Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence comm and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Rebecca Pridgen. Rebecca, you are the CEO and founder of EBR Graphics and Consulting. Ten years you've been doing good work in the world. Your website is e BGC dot net.

Speaker 1 00:01:22 Rebecca, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:24 It's so great to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Speaker 1 00:01:26 Yeah, well I love what you do. Go ahead and share what you're doing to make the world a better place.

Speaker 2 00:01:33 In a nutshell, I make sure that people that are autistic have ADHD, have dyslexia, or a whole range of neurodivergent conditions are able to be successful in the workplace. So that means consulting with businesses, talking to them about accessibility, making sure their websites are accessible for people, making sure there are different assets, whether it's internal or external, are accessible as well. So just making sure everybody can get the information a business wants them to have, and internally they can be successful.

Speaker 3 00:02:02 Yeah, well.

Speaker 1 00:02:03 I would imagine that there is likely like if we think about even like websites and, and again, kind of front facing user experiences, there are likely some, some pretty big gaps out there. What would be some of those notable gaps that you see that are quite frequent, that, companies maybe don't realize that they're doing an ineffective job at communicating with a percentage of the world that is somewhat neurodivergent, which, by the way, if you want to start there and talk about just what a big pool we're talking about, we would love some education around that.

Speaker 2 00:02:46 Fantastic. in terms of the pool that you're looking at, in truth, you have billions of people worldwide that are neurodivergent. When we talk about that, I want people to understand that it's not just one thing, right? It's not just autism. It's not just ADHD. And it's not just neurodivergent conditions in general. We're talking about disabilities. So it could be people that are colorblind. It could be people who have mobility issues, mobility concerns. There's a lot of a poll out there for folks. And if you're a business, it is imperative that you actually speak to these people and you have access for them. They don't just sit at home and do nothing. They primarily go on websites. They look at your things. You might not have alt text on your imagery, for example. That's a really easy win for businesses, and all it really is doing are people who are reading using screen readers, for example. Maybe they have some low visibility, something of that nature. It allows them to hear the description of the image.

Speaker 2 00:03:48 So if you're a business owner and maybe you have an Amazon store, we'll just use that, for example, and you're not using alt text. You are losing out on those folks, and I want people to also understand it's not people who are permanently disabled. There are folks who have temporary disabilities, so maybe something is happening with their vision. Maybe something is happening with their mobility. Maybe they had an accident that they're working back from. Somebody can be disabled at any point in time. It doesn't have to be a permanent condition, which I think is a huge misconception, that we tend to see in this world today. So in terms of like the pool, in terms of the opportunity that's there, it's huge for businesses. You're looking at me, you said it, about 40, 50 to 60% in some cases, depending on what you're talking about, people that have different needs. So it's really important that businesses take a look at this and really start to think of it as a business strategy rather than just a nice to have.

Speaker 1 00:04:52 Yeah. Well, I mean. Yes, yes. nice to have number one. Number two, business strategy. And then number three, I would say what are our values. Right. If we think about, you know, how and who we connect with and, and how we communicate our message, I think it's a powerful question to say, well, what are our values? What do we stand for? And if inclusivity, if, diversity, equity and that sort of I mean, it's like any of that sort of making the world a better place, making I mean, there's a business justification for it. And then I think, you know, even beyond that, it's like, okay, what do we all as a company culture, what do we stand for? And this seems pretty valuable. So you had mentioned a few of these things, right. So alt tags I think are very, very critical. Hopefully there are some good tests, that you might be able to run on your website to, to identify some of these gaps.

Speaker 1 00:05:49 Do you know of anything that someone could say? You know, maybe there's a free tool or something like that they could use to scan their site or what do you recommend? I mean, I know that's what you do professionally. So I'm not like saying, okay, how can people do.

Speaker 2 00:06:02 What you do? If people go around me, I'll usually say this. So there are definitely some tools that are out there. There are definitely some companies that are out there. I do recommend primarily people do find somebody. and it doesn't have to be. I always like to say it doesn't have to be like somebody who does a full audit of your website and charges you thousands of dollars truly doesn't have to be that way. I even offer in some cases, like free audits. There are other, people, accessibility consultants that do the same, just to kind of give you a map of what you need to look at. And when we talk about auditing, I also like people to understand, again, it doesn't have to be like a full blown audit, but it does need to exist.

Speaker 2 00:06:44 And I say that because some people will use like accessibility as an overlay, overlays of those types that are like, well, if somebody needs it, it's there. It's on the website. It actually leaves a lot of different little gaps. it only addresses, I think, about 30% of disability concerns and accessibility concerns. So that is in general with overlays. And that's what people will generally use to be like. Well, you know, this company gave me this audit like an accessibility audit. And it said this, this overlay can fix it. So we're good and it's not necessarily the case. So that's why I recommend people do find somebody. There are low cost consultants that will do this for you. Just to give you a kind of an idea of what you're looking at. to start off.

Speaker 1 00:07:31 Well, yeah. And certainly, you know, listen, if you're a business leader, you're well on your way. Don't muck around on this. I mean, just hire an expert, get it fixed.

Speaker 1 00:07:40 Right. This matters. aside, and just so I, Rebecca, you mentioned a few things. obviously, you know, we think about learning styles. and that's going to be pretty significant. where does video play in this? I, I'm a very big proponent of short video with captions on them. Yes. any any other considerations when we think about like video and again, just kind of more of this multimedia approach to being able to connect with people and work with their learning style.

Speaker 2 00:08:16 Yeah. So I'm a multimedia fanatic. you can probably not find somebody who is more excited about a flashy video than I am. I like making them. They're great. The one thing that I tell people a lot is to make sure that when you are doing any kind of multimedia, you're doing it with purpose. So it's always fun in our minds to maybe have music on in the background of a video, especially if it's something short, you know, an animated. It's like, oh, well, it's fun.

Speaker 2 00:08:42 You need to have the consideration of being able to turn that sound off. Repetitive and emotion type things. They need to be able to have maybe a secondary option to that, because some people who are neurodivergent, some people who have ADHD, even some that have sensory processing things going on, it is distracting to them. And when we start talking about multimedia animation in particular, we also have to think about our rescinding clear messages. So is it just kind of a good icon that we're using there? Is it a solid image that somebody can look and see? Oh, they're telling me to go this direction or they're telling me to go to this thing. So when you're talking about multimedia, it's really in my mind about giving options, things for people to turn off if it's distracting, things that like if you have a GIF, for example, or GIF, however you want to pronounce it, you have the ability to turn off. It doesn't continuously loop because again, it's distracting. Again, it can pull away from attention.

Speaker 2 00:09:44 It can actually be a hindrance to what you're trying to do, as opposed to something fun and engaging?

Speaker 1 00:09:52 Yeah. Rebecca, what does, you know, when you're working with someone, do you mind maybe sharing a story of someone that you worked with and and kind of what the opportunity was, what you were able to do? And and certainly if there's, you know, obviously we want to do this and know or somehow measure that we're making an impact. So I don't know if you have any insights on that.

Speaker 2 00:10:12 Yes, I do. And what I like to say is this I like to work with a lot of smaller businesses from time to time to, because they tend to be the ones who are just like, I don't have a clue where to start, right? And so I was working with a small business company one time, is actually a friend of my father, who had a business, and they were like, hey, we want to kind of get into this accessibility thing. We're not sure what to do.

Speaker 2 00:10:36 Can you help? And so we did start off with a very small accessibility audit. No surprise, most of their website, most of their assets completely inaccessible. and that extended to PDFs that extended to just external facing things like their actual, FAQs, that they have on the website for people to go to. Pretty much. I'd say about 90% of what they had was not accessible. And so what I did for them, and I know it's a little concerning, but what I did for them was I created like a roadmap, and I tell everybody to do this when it comes to accessibility. As a consultant, I want folks to go all in. I want you to completely commit. However, I understand that budgets are what they are, and I understand that the reality of the world is what it is. So I developed a roadmap for them. So the first thing that we actually started with was what are your current goals as a company? What are the things that you're focusing on right now? What are your main products? What are the main things that you're marketing? So pretty much what are the main things that are in people's faces right now that we know really need to be accessible to kind of get this return on investment that we're doing right now.

Speaker 2 00:11:50 And they did have a couple of products that they were pushing some marketing strategies. And we're like, fine, let's start there. So we did do minor things. We updated the website so that things were color contrasted still within branding, but things for color contrasted videos had alt captions, all that good stuff in terms of their products. What we went ahead and did is we made sure the descriptions were accessible. People were able to use keyboard navigation, to to actually access them. I created some simulations for them as well, that were accessible. so there's a whole range of things to do, but we focus on those products first, because at the end of the day, those are the things that people really need to see. These are the things that right now you're pushing and they're a good test. They're good litmus test because it's immediate to see whether or not, you know, we've seen any change, we've seen things like that. And what I do like to build in as well is metrics.

Speaker 2 00:12:45 I love metrics, I'm a learning and development girl at heart. So I believe in measurement and I believe in data. And so what we did is we worked with the sales team and work with marketing to see if there was any increase. There were any bumps, you know, in terms of use, purchase all of these things. And we were able to measure that. Now in terms of accessibility measurements, measuring return on investment, you have to make a commitment to the data, and you have to make a commitment to actually farming that data. And following that data, I usually recommend you do a 30, 60, 90 day approach, right? Something easy, something digestible so that you can see. All right. So we started here. Where are we right now in 30 days. Let's talk to our salespeople who are really the boots on the ground. Right. And see are they getting any different types of questions. Are they getting any different types of clients I'm coming through. Are they having any issues kind of explaining anything in the realm of things that we've changed? Are they having problems at all? If they're saying no, they're not having problems.

Speaker 2 00:13:50 If they're seeing new types of people, new demographics coming in. You can pretty much gather that it's going to be from that change. and then you kind of keep monitoring that throughout. And if we see continuous increases that that tells us we are on the right track and we should continue. So with that particular company, we ended up seeing a good 30% increase, in their revenue. Actually, internally we saw a really good increase of about 40% in productivity, from their people, because we didn't just do changes on the external, we did changes on the internal as well. So, you know, people could actually use simulations. They could use videos and focus on your internal aren't going to necessarily ask for help. They're not going to ask for accommodations. They're not going to say, hey, this isn't working for me. They're going to try to just push through it. And that can be a huge detriment when you're talking about your salespeople. I'm like, these are the people that should be explaining your brand.

Speaker 2 00:14:50 And if they're just sitting there with no help trying to push through, you're not going to get the best potential out of them either. So we actually ended up seeing a really good return on investment. And I still have that client to this day, and we're still going through our roadmap, happily. And we've added some different things. So it's been really great.

Speaker 1 00:15:10 Yeah. you know, before we go, I love, Rebecca, I, I've really been enjoying like, we've been talking I've been looking at some of the stuff that you've been sharing on LinkedIn. You are a really great follow on LinkedIn. And one post, I hope you don't mind just taking a couple minutes to talk about. And it kind of stems from what you were talking about. but you, you talk about fundamental attribution error where we look at and this is Especially. I think as leaders, we need to be particularly mindful of this cognitive bias, right? That that leads us to believe that just because someone's capabilities are demonstrated or they, they, they, they show to us in a particular way that we don't mislabel that or assume that they're being lazy, they're being this, they're being forgetful.

Speaker 1 00:16:00 They are just this kind of a person. it's, you know, likely, you know, again, kind of giving people the benefit of the doubt and showing an extending grace where we can. Right. I think it's just so valuable. But you did share a really great post about this. I wonder if you could just take a minute or so to talk about that.

Speaker 2 00:16:21 Absolutely. And I'll, I'll just share a little bit more about kind of where I come from. You know, part of the reason I got into this particular phase of life is because my son is autistic. and, you know, we went through a bunch of different things trying to get him support and trying to get people to really see him and not just identify him as well. That's the autistic boy. that's there. And he might be doing this just because he's lazy or he's just obstinate or he's just stubborn or all of these things of obviously that stuff exists. We all know this, but I really started to kind of get an idea of the fundamental attribution error from even seeing him.

Speaker 2 00:17:06 People just assume things about him. We've seen it even in his school recently where they see him, but they really see him as his disability. So they don't see him as a person and as leaders, as business owners, as founders, as all of these things, we have really got to step back from that. And as you mentioned, it's about giving grace. People grow, people change. You have to give them the opportunity to do so without making that snap judgment of, well, I've met people like them in the past and they're just lazy. Like, I worked with somebody like that two years ago, and she was just a lazy person and just didn't want to do it, or just didn't want to be bothered making those snap judgments. It does a few things right. It can be demoralizing to the person that you are making the judgment about, because at that point, they can sense it. They can sense that you think that they're lazy or that they're incapable. Right. People have a sixth sense.

Speaker 2 00:18:05 And so they're like, well, my leader doesn't even like me. They automatically assume these different things about me. And that completely creates friction. It creates chaos, and it does nothing in the way of productivity or success for anybody, for the business or for them.

Speaker 1 00:18:22 Rebecca, are you providing so obviously you provide UX leadership here. Do you also consult in and around just like kind of like workplace culture, best practices, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 00:18:34 Yes. Oh my God, a wonderful.

Speaker 1 00:18:36 Okay, so that said, just because we're short on time. Let's make some connections here. your website is e BGC. So much more than just graphics.

Speaker 2 00:18:49 Yes.

Speaker 1 00:18:50 It's a consulting piece. I think that, you know, again, I think folks in this audience really should grab some time with you to maybe evaluate some of these blind spots that we've got within our organization or obviously our user experiences, our workplace culture, leaders. I think most of a vast majority of us don't want to do harm.

Speaker 1 00:19:13 Right? We want to be fair. but I think that sometimes it's just, again, it's it's most of these just logical fallacies and biases that get in our way. and, you know, when we're aware, self-awareness and able to be critically thinking about these types of things, I think just creates a better environment for everybody. So Rebecca, what are next steps here?

Speaker 2 00:19:35 Next steps. of course people can reach out to me via email, via my website, on the contact form or through LinkedIn. Perfectly fine. I'm always available. It feels like, and in the next few weeks, I'm actually launching a community, where professionals can sign up, subscribe, spend some time with me individually, and learn all things about accessibility. And that can be workplace design. Whatever the case may be, you know, we're going to have resources, templates, webinars, all the stuff. So really excited about that. But as you mentioned, it's really just about starting somewhere. Yeah. And realizing that everybody's a person and everybody should be able to succeed.

Speaker 1 00:20:17 Rebecca praises on your website e b g c dot net Rebecca. It's been a great conversation. Hopefully we've we've made some effort out there already with this conversation. But again, folks can go directly to your website and engage with you, and let's fix some of these things that are going on in our world. Thank you, Rebecca, for the work you do.

Speaker 2 00:20:39 Thank you so much for having me.

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