- [Mike] Thank you everyone for joining the webinar today. We will begin momentarily as people start to sign in and get situated. Thank you everyone for joining the webinar today. We will begin momentarily. All right, good morning. Good afternoon. My name is Mike Mooney, the Digital Marketing Manager at TPGi. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today for setting the table for accessibility, creating inclusive experiences for QSR/Restaurant Customers. The pleasure of introducing Matt Ater, Vice-president Software Business Development for Vispero and Laura Boniello Miller, Corporate Business Development Manager for Vispero. Before we get started, I just have a few housekeeping items I wanna take care of. The session is being recorded and we will email everyone the recording after the event. We have live captions available, feel free to use those as needed. And lastly, we will have time for live Q&A at the end of the session. Please use the Q&A box to submit your questions and we will get to those as needed. And with that, I'll have Matt start us off. Matt.

- Thank you, Mike. And thank you, Laura, for joining me today to talk about accessibility and as the cute name and great title for setting the table for accessibility for QSRs, which for those who don't know QSR, is quick-serve restaurants. And just a little background on me, I've been with the organization or Vispero, previously Freedom Scientific since 2014 and have been running different divisions within the organization, including TPG when it was previously known as TPG, now TPGi. And currently run software engineering as well as corporate business development. I've been in the field for about 25 years and look forward to today's presentation. I'll pass it to Laura.

- Hi, nice to meet everyone. My name is Laura Miller. I work with Matt on one of the many hats he wears, which is within the kiosk space and the JAWS Kiosks space specifically, which is the screen meter, the only screen meter that is an enterprise level solution for kiosk. And so, today we'll talk about quick-serve restaurant accessibility in general, and specifically we'll start with a piece on self-service kiosks. So the agenda for today's meeting, creating an accessible experience, self-service kiosk, accessibility, tips, and techniques. And then after we've gone into the weeds pretty deep on some self-service accessibility tips and tricks, we'll talk and do an overview on digital accessibility, making your website accessible and mobile ordering app accessibility. I will warn that those topics will just be surfaced because there's so much to go there for. And so, digital accessibility is we can spend days and weeks talking about that. So we'll start with some deep diving on self-service first, and then we'll have a question and answer. So on the screen, you have a self-service or ordering kiosk. There's a woman who is touching a touchscreen and apparently ordering on a self-ordering kiosk that's fairly large and has a touch screen digital display that is interactive. And next to that, there is just a more of a tabletop counter unit that has a bit of a payment device acceptor. It looks like also touch screen interactive self-service. Some of the machines that you would expect to find at a quick-serve restaurant or really for any self-service experience, it could be check-in, it could be self-ordering, anything like that. Matt, you're up.

- So what I wanna talk about now is making sure that there's a alternative input device for these self-service kiosks. So, many of us know about touchscreens and how those interact, and those are well and good, but there's several challenges around it and why there's a recommendation for additional input devices meet several requirements, not just for blind and low vision, but also people with motor difficulties. So, on the screen, we have a picture of two different input devices that are good for QSRs and restaurants for their self-service needs. There's one on the left that is a Storm AudioNav Keypad. And I'll describe that in a second. The one on the right is a Storm AudioNav Keypad EF and extra functions. So, we'll start with the one on the left, which is one that has a left, a right, an up down, and a center key. So think of those as four arrow keys with a center key in the middle, and then it has a button on the bottom left and then a headphone jack on the bottom right. The EF model is very similar. It has the same four arrow keys and the key in the center, think of that as again, like an inter key. And I'll describe what the other functions of the other keys are, just a second. And then you'll see some speed keys. So there's speed up, speed down. And then there's a volume up, volume down key. And then again, a headphone jack. So let's go back to the original audio nav keypad and the intent of this is not only to give the tactical input and function, but also allow somebody to insert a headphone jack. And these headphone jacks are unique to some of the functionality needed. And we'll talk about that on the next screen, which is launching the screen reader based on someone's needs, who's blind or low vision. The keys otherwise work on the device as described now and they are programmable. So anybody who's designed a kiosk using these specific keypads it's from Storm may have chosen a different use case, but the one I'm gonna describe today is the one that we think based on our user experience, based on our user feedback, based on our knowledge of screen readers and such that we think is the best use case for our customers. So the Right Arrow key would be similar to a Tab key and the Left Arrow key would be similar to a Shift + Tab key. The key that is the Down Arrow would be similar to a next heading or section of the screen. And the Up Arrow would be prior heading or prior section of the screen. And we'll get into why we designed that way when we get into some of the other slides, but the intent being that users need the ability to move by element and they needed to move by section within the screen. The key on the bottom left of the audio nav keypad, the more simpler unit is like a help key or where am I key. And we've used this in installations where you wanna know what screen you're on, and maybe you wanna know what's in your cart so that when you're moving along, you wanna check and see what's total in my cart, that's one scenario. Another would be just increased or decreased volume. And then in some other installations we've set it up where that takes you into a settings mode if you double tap it so you can increase volume or change the rate of speed. Now, the EF model obviously has volume and speed buttons on it. So therefore you don't need to use that key for the same function. What the EF model lacks for us is that help key, which allows someone to do a where am I on the screen at this time. All right, Laura, let's go ahead and move to the next slide. And on this slide, we have a picture of some headphones, and I think there's a kiosk or a input there for the headphones and then a message on the screen. And the idea behind the headphone jack is we can use it to launch the screen reader for somebody who's blind. So if you plug in your headphones, it will actually activate the screen reader. And when you take the headphones out, it deactivates the screen reader. At the same time, it resets the screen reader settings so that the next user who comes in would have default settings. Examples of those settings could be volume, could be rate, could be language. And so, it's important that a user gets set back to default because I know if I use my rate really fast, or I want the volume up because it's allowed restaurant and then somebody else comes in and determines that that volume is too loud or the speech rate is too fast, we want them to set back at default levels before they get started. On the screen, we have, as I described it, a hand inserting the headphone jack into a headphone jack on the kiosk. And what happens next is once they plug in the headphones, it's very important that instructions are given so that the user knows how to interact with this. We can't assume that all users can interact with every scenario of every kiosk without proper instructions because the design of the application is to get a process done in an efficient timeline. And so, it's very important to provide those instructions for what the process would be. So in the screen, we actually have a short message that says welcome to the self-ordering kiosks powered by JAWS. And then it describes how to use the keypad. So it says the Right Arrow key would move forward, the Down Arrow key would move to the next section. I'm paraphrasing what it says, but that is an example. And it may even tell you how to get into settings. And so, that message is critical. And then you may even have to loop it until somebody presses a key. So in the case of one of the installations we did, we looped it three times, but we also looped it in English and in Spanish so that the user would know how to switch languages. All right, Laura, I'm gonna send it back to you for the next slide.

- Okay, so we've talked about some of the primary functions that should be on a self-ordering kiosk to make it accessible, particularly for users who are blind and who have low vision. When you have a self-ordering kiosk, the part that most people think about when it comes to accessibility is the hardware itself. And so, just to mix things up, we started with the things that are often forgotten or that are neglected or are just not known about. And so, we're circling back now to the hardware itself. And so, the way the kiosk is built really sets the stage for how accessible the kiosk is, particularly as it relates to really specific standards, but also as it relates to what people can actually do. So some of the important functions or things to consider when you're building your actual kiosk, the hardware itself, height and reach, the height of the kiosk needs to be tall enough so that, or actually low enough so that someone in a wheelchair can reach it. And there are some specific requirements and, or just best practices for how tall that should be. There's something called clearance. So if you have a kiosk that has a lip or anything comes out, you need to be able to put a wheelchair underneath it so that someone can still access the screen. So how far forward the clearances so that you can get to it, making sure that the height of that clearance is enough so that you can put the wheelchair underneath of it. Operable parts. If you have parts such as that input device that Matt already showed us, or you have other parts that the credit card reader, for instance, those need to be low enough so that someone in a wheelchair can access those. The display, the touchscreen display, this one's a little bit funny only because the touchscreen display itself needs to be viewable from a wheelchair, but the portions of the touchscreen that need to be within reach are primarily those that navigate so that someone in a wheelchair could actually access all of the buttons on the screen, on the touch screen that actually moves you through the application. So there are specific requirements as to how tall or how low that touch screen can be. The angle of the display for instance so that you can view it while both standing and sitting. Another piece would be labels, and I'll get to that in a moment. And then the approach, can someone actually access the kiosk? Is there a ramp so that they can get to that location? Is there enough clearance so that you can go around the kiosk and sort of turnaround that the approach that someone can actually get to the kiosk. These all sound pretty basic, the approach, especially like, of course, you need to be able to get into the door. You need to be able to actually get to the kiosk, but actually some of those are overlooked because when you're talking about a kiosk, it's something that is actually moved and put in place. And so, sometimes the person who designs the kiosk itself isn't the person who actually decides where it goes. And so, really looking at the whole picture of where that kiosk belongs in the store, in the restaurant and making sure that your customers can get to it. So that's the height and reach. And we called that ADA Height Reach. And I just wanna point out that these standards are, the Americans with disabilities act has specific standards for that, but we also know that there are standards in Canada, there are standards in Europe. And so, those standards vary based on where you're planning to deploy. This next slide is about Braille. And that was one of the topics previously labels that I skipped over. Braille labels need to direct users to the necessary sort of input devices such as the credit card readers, such as the input device that the storm navigation device or the tactile input device. And so, the audio jack in particular is something that needs to be labeled with Braille so that someone who is blind or has low vision is able to identify if they can find the Braille. And you put that someplace pretty accessible, pretty obvious so that when someone's touching on the screen itself, or on the kiosk surface, they can find it. As soon as they find that, that directs them to orient themselves so that they can get to the audio jack, the audio jack then would launch when you plug in the headphone. As Matt had said, it would launch a message that can maybe orient them as to whether where the other items are on the kiosk, for instance, if there is a credit card reader or a number pad or anything like that.

- I think that's a good example, Laura. There was a company that we worked with that had two different model kiosks. And for them to design the Braille that covered everything that changed between the two units was from a description perspective, was time consuming and challenging. So instead when the headphones were inserted, not only did it tell you how to use the keypad, but it said the printer could be located below either the navigation keypad or the credit card reader. And so, it gave both examples so that the user knew that it could be in either location.

- No, that's a great example. So the image shown on this page, it says audio jack down on the side, and then it has some braille lettering underneath that. And that's just an example of what a braille label might look like on a kiosk. In that case, the audio jack was located just below that sort of out of sight there.

- And I'll add one last thing, for anybody who's having Braille added to their kiosk, have somebody who is blind, professionally check the Braille as somebody who's seen bad Braille in the market before or incorrect labels, nothing's worse than having bad labels or missing characters within the Braille.

- Matt has some winning examples of that for those who wanna message off after . The next one is designing the application. So this is basically sort of some of the points that Matt is going to work through in a few minutes, but these are just some tips as to how to design an accessible application for which that you would put on a kiosk and allow people to navigate through, particularly one that is going to work well with a screen meter and, or the storm interface or the input device.

- I think that the point to this section is pretty critical because a lot of times when people have been looking at kiosk accessibility, they're looking more at the physical requirements rather than the application requirements. And think about the purpose of your self-service solution and figure out, okay, what's the workflow we need, what's the use case and making sure that a person who's blind would be able to, or other disabilities would be able to perform those tasks are critical.

- Make your kiosks something that everyone can use. This is not just for blind or low vision users, and this is not just about compliance with accessibility standards. It's actually just great usability practice. So to that point, we have some bullets, drive the user experience with headings. Ensure the application includes proper tab order. Focus moves based on the application workflow. Elements that gain focus have proper names and tutor messages. All interactive elements are single action. And don't worry, this isn't a quiz. Matt is going to go through each of these momentarily. Dialogues move focus and hide other content from JAWS. Use ARIA Live to provide feedback when quantities or amounts are updated. And lastly, ensure the application is properly tagged for other languages and that JAWS has the installed voices.

- Very good. So the first one of this is focusing on the using headings to drive a structure or drive the user experience through headings. Now, earlier, I mentioned headings or sections, and I'll just give the hint that we tend to change some of the terminology when we start using a kiosk from a computer, because a person doesn't have the same input, meaning keyboard as they would at their desk. So if I'm at home and I wanna move by a heading, I would use the letter H, but I don't have the letter H on this keypad that's on the screen. And on the screen, I have two screenshots from a kiosk. And then I also have a Storm Audio Nav Keypad on the screen. And on the far left-hand side is a zoomed out version of one of the screens from a menu application. And in the middle I have the keypad. And then on the far right, is a zoomed in portion of it. And the idea here is that if I'm a user trying to complete a task, if there's a lot of options on the screen, I don't want to go through every option. Maybe I'm ready to check out. And so, I should be able to get to that checkout section without stopping on every element between me and it. And it's kinda like going into a store and saying to me that I have to go find every item in the store before I exit the store. Well, no, I'd like to pick out that one item and then move quickly to the checkout section of the store and then pay in exit. And so on the screen, we have two headings shown, and I'm not sure the exact titles of those headings. And then at the bottom, we have the add to cart or checkout option on the screen. So the intent again is to let the user move through different sections of the screen so that they don't have to stop at every element along the way. And so on the keypad, we actually have the Down Arrow highlighted so that a person who was blind or somebody with a physical disability would press that to move to the next section using the Down Arrow key. The Up Arrow would move to the prior section or heading of the screen. Laura, if we can go ahead and move to the next slide. Now on this screen here, we have two shots of a menu application again. And the title of this is to ensure that the application has proper tab order. Now you're gonna say to me, well, there's no tab key on this kiosk, or maybe somebody still wants to use the touch screen. And if they did, how would they move through this same way that they would with a keypad? Now, we intended to set the keypad up in a certain way to match what you would do say on an iPhone or an Android phone, which is a swipe right is to move forward to the next element, swipe left would go back to the previous element. And so, in the case of this, if I set tab order correctly, I would move between there six items on the screen of different food types. And Laura's placed the numbers one through six next to those items. And they're different smoothie bowls or food bowls. And so, if I press the tab key, the intent would be it should go to the first item and speak that item. And then case on the keypad on the right, the Tab key is the Right Arrow key. The Shift + Tab would be the Left Arrow key, again, similar to swipe right or swipe left to go forward or back. Now, for those of you who are sighted and not used to using a screen reader with a phone, you would just put your finger wherever you need to go and then just tap it if that's the one you want. For a blind person, they would do a swipe command to find the one they want and then they would double tap on that item to add it to their cart. So adding the tab order allows, or tab element structure to these elements allows the screen reader to navigate to it. Additionally, it allows the keypad to move to those items. And then if you were gonna do this, keep in mind that you not only wanted to wrap the item in the tab order, but you may wanna wrap other things within it such as the name of the item, or the amount for the item, or the calories for the item would be all wrapped up into the same elements style so that it's quick and easy for you to move by each food item on the screen.

- Matt, we didn't mention, but the examples that are shown on this particular app is actually from the Menu app, M-E-N-U.app. I just wanted to mention that so that.

- Yeah, and this is a sample food app that they've had out there with a customer at this point. And on the screen, there's like I said, there's six items. And Laura, I don't know if you wanna go ahead and describe the six items that are on the screen that are zoomed in so that those who are blind get a feeling for and get hungry for the food options they have later after this presentation.

- Yeah, so it says Signature Bowls, and then it just has six different bowls of, these are Hawaiian names I'm assuming, or some sort of lapana, I don't know, maybe New Zealand names. I'm not even sure-

- Yeah, sure. So go-

- Yeah, so I'm not even gonna try, but they do have various different options inside. One has salmon, one has edamame a mommy, and avocado, and other ones shrimp. So just a lot of different options of bowls for this particular.

- And I wouldn't intend to describe the entire item on this screen. But when you choose one of these, you would get a further description on what's included in that bowl. And back to the example of the previous screen without changing it, but the section of the screen, Laura, you gave a title, which was some... What did it say across the top? The right above the six items.

- Signature Bowls.

- Signature Bowls would be a heading structure for this page as an example. So you have the heading and you would set your focus on that. And we'll go to focus next.

- Actually, if you look above Signature Bowls, Matt, there's actually some navigation options that are sort of grayed out that show you what the other headings are. So if you were to use the headings, it would be Signature Bowls starters, desserts, soft drinks, smoothies, and coffee, but that's not.

- Those are filters for the app. And I think filters is something we didn't talk about in our slide deck here, but filters are really key to making it easier for somebody. If you put the entire menu on the screen with no filters, you're gonna find that the user has a long process to get through the menu app and not just the menu app is entitled, but the menu that you have on your self-service kiosk. So it's important to use filters to drive the user through the workflow as well. An example would be, at McDonald's you may have sandwiches, and once you choose sandwiches, you wanna choose between beef, chicken, fish, or pork. And then that shortens the list of sandwiches for the user. And as I move to the next screen about moving focus, once I choose one of those filters on the screen, I wanna move focus to the first item so that the user doesn't have to go back through that entire menu at the top, the choices between those four or five sections of the menu. So once I've chosen in the example I just gave with McDonald's, once I've chosen beef, I should move to the first hamburger or beef item that's on the menu and read that item for the user and allow them to go ahead and add it to the cart at that point. So on this screen, I have, again, two screenshots, one is the zoomed out screen and then secondly, I have the zoomed in screen. And once again, the idea here is to set focus. Once you've chosen something, move the user's focus to that spot that they need to now start working through. So it's helping the user's workflow as they go through your application. We'll move to the next one. And on this screen, we wanna talk about making sure that elements have proper names and give proper tutor messages. And later we'll talk about proper language, but also potentially within the proper language also needs to be considered. So we have two screenshots, one again, the full screen, and then one of the zoomed in screen. And the idea on this screen is that there's a add button on the screen that allows you to add that item to the cart. And so on the screen, we have add order to cart, which is an ARIA label for that screen item. And then the tutor message is press the middle key to activate and think of that as guiding the user, who may not be familiar with using your self-service kiosk, you're self-ordering kiosks with your QSR. So you have to believe, or you have to understand that not every user is gonna walk in and be able to use it. So having these tutor messages throughout the user experience is a key part of it and ensuring that those tutor messages match the language being spoken as well as critical. So on this specific screen, by landing on the button, the add button, it may only say the word ad visually on the screen, but maybe you need to add more text to it. And that's where an ARIA label comes into play. And the idea is that you can add text that is not visually on the screen to that element so the person who's blind would know how to interact with it or know what the button really means as well as interact with it. So that how to interact with it is the tutor message. And it's talking about the middle key of the Storm Audio Nav Keypad. Now I'm gonna mention one other thing that's important here. JAWS, we do support both the touch interaction as well as the keypad interaction. You need the keypad because it has a headphone jack on it and allows the blind person to initiate the screen reader usage. But once somebody touches the screen, we alternate the tutor messages based on pressing a key on the keypad. We'll say, press the middle key to activate. Whereas if I used my finger on the screen, it would say double tap a single finger to activate. And so, those messages change based on the interaction that the user chooses to have on the kiosk. All right, Laura, on the next screen. So on this screen, we have the Storm Audio Nav Keypad shown again, and then we have a screenshot of the section where you may increase quantities on a screen. Now I've seen kiosk out there that use quantities that are drop downs. The challenge with using drop-downs is that they're not single action. So that means the user's process is gonna take longer to go through that specific item. So on this screen, we actually have a plus and a minus on the screen for increased quantity or decreased quantity. Now plus or minus is what you see visually. But once again, thinking about the previous screen, the ARIA label may say increased quantity. And then the tutor message on that plus sign would say, press the middle key to activate. And so the intent is a single action on the plus or the minus would change the quantity of that item on the screen that you're focused on. I'll move to the next one. So on this one, we're gonna be talking about dialogues in hiding content on the screen. There's times when dialogues grab focus of the screen, and we need to make sure that we one, move focus to the dialogue and two, hide the rest of the screen while you're interacting with it. There's times when people use techniques within the coding that would still show the content behind the dialogue. And even though visually, you guys may see less of it, a blind user would still see the code of the entire screen, including the items behind the dialogue. So it's critical to one, move, focus to the dialogue and set your focus to the spot on the screen that is most relevant to the user where you want their workflow to start. And then separately, you need to block and hide the rest of the screen behind that dialogue. All right, now we're jumping into ARIA Live, and this is a slightly technical term, and I'll go through the reason for this. In the previous two screens back, I'd shown the plus and minus, I think is what I showed on the two screens back. So on the plus or minus, the idea is that if you press the plus or minus, it's gonna change the quantity. It may also update the dollar amount that's associated to it. Well, we need to make sure that we actually say the quantity change when you hit the plus or minus. So you need to say quantity change to two, your total is now instead of $3, it's $6. So you need to say quantity change to two, total now set to $6 or something to that effect. I'm not using the exact dollar, exact language being used in this case. On the screen, I do have, again, a zoomed out full screen of the application, and then on the right, I have the zoomed in on the plus or minus as well as the quantity. It's critical that you provide that information about the quantity change as well as the dollar amounts and the technique is called ARIA Live so you can basically wrap that section in the code in an area that says, "Hey, screen reader when this changes, I want you to alert the user of that change and provide the feedback. Now, one thing that's unique about JAWS that the other screen readers don't do today is that it speaks that ARIA Live in the proper language that's being used on that page. Otherwise, what would happen with other screen readers is it would say the quantity change would go from one to two, instead of saying two or in Spanish dose, it would say two. And so, it's important that the user gets the proper language as well assigned to that quantity and dollar thresh, the dollars being displayed. I'm gonna pass the language screens off to Laura.

- Great, so when creating an application, the app has the option to be written in multiple languages. So you have an option for folks to change the language that they're viewing on the screen to a different language. And it's really important that those language options also be available for someone who is blind or who has low vision. And this can also help with literacy, folks who are more literate so they can use the screen reader and don't have to read what's on the screen. And so, being able to provide the language content or the multiple language content that part of the application via screenwriter is really important. And so, if you're looking at screen meters, make sure that the application, first of all, make sure the application is properly tagged for other languages so that once when someone selects German, for instance, that all of the content then transitions to German. But then also use make sure that your screen reader, in this case, we're talking about JAWS has the installed voices so that those language tags can be read in the required voices or the recommended voices. And so, making sure that you are appealing and servicing the number of people or the vast diverse group of people that attend or visit your restaurant, that eat in your hotels or your student dining halls, those kinds of things, making sure that you provide as many options as possible because really, if you're doing it in the language of the website itself, just making sure that the screen reader supports it. It's a pretty simple, short step for the next step.

- And I would add one thing to it is the tutor messages, depending on how you do it, you do need to make sure that you not only change what's on the screen, but that you do the proper language translation for any other tutor messages or information that's being passed to the user that may not be visible on the screen as well.

- And that includes instructions and things, Matt?

- Yes, yup.

- Great. Okay. So how do you get started when you're talking about kiosk and self-service self-ordering accessibility? Well, you can have your kiosk checked, your existing kiosk deployment checked for accessibility, and that's a hardware and software check. Those are both options, but you can also, and by accessibility in this case, I mean, usability, you can check it to see if it's accessible and usable. You can also check your kiosk against the standards, whether or not it meets the standards for each specific area in which you deploy. And then you can also have your application tested with a screen reader. So making sure that your application, that your kiosk itself works with the screen reader, that the focus moves as Matt has shared so that you don't get stuck in any particular place, that the instructions provide people with the information that they need in order to proceed. And it's really important that when you're doing this testing and when you're doing the review that you're checking the physical hardware and the software, not just measuring with your measuring stick, what the height of the kiosk is, but also making sure that it's usable from end to end, can someone get to the kiosk and then can someone use it, check out and get their food? Is this an accessible experience for users with disabilities? And by checking those for users with disabilities, you're also improving the user experience for all users, not just those with disabilities. So Matt, is there anything else that you have to add about the self-ordering kiosks, self-checkout kiosk before we move?

- No, I think that's it.

- Okay. So I wanted you to touch a little bit on some of the other areas in which the user experience encounters accessibility barriers. And one of them that I actually added sort of late to the party is social media and other digital accessibility, also includes videos, websites, and mobile. The social media piece, it's really just adding this to sort of your box of things to check for your marketing team, making sure that you're adding all text to your posts, alternative texts, just as you would do on your kiosk app, just as you would do on your mobile app or your website. Avoid, sorry, add closed captions to any video content or any audible content. Avoid emojis. And Matt, I wanted you to demonstrate what an emoji overload does to someone using a screen reader.

- Yeah, I mean, if I, here smiling face with clapping hands three times in a row, you as someone who is sighted can see those emojis and pass right through it. And you can say, you know what, it's very quick, but we have to listen to every syllable of the description of those. So I think that, I see things in social media all the time where people have used a ton of emojis. And when you start doing that, it's overwhelming sometimes. So use it to provide something, but don't line up 20 emojis in a row 'cause it's just overwhelming.

- And then capitalize the first letter of each word in the hashtags so that a screen reader can actually use it because otherwise it either blurs it all into one word or it mispronounces it or it just reads off the letters because it's kind of gibberish. So no matter what content you're using, whether it's a video, a blog post, and infographics, social media content, any other assets that you're dreaming up in your world, just consider that it needs to be checked for accessibility and follow some of these tips. And then for website accessibility, unlike physical accessibility, like a wheelchair ramp grade or Braille signage, digital accessibility criteria are not as cut and drive. They're not binary standards. The web content accessibility guidelines WCAG provide guidance for what's considered accessible for US digital content, and actually for digital content in general, not just in the US, but it doesn't prescribe exact methods for achieving accessibility. So you can seek out outside assistance with that. You can use something like testing remediation from a digital accessibility consultancy such as TPG interactive. If you wanted to check things out, you can go to the free arc toolkit that we have on our website that we provide for folks to give a check of their website. And then there is arc monitoring that would do a more comprehensive, allows you to actually keep an eye on things as you make changes to your website so that you can find out if you have issues in advance. There's also a knowledge base and tutor help desk onboarding and platform support through our platform. And so, just wanted to sort of share some of that information for website accessibility, because there are some really great tools out there to help you to not only become accessible, but then maintain accessibility because especially in a self ordering environment or a restaurant environment, you're changing your menus regularly, you're changing your prices regularly. You wanna make sure that you're keeping pace with that from an accessibility standpoint. And especially if you're using content from a website that then is ported to a kiosk, which sometimes you share assets in that way, you're able to leverage the accessibility in both locations. And then you have your mobile app. And again, if you're using your mobile app on a kiosk, we've already addressed some of the ways in which you can make it more accessible, but you also can just turn on your accessibility mode on your phone and pull up your mobile app and listen to it and really just see if you can actually navigate through the application without being confused about what's that without looking at your screen and just listening to the Android talk back or iOS voiceover screen reader that is native to your phone. And if you find that you can't, then that barrier is yet another one that you wanna remove from your disabled customers so that they can sort of manage to order on their own without assistance.

- The one thing I would say about turning on voiceover talk back, if you're not a user of it, just be aware, it does change the entire interaction of how your phone would work. So, it's great to try it out, but there are professionals who do testing and you may wanna have somebody train you on how to properly use it, because in the end, you wanna make sure that you're testing correctly, not just saying it talks, and so therefore, it must be accessible.

- Oh, absolutely. And more as a method for seeing that, for understanding what the difference is in terms of the user experience, and then knowing that changes need to be made and seeking outside help for those changes for sure. We do have some other resources for you at tpgi.com/blog. You'll see there is a kiosk section. There are other sections legal development business. You can also do a search for mobile or things like that. If you'd like more information about how to improve the digital accessibility and the self-service kiosk accessibility experience for your customers and visitors, knowing that, making sure that your customer who is blind to a positive vision, your customer who is deaf or your customer who is in a wheelchair, for instance, just some of the examples that they can all get navigate and have a good user experience at your facility. And then I have the questions. So my email address lmiller@vispero.com. If you have any reason to contact us, you're welcome to reach out and say hello. And then we have mater@vispero.com.

- And just for those who are blind and may not see the spelling of Vispero, it's V-I-S-P-E-R-O.com. That's V as in Victor, I-S as in Sam, P as in Papa, E as in echo, R as in Romeo, Oscar, O as in Oscar.com.

- So do we have any questions? I sort of sped through the second half of that, but wanted to make sure that we covered a broader range knowing that the self-service accessibility section is sort of our near and dear to our heart in particular.

- I do think there was a hand raised, but I'm not sure if that was just by accident. For those who are blind, I think it's Alt + Y to raise your hand, but I'm not sure if we're just taking questions in the Q&A section, are we taking hand raises as well? I'm not sure.

- We can do either, I believe. If you wanted to... So I did answer the one question that came in earlier, which was really about the standards. And the reason we don't go into the standards here is that's a completely separate and extremely detailed conversation that can get into the weeds extremely quickly and can make your eyes cross .

- And there's standards for the physical side and the standards that we would adopt for the application side. I think when you look at when self-service kind of started, back in the 90s with ATM's is good examples of where accessibility standards started with self-service. And I think they're still continuing to adopt to these more complex self-service experiences. It's not enough just to get money out of an ATM. Now you're actually doing a full user workflow to order some food and make adjustments and stuff.

- And so that point, though, the standards do vary by location pretty-

- By geo, yeah.

- One of the things that we didn't touch upon was QR codes. And I was hoping someone was gonna ask that question, but I didn't put a plan in here to do it. QR codes are something that we see a lot in restaurants for people, especially now that we're in this post COVID space where we don't wanna have printed menus. So wondering Matt, what your thoughts are on QR codes and making them accessible and how accessible those are.

- So I think there's two parts to it. One is someone has to know it exists and they have to be able to find it. So there has to be good labels to indicate that that's what it is. And an example would be that sometimes there's a QR code on the corner of the table. Now we're getting more and more used to that today, but it doesn't mean that if a blind person is their first time going to your restaurant is gonna know what that means. So having proper labels around that, or being very descriptive to people that that's where it is and the reason for that QR code is also important. So it could be QR code used for just getting on the internet or it could be a QR code that brings up your menu, brings up the app, or maybe some other reasons for the QR code, maybe it's a survey. So make sure that there is clear labeling on that QR code to indicate one and what it's for and two how to use it. And I know that I open up an app on my phone, I take a picture of it, or I scan it and it brings up whatever that item is. Not all users know that today.

- And then once you get to that location, making sure that the app or website that you're directing people to is accessible is critical.

- Correct.

- So, any other questions that we can answer for you today?

- Well, like an excellent presentation, Laura. Thank you for participating and going along with this one. This was good.

- Well, thanks for joining me, Matt. And yeah, if anyone has questions about making their kiosks accessible or their content, their digital content accessible, just send me an email and I am happy to follow up with you to see where we can direct you and how we can help.

- The last part I'd remind everybody that if you see a Storm Audio Keypad around, you do need to bring, I'm gonna call them the old-fashioned headphones. You need a 3.5 millimeter jack headphone. And why I bring that up is that today with iPhones, we carry headphones with lightning jacks, or you carry Bluetooth. You're not carrying the headphones that are traditional. A blind person is used to carrying some of these around for reasons of using ATM's, but they may not be thinking about that when they choose to go to your restaurant. So, some restaurants may choose to have some cheap headphones, 'cause once they're used, they're thrown away. There's no way to kind of keep headphones around for multi-use. But most cases, people are bringing their own headphones. I carry some in my pocket wherever I go.

- [Mike] So would that be the same, Matt? Sorry, this is Mike. Would that be the same for one of the tabletop ordering kiosks as well?

- Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've seen one at a restaurant that had a tabletop kiosk at the table and on the back and Brailles had audio and there was a headphone jack. So yes, you would need a headphone that I would say that used to work with an iPhone, probably still works with an Android phone, but it's not the lightning jack, it's the round jack that you'd plug into, oh, I'm gonna date myself a Walkman.

- Yeah, you did.

- Or it's not USB. Let's just be clear, it's not USB.

- [Mike] Yeah, right.

- And to that point, there are alternatives. There are Bluetooth plugs that you can plug into those jacks that I've seen. I see it there all the time.

- Yeah, but then people would carry that. I've also seen on the market and this doesn't work in a loud restaurant, but I've seen it on the market. I've seen it in museums where they had a directional speaker on the ceiling pointing down where you're standing and that way the audio is being piped directly straight to the person who's using the kiosk. And so, you could end up using a method to provide the audio to somebody without headphones, but it's another step of technology, it's another failure point. It's a little bit more work.

- [Mike] Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. Well, thank you both for joining today. It was a great session and we'll send the recording to everyone after the webinar has been processed. And if anyone has any questions, you can feel free to reach out to Matt and Laura and I'll add their emails to the email we send out to everyone. So, thank you both.

- [Mike] Thank you so much.

- [Matt] Thanks, Mike.

- Thanks for , Mike.

- [Mike] All right, bye.

- Bye.