Chax Chat Accessibility Podcast

Learn our favorite tips, tricks, and shortcuts to creating accessible documents in Indesign!

Every application has hidden secrets, some so good you wish you knew them sooner. Join Chad Chelius and Dax Castro as they share their experiences behind these shortcuts, how they found them, and how each tip can help you become a quicker, more proficient document accessibility expert. 

 In this episode, we will cover how to n...

Avoiding a lawsuit is as easy as implementing accessibility correctly the first time. But as many of us know, we still aren’t quite there yet. There is a lot of work that needs to be done if we are going to truly have an internet that is accessible to everyone. Many businesses and public entities offer services, products, and information that everyone needs access to, regardless of...

“Automation does not guarantee compliance!” is the inspiration behind today’s episode. Here at CHAX Accessibility Training. Accessibility Checkers are one such tool. They check for particular issues, but just because a checker does not flag accessibility issues does not mean your documents are compliant. Today we are going to unravel the 7 things that Fail Accessibility but will pa...

There is no doubt that the subject of accessibility and remediation can be a confusing landscape for those just starting out in this wonderful industry. Today, we tackle part two of our Top Ten Questions in accessibility and remediation!

Some of these answers might surprise you, as we both learned something new in this episode, too. We discover new tools, like PDFix, review our top applications, discuss some of the oddities in the ...

Understanding how people use accessibility technology is essential to creating accessible media. In this episode, Chad Chelius and Dax Castro dive into the 2024 WebAIM “Screen Reader User Survey #10 Results” to get an inside look on who uses screen reading tools, and where they use them. They cover age, location, favorite reader, and more. Even though we are exploring a relatively ...

In this episode Chad Chelius and Dax Castro discuss what it means to understand the user experience of a screen reader as well as accessibility technology at large. Creating documents and digital media has its challenges, but what if your product does not respond the way you expect it to? Learn about how to adapt your understanding to the end user experience in today's episode. We ...

In this episode, we unravel nested tag structures. Chad and Dax break down lists, TOC, footnotes, and tables. Learn what the most basic way to create a list structure is and how Dax had to hit the books once again to make sure he wasn't telling tales. Chad talks about footnotes and references and why you might hear "Link Link" in your TOC elements. If you struggle to understand which tags get nested inside others, then you definite...

In this episode, Dax Castro and Chad Chelius talk about the troubles with creating QR codes and reveal the common mistakes people make when trying to make them accessible. They show you how to create them, how to set the placement correctly, and what your options are when it comes to making accessible QR codes for your documents. Chad even shows how you can use InDesign to make your QR codes right in the program. If you struggle wi...

In this final episode for 2023 we look back at the most frequently asked questions by people just starting out in document accessibility. We also dropped a major announcement about the future of Chax Training and Consulting. So you definitely don't want to miss this episode.

Top 5 Questions:

1. Do Span Tags Matter?
2. Do Container Tags Matter?
3. How Long Should Alt-text Be?
4. Can I have more than one H1 in my document?
5. What is the diffe...

You have heard us mention Venngage a few times and have featured it on our podcast. Now we thought it would be great to invite Venngage CEO, Eugene Woo on the program to talk about is journey in creating this accessible online design tool. We talk about the struggles and costs of going down the road of accessibility but more importantly, the cost of NOT going down that path. Eugene also discusses how they took the opportunity to te...

Chad and Dax take this session to talk about the possibility of having too much accessibility in the form of multiple patterns in pie charts. They discuss the merits of several approaches to making pie charts visually more accessible. Stick around to hear them give out some secret sauce for troubleshooting tables that just don't seem to want to pass accessibility. Their tip might just save you hours of needlessly hunting for the mi...

Are you using accessible color contrast and colorblind-friendly designs? Chad answers the question: "Does it really Matter if I make my designs colorblind compliant?"
Learn some important colorblind statistics and find out who needs to make their designs accessible?

We share some things you can do to make your graphic colors accessible and review the WCAG success criteria 1.4.1 Use of Color. Dax gives you some easy ways to make you...

Senior UX Researcher, Inclusive Designer and Accessibility Design Lead Sonya Lewis agrees to be our guest this week to talk about how the Reading Order in PDFs impacts her ability to apply for heathcare enrollement, participate in her workplace and overall online presence. Chad and I loved her response when we asked the question "What do you say to people who think the Reading Order in PDFs doesn't really matter?" Be sure to listen...

We stumbled on to an online design tool that is giving Canva a run for their money. We show you our first impressions about the product and the accessibility features it has and a few ways we might suggest improving it. We also reveal the new EASY way to set the PDF/UA Identifier in Adobe Acrobat. Dax mentions the upcoming guest and their struggles with reading order in PDF documents. Finally, Chad reveals some insights on Form Tag...

Listen to Chad and Dax talk about alternate descriptions for hyperlinks and what WCAG has to say about it. We mention PDF/UA-2 set to remove the mandatory requirement for alternate link descriptions. Chad shares a users comment "I want users of assistive technology to have the same crappy experience a sighted person has when reading long URLs." You will get a chuckle out of our "Six Degrees of separation from Dyson," and why where ...

CAUTION: Highly controversial accessibility topics in this podcasts:

1. Do we need to set the reading order in my PDFs?
2. 2. Title Tag or H1?

We discuss a real-world situation where someone's barrier to information in a PDF is not vision. However, because of a traumatic event this person has dyslexia and requires audio input to fully understand the content on the page they are reading. We discuss how reading order is affected...

This week's podcast is truly an amazing goldmine of information if you struggle with creating accessible infographics? Chad Chelius and Dax Castro walk through 7 Questions to ask yourself before creating an accessible infographic:

1. What do we want the user experience to be?
2. What is the most important information?
3. Does Content order matter?
4. Does color or line weight indicate additional information?
5. What is the volume of data? (D...