Making Accessibility Part of Your Design Process
The CreativePro Podcast
Accessibility experts Colleen Grotzer and Chad Chilius discuss how to integrate accessibility into the design process without stifling creat
Key takeaways
- Accessibility does not require a separate step; it can be an extension of existing design workflows.
- A practical starting point for designers is mastering color contrast requirements for text and icons.
Main topics
- Personal journeys into accessibility
- InDesign workflow optimization
Notable quotes
It is your job as a designer... You just never were taught it.
Conclusion
The episode serves as an empowering guide for designers to adopt 'baby
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) As a designer, you've already got a lot to think about, and adding accessibility to the mix can feel overwhelming. But knowing accessibility matters and knowing what you're actually supposed to do about it are two very different things. Where do you start? How much do you really need to know? And does accessibility mean putting limits on your creativity? Speaker 2 (0:24) These are exactly the kinds of questions we're tackling today in a conversation with accessibility experts, Colleen Grotzer and Chad Chilius. Hi, design friends. Welcome to the Create a Pro podcast. I'm Teresa Jackson, Create a Pro program manager. I'm happy you're here today. If you're a design professional, well, you're in the right place. If you're new, make sure to hit the subscribe button. And just for being here, you can save $15 off a one-year CreativePro membership with the discount code PODCAST. That same code works for $100 off any upcoming event, including our upcoming Design and Accessibility Summit, which runs online October 20th through the 23rd. Our guests today, Colleen Gratzer and Chad Chilius, they'll be speaking there. I'll hand it over to them now. Speaker 1 (1:28) Good morning, Colleen. How you doing? Speaker 2 (1:30) Good. Hey, good. I'm doing well. How are you? Speaker 1 (1:32) Good. Good. How's your summer been going? Speaker 3 (1:35) Good. I've been busy with work and busy coming back and forth to the beach and doing work. Oh, sounds Speaker 1 (1:41) rough. Sounds rough being at the beach. Yeah. I actually love it. Speaker 2 (1:47) I Speaker 1 (1:47) like going down to the beach and, you know, like I'll often like work on the patio at the place we're staying or something and just enjoy the salty air. You know, it's, it's always fun. It's relaxing, you know? Speaker 3 (2:00) Yes. Well, it's good Speaker 1 (2:02) to, it's good to talk to you today, Colleen. Just to introduce ourselves to, you know, our listeners. You are. Speaker 3 (2:12) Colleen Grotzer. And I have a business where I do the accessibility work and I have training for designers as well. So I do the work through Grotzer Graphics and I do the training and I have a podcast called Design Domination. I do all of that through Creative Boost. Speaker 1 (2:32) Awesome. Awesome. And Speaker 3 (2:34) how about you? Speaker 1 (2:35) Well, my name is Chad Chilius and I work for Chax Training and Consulting. We do primarily training and consulting for our clients on accessibility. And part of our conversation today, Colleen, is really talking about what led us to where we are today. Because you and I are both in the accessibility space and Speaker 1 (3:05) Over time, a couple of times in my life, somebody had asked me what my five-year plan was. Has anybody ever asked you that question? And I've never had an answer. I'm like, I didn't want to get to tomorrow. You know what I mean? So I've never really had a five-year plan. So being in the accessibility space was never part of my plan. It was really, I would say it was kind of an organic transition. right and and so with that being said you know let's just kind of talk about colleen like your journey from you know designer and design trainer to you know being in the accessibility space uh that you're in now well Speaker 3 (3:49) it's really interesting because i was at a place with my business where i was doing all of the design things you can think of i was doing print i was doing websites i was doing these horrible html emails those are like the worst thing in the world so i was designing i was coding i was doing everything i actually i just got to a point where i was like just crying all the time out of frustration with my business because i just felt like nobody's i feel like people said they took me seriously as a designer like clients said that but i didn't feel treated that way And I felt like I was constantly lowballing my rates. I felt like I wasn't like I was confident in my abilities and my skills, but I wasn't I wasn't confident enough to sometimes charge more or to like explain or defend my design decision so much. And like if there was pushback that made me nervous. Right. So I just I didn't like that. And like everything in my whole business just felt like it was falling apart. And I said, I'm just done. And I actually thought about a career change. And I thought, well. I don't know what I would do. I mean, in my degrees in foreign languages, I thought maybe I could do something like that, but I just got really fed up. I thought about niching. I couldn't figure out what to niche in. And then just like, this probably went on for like, I don't know, maybe like a year or two. And then one time, Bevy Shanyong contacted me because we're both in the DC area and we were on the same email list where she would send out emails talking about her accessibility courses. And I would literally just hit delete when I saw the subject because Not that I had anything against her. I didn't know anything about accessibility. And I thought it doesn't have anything to do with what I do. So, you Speaker 1 (5:24) know, Speaker 3 (5:25) it's Speaker 1 (5:25) just Speaker 3 (5:25) I don't know what that is. And if I don't know what it is, it doesn't apply to me. Speaker 1 (5:29) And you're like, I don't need one more thing on my brain. Exactly. I Speaker 3 (5:34) didn't even know it had to do with design at that point. I had no idea. So I would just hit delete. And then like one time she contacted me and she goes, look, you and I know each other from the email list that we're on. And she's like, I know that you're a good designer. I know that you know how to code. And she's like, I want you to take my training in InDesign because you would be really good at it. And I'm like, I don't even understand what that means, accessibility. So I got on a call with her. I went through her course and I said, okay, like I could do this. But I'm like, but nobody's asking me for this. So what's, I mean, maybe I just spent money that like I'll never. Like maybe I'll never get my money back, my return on investment for this, right? So I just started talking about it to clients and I was bringing it up to clients that I thought would really benefit from it, especially because of their audience, even if they didn't have the legal requirement. And I mean, some of them were not interested and some of them were, and then I just started talking about it more. And then clients who did need it just started coming to me and it just started snowballing from there. And then it actually became... So such a big thing that I decided to like, I decided like, I don't know, but a year or so ago to get rid of websites, accessible websites, because I was doing accessible documents, accessible design and accessible websites and the code and everything. And I was like, this is too much. There's actually a lot to do in accessibility. So I just wanted to focus on documents. I mean, that's how I started, but I was still doing websites at the time. So I just kind of narrowed it back down to documents. And I just. Then I started getting requests for training, for people to, well, for speaking, for speaking from Creative Pro and at the summits, the design and accessibility summits. And then I started getting a lot more people finding me and wanting me to do training for them, private training and things like that. So it just kind of like, it just, it like changed my business. Like it took my business like out of the gutter. Speaker 2 (7:33) And it Speaker 3 (7:33) like made it like such a. It's such a natural thing. And it made me feel more confident. And like everything about my business changed. It was like really interesting how something that I was looking for so badly, then somebody shoved it in my face. Speaker 1 (7:47) You know, and it's like, as it does. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Speaker 3 (7:51) And Speaker 1 (7:51) I Speaker 3 (7:51) know Chad, your story is totally different. Speaker 1 (7:54) I mean, it's, it's different, but the same in some ways. And. you know, I know some of our audience has heard me tell this story before, but you know, um, you know, my degrees in graphic communications, uh, essentially printing technology, right. You know, and like, I really have never really considered myself a graphic designer, but more of a layout artist. So, so my skillset has always been more on the technical side of things. Like I would, I would get designs from art directors that. between you and me were a hot mess and I would rebuild it and execute it with styles and, you know, with purpose so that it could actually be rebuilt, you know, in a, in an efficient manner. And that's what I always enjoy doing. But, Speaker 2 (8:43) um, Speaker 1 (8:44) you know, prior to getting into accessibility, I think I had spent like the last 15 years of my life, probably 18 years of my life, you know, mainly as a, as a trainer. right i would you know i've spoken at creative pro i think i'm i think i'm on year 10. i think i'm coming up on year 10 speaking at creative pro but um you know i was always a trainer in for graphic design for for graphics applica all the adobe applications right and and i was in uh orlando at a conference speaking I even forget the name of the conference right now. I think it was called Create, if I'm not mistaken. But I was doing a presentation on the PDF format. And at that time, Acrobat had Adobe Flash built into it. So you could do video and 3D and all this really cool stuff in PDF. And that's what I was talking about. And during my presentation, this very nice woman in the back of the room raised her hand. And she's like, this is all great, but is it accessible? And, you know, that's every speaker's nightmare is to be asked a question that you would know nothing about. Right. And that's where I was. I'm like, I don't even know. I have no idea what words just came out of your mouth. Right. And somehow I talked my way out of it. Right. And I continued on with my presentation. But afterwards, she came up to me. And we