T Nunciato podcast

Tammy Nunciato records her plan to advocate for website accessibility at Western New York Library Resources Council. She emphasizes proactive measures to comply by 2027, focusing on inclusivity and collaboration among staff. Tammy suggests starting with the director, involving the systems librarian, and implementing policies for website compliance. She stresses the importance of natural inclusivity and consideration for all users, highlighting the need for collaboration and passion in making websites accessible to everyone. Okay, here goes nothing. I'm going to be starting my recording. My name is Tammy Nunciato. This is for Professor Dr. Grassi. It is about being an authentic accessibility advocate for the company that I currently work for, which as we know is Western New York Library Resources Council. I have not been there for a year yet. It's a rather new position for me, but the one thing that I wanted to bring to this new company, new job for me, is helping them with the accessibility of their website. They are one of the entities that will need to be titled to compliance by 2027, and I want it to be more of a proactive item rather than reactive, remediating, going back and fixing something. So my plan is to start with the director at one of our meetings, our weekly meetings, and just make mention of the fact that there needs to be some policy changes and there really needs to be major inclusivity of all the employees or staff in the company, and we need to work together and collaborate and be held accountable for our website so that we don't fall under the jurisdiction of the DOJ and they come after us for not being ADA compliant. So if you start with the director and you start with this plan and you say, hey look, I want to bring this to the company, I want this to be important, this is what we do on a weekly, daily basis. When somebody writes a letter, we're having an annual meeting and there's an award ceremony and people are receiving awards, they are getting letters that say, hey congratulations, you are receiving an award, please come to our annual meeting. And before the letter is sent out, the woman that I work with that's composing all these letters will send them to us as her co-workers and say, hey can you just look at this, make sure there's no typos, the date is correct, it's always good to have another set of eyes on whatever you're working on, especially if you're going to send it out to the public. So we already collaborate on our own on a daily basis and with each other and truly rely on each other for input and other ways to say things in a letter or if they misspelled something or if the date is wrong, things like that. So we do a daily collaboration as it is. So going to the director and saying, look we need to collaborate all of us together on this website, I'd like our systems librarian to spearhead this whole thing, he's the one that's really into AI and he's technology and he's a programmer and he's a coder, you get the idea. He should be the one that says, all right we're going to sit down, we're going to make a plan, here's what we have to work on because we can all run a wave report on the website on the different pages showing us where the broken links are, showing us where contrast is wrong or other things are not compliant with the WCAG 2.2 that's coming up. So once we get him to put all that information out there for us, we can sit down, break it up, give everybody a page or give everybody, you're going to handle this section, you're going to handle that section over all the pages. And it has to start with the director, it has to start with a policy and the board has to write the policy, approve the policy and send it out to us the employees and say, you know, this is major, this is what we're going to do on a daily basis because the more you let it go, the more you leave it behind the next thing you know, it's hey, it's due tomorrow and it's not done. So we don't want to fall into that situation. So it's going to have to be something that starts with your first day of employment or for us who are already there starting on Monday, this is what we're going to start working on, let's sit down, let's have a meeting, let's figure this out. So once the meeting is held, once the director understands what I'm looking to try and do, she can take my formal proposal to the board, have them look it over, change it, question it, what they need to do, vote on it, bring it back to us as employees and say, okay, now we're going to implement this, this is important. So I want this to feel like natural, like you're breathing, like this is, I'm going to put something out there, but wait, I've never had to use an assistive device to be able to read this, somebody else will. Will they be able to read this? Will this work with a screen reader? Will this work with other assistive devices? These are the things that we need to be asking as we're creating and putting these things out there to the world. And by doing that, we're going to, like I said, have one person work on contrast. Okay, you're going to check these five pages, hey, does this look right to you? Is this wrong? Can we tweak this? Let's sit down and talk about it. And because we need to be as passionate about those with disabilities that are using our website as the people who have the disabilities, it's got to be like breathing. It's got to be natural. It's got to be an instinct. And going through this class for me, like I said, I wasn't diagnosed with anything. I've never needed assistive devices to read a website or use a website or understand what's going on. But I do know people that require these things. And I see the frustration in my own family members. So I don't want them as my own family, I don't want them to have that frustration. And if I don't want them to have the frustration, I don't want the people out there to have the frustration either. So by taking this course, by using the information that we were given by the different websites and the guidelines and Title II, I think that we could start with a policy and work our way down and work collaboratively together and, again, have it as natural as breathing because this is something that we need to do that's important for everyone. Because once you make this accessible in so many different ways, you're going to be helping people to see what's on the website without even trying, without even realizing how many more other people you're helping.