorry, in September I’ll be teaching a course in their advertising and promotion program focused on, communications and PR strategy and communication, which is really exciting to engage advertising minds into what we do as PR practitioners. and then I also, run my own business, Matisse Neal as Consulting, so working with clients on helping them with their accessibility and communications as well.
and we’re revamping PR and Lattes, my own podcast and blog that we have- about all things, PR comms related in that field. Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: So there is a lot going on, so yeah. Just a
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: little bit. Just a tiny, little
Michelle Garrett: bit. We like to keep busy, We do.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: We do.
Michelle Garrett: It keeps, things interesting, [00:05:00] so
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: that’s- Exactly.
Exactly …
What Inspired Matisse to Write Her Book?
Michelle Garrett: always good. of course, today we’re gonna be talking about, accessibility in PR and communications, and I would love for y- anyone listening or watching to submit questions if they have them, and we’d be happy to get to those. but I’m gonna jump in with a few questions that I have, for you.
And, my first question is about the book, but —
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah …
Michelle Garrett: we’ve, talked a little bit about it, but really what made you decide to write the book? What was really the, you know- The
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: catalyst?
Michelle Garrett: Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. So- When I first started my career in public relations and communications, my first real job outside of an internship was for an organization called the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, CNIB.
and so fresh out of school, my second day, I was a corporate communication specialist, loving it, [00:06:00] excited, and I was asked to tweet something, and this was when it was still called Twitter. 280 character limit.
Go ahead and write your thing. So I was like, “Yeah, sure. Not a problem.” So I put the hashtag DYK for did you know, and some sort of stat, and sent it out into the world from the national account.
Within 10 minutes, one of my colleagues with sight loss called me and said, “Hey, you’re new. Welcome to the team.” And I thought, “This is lovely.” And then it was followed up by, “Did you just happen to tweet?” And I said, “Yes. Is there a spelling or grammar mistake?” Or in my head also being Canadian, thinking Canadian press style or associated press, mistake in my writing is also going through my head.
He’s “No, the spelling and grammar is fine. it’s your hashtag.” And I said, “Oh, it means did you know?” And he goes, “Yeah. We know that, but it actually reads as dick to a screen reader user because- Oh … screen readers [00:07:00] read, acronyms as full words, unless there’s a period or a space in between to read each individual letter.
to say I was mortified and thought I was gonna get fired right off the bat like on my second day is an understatement, but he calmed me down and told me what I had to do to fix it. And that was my initial journey into digital accessibility, and it opened up… It completely changed the trajectory of my career.
But it also opened up a whole notion of, I’m fresh out of school and I haven’t been taught this. There are those professional communicators who have come before me and those who are coming after me, and I don’t see it anywhere woven into the curriculum. and also if we’re already out of school, we’ve graduated, we’re not necessarily gonna go back, but we need to know this stuff.
We have legislation in place in Canada, in the United States, in the United Kingdom around digital accessibility and what we have to do. But as professional communicators, we don’t actually know how to do it. We’re told we have to without that actual [00:08:00] help on being able to do it. So it was, 2024 when I had this idea.
I said, “You know what? We… I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years at that point.” I said, “W- I’m hearing the same questions over and over again, and it’s not fair to the profession to not have a resource on how do we actually do the accessible stuff that we’re supposed to do. So-
I reached out to Lisa and blessed her after some convincing because she’s “What do you mean you wanna write a book with me?
like we’re busy. What are you talking about?” And I was like, “No, this is really needed, and I think we, can do this.” e- w- everything just fell into place, and the publisher loved the idea right off the bat, which was fantastic. So it wasn’t just us thinking this was needed, but the publisher saying, “Yes, this is the type of information that the profession needs.”
And so that’s how the whole book came along. It really started when I first graduated school and just a thought all the way through on how can we get … [00:09:00] how can we make more professional communicators accessible professional communicators? Because at the end of the day, when we’re being accessible, we are striving for that communication excellence that we’re always saying and talking about, right?
Because now we’re actually incorporating every different type of potential audience in our communication.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. No, I love that story because, it really illustrates… And I think so many people have probably run into something similar- Yeah … and maybe they have, even- Yeah … been like, “Oh, from a position or something,” if it’s, the mistake is too-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah
Michelle Garrett: egregious. but it’s something I don’t know that people… I feel like often they’re not aware because they’re just not, they’re just not thinking about it, right? So-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah, like who would think a hashtag that’s in all caps and it’s just an acronym, ’cause we use acronyms all the time.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: But it’s understanding how an end user or your audience may engage with it, and it’s not gonna simply be that we can visually see that these are the letters and we can Google it. for [00:10:00] example, if the Y- sorry, in case you missed it, I-C-Y-M-I, reads as ICYMI- Ooh
instead of I-C-Y-A-M-I. if reads as
Michelle Garrett: ICYAK. Yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: So if you’ve never seen these a- and in a lot of cases, we’re coming up with acronyms and short forms for things left, and center. Go on social media. Every day I find something new, and I’m like, and taking those letters, popping them into Google and seeing what it tells me it s- stands for.
But imagine listening to it, right? And it’s trying to make it as a word versus each individual letter. You could have every possible variation of spelling to try to figure out what it actually is and not actually get the meaning of what it’s supposed to be.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, I struggle just with acronyms. I work with technology companies- Yeah
manufacturing com- and it’s like they… And obviously it’s like inside, insider language. It’s like everybody- Yeah … maybe in your [00:11:00] little niche knows what that means. But if you do truly want to make sure that everyone knows, you have to- Yeah … kinda, just follow the, spell it out on first reference.
And even that kinda thing people- Yeah … I don’t think are aware of. They’re just doing their thing and they don’t really think about it.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. Yeah, very true.
Michelle Garrett: So Fatou is saying something very nice, and I just wanna-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah …
Michelle Garrett: I just wanna say thanks, Fatou. And then, obviously, we know, I agree that Matisse is doing very needed work.
And, yeah, I, we really appreciate what you do. And,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: thanks.
Michelle Garrett: Aw, thank
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: you.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Fatou for weighing in!
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: I’m such a big fan of hers as well. She runs- I know. I know … the PR Pro event. So just a little shout-out there. Fantastic.
Michelle Garrett: And you’re both gonna be at the PRSA, Yeah
international conference. I wanna say, is it, do they call it ICON? Is that really what they call it? ICON, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ICON,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: yeah.
Michelle Garrett: In, this fall in Orlando. So [00:12:00] that’s just a little, plug there if you wanna, meet these two, y- I’m gonna call them visionaries. and co- make sure you are at the conference ’cause they’re both gonna be there speaking.
So that’s gonna be a big deal, okay. as you’ve been out there promoting the book, talking about the book, is there anything that’s come up that people are asking you about or saying about the book or that’s really surprised you?
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: I think, it’s people realizing the amount of acronyms that we use to describe accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So in the book, in one of our first chapters, we talk about, what are the acronyms? ‘Cause people have heard DEI, so diversity, equity, and inclusion. They’ve maybe heard of IDEAA, inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. D&I, diversity and inclusion. So many [00:13:00] variations. My favorite one was JEDI, which is justice-
equity, diversity, and inclusion, and I was like, that, that’s a fun one.” I’ve never
Michelle Garrett: heard that. JEDI.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: I’ll have to write that
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: one down. There’s also… Yes
Michelle Garrett: Justice, equity,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: and… Diversity and inclusion … inclusion.
Michelle Garrett: Okay.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. And then there’s also ABIDE, which is, accessibility, belonging, inclusion, diversity, and equity.
but there’s so many different acronyms, and people have come up to say, “I never know which one to use.” And I said, “At the end of the day, you can’t have inclusion without accessibility, and you can’t have accessibility without inclusion.” So no matter whichever one you incorporate, if you need accessibility to be top of mind, use ones like IDEAA or ABIDE.
If you know you’re gonna try to be accessible throughout everything you do anyways, then it doesn’t matter which one you choose, because you’ll always be inclusive when you’re being accessible. The other item which has always been a little fun debate between Lisa, my co-author, and I, has [00:14:00] been around accessible PDFs.
and you know how- Ugh Yes. Ugh. th- they, they can be tedious, and, understanding and finding that balance of when do you use HTML to create something and that’s what you need, versus when do you actually need a PDF? There’s a time and a place for both, and one of the things that a lot of folks have come back to us to say, thank you for, is that we actually…
we put in a list of prospective vendors that we’ve used in the past that we’ve found very useful. no one better than the other, but we provide a list because some people also don’t know, “What do I look for? What do I need? who does this stuff?” and we can do basic ones and creating a Word document accessibly and export and do little tweaks in a PDF, but think about some of those impact reports with all the graphs and charts and, very, advanced graphics, if you will.
How would you describe your alternative text for that? How [00:15:00] would you format it properly? How would you make sure that you have the time and capacity to actually make that PDF accessible? And that’s where having that vendor list, saying, “These, people can help as well. It’s not just on your shoulders.
It’s a team effort in some cases, when it comes to this, that you have support there as well.” So a lot of people have come back to us to say “Thank you for that. We didn’t know where to even look.”
Where Should One Start with Accessible Communications?
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, the, I just, it’s… the, I think this just leads right into the next question- Yeah … ’cause it’s, it can be, if you’re not really used to this, you haven’t done it, you’re starting out, you were trying to, do a better job, what should you remember so you don’t, get too, I don’t know, overwhelmed?
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah, that’s a great question. My biggest thing, first and foremost within an organization, is to say that there is no subject matter expert on accessibility. We all play our role, which [00:16:00] tends to be a bit of a shocking statement for some because they’ll say, no, our web team are our accessibility folks.”
And it’s that’s great for web- Yeah … but what about the copy going onto web? Are we writing in plain language? our web team wouldn’t do that.” Okay, so now, your marcom team or your communications and marketing team- needs to look at the copy and ensure it’s being, it’s in plain language.
which doesn’t mean oversimplifying, it just means writing your message in a way that is understood by your audience the first time they read it. And how many times have we gone to a website saying, “I have no idea what I’m looking at” or gotten a document and we’re just like, I don’t understand what my call to action is here or what you’re trying to get out of me”- Yeah
because of how it’s written. then to our graphic designers, making sure we have color contrast, applied to what we’re designing and, fonts being big enough in our design. everybody plays a role when it comes to digital accessibility. And when it… And that’s the big thing [00:17:00] for organizations is to understand you should not have a subject matter expert.
Everybody should be a subject matter expert for the aspect that they do within that project, if that makes sense. but then from there, as the communications team, what we wanna ensure is, like I said, that we are writing in plain language. Again, not oversimplifying, just simply making the message readable the first time and understandable the first time.
so that means knowing your target audience. if you’re going on social media, and this is a k- social media campaign, writing for that grade seven or eight grade level is your target audience, right? Because you don’t necessarily know who’s gonna engage with it, but it’s open to everybody. So we’re limiting jargon, we’re, not writing too technical or anything like that.
Versus if it’s an internal communications to our engineering team, we can probably go a little bit more into the jargon and the technical acronyms and all that stuff ’cause they’re gonna know, and that’s writing for their- [00:18:00] plain language standard, if you will. but the biggest thing, no matter what, when you’re feeling, when you are starting on your accessibility journey within communications to be more inclusive-
is to start There tends to be this paralysis around, needing to be perfect. If I’m not perfect in my accessibility endeavors, I’m not even gonna try because I don’t wanna get a lawsuit, I don’t wanna get called out on socials or whatever the case is.
You don’t… And, I completely appreciate and understand you don’t know what you don’t know.
Been there, done that, put out an inappropriate hashtag unintentionally off of a national account. but you still need to start somewhere. and I like the rule, reading ato- Atomic Habits, where he says, starting with the rule of one. So pick one thing and get really good at that. And it might be simply making sure your [00:19:00] hashtags are using Pascal case, where it’s the capitalizing the first letter of each word in a multi-word hashtag.
Maybe that’s your first step. That is a great first step, or maybe it’s ensuring every image that you’re putting on socials has alternative text, so describing the image. Again, another great first step. And then maybe your next step is looking at the language you’re using. Are we writing in plain language?
Are we being too technical? But creating that sort of journey and path and making it bite-sized, because at the end of the day, you’re not gonna be, shocking statement here, 100% accessible to everybody. Because it comes down to the end user experience, right? So you may have two people who are blind who are engaging with your website.
one has been blind for since birth and has been a assistive tech user, so a screen reader user, for 15 years, let’s say. While somebody else has recently lost their sight and is just starting to really understand their assistive technology, so their [00:20:00] screen reader. They go onto the same website. The super user, the 15-year user, will say, “This is a really great and accessible website.
I can navigate it totally fine.”
While that s- that person who’s recently lost their website, so they’re more nove- the newer, user might say, “This is really inaccessible to me. I can’t navigate.” So they might come and say, “Your website’s inaccessible.” It doesn’t mean that it is, but it is for them because of how comfortable they may be with their tech.
It doesn’t mean that you have done a bad job, it just means that we are trying to meet people where they are at. So understanding that you won’t be 100% accessible to everyone is okay, right? But still trying to make that progress over being perfect. So progress over perfection 100% of the time, that you’re trying to do better, trying to be more accessible, trying to be more inclusive with what you’re creating and what you’re doing.
That’s the key point there.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, no, I love that. progress over perfection.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: [00:21:00] Yeah.
Michelle Garrett: We need to put that on a placard and hang it because I think so many times we just don’t even, like you said, we don’t even try, we don’t start because we are afraid- Yeah … of it not being perfect. yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. And when you start…
my friend, Kelly Thibodeaux, she has a great line, “Practice makes permanent.” So even if you’re just starting out, just trying to incorporate your accessibility, your different tactics, if you will. And so weaving in Pascal case for your hashtags, weaving in, your alternative text.
You may not get it right the very first time, but you’re gonna keep practicing it, and then it’s gonna become permanent. So it’s not even gonna be an afterthought, it’s gonna be just naturally in your process. And that’s the big thing, is making sure that accessibility isn’t an afterthought, it’s thought about at the beginning, or it’s already just naturally woven in because you’ve made it permanent.
Michelle Garrett: and I also [00:22:00] love that a lot of these tips have to do with just clear communication- for all purposes, for everyone. you’re talking about jargon and acronyms and, yes, we just touched on that a little bit, but it’s a, hu- it’s a problem for anyone who wants to, communicate clearly- Yeah
and, really get their message across. ‘Cause we see it all the time, I have a good friend who does websites and talks about, how the language is just, you know- Yeah … everybody uses the same thing ’cause they think that’s what’s effective. But really this is how people, read and evaluate- Yeah
and, So it’s important. These, principles that you’re discussing are important. A- they would be helpful across the board for your communications team really,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. And if you take it to a personal level, think about when you’re driving and you’re not using your phone, you’re listening to the audio of your text messages when they come through, [00:23:00] and you’re using emojis.
You’re gonna hear- … the alt text of the emojis and wonder, “What the heck is my friend trying to say?” Especially if they’re, like, a bunch of heart emojis, smi- different smiley faces, so on and so forth. you’re using assistive technology in that moment, right? It’s a screen reader, it’s reading it out to you, and you’re just sitting there going, “What?”
And then you finally get the message at the end. It’s the same for somebody who is blind or partially sighted, or even with a cognitive disability who is listening to the content. Think about your social media. Are you using emojis for bullet po- That alt text gets attached to that emoji, which means that it’s gonna read the alt text into the content of that bullet, and it’s not gonna make it make sense.
Michelle Garrett: Ooh, yikes.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. So think, so from a personal level, think about when you’re driving and you’re just like, my best friend Heather might text me, and I, listen to it, while I’m driving, and I’m like, “That’s, your emojis have completely lost me. I, you, too many emo- I think we’re excited.
Are we?” And so I have to [00:24:00] respond back, “Is this what you’re trying to say?” I got lost with all the emoji fun. and I love myself a good emoji, don’t get me wrong. Yeah … but it’s using it in moderation and using it appropriately.
Michelle Garrett: No, I don’t think we always think about that, that people do listen to texts while they drive.
And yeah, no- Yeah … I have a couple people in my life who I would not even attempt to listen to the texts- … ’cause I know it would have 100 emojis in the… She would be like, it w- it would be totally unintelligible,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: And the funny thing is, that emojis have different alt texts in a lot of cases depending on the platform, browser, and device combination.
So there is, the emoji of that old rundown house that has the boarded up windows and that sort of thing, and it actually has four different types of alt texts associated to it. So again, depending on the browser, platform, or device, it might be old house, abandoned house, derelict house, or haunted house.
Oh. So if I’m thinking of an [00:25:00] old house, I’m not thinking of something that’s completely run down like a derelict house, I’m just thinking it’s an older home, right? So you’re getting different imagery, if you will, in your head of what is actually on there. And sometimes the emoji that you think… So the water droplet emoji, everyone thinks it’s like splash or anything like that.
It’s alt text is actually sweat droplets. So imagine listening to that- Yeah … being like, “I’m going to the beach,” sweat droplets. What? So it loses… You lose that communication and that message that you’re actually trying to get through, ’cause then either people are laughing or very, confused.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. I- that’s, I… Yeah. I’ve cut back on my emoji use- … and now I’m like, “Maybe that’s a good thing.” I don’t know. Just the context. Always have to th- think- keep in mind the context- Yeah … of what you’re doing. Of
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: course.
What About Rules and Regulations Around Accessibility?
Michelle Garrett: That’s so funny. so we… s- this, you’ve covered this, but I wanna ask, Yeah
w- we can feel overwhelmed. [00:26:00] there are rules and regulations around accessibility. So maybe we could talk a little bit about that and, what really, what are the rules and regulations? Actually, that would be another question I would maybe wanna know.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. Yeah. So for example, in the United States, there, is the accessibility for…
sorry, the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was starting to say the Ontario one. The Americans with Disabilities Act, and i- in that, there is the Title II amendment changes that, come into effect soon. They were supposed to start to come to effect this past April, but there have been delays. But basically, it says that, organizations, public organizations, and, local s- local and state governments need to be accessible to various levels, f- to various degrees, around their documents, their websites, their social media.
and that means that your website needs to be Web Content [00:27:00] Accessibility Guidelines compliant to level 2.1 AA.
Michelle Garrett: Oh, boy.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: yeah. So the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG, or as I refer to it, WCAG, has three level, three iterations. There’s 2.0, which in Ontario, where I’m based, that is what our Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act tells us we need to do, because that came out in 2005.
Now, think about back then, 2005, we didn’t even have Facebook, so things have changed drastically. And so how do we make sure we’re being compliant there? most legislation around the world looks at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, so WCAG 2.1. And then there’s the newest version, which is WCAG 2.2, which is now also an ISO standard.
But across all three, we’re looking at level AA compliance. So it’s broken into three levels. Level A is very, basic and will not make you compliant with your legislation. Level AA [00:28:00] is more accessible. It’s what all the legislation calls into, i- it’s, pulls into what does it mean to have a website that’s accessible and your content being accessible.
And then there’s AAA, which in all honesty and reality is incredibly difficult to maintain, across the board ’cause it looks at videos, it looks at your audio, it looks at your imagery, it looks at… It’s so many different things and it’s so, detailed. Even your color contrast now has to change. It has to be greater color contrast, so on and so forth.
So like I said, it’s very difficult to maintain, which is why governments have pulled in the two point- the level AA, meeting of compliance But then it’s also looking at things like documents. Are your PDFs compliant? So a lot of people think when it comes to PDFs, we are looking at s- only WCAG.
So again, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. But that looks at just that, your content, the C in WCAG. so are you [00:29:00] writing in plain language? Does your i- do your images have alt texts? Do you have heading structure in your document? But with PDFs in particular, there’s also an ISO standard that talks about the technical side of things.
So do you actually have a proper reading order? So some assistive technology, when you’re looking at a PDF, will navigate through the reading order of your document. So if you are using something like InDesign, for example, and you’re new to InDesign, that reading order, and this might come as a shock to some of you who use this, will be built based on how and when you drop things into your page.
So if you’re a designer, you’re probably putting in maybe your background, great, and then you’re maybe adding in an image ’cause you sh- you’re gonna have a call-out box, and then maybe a title, and then later some copy, and then maybe you’ll add in another image. How it’s going to natively read that is that first image you pulled in, then your title, then the copy, and then back to the other image that [00:30:00] you added in.
But there’s ways to make it accessible in InDesign that you would actually create the reading order. and the other big thing is tagging. So tagging provides a different type of structure to your documents that screen readers in particularly use that allows individuals to navigate your document very easily.
So in a lot of cases, what people will do when they’re building out a document, let’s say in Word, and export to PDF- there is your s- your styles pane and your top navigation of Word that says normal, heading one, heading two, heading three. And a lot of people are fearful of that pane because they’re not taught how to use it.
They’re just like, “Oh, I’m just seeing a lot of fonts and a lot of, ABCs. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just gonna avoid.” But those things, that styles pane is actually your best friend. And this is usually the aha moment when I teach, ’cause I teach my students to create accessible Word documents, and I said, “When you use that heading structure, and you can modify the style of the heading [00:31:00] one, heading two, heading three in that styles pane, and your normal, which is your body copy.”
When you do that and you apply it, so let’s say the beginning of your chapter is a heading one, your subsection in your chapter is a heading two, and that sub-subsection is a heading three. When you then go to pull and make a table of contents, it’ll pull from that structure to build your table of contents automatically.
Versus, and I’ve seen this as a st- from so many students, and I used to be guilty of it myself before I did it, where you were building out your table of contents saying, “Chapter one, period,” what? And then you’re trying to line up the numbers and it’s still all wonky. The heading structure will actually do that for you.
So it makes your life easier, but it also makes those who are maybe engaging with your content and using assistive technology significantly m- much easier as well. So that’s where the legislation pulls in these things to say, “Hey, we need to be more accessible.” And with the ADA Title II amendments, it also looks at social media, which is [00:32:00] fantastic because so many of the legislations before it, and, whether it be in Canada, whether it be, in Europe and Australia, hadn’t really talked about accessibility on social media, right?
Because it was… The legislations tend to have been created before social media was even really a thing. Like I said, in Ontario, ours was in 2005, before Facebook. with this legislation, it’s telling us that we need to have image descriptions or alt texts, so that describing of the image within our, our post.
We need to be using things like PascalCase in our hashtags, so capitalizing the first letter of each word, or camelCase. And this tends to be, They seem to be used interchangeably, but they are slightly different. Okay. So PascalCase is capitalizing the first letter of each word. camelCase is the first word is all lowercase, and each subsequent word after, the first letter is capitalized.
Oh. So it looks more like a camel’s hump. The hump,
Michelle Garrett: right? Okay. So they’re both- ‘Cause I’ve heard [00:33:00] more camel used- Yeah … more often, I think.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yes. And so they’re used interchangeably, but people tend to think camelCase is the capitalizing of each f- the first letter of each word. Yeah. That’s actually PascalCase.
But both are accessible. I have a friend who finds Pas- camelCase, so the first word all lowercase and then the other ones look capitalized, much easier to read. I prefer PascalCase myself. But again, both are accessible. Whichever one you use, you’re good to go. Okay. so looking at that, and then also plain language and how you write on social.
So all this stuff is woven into the accessibility thing, into the accessibility legislation. but at the same time, you’re not gonna be penalized as long as you’re trying. If you’re showing that, look, it is not realistic to say that you are going to be 100% accessible across the board in your compliance, for everything you’ve done on your websites, your documents.
So think about how many documents live on your websites or are public access. But having a plan and strategy in place on how [00:34:00] we’re going to be accessible, that is the big thing. And moving towards those milestones, that is a big thing. Because it can be overwhelming to say, “We have 1,000 PDFs on our website.
Our website alone isn’t accessible. Our social media, what do you mean image description?” there, all these things can feel overwhelming, can feel daunting. But if you’d make them bite-sized and say, “Okay, first things first. We can… From this point on, we can ensure that our social media will be accessible.
We are going to add audio cap- we’re gonna add captions to our videos to ensure that those who are deaf or hard of hearing or just somebody who’s on a train without their headphones can still engage with the content.” That is a step in the right direction. We’re adding Pascal or camel case to our hashtags.
Great. We’re adding our image descriptions or alt text to our images. Fantastic. There is your social media moving forward. For website, it might be, “Okay, so what is the plan to renew our website or to audit our website so we know what needs to be [00:35:00] changed?” And for documents, it’s looking at what can be archived, like what is nobody accessing from 1979 that is a scanned copy uploaded to our website, that nobody has really touched in five years?
What are the moderate ones, and what are the places that people go all the time and documents they’re accessing? And creating a plan from there to say, “Okay, the ones that have a high touch point, that’s, those are the ones we need to get made accessible right away. Those that are medium, they can come after.
And then those that are archived according to the legislation, as long as they are archived and they are not being touched or edited, they don’t need to be remediated.” Now, if somebody asks for it, then you do have to provide an accessible version, right? But if it’s being archived, then it’s out, it’s not there anymore.
But the biggest opportunity across the board, and something that people tend to forget about, the content that we want to create, the stuff that ha- doesn’t exist yet, that is the sweet spot when we say moving forward, we can be [00:36:00] accessible, right? We can apply best practices on how to make our Word documents more accessible, our social more accessible, our videos, our podcasts, our…
Whatever we’re living online, we can make that more accessible because we haven’t started it yet, right? That’s the opportunity moving forward.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, no, that’s, I think that’s a really important thing to remind people. And I also like the prioritization of-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah …
Michelle Garrett: which pages. ‘Cause obviously some pages buried deep within your site, those are not gonna be accessed as often as- Yeah
the ones that everybody goes to right away, Yeah But yeah, if we would think about our new content and, how to make that more accessible, and I’m sure there are tools, probably in the book.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yes. Tons of tools, checklists in the book as well. And of course, consider me your accessibility bestie.
So f- don’t hesitate to ever reach out and say “I have a question. How do I do this?” Yeah. or, “Where do I go for this?” More than happy to answer those questions [00:37:00] anytime.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. I just saw somebody, talking about how, if you just let YouTube do your, your subtitles, it might be better to upload a file of the actual transcript instead of just going with YouTube, and I don’t know if that would work, would help with accessibility, but it…
I guess YouTube makes mistakes, so that was kind of- Yeah … the point they were making,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah, so YouTube, love the platform, however, it does have a loving nickname when it comes to its subtitles or captions, and they’re called craptions because they lose punctuation, they make spelling mistakes.
Sometimes you’re just like, “What gibberish have you put out there?” But I will say it’s a great starting point because you can edit those auto-generated captions, right? To then make them fit your need versus sitting there and trying to transcribe something from scratch. So it’s a great starting point, but it’s remembering to go in and fix those auto-generated captions and not just [00:38:00] leaving them as they are.
Yeah. So that’s the thing there. And when it comes to YouTube in particular, you always wanna make sure you do have a closed caption, option. closed captions, the end user has the opportunity to turn the captions on or off versus open caption when you’ve burned the captions into your video. So they don’t have the opportunity to turn them on or off.
Michelle Garrett: Okay.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: and on YouTube, when they are closed captions, so the auto-re- auto-generated captions would be closed captions. Not only does the end user, so let’s say you, Michelle, you go on and you’re like, “Great, I’m turning on my captions.” So now you’ve turned them on ’cause that’s what you want, but let’s say you have your screen mag- magnified for whatever reason.
You can now actually move the captions better to par- to another part of the screen so it fits what you’re looking at. you can also change the style, the font, the, the color, the highlighting- the all of it, to make it suit your needs, right? So on YouTube in particular, you want to have closed captions available, whether it’s using the [00:39:00] auto-generated captions and editing them, key, key there, edit them.
or uploa- uploading a separate, what is either a VTT file or an SRT file. Those are your captioning files to YouTube so that it pulls it in from there. Either or, they’re fine. If you’re using auto-generated ones, make sure you’re editing them as well.
Michelle Garrett: I’m making notes,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: And it’s all in the book.
There you
Michelle Garrett: go. It’s in the book so we don’t need notes, we just need the book,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah.
How Can Organizations Help Teams Collaborate on Accessible Communication Initiatives?
Michelle Garrett: so I’m gonna skip a couple questions- Yeah … that, that I had ’cause I think we’re covering… you’re really, you’re covering so much, which is great. so I’m curious about how you get… we talked about- You, mentioned, there’s no expert, there’s no one team that’s gonna be working on this within your organization.
So what’s really the best way to try to get this on, the right people’s [00:40:00] radar? The, and get the teams to work together to, to make this, work for everyone.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. I think in a lot of cases it’s getting that, executive leadership team buy-in- and it’s looking at the numbers, right?
When you’re talking to your executive leadership team, it’s not so much it’s a nice to have, it’s a good thing to do, it’s being good humans. while all accurate, they’re looking, “Okay, but what’s our bottom line gonna be?” So when you think about the disability community globally, that is around 1.6 billion people who identify as having a disability.
And I use the term identify because people like my dad, who has hearing loss, will not identify on a census that he has a disability. Although he wears hearing aids and you have to yell at him with them on for him to properly hear you as well. But he’s no, I’m fine. I move around, I do my thing, we’re great.”[00:41:00]
that number is w- actually much larger, and then when you also think about the aging population, th- just the needs and requirements, being accessible removes all barriers to ensure that people have access to it. So there’s that component. But then when we look at the numbers, right? from a spending perspective, the disposable income for individuals who are, who have disabilities plus their friends and family is about $13 trillion.
That’s trillion with a T. Right? So you are… I always say unintentionally, I never like to believe an organization is out there being like, “We don’t wanna be accessible. What are you talking about?” I think it’s just that we don’t know what we don’t know. So what we don’t know or realize is that when somebody has a disability and uses assistive technology, and they go to your website- And they can’t engage with your website.
They will not only leave their website, they will tell their friends and family, who will then [00:42:00] also boycott your website. It takes longer to build that trust back than if your website or your content was accessible from the beginning, because then they would then tell their friends and family, “Oh yeah, I was able to get this, that and the other no problem.”
I’ve had a client not too long ago who was a car dealership and they’re like, “People who are blind don’t visit our website, right? They don’t drive.” I said, “Okay, but are they parents?” They said, “Yeah.” “So their 16-year-old with s- who is sighted wants to buy a car?” They’re like, “Yeah.” “Does the 16-year-old have the money?”
no, the parents would pick it.” “Okay, so I’m now blind, I’m going onto your website, I don’t have any informa- I can’t navigate your website. I’m not gonna use you.” So you’ve now poten- lost a potential sale for th- that individual who has a child that they wanna buy a car for, right? And it’s little changes in thinking like that usually gets, executive leadership teams to think, “Okay, so-” We’re potentially saying, “We don’t want your money,” [00:43:00] to a group of people when we’re trying to get money.
Very especially in this economy. and then we’re doing it unintentionally. So what can we start doing? And from there, once you have that executive leadership team, buy-in, it’s then saying, “Okay, so at every meeting, whenever we’re starting a new project,” asking the question right up front, “How are we building accessibility into this?”
And if the question is we don’t know, that is also okay. That fear of not knowing tends to put a sort of kibosh, if you will, on anything accessible. But the not knowing is the fun thing because then you can say, “Okay, so we wanna create a video.” Great. What do we need to do to ensure our video’s accessible?
You know what? I’m gonna go find out. Google search, ChatGPT as a search engine, whatever you use. You’ll find a bunch of resources, or our book, to tell you how do you make your video accessible. And then, okay, so we know what we need to do. How do we build that into our project plan?
‘Cause what [00:44:00] tends to happen is that somebody at the end of a project will say, “Oh, it needs to be accessible.” And okay, but that’s gonna cost us so much money to now retrofit what we’ve done, when instead, when accessibility’s thought of at the beginning, you’re also now saving money across the board.
And the best example, going back to video, is when you have to add in, described audio. So there’s two types of described audio. One is post-production described, which a majority of people would have heard, where it will be like, “Man walks into room. Woman sits down.” and that’s usually woven in between the main, speaking of whoever’s on screen.
Which can be very costly. Think of an Aaron Sorkin West Wing show when they’re- talking really quick and you need to try to describe where they’re going, what is happening in between that dialogue. Very expensive, very short. it, it’s, a skill. It is a very much a skill.
But the other type of described audio is called integrated described audio, [00:45:00] and this is new, newer. And this is when you are thinking about accessibility from the start. So you are storyboarding, you’re writing the script, and when you’re writing the script, you’re trying to incorporate what you’re seeing.
those really important items, you’re weaving them naturally into the script. So instead of seeing and hearing “Man walks into room,” you’d have somebody now say, “Hey, Mark- Acknowledging that the person has walked in. And for those who are blind, who are really engaged with the described audio, they have preferred the integrated described model because it makes them feel that they haven’t been othered.
Michelle Garrett: Okay.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: I don’t need a special version of this video or of this show. I have a version that I can watch with everybody, and it’s… I get as much information as everybody else in a way that doesn’t make me feel othered, right? So and that’s where you weave, like I said, in p- pre-production, the script writing and the storyboarding.
In production, making sure you’re, tweaking as you go along. [00:46:00] If something’s changed in the scene, making sure it’s woven into the script. And then in post-production, just checking it, right? So you’re ensuring that is fully accessible at the end of the day. Without even realizing it, now you’ve saved money in post-production trying to now weave in those descriptive, the audio description that would’ve been in post-production described, right?
So you’re saving money as well. So when you’re being accessible, you’re not only gonna save yourself money, you’re gonna build your audience, and you’re gonna build trust. And those are the three big things, and that’s how you can start getting, buy-in from leadership. but also, from across the table, working together, across teams to really think about how can we be more accessible?
How can we work together versus, again, siloing it out to one person being the subject matter expert.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, and once you, back to a point you made earlier, once you start doing it, practicing it- Yeah … it’ll become more second nature to just do- Yeah … everything that way. But it’s just getting that ball rolling, [00:47:00] maybe in the beginning to-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah
Michelle Garrett: yeah, get your process updated, so yeah.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: no- Proper self-perfection.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. and again, that’s, like that’s really important in so many ways, but that’s a… I feel like a lot of this just applies to so many elements of what we do. Yeah. And, if more people would really just… It just takes a little thought, just, like a b- just be a little bit more thoughtful and just kinda…
I think sometimes we just get in our mode and we’re just putting- Yeah … our head down, getting the work done, c- chunking out, things. And we’re not really, taking a step back to reevaluate, you know- Yeah … what we’re doing. And so that’s, that’s just good to do, in, across the board in a number of ways, but this, could be part of that process,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. and think of yourself as the end user as well. None of us- are ever in the optimal perfect conditions to engage with content. People will say, “I ha- I am when I’m on my patio outside.” I’m like, “Are you with the [00:48:00] screen bea- the sun beaming down on your screen?” Yeah. oh yeah. Maybe not.
Michelle Garrett: A lot of people turn on the captions now just because there’s noise or they’re trying to concentrate or they’re, like maybe it’s a, it’s an accent that they, it’s, they’re not capturing-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Exactly.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah, so even with my kids, I, when I’m watching something, sometimes I’ll have the captions on and it’s just- Yeah
because we, just are having trouble understanding what they’re saying. so yeah, it’s- a lot of people are doing that now,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Exactly. Even color contrast. think about, going to a restaurant that’s m- more dim than, lit, right? It’s trying to create ambiance, and you’re trying to look at your s- your menu.
I, I’m guilty of pulling out my phone and turning on the light. To be like, “Okay, hold on. I’m, getting what’s going on.” There’s no c- contrast ’cause it’s too dark, right? So these are small things that we don’t think about, but these are accessibility needs as well. right? So it… I have a [00:49:00] friend who is blind, and I’ll never forget one time we were at a hotel for a conference, and all her lights were off in her hotel room, and I went to go grab her, to go for dinner.
And she goes, “Oh, do you need me to turn on your assistive technology?” And I just looked at her and I said, “What are you talking about?” She goes, “The lights. Do you need the lights? ‘Cause I don’t need the lights.” Yes. And I was like, “Oh. Oh, you’re very right. That is my assistive technology,” without even thinking about it.
She goes, “I can navigate just fine. How are you doing?” As I’m banging into things. And I was like, yeah, I need it. I need it.”
Michelle Garrett: Never even thought of that, right? Yeah. yeah. That’s, a great example. speaking of examples-
we’ve got, a few minutes left. If anyone has a question, please ask, ’cause I’m sure that Matisse would love to answer it.
And if you don’t, if you’re watching this later and you have a question, sh- as she mentioned, she’s your, accessibility bestie, so be sure, to get in touch with her, after the fact if that’s easier for you. But, [00:50:00]
Examples of Organizations That Excel at Accessible Communications
Are there examples that you can maybe give us that, organizations that do accessibility really well that really have a focus on it or have, done a good job?
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah, I think, and, yes, they are bigger names, but they’re doing a really great job in not only promoting, but ensuring that it’s making it easier for individuals to make their content accessible. Somebody like Microsoft, right? So not only are their commercials, their communications, and everything very accessible, but also they’ve provided tools and have tried to make the tools not only be accessible, but ensure that you can make your content accessible for others.
So one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that in the Microsoft Suites, whether you’re in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, they have an accessibility checker that will walk you through and help you make the changes that you need to make within your document, right? So that’s a great starting point, and then like I said, their actual [00:51:00] communications and promotions, very accessible as well.
Apple is the other one. Okay. So you will see, an ad on TV. If you go to YouTube, that same ad will now also have a described audio version. Now, for theirs, just because of how quick some of them are, they have the, post-production described audio. So again, that secondary audio voice that’s describing what’s happening.
But across the board, their website, very, accessible. Their … The content that they put out, very clean, very plain language, very easy to read and navigate. places, organizations tend to fall, into not being as accessible, but still trying, when they have maybe … They’re jumping on bandwagons. So that’s the big one where, the best of intentions comes in, but you’re forgetting about accessibility.
So when Wordle, during the pandemic, took over, a lot of companies on X or Twitter still at that time, [00:52:00] were putting the, a mock of the Wordle grid, which is five gray boxes by s- six rows. So five across- six down, and that’s all you would see. So imagine listening to that. it would either say gray box or gray square, 30 times-
or it would say 30 gray squares. So either way, you’re just like, “What the heck is happening?” there was one organization, and I’m drawing a blank on the name, but they made that as an image. So they created the Wordle look with the emojis, but they actually made it as an image and added in the alt text to it.
So visually, we’re seeing it like the gray square, but audibly I’m hearing the Wordle, What was it? the Wordle, map w- that has five gray squares across, six rows down. easier for me to understand what exactly is happening. another one where companies [00:53:00] got into trouble, has been, there was a time when in, a- again, it was Twitter if I remember correctly, and Facebook, people would say they ha- changed their cover photo to say, “Click here,” and the arrow went to their profile photo to listen to the alt text.
And when you would listen to the alt text or show the alt text, it wouldn’t be the actual description of the image. It would say, like McDonald’s said, “Pickles are life.” And you’re like, “What?” Forgetting the whole reason as to why we use alternative text. They thought it was like a fun marketing tool, and then, individuals who use alternative text to really engage with content were like, “I’m so lost as to what’s happening.
What is going on here?” another organization doing really, amazing work in this space, though, would be NASA.
Michelle Garrett: Okay.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: You try coming up with an image description for the stars. They [00:54:00] do it, I think, flawlessly. right? And so when people think, I don’t know how to describe… I don’t know where to start with describing, a photo of my friends and I at a party,” for example.
I always think back to if NASA can describe the stars very, differently in the images that they’re taking, we can take that small step forward in terms of w- how would we describe it? How would you… What’s the most important information of the image of you with your friends, right? So it might be that your friend in the middle ha- is holding a birthday cake.
So it’d be, Matisse and her group of friends standing, together while the person in the middle holds a birthday cake. Right? Start simple and just start pra- again, that practice makes permanent. As long as you’re starting somewhere and you go from there. But like I said, NASA, oh, spectacular.
If you go on their X and you just start looking at the alt text, which you can, on Bluesky and X you are able to view alt text. there is an alt button when you click on the actual [00:55:00] post or tweet or whatever they’re called now. you can click on what is a little button that says ALT, and it’ll show it to you, right?
Whether you are using assis- technology or not, you actually have access to that information, and NASA, like I said, spectacular job. I couldn’t even begin to describe what they try to describe, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s it.”
Michelle Garrett: That is a really… I love that, and of course, NASA’s having, been having a moment now for- a few months, and so-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah …
Michelle Garrett: I love that example ’cause a lot of people are have been discovering, I guess-
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah …
Michelle Garrett: not that it’s new, but a lot of people are, following NASA now or just kind of- Yeah … paying attention to them. that’s a great example.
When It Comes to Accessible Communications, Just Start
what else do you wanna tell us? I’m gonna put the, some links up here for people to follow you and stay up to, date on what you’re doing and, get in touch if they want to,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. I, would just say, w- to end all of this is just [00:56:00] start. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. When you make mistakes, you do so much growing and learning, and if you’re like me, it’ll change your entire career. it’ll make you want to learn more, explore more. It’s progress over perfection when it comes to this stuff.
Think about how quickly technology has changed. We didn’t have AI three years ago, and now that’s all anybody talks about, right? And, so things are always changing and adapting. You may not get it right the first time, but practice and you will get there. and if you have questions, ask.
The accessibility and disability community are always more than happy to answer any questions, especially when people are engaged and wanting to do better. We’re not gonna say, “Oh, you don’t know how to do that?” No, we are gonna say, “Oh my goodness, let us tell you all the ways you can do that. let’s help.”
Because when we are being accessible, we are creating a barrier-free society and providing that human right to everyone [00:57:00] to have access to information.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. that’s… I can… obviously every time I speak with you, your enthusiasm and- … and love for what you do comes through. And I imagine it’s that way with, others that, do this work as well. So it’s… Not only is it important, but when you’ve kinda opened up the world to people that, maybe, aren’t used to that, I think that’s just so rewarding and special,
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Michelle Garrett: Yeah. Yay. Yay. I have enjoyed having you and having this conversation, and I really appreciate, all the work that you do and everything that you share.
And again, I hope people will, will follow you and get the book, get in touch if they have a question. all the information I’ve been putting up in the comments and on the screen. And, yeah, I just… I really wanna thank you so much for spending, time with me today. And, [00:58:00] yeah, I, wanna thank you, and thank everybody who’s tuned in.
So thanks so much.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Oh my goodness, thank you. And thank you to everybody who’s tuned in, who’s watching now or later. like I said, if you have any questions, I’m always here to answer.
Michelle Garrett: Yay. Thank you, Matisse.
Matisse Hamel-Nelis: Thank you.
Michelle Garrett: Bye, everyone!
About the host: Michelle Garrett is a B2B PR consultant, media relations consultant, writer and author of B2B PR That Gets Results, an Amazon Best Seller. She helps companies create content, earn media coverage, and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Michelle’s articles have been featured by Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Muck Rack, and Ragan’s PR Daily, among others. She’s a frequent speaker on public relations, marketing and content. Michelle has been repeatedly ranked among the top ten most influential PR professionals.
Learn more about Michelle’s freelance PR consulting services here. Book a no-obligation call to talk about your needs here. Buy Michelle’s book here.
