Your audience needs to be able to consume your content. They need to know where it is, how to get their hands (or eyes or ears) on it and they need to be able to physically consume it.
But what if your audience has an impairment that makes consuming your content difficult?
Accessibility might be in the back of your mind like it was for me, but it’s time to think about it–and do something about it too.
Today’s guest, Erin Perkins, approached me in a Facebook group to ask how I was going to ensure my upcoming summit was accessible to everyone. I thought I had my bases covered, but after talking to Erin I realized that there was so much more to consider.
Erin shares insight from her own experience of being deaf and how some of the new platforms out there (ahem…Clubhouse) that feel so accessible are really far from it.
Tune in and be sure to grab her toolkit. It’s what I’m using in my business moving forward!
You can also scroll down for a full transcript of this episode (something I’ll be doing with every episode from now on).
Mentioned in This Episode
About Erin Perkins
Erin Perkins is an online business manager and accessibility educator. Through her business, Mabely Q, she empowers women-owned small businesses to grow bigger and serve better, taking behind-the-scenes admin work off their plates and advising her clients how to create a more inclusive environment for their communities.
You can follow her online on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Transcript
Abby Herman: If you’re new to the podcast, welcome. I work really hard to bring you informative and to the point content because no one has time for fluff these days. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don’t miss another episode. I usually release episodes every Monday morning and every other Thursday morning. However, as we prepare for The Content Experiment Summit coming up in March, my plan is to release two and three times a week, every week until March 15. What’s the summit you keep hearing about? I talked a lot more about it in Episode 84. But I’ll give you the rundown here too. The Content Experiment is a five-day summit for coaches and course creators who are tired of feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by their content. The summit features about 25 speakers who are sharing bite-sized tips and tricks on how to get a better ROI on their time and financial investments in content and marketing. There are so many people out there telling you what to do with your content and with your marketing. “Do this, not that. Start doing this, stop doing that”, it’s really noisy, and I know it. And often we’re listening to the same people over and over and over again talking about the same things in the same way.
That’s what I think makes the content experience so much different. When I was looking for speakers, I intentionally looked for business owners who we really haven’t heard a lot from before. Business owners who have amazing ideas, stellar results, and so much knowledge to share, but we don’t hear from them. Because so many summits, conferences, podcasts, and partnerships focus on email list size, social media, following popularity, and other really arbitrary things that have nothing to do with the impact the speakers could give you. I believe in letting other voices shine. So I’ve worked really hard to make that happen. You can sign up for the waiting list at thecontentexperiment.com/summit. The doors open at the end of February and you will for sure be hearing more about it as we get closer. Yes, you’re going to recognize some of the names that you see on the summit. But I bet that you will see a lot of new faces too. I’m not sharing who all the speakers are just yet, but I will share that everyone you’ve heard from so far this year on the podcast- They’re all on the speaker lineup. And so is today’s guest, Erin Perkins.
Erin approached me after I posted in a group about the summit I was planning, I was looking for some really specific speakers. And she asked me what plans I had to make sure that the summit was accessible to people who have visual or hearing impairments or other needs. I responded that I plan to have captions and transcripts for all the presentations. But then I researched Erin a bit more. And when I looked at what she specializes in, accessibility of content, I knew I had a lot to learn to ensure The Content Experiment Summit was as inclusive as possible. So I asked her to be a speaker and I hired her to help me behind the scenes. And I’ve learned so much. I’m now committed to having a transcript of every podcast episode on my website, something I talk about in today’s episode. As of this recording, my team and I are working out the logistics of this, but we’re committed to having it worked out before this episode goes live and then we will work backward on previously published episodes as time allows, and of course, moving forward having transcripts available. In today’s episode, Erin and I talked about why you need to think about accessibility whether you’re an online business owner or have a physical location, why the new Clubhouse app is excluding an entire population of business owners, how to ensure your own summit isn’t physically exhausting to attend for anyone, and why we need to talk about all of this more.
Let me formally introduce you to Erin so we can get to the interview. Erin Perkins is an online business manager and accessibility educator. Through her business, Mabley Q, she empowers women-owned small businesses to grow bigger and serve better, taking behind the scenes admin work off their plates and advising her clients how to create a more inclusive environment for their communities. Without further ado, let’s hear from Erin Perkins. Hi, Erin, thank you so much for joining me today.
Erin Perkins: Hi, Abby. Thanks for having me on your podcast today.
Abby Herman: Yeah, I’m excited to talk about accessibility, inclusion, and successibility, which you’re gonna go into and tell us what that means. And I really looking forward to having you as part of The Content Experiment Summit as well to teach you know, more business owners what it means and how to be more inclusive. Before we get started, I would love to have you introduce yourself and let us know what you do and who you do it for.
Erin Perkins: So I’m Erin Perkins and I own Mabley Q. And the idea of my business really started off as a virtual assistant and graphic designer because my background is 20 plus years in graphic design. And I also have a knack for basically doing all the behind the scenes kind of thing, because I always did that at my old company. And it just was like a natural progression into doing this for small business owners. So I do it for a variety of different business owners. I actually weirdly enough do not have a niche because I have a hair and makeup artist, I have a membership client, I have a client that is an animal rescue, I have a client that she’s a stand-up comedian. So it’s really a huge range of clients. And then on the other side of my business, I teach a lot about accessibility because I am deaf. And accessibility was something that I’ve always had access. But as I grew my small business, I realized that it wasn’t part of the norm. It wasn’t part of a process for small business owners to understand that accessibility is really important. So I started teaching about that because I know what it’s like to have a lack of accessibility as a deaf person.
Abby Herman: Yes. And what does that mean a lack of accessibility? Can you talk about that a little bit.
Erin Perkins: So a lot of times, when we talk about- I can put this in the best way I know how. There’s this hashtag that goes around like every few months, that is called “#HearingPrivilege”. A lot of time hearing people don’t realize how much they take for granted a lot of things. It also ties into this term that went around a lot in 2020 and it will still be going around in 2021, I believe. And that is “ableism”. It’s literally people taking for granted what they are able to do on a day-to-day basis. Accessibility is really talking about teaching people to make sure that whatever content you’re creating is accessible for everybody, no matter what their ability is. So, the biggest example is if you’re going in a physical building, and you notice that there are curb cuts. Curb cuts help people in wheelchairs. They also help parents who have strollers. They also help other people who might have their hands full and they have like a little cart to push things.
And then we also talked about the door, the electronic door that pops open. That is beneficial for people in wheelchairs, strollers, people who might be temporarily disabled and they’re on crutches, or their hands are full. So these changes that have been created in the physical building, help everybody, no matter what their abilities. Now in the digital world, a lot of that applies to closed captioning. So when you think about closed captioning, it definitely benefits the deaf and hard of hearing community, but it also benefits people who might be in an area where it’s really noisy. They can’t listen to it; they can read the closed captioning on the video. Little stuff like that is what accessibility means.
Abby Herman: Okay, yeah, that’s great examples. And yeah, I think that it’s very common to see those physical accessibility tools that are out there, like you talked about, like automatic doors, and for, you know, physical disabilities that way that we can visually see. And the, you know, the American with Disabilities Act, it has kind of normalized to that, I guess. However, I don’t feel like as digital business owners, we- like you said, it’s because it’s not, I guess, physically visible to us all the time. Aside from closed captioning on television shows and movies and things like that. I feel like we forget about things. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like, from your perspective, from someone who is deaf? What does that look like, from your perspective, when you’re trying to participate in something online, when you’re trying to consume content? Whether it be a video or you know, even images, audiograms, things like that? Can you talk a little bit about what that’s like, from your perspective, as a consumer of content?
Erin Perkins: I think people forget how different people learn. Like, I have a really good example, between me and my husband. I’m a very visual learner because that’s what I’ve had to do. Growing up, I’ve always had to read things. I always had to like learn things by watching and doing. While my husband, on the other hand, is an auditory learner. He picks up things just by listening to stuff. And it’s very, confusing to me that you can learn things just by listening. But it’s really true because if I read directions on how to put something together, I have to read it out loud for him. He picked it up better. So the different thing- So when we talk about consuming content, on the internet, on social media, we have to think there is info that is very visual, which is great for people like me, but then you add in the video when people start talking and then you’re like, oh, like that turned into something auditory. But okay, you still need to make sure people that, you know, people who might have vision limitation- that’s great because now they can pick up things just by listening to people talk. But then you leave out people who have auditory sensitivity, that they’re like, “Oh, I can’t handle all this noise”, or deaf people. We’re like, “what are you saying that’s not fair? Like we’ve been following you all along now you’re like pushing things up to doing video all the time” It’s very frustrating, because it’s like, people switch so fast to adapt to new technology, which is great. But they leave certain communities behind. Because the technology is not staying up to date with making sure everything is accessible for everybody. And that’s really a challenge right now.
Abby Herman: Yeah, well, and like right now there’s this big surge of people joining Clubhouse, which I like literally just joined yesterday, the day before we’re recording this, and I only joined because I had a client recommend, you know, “you really should figure out what it’s all about, you know, for your own clients”. And I have no intention of being active there. But I don’t know, have you? Do you have an account there? And have you attempted to be active there? Is that something that you’re even able to do? Are there tools attached to Clubhouse that allow you to participate?
Erin Perkins: Oh, my gosh, you like, Oh, you should follow me on Instagram. I actually dropped like, I am kind of pissed about this app because they literally left off an entire community of people. Just based on that, you’ve like created an app that basically excludes the entire Deaf community without having us included. The biggest thing when I was reading the community guidelines and they were referencing that they wanted to be a town square. A town square that welcomes all types of people. All types of people, religion, political affiliation, gender.
Abby Herman: As long as you’re not deaf, right. If you’re deaf, then forget it. You can’t be part of the town square.
Erin Perkins: Right. But they totally left off people with disabilities. We do fall into our own category, people with disabilities. And they did not account for that. So it kind of like really kind of pissed me off because you talk about inclusivity. And yet, you are literally excluding an entire community. And it’s just like, really frustrating to me, because the people that are joining it, and they’re all about being inclusive online, great. If you want to be inclusive, please be a voice for us that can’t join. Because right now it’s live, there are no transcriptions. I don’t understand how they couldn’t come up with a way to automatically collaborate with one of these transcription apps and create something that is accessible.
Abby Herman: Yeah, because, yeah, there are tools out there. I mean, you and I are talking here, there are tools that you can use to make it more accessible. And I definitely want to talk about tools today. And we’re gonna get to that in a little bit. But I want to talk about- I want to ask you about, how do we, as business owners, as people who are creating content, we’re creating marketing content for people to consume, we want to promote our business, we want to create communities and things like that- what are some things that- and I’m talking about, you know, like, any kind of accessibility issues. What are some things that we need to really keep in mind, aside from, you know, having captioning and things like that? What are some things that like, maybe we’re not thinking about? Because I mean, honestly, we don’t know what we don’t know. I’ve hired you to help me with the upcoming summit, to make sure that it’s as inclusive and accessible as possible because I don’t know. I mean, I knew I was gonna do transcriptions and I knew I was gonna do captions, but I don’t know what else to do. Aside from that. So can you help walk us through some of the issues that are out there that we, as business owners should address and maybe talk about? Like, what are some of the most pressing things that you see? Because, you know, we can’t fix everything all at once. What should we start with?
Erin Perkins: So that’s like a loaded question.
Abby Herman: I know, sorry!
Erin Perkins: Um, the thing is, I think like, a lot of people don’t think about it. Like honestly, the summit itself, I know it’s really popular right now. But people don’t realize how physically exhausting participating in a summit is. And yes, we just sitting at a computer, but the way people absorb and learn, a lot of people get overwhelmed with information and it mentally exhausts them. Like, to me, there’s only so much time I can spend watching video before I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted because it is so much information that I have to consume. And then it takes me a couple days to recover from it. But I remember I did one summit, and I didn’t realize how exhausting it was. And I was like trying to focus on the captions. So I was like, really trying to absorb as much as possible. And then it really impacted me from being able to work the next like three days because it was too much. A lot of people don’t realize that and the other thing is little things, like including animation. Like gifs, if you have it constantly running the whole time, it actually is visually triggering for some people.
Abby Herman: Oh.
Erin Perkins: It’s really the darn things like making sure you have the right color concept.
Abby Herman: Like what do you mean by that? By color concept.
Erin Perkins: So I know some people like you already created your brand and then there’s not quite enough color contrast. So if somebody gives you a PDF of their presentation. You might want to look at it black and white and made sure that it is legible. It might be readable in color, but it might not be readable in black and white for the person to read.
Abby Herman: That makes sense. So I want to ask you, can we go back just a minute, I want to go back to what you said about consuming the summit content because summits are, they’re generally three, four or five days long. And each day, there’s four or five or six different speakers. And that’s a lot. I agree. I mean, that’s a lot for someone who can consume it, you know, just auditorily without having to read captions, what would be a good solution for that challenge? Would having shorter videos help? Shorter presentations? Would having a separate, like word for word transcript help with consuming the content? Would spreading things out over more days? Would that help? What do you think like, what could business owners and what could summit hosts do to make sure that we’re not completely exhausting all of the you know, the people who we want to attend?
Erin Perkins: I think the biggest thing, and we’ve been seeing this a lot more, we have five days of amazing like 30 plus speakers. The biggest thing for me, I noticed that it’s like, I don’t know why I want to watch because I don’t feel like there’s never enough detail about the speaker. So encouraging people to actually review who the speakers are and what the presentation is going to be about. So that we can like plan our week ahead and be like, “Alright, I know I have five topics that I want to attend”. And definitely keeping them short to under 20-30 minutes long, I think 20 minutes is a sweet spot. My presentation hit about 25 minutes. And it kind of like- when somebody says “your presentation needs to be 30 minutes”. It’s like, that’s a really long to me. I remember when we first started, I think they wanted like an hour long. And I’m like, oh my god who can talk for an hour. Right? I mean, there’s a reason why it’s become so popular. They’re 20 minutes! Boom, get it done in 20 minutes, so not 30 minutes, 20 minutes long. Yeah. The people have 20 minutes, you don’t have to tell people everything. You can tell people the top five things that they need to do to take this next step. I think that where people have the mental thing that I need to share everything. No, you don’t. You just need to share enough for them to take action in that.
Abby Herman: Yes. Okay. So I’m hearing a couple of things from you, one being more detailed with descriptions. And I think that that goes across any kind of content that you’re creating. Can you be a little more detailed about, you know, what I’m going to hear in this presentation, in this video that you’re asking me to watch, and whatever. And I think that that benefit- I mean, that’s something that we should be doing anyway for everyone. Because that benefits everyone. I totally agree with you that sometimes you don’t know what you want to watch because all you have is the name of the person and you have the title of their talk. And you don’t know what else is in there. So yes, I totally agree. Being more detailed about the presentations.
Shorter presentations, totally agree. We have lives, we have businesses that we’re running, and that will benefit everyone. And I love what you said about the color contrast on visuals. And I agree. It’s not something that we necessarily think about because we want- you know, so many people, they want their Instagram feeds to be beautiful, and we want everything to be branded. I love the idea of looking at it in black and white or even creating a black and white version of what you’re doing. So have your beautiful image, but then also have it in black and white, so that it is easier for people who have visual impairments that you know, to be able to consume. But then it also helps everybody else because what if you’re printing it out, save your color ink and print it in black and white and stuff.
Erin Perkins: Yeah, and it doesn’t necessarily translate from color to black and white sometimes. So you end up wasting ink. I’m a graphic designer. I love design and stuff. But the fact is, I have not really thought about the foundation of accessibility when it comes to design. I learned that myself. And I think that’s the biggest thing everyone needs to realize. This is something that is not built into, like, any kind of academia. It’s kind of like finances. Finance is typically built into high school teaching like accessibility should be taught. I mean, you teach ethics in high school, but you don’t teach about all the other things, like finances, that actually have a light. So accessibility is something that I’m like, it mind boggles me that it’s not a thing. Like why is it not something that is taught so that people can learn and make sure they’re aware of it? Because then there are people out there that really just don’t care.
Abby Herman: That is true. Because it cost money, right? If it costs money, then that’s it. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit before I hit record about the laws around accessibility relating to the American with Disabilities Act. And I’ll let you explain it a little bit more. But basically, you told me that it depends on how much your business makes. It depends on your business revenue on whether or not you have to follow these guidelines. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Erin Perkins: So this is- the ADA law is 30 years old no. I believe 30 years old, which is like, really young. And there are no real black and white with a new law. Because the tricky part is, there is a threshold that your business has to make, in order for the ADA law to apply. However, there is a balance of- there is somewhere, where if it causes you undue duress, in a financial way, then you don’t have to do it. But I think there’s a lot of gray area with that because there are some other alternatives that people can do to kind of work around that, to make sure that it doesn’t create undue duress for the business. It is so very tricky, because I have a cousin who is a doctor, and she does not take insurance. And the way her business works is different. It’s direct primary care or something where people pay a monthly fee to have her. And she was asking us about whether or not she had to provide an interpreter and the fact is yes, you do have to provide an interpreter. Because of your practice and the way your practice is set up. You have to. So it’s very tricky, what you have to do and what you need to do. A lot of medical businesses drive me crazy because offices, they will revert to virtual relay services. Video Relay interpreting. Which is not necessarily the best solution for people going to the doctor, because ASL is something where you are picking up things based on face or reaction So that’s really tough when doctors say, “Oh, we can only do video relay”. But you can’t do that, like that’s fine for most businesses, because like I could call into the room and have an interpreter with me and interpret everything, everything will be great. But that’s not- I mean, people need to realize there is multiple solutions for everything. You need to be willing to work with people to figure out what can make people happy. Yeah, no, I can’t do it. I’m protected over the ADA law. You can’t do that. But there’s another thing called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Like this is actually kind of outdated because a lot of this just applies to your website when there’s a lot more involved in a business now in regards to social media, and how you do things. So if you’re not sure, look into it and figure it out. It’s a big reason why I created my course.
Abby Herman: Well and you have a resource guide that teaches people how to do that. And I’m absolutely going to include a link to that here in the show notes so that people can grab that because yeah, like, it’s not about, to me, it’s not about how much money you make. And something else we talked about too, before I hit record was, you know, knowing who your audience is. You don’t know who your audience is, you know. I mean, you don’t know who they are, it’s a matter of just being inclusive for all of the reasons why people might need additional support, consuming your content, and planning for everyone, not just, you know, the people who are on Clubhouse.
Erin Perkins: I will say the biggest thing, and they probably freak people out. They’re like, “Oh, my God, how do I plan for anybody else?” Don’t think of an overwhelming vision. I want you to think of it more like not everybody necessarily shares every part of who they are. One of the biggest things that was one of my clients. We were planning for this summit. And there was a question that’s coming up in whether she was being diverse and inclusive in her speaker’s panel. And they were asking about what some of the speakers were their sexual preference. And she was like, I know one of the speakers are, but it’s not necessarily everybody’s story. Like, not everybody that I’m friends with- there’s a couple of people that I’m friends with, through Instagram, they don’t disclose the fact that they have a hearing loss, they don’t disclose the fact that they’re deaf, because they don’t feel like it’s part of your story. Like some people might not disclose the fact that they are lesbian or bisexual. Some people just don’t feel like it’s part of the story.
So when people ask that question, it’s really hard because some people just don’t want to share whether or not they have a disability or not, because they don’t feel like it’s necessary. It was something that I struggled with. I’m like, do I make my being deaf a part of my story? And when I went through the process, I realized, yes, it was part of my story. But it’s not everybody’s story. So you’re you want to plan for whoever’s in your audience, but at the same time, do not go into this whole, like spiral where you’re like, “Oh, my God, how am I going to do it all?” We know, you’re not going to do it all. It’s more the fact that you put effort for how you’re going to progress forward.
Abby Herman: Yes, yes, I totally agree. You cannot possibly do everything at once. You can take little steps today and some more little steps a month from now and more little steps, you know, a month from then. Yes, and make the effort. I totally agree. So what are some of the tools that we should be aware of as business owners to help us to take that next step? Or that first step? I actually have a specific question, because it’s something that frustrates me that I know that there’s a tool. I just don’t know what it is. And that’s Instagram stories. I actually go in and I don’t always do it, but I tried to do it where I, after I recorded the video, I type in what I said, but I know that there’s a tool that does it for me, can you share some of those tools to make things a little bit easier?
Erin Perkins: I actually have a follower, she’s also a friend of mine I’ve met her in person, and she said if she is creating an Instagram story and she doesn’t have time to put the captions in, she doesn’t do it. I love that because she’s like, if I’m creating an Instagram story, and I don’t put that little detail in, she knows that I’m gonna call her out on it. So she doesn’t do it. So I really appreciate her for that. So yes, a couple of different apps. It really depends on what platform you are on. The newest one is Thread by Instagram.
Abby Herman: Okay,
Erin Perkins: And then there is Miss caption and clickomatic are the other two that you can use to transcribe. I mean, I’ve tried them all. Clickomatic seemed crazy.
Abby Herman: okay.
Erin Perkins: It hates me. So I’ve tried it. But it’s really tricky for me because you have to hold it down while your- and I’m trying to sign and talk at the same time. So that doesn’twork for me. So I just type what I say, with the exception of my live yesterday, I feel I can get away with it and I spoke and I sign so I feel I will reach both audiences.
Abby Herman: Yeah. What are some of the that’s great, I’m gonna I will include links to those three in the show notes also, and I’m definitely going to give them a try. What are some other tools that we should be considering? Aside from like Instagram stories? Are there things that we should be looking at if we’re doing YouTube videos or podcasts? Like what are some because we’re here on a podcast right now? What are some things that I should take into account as a podcast host?
Erin Perkins: Oh, so I did. I’m sending you the link, so that I did a challenge in November, that kind of encourages everybody to make sure they include transcriptions for their podcast and the biggest thing for me. One, you need to automatically make the transcript available like I know, if you’re announcing the “Hey, I just released this new podcast episode”, you need to make it to a point where I can literally just like go and look at your podcast and easily open up the transcript. Don’t make people pay for it. Please don’t.
Abby Herman: Really that happens?
Erin Perkins: Yeah. People make people pay for it. And I think what pisses me off a lot is that because there are people out there that will make this a cost for people with disability. And I actually reached out to, I remember I was planning a summit and they didn’t caption anything. And I was, ugh. So I reached out and I was like, “Look, I’m deaf, I need transcripts, I need something, just give me an idea”. And she was like, “well, you can get that by upgrading to the all access pass”. I was in the beginning stages of my business. So that cost wasn’t affordable to me. Now I will pay for the all access pass now. But I hate that it’s only that option. And when I called them out on it, they actually sent me that. I said, “Look, I’ll give you a list of what talks I want to know about” and she sent me those transcripts. I wasn’t saying give me all the transcripts. I was like give me these like three that I really want to know more about. But don’t make people pay for it, for God’s sake.
And then with podcasts like you need to, like I encourage people to do hashtag, like podcast accessible, make podcasts accessible, love stuff like that. And they make it loud and clear that you are making it a point to make sure your podcast is accessible from this point on. And if I’m in your podcast now, and I’m the first one that you’re transcribing, awesome. But make sure you do everyone after me as well. Because I was a guest on another podcast where they transcribed mine, they clearly did not edit it. I’m not expecting the editing to be perfect. But little tweaks just clean up like really, like spend maybe 15 minute cleaning up. And then the episode after mine. None of them was transcribed. And I was like, that is not cool. I asked them to take it down until you start transcribing every single one after mine.
Abby Herman: Good for you.
Erin Perkins: Yeah. Not cool at all. So I can appreciate it. If I’m the first one. Go for it. transcribe mine, and from this time, make it part of your process.
Abby Herman: So yes, absolutely. I’m totally on board. My question because you mentioned editing. So I’ve used a couple of transcription services before mostly for transcribing podcasts into to create blog posts. And you know, I go in and make a bunch of changes and all of that. What are the best because it’s true, like you get it transcribed. Sometimes it is done automatically or it’s like a bot that’s doing it. How do you make sure that it is like- mwhat’s the best transcription service to use, where we’ll have minimal editing to do afterwards.
Erin Perkins: Well that’s tricky because if you’re in beginning phases of your business. I’m going to recommend Otter, which I was going to for you. Otter, it is $9.99 a month, I think it’s totally affordable. That’s like what, three coffees. I don’t drink coffee. So I don’t really know.
Abby Herman: Me neither .
Erin Perkins: $9.99 you get 6,000 minutes, which is ridiculous because I’ve literally never used all 6,000 minutes, but like, you’re able to go in and clean up it, you can download it as an SRT file, doc, or a txt file. The SRT file is like what people want the most, but you’re able to go in and edit it. It is more work manually, but I have a few people that use it, you can just upload the audio in there. And It’ll transcribe it for you and you just go in. I tend to run it live while I’m on stuff like this because I need it live. So it’s really great because I’m not just using the transcript just for like podcasts or whatever. I’m also using it for when I do a coaching thing. And I need to like go back to my file and pick up what my coach said to me. So the transcript has so many benefits, you can go in and pull it line by line a callout that your guests said that you’re like this is impactful. And you don’t have to go back to your podcast guest and be like, what was that word you said? No, it’s already there in text. That kind of thing. So my website has a few different free things that you can download. I’ve tried to find different levels of like free to paid. So if you want paid, the best one I found is rev and rev, they actually use humans to transcribe but the cost can be pretty high.
Abby Herman: Yeah, I love that. So I do have to say that I’m going to totally call myself out here. I have never been a fan of having transcriptions of podcasts on websites. Because my theory, and I’m learning so this is me learning and doing it, you know, I’m committing to doing it differently moving forward. I mean, it’s purely a content perspective, not an accessibility perspective. So when you have the same content in audio format, and in written format, you are basically inviting people to not listen to the podcast. And ultimately we want people to listen to the podcast. So I’ve always said, you know, transcriptions, we don’t need them, because we want people to listen to the podcast. Now talking to you learning and committing to doing things differently and better in the future. And totally, yeah going to start including transcriptions immediately. So as soon as I can get off the our call and get signed up it’s something that I’m going to do moving forward. Because just looking at like the Otter $10 a month for 6000 minutes per month or $100 a year that is, you know, almost anybody can afford to do that. And have that so that their podcasts are accessible to more people. So, totally calling myself out. I have been against it. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. Right. And now I know.
Erin Perkins: I totally get wanting people to listen to your podcast. I totally get that. I’m gonna drop a link in here as a great example on somebody that I was working with. I was like, she did my sound and she was like, Oh my god, I really screwed up, because somebody else got mad at her. Okay, okay. So she just provide a link for you to download the transcript. But otherwise she encourages people to listen. But it’s really nice, because I’m like, Oh, I can literally just click on Download podcasts. Another person she included the transcript at the bottom of her post, though.
Abby Herman: Yeah, I mean, why not? You know, it’s great for search engine optimization to have that text on there. So why the heck not, you know, and it’s, yeah, I don’t know how to do it moving forward, but I am going to do it moving forward.
Erin Perkins: Yeah it’s just finding that balance. And honestly, I can like, I’m a really fast reader. So like, honestly, I’m like, I don’t have an hour. I don’t because I can’t listen to stuff. I’ve learned how to read really fast. I mean, trust me, it pisses my younger sister off that I can finish like a 500 page book in like, four or five hours. And she’s like “How can you do that?” I’m like, I read everything. My whole life is based on reading, I have to read captions. Like, I’m used to it. So like me, I can be like, oh, here’s an hour long podcast, I can finish it in 15 minutes. And she’s like “that’s not fair”. But hey, what are you going to do?
Abby Herman: Yes. oh, my gosh, this has been so much great information. So eye opening, so many things that we don’t you know, if I’m not in your shoes, I’m not thinking of things necessarily, from your perspective. So I so appreciate you talking about this, and bringing this to light. And I hope that this conversation has really helped other people to think about the accessibility of their content. And I’m so looking forward to having you as part of the summit, and helping me make sure that the summit is inclusive and accessible to anybody who wants or needs the information. So thank you so much for being here. And can you share with everyone where we can find you online? And where we can find the tool, you have a toolkit? Where can we find that as well.
Erin Perkins: So I will send you the link, the biggest thing is, you can find me on Instagram at Mabely_Q, but I will in my bio, I have a link to like all the quick links to my stuff, like on my website, and I’m probably the most active there in terms of giving people the most up to date information. People can email me, they can like go to my website, MabelyQ.com. At the top, you’ll see that the accessibility resource which takes you to the free tools and apps, but then I also have an Accessibility Made Easy course, which is only $147. And that’s for like unlimited access it literally give you the 1-2-3 this is what you do to make your content, the most accessible across the board. It is not just your website. It is your like social media, you’re design. Accessibility falls everywhere.
Abby Herman: I love it. Thank you so much. I’ll make sure to include links to all of those in the shownotes and in the transcription of the episode as well. So thank you. Thank you so much for listening in to today’s episode. I wonder if your eyes are as open now as mine are. I’d love to hear your takeaways on this episode and what you might be doing differently now moving forward.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
