Yes, I am hi. Sorry just getting getting off mute getting the video set up. So Hey everyone, so thank you David and thanks everyone for joining this morning here I will get these slides up so you can all see them. There was a question in the chat also about Availability of slides and yes my slides should be available for download on the event website So bear with me just one moment And there we go All right, so as David said, I'm going to be talking about generating software builds of materials for embedded devices and IOT at build time And in the I David I really liked that supply chain integrity map slide that you showed showing the different stages of the software development process and in that map that you were showing this fits into the really the I think it was the third section of that process the build and verification stage What this is about is going to be about Having that ingredients list of the software that you're building and specifically Generating that ingredients list at build time so that you have it available and to distribute along with your software Right when you build your software. So the specific context that we're going to be talking about is for a project called Zephyr and Zephyr is a Linux foundation Project that we support It's a real-time operating system for embedded and resource constrained devices It's written mostly in C and it's built on top of a couple different existing tools for its build infrastructure So it heavily uses C make to manage builds to generate its It's make files or it's build files and then it Uses a tool that the Zephyr community is built called West which is a meta tool for Running the builds as well as running other actions such as taking the generated binary and deploying it onto devices so And at a high level the build process here involves Compiling the source files from the Zephyr Zephyr operating system itself Then also compiling the source files for your own application that you're running on top of that operating system Statically linking them together into one binary blob and then deploying that binary blob onto a device and it's it's that process that The fact that instead of having a full distribution of software We're generating a single binary blob that makes it particularly helpful to have a software bill of materials because it's That much harder to go back and figure out. What's in that binary rather than being able to do that after the fact So we'll talk about that more as we go on And I'm not I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this but just to help orient for folks who aren't familiar with Zephyr I'm going to give a very high level Just understanding of the build process which should look familiar to anyone who's who's done similar development But basically on the upper left-hand side here for the slide There are source files that comprise the Zephyr operating system itself So a variety of C source files headers that get included On the upper right-hand side We've got your own application that you're building to run on top of Zephyr again sources headers that getting included Some of those headers coming from your own application you've written some coming from Zephyr Some coming from a Zephyr SDK if you're using that and then really everything at the bottom is what gets generated as build products So the libraries that get built and then that get then get linked together into that final binary blob And we'll come back to this slide later on as I get to some of the specifics But basically you can kind of group those together as I was saying that on the upper half You've got the different sources which can split in different logical groups and then at the bottom half You've got the build products and the build results of that whole process Coming down finally to that binary blob And I see that there are a number of questions coming through in the chat Please Jillian if you can jump in if there are any questions that I should answer as I'm going through that would be great Otherwise there should be time for Q&A at the end so All right, and then the other just another view and we'll also come back to this But another view on the build process for Zephyr is because it uses CMake CMake defines a variety of targets that are the different built the different stages in the build process And some of those are kind of utility stages Some of them are taking actual sources building them into Library files or build products that then go on to the next stage again coming down to that final That final binary at the end. So The goal for all of this I think as David was saying earlier was to be able to shine Shine some sunlight into what's in that binary that you're getting at the end of the day So Being able to tell easily after the fact what pieces went into that binary what specific source files Did we use that went into that binary blob? because as someone is do as Zephyr developer is doing development there of course changing the sources they might be mod because it's open source They might be modifying the operating system files cells. They'll certainly be modifying their own application They'll also be updating the the you know pulling new versions of the Zephyr sources and so on so the Source files that they're building from are going to be constantly changing and Being able to tell after the fact, you know six months later or two or five years later Which source files which specific versions of source files went into a particularly by a particular binary blob is challenging The fact that it's a single binary also makes that post build analysis challenging because you know for other develop other developments of software other Systems that are not for kind of embedded resource constraint devices You might not have a single binary blob. You might have something more like a file system or a system that's built on top of Ecosystem like npm or pi pi or something where there are Kind of a setup for dependencies and for versioning dependencies, but it's really what you're interested in here It's specific source files that are going into a single binary at the end so that post build analysis can be challenging And one one thought here is certainly you could and you probably should keep the source files around for anything that you're That you're building and certainly anything you're distributing to customers or to end users You know, certainly it makes sense to keep an archive of those specific source files around The challenge with just saying that you'll do you'll do that and that takes care of everything is that First off, you'd have to you'd need to be trusting that those source hadn't been modified post build That the ones you've archived are the exact versions you use to build that binary And then second the sources are going to be a little hard to interchange or review Even if you are distributing your sources to customers It's still you know harder to be able to quickly tell is this the is this the version of the sources that were vulnerable or You know, it's harder to review that than it is to review just a hash that's in metadata. So So the goal here is really that we want to create a software build materials a record of that metadata for the build process For Zephyr applications at build time and we want to have that that sbomb express metadata about file hashes I express metadata about licenses and then about the relationships Between the sources the intermediate build artifacts and that final binary And from my side, I think it Yeah, I'm so I'm an attorney with the LF I'm also kind of a decent development on the side But my interest is particularly on the licensing side of it How do we track which what were the open source licenses for their source files? How did those flow through the binaries but as part of building that and gathering that data we're also gathering data about these other details about the hashes the relationships and so on and That's going to be particularly of interest to the security side of things Shining the transparency into which versions were shared. So So the particular goals here are to first off do this at build time So not doing it after the fact Second to make it fully automated. So to make it something that's as low as low paying for Zephyr Zephyr application developer as possible. So having it be as simple as possible for them to To generate an SBOM without having to use third-party tools take a take any significant additional steps in their build process Third we want to try to do it without leveraging external knowledge sources And this is something where, you know, there are a variety of tools out there both proprietary and open source that can Can generate SBOMs can Pull in more information about what you're building and those are those are fantastic tools So those are things that should be used but here a part of what my goal was was to Keep it as limited as possible so that it's something that is just occurring within the Zephyr build process itself And then finally kind of touched on this before but not rewriting existing build systems Just leveraging what's already there having to be an additional extension that someone can use if they want to But that they don't have to kind of muck up their own build process in order to do it Um, and I touched on this last point already just that uh with Zephyr because of the nature of the project It's something where we're really not focused on third-party dependencies such as javascript Uh, or or python modules or pulling in it's really focused on the zephyr source code itself And someone's application that they're building on top of that on top of that or less Uh, so the format that used for the SBOM is spdx which David touched on earlier And as for those of you who aren't familiar with it spdx is a language that for expressing Uh software composition metadata including components licenses and so on Um, it's currently in the iso publication process. Um, and I think you're moving towards iso full Uh, full deployment as an iso standard. So um So the the simple way to do this and kind of the the starting point approach the version kind of version zero approach for this is to Just run the build Scan all of the source all of the source files and all of the build products that get generated scan them for Hashes scan them for licenses if there's license information in there Um, and then assemble that data into a tag value spdx document Um, so and this is something that you can do pretty easily leveraging other existing tools from spdx Um, and I've got a link here to an example where you can do this So this is kind of the the simpler the naive approach Um, and this is good. This is something that can be easily You know somebody if they want to use one of these third one of these external tools They can pretty easily do this and add it into their build process um The drawbacks to this So one is that it is an additional step to take after the build and it is something that's using separate tooling outside the build process Um, the other drawback, which really I kind of gotten some more details here But the other drawback is that using an external tool it's likely not going to know a lot about the specifics of A project's build process and so it may you know, it may take some additional effort to distinguish between the sources and build artifacts It also might not provide you with very much detail about which sources are built into which binaries or which What are the different stages of the build process? It's more just a snapshot of everything that came out at the end of the day So this can be a good starting point But it's what I think what we were looking to do was to have something that would go a step further and provide some more detailed Knowledge about the that build process and the relationships between the stages. So um What we decided to do was to leverage metadata that cmake provides and because zephyr Already uses cmake as it's as part of its build infrastructure Uh, what we did here was to look at how can we leverage what cmake already gives us to? You know to take that take metadata it gives us and reformulate it And express it as spdx in an sfam format And so cmake has this really useful functionality They call their file-based api which essentially what it boils down to is before running cmake if you create a an empty file at a at a well-defined Location this api v1 query directory path to create that that path and that empty file and then run cmake as usual Then in addition to generating all of the build the build artifacts and the build Files that cmake produces it also outputs metadata in json format about what cmake is doing and about what the different build sources and build artifacts are going to be And so it outputs it as json it gives data about the different targets that are the build stages and it gives Data and then provides other json files that and I realize this might be hard to see here But basically other other json files about what sources are being used. What are the different artifacts or sorry command line arguments they'll be sent to Compile their sources and then what are the libraries that the sources are being built into so all of that cmake just for free gives you as json if you configure it to use this api So what we did for zephyr and for the west tool that the zephyr community is built is essentially just to add on an extension to that to say So steps two and three here are what anybody would do if they're using west to build the zephyr products They'll they'll make a call to west. I think it's west build that will run cmake cmake generates the build files and then zephyr and then It'll use those build files to generate the zephyr artifacts just as usual Essentially, what we did was just to add on an extension called west spdx That enables that cmake to to generate those json files And then after the build is done Takes then processes those json files and does some other analysis to generate the spdx files And just in the interest of time, i'm not going to go too much into the details about this But essentially what the west spdx process is doing is parsing those cmake There's json metadata files that we get from cmake Looking at what sources and what build artifacts it It says that it's going to be that it's building Analyzes them it optionally does some dry runs of compiling With those particular command line flags to get more data about what which particular header files get included And then it Essentially processes all into spdx data So it generates an spdx id for each package that's built each source file and each binary file that's being processed Along the way it scans those for the spdx license identifier statement So it because the zephyr community has added those into most of their Most of their source files we can get information about the licensing for those files essentially for free And then at the end it's creating spdx documents to express that metadata So going back to this slide real quick. Um, you remember this is where we kind of broke out the different source files into Uh logical components for the zephyr operating system the zephyr sdk if you're using That in your own application and then at the bottom of the build the build artifacts So each of those as as essentially separate separate blocks Uh, what we're doing then is generating an spdx document for each one And using the functionality that's built into spdx into the spdx language to link them together So, um, just a an example of that The way that this is done in in spdx is what they call relationships. So in the Zephyr spdx file, which is about the which contains the data about the zephyr sources For each source file there we're creating which so the file itself is shown on the right We're creating in the middle there a uh an spdx metadata record for that file Giving in an spdx id and including it in that zephyr spdx document And then on the bottom in the build artifacts spdx document Where we want to indicate that a particular build artifact is generated from one or more source files We can now link out by reference and create a relationship to express that it is generated from that source file And in spdx i'm not going to i'm not going to spend time on uh the specifics here But if you want to take a look at the slides this shows some details about how the specifics of the spdx tag value format And how to express that how to have a in the build artifacts spdx document Make a reference out to the external document for the zephyr sources Define an id for it and then have relationships that uh that reference that externally defined Document and reference metadata from that externally defined spdx document so Um, ultimately what this gives us is it gives us automatic generation of s bombs In spdx format in tag value format and which express metadata about what we talked about earlier So which source files are used to build which binaries the hashes for those source files and for the binaries so that we know Exactly which uh, which source files were used And then additionally information about the licenses for those source files because we can get that from The what the zephyr community has added in as those spdx license identifier statements so Areas from Provement here part of what we're looking to do is what i'm hoping to do is to align it More closely with the nta spom recommended fields to make sure that we're covering all of those appropriately Looking to understand and cover a broader set of the community build cases Because what what we've done here is really focused on I think this sort of default process of using Using west using the zephyr sdk To generate and kind of assuming that those are in place which they will be from many developers But looking to understand and see if we can cover a broader set of use cases where someone might not be using just those Built-in tools and then also looking to extend the licensing related functionality. So gathering other information like copyright notices and so on And what I'd say just is the takeaways from this, you know been focused heavily on zephyr specifically and iot and embedded the kind of the embedded context generally but I think kind of what we learned from this is that s bombs really can be generated as part of a build system for any sort of software development Doing so doing it and generating spdx s bombs at build time it can be ideally it can be minimal effort for The developers using that platform and to generate these s bombs and provide and make them available to downstream consumers of of a product It can be done using using and leveraging existing build infrastructure and particularly for free and open source projects What I'd encourage is to look at building them into the projects build infrastructure itself and doing that at the project level Enables all of the downstream repackagers or application developers or so on to essentially for free or for very little cost to be able to generate spdx s bombs for their own deployments in their own products and services and Developments on top of the project and doing that really improves the entire ecosystem because it makes it possible to easily generate this metadata and archive it and distribute it in a way that Kind of the end users can ultimately consume Particularly for embedded devices build time. I think really is the right time to gather this metadata because When you're when you're actually building the binary is the point in time where you know the most about what's going into it and generating and archiving that metadata Really gives both you and your downstream end users and consumers knowledge about that that information that is going to be extremely hard to try to Retrofit and gather after the fact um, I think one thing from this the kind of learns is that for spdx documents that linking process between multiple documents and the Relationship syntax can be very expressive and is is both expressive and flexible so you can express a lot of different Different facts about the build process as part of that and then finally, I think I'd say just I'd encourage projects or or Whether it's open source or proprietary anyone who's looking to Integrate a process like this into their own build infrastructure I would encourage starting small and improving over time So start with kind of the simplest possible approach that you can to create an sbom As part of your build system and then add more on to it over time You know add get more expressive about relationships between different elements add in more and for more information about dependencies Or other elements and grow it over time But really starting small with something that just generates a basic sbom can be the starting point so Uh, and with that, um, I guess we've got a bit of time for q&a. Um, so I will take a look at david Feel free to jump in with questions or I'll also take a look at the chat and see what questions we've gotten here Yeah, take a look at the chat in particular We've got a question It's been hanging for a little bit. Does the build spdx capture the sbom for the building for the tooling and build environment In the particular case that you were talking about obviously it could but the question is in your particular case Yeah, it's a it's a good question. I think it were we're at the early stages of doing that So it captures a little bit when it comes to let me go back here when it comes So the stk for instance, if you're use if someone's using the Zephyr stk then there's an optional flag that'll capture information about headers that are being included from the stk Um, at this point, it's not doing more than that. It's not going into. Okay. What are the particular? What's the particular version of the stk that you're using because that also encapsulates the various tools the compiler the linker the other parts that you're using for your particular build So my hope is to extend it to also capture that information and that's something that I think with relatively easily could be added in um Particularly where someone is using the zephyr stk to record what version what version of the tools and so on but at the moment No, it's not we're really focused primarily just at the sources and the headers that are being included Yeah, keep going through the chat. I think we've got some other interesting questions Yeah, so uh, so let's see. So question here about how the mechanism will cope when external libraries are included in build systems Yeah, so that's something that I I haven't focused on as much here for zephyr, but it's something that in many contexts You know, it's going to be highly relevant to people's build infrastructure because particularly when you're Using something where you're pulling in third-party dependencies whether, you know, whether from external libraries or from a third-party packaging such as npm or Or pi pi or you know, whatever your whatever your particular ecosystem is that's going to be highly relevant It's pulling in that metadata and I think some of the what we'll hear um probably from I think from Thomas or Thomas in the next session and then from about some of the other tools later today We'll probably focus more on that sort of situation where you're pulling in information about to pet third-party libraries and dependencies that get included Um, so I see there's a question about Let's see about uh included headers as an optional step Um, you know how important that is for tracking header files in the SBOM I think that's probably going to depend on context I'm going to depend on the particular developer whether or not you're going to see that as important From my view, I think it's important to include if you can because it's just more information It's more that you know about the build um people, you know a particular application developer might decide that they want to Keep us, you know, generate a smaller SBOM. They don't want to cover that sort of information That's going to be a trade-off they'll make but um having the functionality there and having it optional is something that at least Has it available if someone chooses to Okay, and any other uh Let's see. So another question that just came in and and David feel free to cut me off when we're uh when we're getting close on time I know we've got a couple more minutes and I want carry on So let's see. So there's one that just came in about um the architecture the linking flow, but um When interacting with product teams, they don't maintain this high level low level architecture diagrams How did so how do you deal with scenarios or convention different teams? That's important to emphasize that for binary analysis so I think here I I Maybe take a step up and go back to the slide that david had showed original in his in his presentation about the different stages of development and going from the individual developers to the build and release teams to the um You know other other other stages and other teams that within an organization are going to be involved with building software and I think A couple pieces of that one is going to be that this process that i'm talking about here I've been thinking about it and talking about it largely from the perspective of An organization that's developing a product or a service then deploying it to end users But I think even within an organization the end users can be the next step in the chain. It can be the next Uh, you know the going from the product developers to the build and release team or so on And so I think having it be part of the build system to be able to generate these these sort of files and produce S bombs You know the next step in the chain could then be also consuming s bombs and making use of it But to your point about convincing the product teams about this being important I think that's something that ties into the broader, you know the broader messaging of what we're talking about today and uh of just the importance of Understanding the ingredients for your software and then having the tooling be smart enough to make decisions about that So that it's something that can be more and more automated If I may jump in steve still automate automate automate If if if it requires that people take special steps every time Uh, that's a lost cause and and frankly rather insane. I think uh, you know what if it's part of the build process You know, they build and things happen And I think you know, I noticed that one of the last words steve mentioned was automate And uh, I see there's and and just uh, yeah echoing that that was the really the goal of this was to have it be As low touch for zephyr developers as possible So it can be as simple as making a a call to west west spdx at the same time You do west build and that it's nothing more than that that there's no external tools to deploy or call separately or anything like that One comment in here. I see a question about spdx being focused on Artos and binary does support container image supply chain Yeah, I'll say that if if this presentation is the only thing you're you've seen or the first thing you're seeing about spdx You might get the impression that it's focused on artos and it really isn't it's a It's a broader language for expressing metadata about software composition generally and it can cover A variety of use cases. There's a lot of folks who are looking at it for containers And I think you'll we'll probably I think we'll be hearing more about that later today But yeah, certainly it's much broader than uh embedded and real-time operating systems There's a lot that you can cover and a lot of use cases that aren't focused on that at all so um All right, so I think we're we're a few minutes ahead So I think let me go ahead and I think david unless you unless you have any other questions I'd say maybe let's give the time back and stay a bit ahead Yeah, I think that would be wise. Uh, so uh, so steve thank


Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today and happy new year to all of you. We're going to give it a second to just allow a couple more participants to join and then we'll get started. But if you are here, if you can just let me know in the chat what organization you're representing, or you can just give me a thumbs up just so I know you all can hear me as well. We'll get started in a second. Thanks. My chat is not working. Are you all able to just put into the Q&A if you can hear me? Awesome. Thank you. Okay, cool. So we will get started. I don't know why my chat isn't working, but we can stick with Q&A for now. Cool. Alrighty, so thank you everyone again for joining us. Happy new year. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday break if you had a holiday break. So welcome to the Give Back Tahoe post webinar. My name is Sarah. I'm a project manager for Give Back Tahoe from Mighty Cause. I want to let everyone know that this webinar is going to be recorded. So if you do need to leave or if you want to share this with another nonprofit who wasn't able to attend today, you can always send them the link. It'll be posted to our nonprofit toolkit on the Give Back Tahoe website. So today we have just a super short but pretty informative webinar. We're going to talk through just pretty much how to close the loop on this year's giving event with your donors. Review how you can continue connecting with your donors even after the event and how you can continue using the Give Back Tahoe platform on a year round basis, which is really cool. So we will get started. So quick look at the agenda today as you can tell. We're going to go through just a bunch of different kind of ideas for you all. We'll discuss disbursement dates. If you do have questions, if you can stick to the Q&A, I'm not sure why my chat isn't working, but we'll get those answered for you as we go along. Alrighty, so giving day follow up. So since this year's event is complete, this is the perfect time to start to consider your follow up for your post event if you haven't already done so. I mean, the event kind of the challenge ended on the 13th, but the event went through the end of December. So now everyone's kind of getting back in a swing of things. So if you are considering follow up, you're definitely going to want to go beyond the platform tools and the automated thank yous that go out to the donors when they make their donations. So if you haven't already start to plan your thank yous, we always suggest things like making a video or sharing kind of a photo with your staff, something that has like a bit more of a personal touch to it can go a long way when you're thinking your donors. And continuing communication, you'll want to also start to talk about the impact of the funds that you raised during your campaign to help kind of close the loop on what you were fundraising for. So basically, if you were fundraising for something specific, if you needed a new piece of equipment, or if you were, you know, fundraising for like changes to your building or anything like that, you'll want to let donors know how you did and where you stand with your goal. Like, did you meet your goal? Did you come close to your goal? Either way, you're going to want to update them and send them thank yous. Let them know that everything they did, whether that was peer to peer fundraising for you, whether it was making donations or sharing with emails or through social media with friends, all of that really helps contribute to your successes here. And then also periodically updating these same donors on your progress throughout the year is going to help foster those donor relationships. You don't want to just kind of end the event and close the door and say see you next year. You want to definitely bring them into your family and your nonprofit and kind of keep them in the loop so that they can hopefully keep, you know, supporting you. So to start, you're going to want to download your donation report from this year's event. So within your organization profile, you can view your donation report and your disbursements. It's super easy. If you do need help, you can always reach out to support and maybe cause.com, but you can download a very detailed donation report and a spreadsheet through your organization profile. This way you can start, you know, pulling this information, sorting it, grouping people maybe by different gift amounts, however you kind of go through and organize your data post event. You can also select of course custom timeframes and pull any types of donation reports year round since your profile is available to you on a year round basis for give back to home. Within this, you're going to organize your donor info into whatever kind of client management platform you use. So if you have MailChimp, you'll want to start to kind of take a day or however much time you need to really sort through tag different kind of groups and add in any donor emails and addresses that you received. So you most likely did receive a couple new donors. So then also kind of starting to think through post follow up strategy, specifically for these new donors is going to be really important. So like I said, just coming up with like a special and separate plan for new donor outreach. If you have new donors who gave during the event, you're going to want to make sure you have a special onboarding plan. Make them feel seen, consider mailing them a welcome packet as a fun way to get on boarded. You can give them a newsletter, a handwritten card from some staff members, maybe your board members want to write thank you notes. That might be a cool little thing they can do. But basically just kind of figuring out a journey in place for new donors and overall just thinking and appreciating your donors is going to be absolutely essential in your donor retention. So we all kind of know this but it helps to reiterate that it costs less for you to retain an existing donor than it does to acquire a new one. You'll know how much time and effort goes into trying to find new donors. So when you do get new donors, big pat on the back, make sure they feel seen appreciated and valued. Not just after they make their gift but just on an ongoing basis so that they are more likely to stick around with your organization long term. And then of course I also want to mention this last kind of note is just taking the time to meet with your team internally whoever that might be whether it's your board, whether it's just you and another team member or maybe it's just you. Just sitting down and kind of thinking overall how did your organization do this year, what did you find successful what would you definitely change for next year. It's a great time to also just see if your goals were.  This is a really good time to just kind of gauge what you want to do differently next year or keep the same because everything is so fresh for you. So definitely take a day, sit down, comb through what happened and make any changes as needed. Okay so reports and disbursements you can see here, kind of a schedule for when you can plan to receive funds donated to you during the event in general or electronic dispersals are coming through mighty cause and they're happening twice a month on a consistent schedule of the 10th and the 25th of each month. So that set up with EFT checks are going to be dispersed on the 10th of the following month for any donations that are made during the previous month. So anything that came in during the summer will be dispersed the following month in January if you have checks set up. The check is going to be mailed to your legal mailing address listed in your organization profile. So if you do need to make any changes before.  If you need to update anything you can always reach out to mighty cause support team as well. And then also a note on price disbursements from give back to how those can be expected to be sent out sometime around mid January for you. Alrighty, so for continuing the momentum we want to definitely reiterate that you all have access to your give back to a platform, your organization page all year round. So if you don't have another fundraising site or maybe you really liked just, you know, using your give back to a page, you can continue to use this. Just by, you know, being registered for give back to home. So by being part of give back to how you have access to all of what we call the mighty cause essential features, plus an opportunities tool which you'll see on the next page. But if you're thinking about, you know, like switching to just using give back to how something that you can always tell your board is that this this what is available to you on a year round basis is a $59 a month value. So you get everything here that you see checked on the right. Just by being a part of give back to how which is pretty fantastic. You can always, you know, continue to utilize these tools you can continue to take in donations. And, you know, use whatever is available to you to continue your fundraising outside of the event. Of course, the reporting is always available to you. So if you do have any questions you can always reach out to support we can always, you know, set up a free demo for you if you want to look at more advanced features. If there's something that you need integrated with like sales force or what have you. But you do want to note that once since give back to how has concluded the fee structure changes lately. It switches to the standard rate of 4% platform fee and 2.9% plus the recent credit card fee on all donations. But donors do continue to have the option to still cover the fees during their checkout process. So, like I said post event is an excellent opportunity to kind of look through all the features that maybe you didn't use maybe you didn't get a chance to do a lot of peer to peer fundraising. Go ahead and you know try it out during the off season so to speak, so that you feel more prepared to try peer to peer fundraising during give back to our next year. And of course I circled volunteer and opportunities tool as well. All of our give back to nonprofits have access to the opportunities tool. This means you can post just all of your volunteer opportunities or special events that your organization is hosting. Some of you are already using this feature but for others this is a good time to also, you know, take a breather, start to look through this tool, start to see if this is useful and helpful for you. And on this note this year for the first time there was a question in the donation form that asked donors if they would like to receive more information regarding volunteer opportunities from your org. If they were donating to you. If they also, if they check that box, they had an option to pledge a certain number of hours for the upcoming year which a lot of donors did take advantage of. So you can find out which donors check this box for your organization by downloading your complete donation report from this year's event.  And on the very right column, there is a column I think it says volunteer interest and I will say yes, next to the donor. So you can sort that column, and then some of them, it was optional but some of them did pledge a certain number of hours like they wanted to do 20 hours. So now is just the perfect time with the new year and people setting resolutions and goals reach out to these individuals by email or giving them a direct call if you have their phone number. And just like talk next stop see what they're what their, you know, ability is to if you have on site, kind of volunteer opportunities or remote volunteer opportunities. So of course, start to create actual volunteer opportunities on your organization page. So these, you can always link to your page. Once you create a volunteer opportunity, it'll show up as a little kind of tile that someone could click on and register to attend. So if it's super easy, you'll just go to your fundraising tools, and then opportunities, and then the little plus sign create an opportunity, and then you can kind of see this example that Caroline put together have like different funder volunteer opportunities. So you can have a little location be in person, you can have it be kind of an online type of meeting. You can have a lot of flexibility with this if you have an event bright type of registration form that you need to link to you can add that. The great thing is that all of these volunteer opportunities, they're very customizable but they all are in one place. So you can, you know, fill those out.  So make sure you get these posted because they are looking for opportunities to share with their database of donors. So if you have any questions on this you can let me know but I believe it's pretty straightforward and you can always also reach out to support. But it's fun to play around with there's you can add like a photo and all sorts of cool stuff. Also, anything you post here that's a volunteer opportunity donors are able to, when they're looking for organizations, they can go to the search on give back Tahoe and they can sort by organizations that have active volunteer opportunities. So it's just another cool way to get more visibility in a different outlet for donors. And then the last thing I believe is the feedback survey so that is on the front page of the event. There's a little button that says survey, we would love to just hear your feedback different things that you thought went well. If there's you know content or trainings that you would love to benefit from next year if you want to just learn more about matching grants, or if you're just curious about how to communicate with donors or a timeline of communication, we just would love to hear what you all are interested. So we that we can help support and help you reach your goals, each year that you participate. So, yeah, please definitely take the survey. And then of course also support from any causes available to you all year round, you have access of course to give back Tahoe and organization page year round. So if you need to be directed to anything we have a ton of great blog posts now is an excellent time to also kind of dig through different blog posts. We have different kind of just a ton of like pre recorded webinars that you can check out. If you want to do some trainings. And of course, we're always here to chat so if you just have a question you can just reach out to support at many kinds.com. If you don't have any questions, I'd be happy to take those now, or else you can digest this material. I always tend to talk too fast on my doors. So if you do think of any questions, let me know I'll wait here for a minute, or else I will upload this to the toolkit and you all can always reach out to us at support. I don't see any questions coming through. Well, I want to wish you all just a huge congratulations. I know how much work goes into these types of events and I know how hard you all work in the lead up. So hopefully you get to take a breather and just congratulations to you and all of your teammates. Happy New Year.


So we're here at the mezzanine level of Qualcomm Stadium here in San Diego We're sitting here talking with Bob Kanaske a former captain of the San Diego police department Now you were the incident commander of the evacuation shelter here at Qualcomm. Yes, I was now. This was in 2007 Yes, this was the Southern California fire siege. Yes, that was going on How big of a deal was that back then this was huge now We had gone through a fire in 2003 where we lost quite a few homes up in the north up in Conroe Mountain and we had used Qualcomm Stadium at that particular time as a evacuation center However, when we got to 2007 the fires were much bigger broader covered more area and we had more people to evacuate So this center this stadium became quite a big shelter. I mean by recall at one time We had at least 15,000 or more people here at the shelter. Wow And so where were they put to the this area doesn't seem big enough to hold 15,000 people? No, we utilized the entire stadium What was unique about this place is it has various floors. This was actually in the reception area and You're sitting kind of a ground zero. This is where a lot of supplies came in But where everybody checked in we had a number of boosts up here that Monitored mapping systems throughout the county so folks could keep track of their homes in their area But then what we did is for sleeping arrangements because we used this place for six days We various floors. We use the downstairs covered floors for those with families older People so that they'd have a place to be and then kind of moved it all the way up to the top with tents and Cots that were provided by the military. So the whole place was just covered Did you guys already know how you would utilize this facility for evacuations? Or did you just sort of wing it for lack of a better phrase? It wasn't necessarily a wing We knew that in the 2003 we had some practice because we'd used it for a couple of days I don't really think that we knew that this was gonna last as long as it did So we had to wing some of it so to speak but really what it came down to was the kind of common-sense approach We knew that we had a number of folks here who would need shelter who would need to eat Who would need to find out about their property who would also need to make sure that their kids were taken care of their Dogs and their animals and pets were taken care of because we had a place for that And then addition which was also thrown in is that we used our club floors as hospitals We had over 300 patients. We had a working hospital here at Rockham. Yes So how did was it was it a triage center or was it a full-fledged working? No, what happened in the north part of the city. They had a number of Elderly homes that had to be evacuated and they all had various different maladies and basically what we did is we took over the club floor and changed each one of the clubs into a different type of a Medical environment and so you'll hear from the doctor later How he set that up along with the 24-hour pharmacy and things of that nature to help with the treatment of patients now What we did not do was open it up like a hospital because the hospitals were still open Okay. Okay. This is fascinating Fans come here to watch the Chargers and yet During this fire siege it became really a city unto itself. It became a home We had places where children were being taken care of We had movies playing on in the big screen But what we also had was we knew that as people were start to repopulate their areas They were loss of homes loss of property. We also had on the outside We're ringed with insurance companies. They came in and they set up their trailers So it was a one-stop shop so that once you left here You could be knowing that you could get all your items taken care of in one general area That seems brilliant. It seems simple and simple enough that it was so effective But at the same time it does seem brilliant. It's this weird kind of combination of Genius and common sense. Well, you know the we talk about this all the time I was also an evacuee. Oh, yeah, my home was evacuated So I'm here with folks here and I had nowhere else to go But it's not only my job, but I'm evacuee as well So it what it really came down to and I think there's a big difference when you look at other mega shelters When you have everybody coming here realizing they all have to pitch in they all work together Even the people that are here because of unforeseen reasons it worked out for the best How were you able to manage such a large number of evacuees? Couped up all at once because I remember and I think you do too remember seeing the footage from Katrina Yes, and inside the New Orleans Superdome, right? There are a lot of disgruntled folks in there for good reason, right? You keep things on an even keel here Or were you able to to the degree that you wanted? Yeah, we learned a few things There were some things that we had to take a look at in the after-action report such as taking care of people with various diverse backgrounds Taking look at those who may not speak English or those who come from certain areas So we learned from that as far as if we ever have to do this again We need to make sure that everybody's taken care of but for the most part what we had was a realization that We had plenty of volunteers We had a lot of folks who knew exactly what they needed to do with their various Talents who all came in so we had folks who would work check-in. They were working from the city We had those we had the National Guard who were working our commissary in the parking lot So what it was is you pick on people who have those basic Experiences those who have that knowledge and you put them in the place where they do best It all just seems to come together in one spot where it works. What was the biggest challenge for you? Were you the one who was coordinating the evacuations themselves? No, those would fire department normally does mostly they'll tell law enforcement what areas need to be evacuated So law enforcement will normally move in and tell folks they need to go and then they'll be direction on where to go My job was once they got here was to take care of them once they got here Okay, and I think one of the keys on any type of evacuation center as long as you're taking care of the people's needs The people are going to cooperate. They're going to be there for you. It was interesting here I think one of the biggest complaints in Katrina was that they had nobody to go to Restrooms are getting overflowed. There was no food There was no really good sleeping area security was lax Here we had plenty of security through San Diego Police Department. We had plenty of help from the National Guard None of these the stadium did an outstanding job in maintaining all the facilities here There was not one time that any of these facilities was not running appropriately we also had folks coming in from the city who cleaned out the lot every single day and These were folks from the city who had come in and they parked their trucks right out in the lot So the city didn't just say okay, the stadium can take care of it. No city was actively involved actively involved So it was a it was an overall effort On all parts. Yes to make this a success. Absolutely. So now looking forward This seemed to have worked out very well. Would you agree? You know, it did You know, but the one thing you look for an evacuation site is that you want it to be covered Because the good part is in San Diego We had the fire gone and the one air quality we were worried about and this is an open stadium And so we knew that we weren't going to stay here very long I think a week was probably about the best we could do because the last thing you want to do is take people out Of an environment that's safe put them down in what you think is a safe environment But yet not worry about air quality, especially with all the smoke So we knew we had about a week and I think when you look at what a mega shelter here does a Week would probably be about the best. Okay. So all our planning that we did after that was the development of a mega shelter What do you need? What did we learn from here? What kind of tools will you need? How do you make sure that folks that come here are certified to be? Nurses and things of that nature. So we had to do some make sure your backgrounds are being done on your folks And you have to do it beforehand. You can't wait until the actual incident So all these things are still being done to where we are prepared for the next incident So looking forward, will you use this facility again? You know, I believe it probably would be used My feeling is this is a it says in a central location It gives you the opportunity to move very quickly to get people here get them safe But as time goes on what you want to do is then take a look at where you could move them to where you want say long-term Care and I think what we did is we worked here for about six days and eventually when areas were repopulated We still had a group that could not go home And so what we did is worked with the other shelters that were covered like in Del Mar and we moved folks up there So where was the fire compared to where we are now which direction the fire was up north And up north into the east a little bit and it was it blew From the east to the west. Okay, so were you actually getting smoke in the stadium here? Actually after the winds had stopped Yes, you get the swirling winds around here and the air quality is a little bit difficult It wasn't as bad as 2003 because those fires were actually closer to Qualcomm These fires were actually further north and so we didn't really get huge smoke So we could stay here a little bit longer and not worry too much But yet it still was a problem because you got an open-air stadium that you're trying to make into a shelter Thinking back to that day Okay, now you got it you thinking back. Oh, I can see it perfectly When you would come out here and you would look around and you would see the activity What was going through your mind? You know the biggest thing I worried about on those time was to make sure that everybody was taken care of The one thing that I wanted to do and if you give her go back and take a look at the archives And there was a press conference and what I had told the folks at that time is that you've got enough worries Going on right now about your homes I do not want you to worry about where you're going to sleep. What are you going to eat? What's going to happen in the next two or three days? Our job is to make sure we take care of that so you don't worry about that You can take care of your homes later, but let's worry about let's just make sure we've got you taken care of her right now That was the biggest thing Did you hear of any criticisms? There were there were criticisms. It wasn't necessarily about the care and things of that nature I think the criticisms came later with regard to making sure that everybody had Equal access that was one of the things that was brought up by the ACLU and a few other folks Is that just because somebody lives in a home? That's not the only people there are people who are living in canyons Are those who didn't speak English and so what you cannot do or what you need to do is make sure that they're not Fearful of coming into a shelter and thinking that something else might happen to them That is interesting. I you know, honestly, I don't think I would have ever thought of that I did not think about it at the time, but I do now I mean It's one of them items that I would take a look at if I were to run another mega shelter is that as we start moving people in I want to make sure that we're taking care of all the people that need to be taken care of But to make sure that we've got all the systems in place that take care of language that carry Take care of some cultural differences that make sure that everybody feels they're getting equal access across the board Were there any decisions when you look back now that you wish you would have made a different decision? You know, there was only really one decision that bothered me And I didn't get actually involved in it because it kind of happened and not come up to the command post But we did have an incident where we had folks that were coming in and we had a huge Commissary out on the parking lot, but we were giving things out to people who truly needed them So if you would come by If you were a family you could come in and if you needed blankets or you needed water you needed food We had you just drive through oh and we were taking care of nationally We had National Guard that was kind of helping with along with some of the city employees But we also had people that were taking advantage of it and what had happened at one particular time is there was a group that had come in and eventually Border patrol got involved and I wish that not had not have happened I wish that that had been taken care of a little bit differently So those are things you have to think of The biggest thing is is when you're running a shelter the shelter is open to everybody and everybody needs to be taken care of it And that's the only That's the only thing you really truly need to worry about don't worry about the rest How do you anticipate all those little things the things that didn't occur to you at the time? But how do you anticipate all that you try and do them beforehand? I think one of the things that the one thing that we did use quite consistently here And it works really well as the incident command system Once you put that into place and we started training some city employees and how to do that in the various responsibilities they had Things start to fall in place and people see that the job is actually a little bit easier But the other part is pre-planning you know the one thing that you should tell every city in every county It could happen to you you need to come together and do these Preparations before any of these things happen you can still think of things that might not you know Things are going to happen that you didn't expect but you're more You're better prepared to make those decisions if you've got some pre-planned incident or pre-planned Things in place and pre-planning is the key. It is the key You've already mentioned a number of things that you've learned from that past experience actually the past two experiences Looking forward to the next one What do you what would you be ready for what are you telling these others to be ready for? Maybe there's something you haven't talked about yet. Is there anything else you'd like to kind of pass along? You know the one thing you know we're good with fires. I mean we've had a number of them here But the other thing we have to be really prepared for is something that would be natural or a natural Disaster such as an earthquake there are things that would not be available to us that We're available to us during fires. You know fires were pretty consistent in some of the areas We lost some communications, but we were able to put those back into play But if you had an earthquake or some other type of natural disaster where you you lost Structures or you lost huge areas of communication those are things that you need to have Prepared for in advance because you're not going to be able to figure those things out when it happens You're going to be behind the eight ball. So what I would tell folks is think of your worst Worst environmental hazard that could ever happen and put a plan together for that The second side is take a look at what's happening across the country or in the world right now There could be other things that could happen with some of the other types of man-made Decisions that could cause you difficulty be prepared for those and know the ICS system I'm going to tell you right now if folks are not up to date on ICS are not comfortable using it Get comfortable because it helps you make your decisions better It helps you work with the fire department and other people better But it also makes the organization run a whole lot more smoothly Aids in planning aids and not only in planning But once you start putting things into play and people know what the responsibilities are It makes the decisions a little bit easier and you can hold certain folks accountable for certain things that need to get done And just to clarify You did use the ICS. Oh, absolutely 2007. Oh, absolutely Right off the very bat that was one of the first things we did when we got here was to really put the command structure in place Because we knew that we were not going to be able to use we didn't have enough security here at the time with St. Agil-PD because they were all up in the fires and everything else So we knew we needed to add and that's how National Guard got involved But having that structure in place helped put them into place and get all the resources that we needed We had to feed people three times a day six days in a row There had to be somebody in charge of food 24 hours a day and they had to be working in advance Then we also had logistical needs here at the stadium who was taking care of maintenance So there was a maintenance person here that would take care of all the difficulties You had environmental issues in the parking lot. They had to be taken care of so having that command structure in place Made it easier for me as the incident commander to see that those things were being done. I Think that's a very good point Well-made and I think it's the perfect ending to this interview Bob Kanaske Former evacuation shelter incident commander here at Qualcomm Stadium a whole different picture now than it was back then Big time different. You're back. Say we're sitting in ground zero. This is completely different very interesting All right, sir. Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time and hanging out for us and Sharing your thoughts more than welcome


Really? This is my little friend. We had the packet. We had the two-patient packet. That's too far. And then we're going to go slow. Okay. That was a plastic bag. You're welcome. If you couldn't get into the plane, then you could get into the plane.


Okay, now it works. Okay, so a few words about me Hi, I'm Mika. I'm the CEO of G-Works and pointed two weeks ago and before that I worked as a project manager and I'd be working with WordPress for about three years and I'm come from a technical background I'm not a developer and it would be kind of hard stretch to call me even a designer I'm kind of the business end, you know in our company doing stuff like Selling WordPress and doing concept design this kind of thing You can find me at Twitter By that handle if you want to follow me I'm actually a very lazy Twitter But if you feel I feel like it you can follow me you probably want to follow the company as well so This actually works There we go I'm gonna be talking about four topics today all related to the same subject. So I'm gonna be going over the Generals of the accessibility directive. I'm not going to go into detail Directive itself is like 80 pages long and so on but I'm gonna just Tell you what's it mostly about then I'm gonna be talking about the double WCAG guidelines, which are the Well guidelines that you use to create develop design accessible websites and They also apply to applications as well, but I'll be focusing on web development mostly Then I'm gonna talk a bit about a project we made for our client that actually had the accessibility as a Probably the most important thing in the project itself But we'll get back to that later And then I'm gonna throw in some tips and I promised in in the description that I will also be giving some contradictions in the guidelines themselves But we'll get to that later First of all, I want to talk about the accessibility directive made by the European Union and Actually want to stop here for a while Because there's been a lot of fuss about accessibility in general and and it's been a hot topic, you know So I mean has been doing some some good representations in on on Meetups and so on but I actually want to talk about it because we here as a community represent the very large part of websites or web applications that are made in Finland and as a human being I want to Press the importance of the matter that we have the possibility to create accessible web web in itself has has brought the world together and and We have in our hands the possibility to make web accessible even for those with severe limitations to their ability to Well see or or people who have cognitive disorders and so on so I say to you Please focus on accessibility. It's very important because that brings the world closer together So about the right active itself. So directive you 2016 slash to 102 of the European yada yada yada This is the accessibility directive and in the short short version of this is that every single website and Actually mobile application as well has to be accessible and You have to each European country has to adopt the directive into the legislation before 23rd of September 2018 and I call this the a day This would be cool if it had like an explosion sound effect or something with the tech guys didn't come through with that No, really. I didn't even ask for it. Okay, but the a day So called a day is 23rd September 2018 and what this means is that Our news so-called new services web services released after a day must be accessible by 23rd of September 2019 a new services means services that don't exist yet, which are being developed and You you don't have have anything to work on and then we have old services services that exist already and these must be must be accessible by 2010 2020 sorry and The thing is that that especially in the old services to when we're thinking about stuff like Like vero hollanda for example the tax-exministration in Finland They have a very large system which needs to be remade almost completely at least in the front end perspective So we're talking about kind of a moving train that if you start By 2018 when the directive comes through you're already late So you have to take into account that services that are accessible are actually Very difficult to make and and they take time. We usually give an estimation that that a regular service or compared to an accessible service the Accessible service actually takes about One and a half or two times more to develop single simply because it has a lot more code and accessibility is hard like like really hard and Why is this a simple the fact that we have a lot of variables? first of all we have all the different operation Operating systems and the different software that are used to make things accessible So for example in our windows environment, we have nv nvda jaws and supernova. These are all screen readers and Most most common of these is the nvda mostly because it's free and it's at least partially funded by the Mozilla Foundation so they're kind of the forerunners in trying to make accessible services for everyone This system works on Firefox Chrome and in Explorer, but it doesn't work on edge Then we have jaws which is kind of a Windows specific doesn't limit itself to any browsers, but this software is really expensive It's like I think it's like 1500 or 2,000 euros or something like that And then we have supernova, which is a bit cheaper, but still about 200 euros or something like that Mac OS and IOS have voiceover which is built in and and that's I think probably the second most government common Software used mostly because well it comes built in those machines and a lot of People with disabilities actually use use Apple devices And we have orca, which is for Linux. There are probably more more software for Linux But orca is probably the one used the most and and then we have Android which has software called or an application called talk back and This is this is just a scratch in the surface of these applications. I think when I tried to search for these I came up with like 50 different kinds of software and The problem with this is that none of these work similarly So if you get something that works on on voiceover and you're like, yeah Now we have a nice and accessible service Then you pop up your NV a NV da and realize that no it doesn't work the same way So in addition to the testing that you have to normally do With different machine kind of operating systems and browsers you actually get like another another set of variables Which you have to test But it's not really just the software because we have we have a lot of different users as well who are Disabled in some way and the thing is it's just not about the blind blind people Blindness is the most common reason for accessible services and and using voiceover and other other screeners But we also have things like partial blindness extreme nearsightedness Even color blindness this deck dyslexia attention to physical disorder and all kinds of other I'm not I haven't watched enough house to pronounce that but We are like we are talking about physical disabilities like people who cannot use a mouse for example And they they can perhaps use use a tablet and do slight swipes or something like that but we're talking about the people who have a trouble raising their hand and It's estimated that that about about 10% of people suffer from some of these conditions and Obviously, we have some people who might have rheumatoid arthritis and They might not be as disabled so they don't have to necessarily use the services But we're talking about a pretty high number here in Finland. This is about 500,000 people and Then we are I'm gonna talk about the guidelines themselves are Most of is there someone who is already familiar with the WCA guidelines The way to hand if you are well, I'm glad that our employees raised their hands as we have been working on this but this is a guideline made by the W3C and it's an essentially a collection of best practices recommendations to creating accessible code and content and It's managed by the World Wide Web Consortium and The original guidelines were published in 99 so they are quite old and then revision version 2.0 was published in 2011 and 2.1 is currently in its first first public draft stage and it's actually you can go see the new guidelines at World Wide Web Consortium site and And the guidelines apply to design they apply the code and they apply to content and We have three different levels for for the guidelines and The following is my own personal into praise interpretation of them So we have level a which I've dubbed accessible So that's your basic basic level This this means that it's usable but not necessarily very pleasant to use So that that's the bare minimum that is required. Then we have a for advanced accessibility and this is actually the level in itself that Usually is recommended. So in a you have some things that are already Like really usable and actually pleasant to use and then we have the AAA for absolute amazing accessibility and This is a very hard level to reach because In addition to having to feel all the previous requirements So if you want to get to level AA you have to feel every single requirement in a But then in the AAA you actually have things like which are related to the content and the production of the content itself So you as a designer or our developer cannot actually do anything about that and there's a lot of things in there that are Kind of hard to do for example. We you have to take into account that these directives also Include sound so so they technically You we know talking only about screen readers We're all talking about people who are deaf and and you have to create For example, you cannot use sound to convey information or if you have a video you must have text for that and these kind of things and Now about the project that we went through and this project was started in in 2016 and we actually did it for quite a long time and The project self was made for Celia formerly known as The library for the blind nowadays the National Center for Access Accessible Literature So what we did was that we created a WordPress based user interface for Celia's new library system. These library Deals in ebooks or audiobooks. So The project itself consisted of two main elements. We had the WordPress and then we had a really big API to Aurora, which is the library system itself. It was provided by Web library systems specialist called Axial The site itself was hosted at Walter and the streaming and download services for the audiobooks were provided by Pratsam And then we had the the user interface which had the cover images and that was provided by BTJ Finland and Then we had the testing which was done with Celia and other get so as we say in finish We had a few variables This Was an actually very interesting project because we were kind of a central hub here and and we had a very difficult user base People with varying degrees of disabilities. We had completely blind people. We had people with dyslexia. We had people with maybe physical problems who like I said before cannot use a mouse and The communication between all these different parties was difficult and I don't know if any one of you have worked with Walter before but they have quite strict requirements for different kinds of software Right, we'd like you to try it, but you probably can't unless you have one of these disabilities So it's not open for the general public You actually have to have some of some kind of disability to use this use it you have you can go check it out at selly Annette dot fi and You can get somewhere with that but mostly it's just for the client base of Celia itself Okay, so Few pointers towards designing Accessible services, I'm gonna do some tips which are we found out during the project with Trial and error and then I'm gonna talk about some myths as well which We kind of encountered and which have been going on Recently that you can or cannot do so the first thing is simple keep it simple and It's actually in in a system that We had we had a library library interface that you used to borrow books so we had to figure out that what was the most commonly used and the most important element and bring it up to the front page and we brought the search in itself to Kind of being the first thing like literally when when you're browsing something you use Perhaps you use a tap index or or simply go through it visually the first thing you encounter is the search and We received a good a lot of good feedback for not having like a big hero image or something like that but instead like keeping it simple and Using the most important element first And then there's the thing about graphics You cannot use any kind of graphic to deliver information and if if a graphic doesn't have any specific Value you should leave it out and this is a special especially when talking about hero images for example if it doesn't have any other purpose than perhaps being like a nice image or or Developing the brand you should leave it out in these services And same goes for shape. So you cannot use for example certain kind of triangles or or circles to convey any kind of information and you should also consider that that you can make a lot of different kinds of views but You have to use less elements rather than more. So the less elements you have on the page the more simpler and as such accessible it gets and One thing about this thing consistent in the design So if you're using for example a certain kind of subnavigation that same subnavigation has to repeat on every page in the same way Also different button styles for example keep using the same colors keep using the same Functionality tab if something opens in a new window or a new tab every button has to do that the same thing Another thing that we noticed actually during the testing was that Most blind users want to get a hold of the whole site before they actually navigate further So it's kind of they have to see a map before they go anywhere because it's a maze for them They can they don't have any of the visual aids that we normally do so they want to listen through the site map and users are Used to going to a footer to find the site man site map So put it there just just do it like you know she'll above style like just do it Okay, then the tip number three is to use really visible focus elements And this this is actually the search that we did and as you can see there's a pretty big Green green focus there and this it could actually even be bigger like it could be like even five or ten pixels more than then it's there so For those with partial blindness or cognitive problems. It's really a lot easier for them if you're like really highlight the element that you're on And one thing which is kind of sad is that you shouldn't use any page load animations while it is possible to create animations that work and are user user and screen reader friendly Users with cognitive disorders or attention deficit disorders can get really distracted and that may even cause nausea So if you have like a big animation that swoops the screen every time you switch the page that Actually make the user feel physically ill and I have some Myths and the first one is that Simple doesn't mean boring so you can actually use a lot of different kinds of elements and you can Have an interesting layout for those who use the service to the vision But the thing here is that you cannot cannot have like too much moving elements So as long as you remain static you can actually create a really different different kinds of pages and layouts The color scheme doesn't have to be simple But there are a few things that we have to take account when we're talking about colors So let's do a little test You'll see two buttons and two Style buttons here and one of these buttons is Done accordingly to the guidelines and the other one is not and if you take into consideration that which one of these You think is more accessible which one of these has more contrast and is more easily to view Let's do a little poll who would say that the white text is better One two three, okay, and who would say the black one is better Yeah, most of you congratulations. You passed the test Yeah, the blacks text is according to the guidelines the better version, but When we did the testing about these colors the white one us was actually more pleasant to the users themselves So we have a contradiction here This one is correct according to the guidelines and technically we are getting to the point where we actually have by Legislation we have to do this, but most of the users with problems with the vision think the other one is better This is kind of a kind of a Hard problem since this is the way we have to go But that one would be better for the users with limited vision Okay, something is for developers and I'm not a developer. So please be kind on me on these ones The first thing is one of the most important things about making things accessible is the white area labels And these are hidden texts for screen readers. They tell the screen reader user more than the site visually shows And they can be used to identify different kinds of elements on the site such as navigation and also explain Buttons drop grounds, etc. And consistency is again the key here. So talk with your designer when doing the labels Here's an example of how the screen reader works when when using labels So we would have a text called which goes like local breweries or micro brewers have taken a significant market share from large corporate breweries And then we have a link which is learn more Then you would create the real label and give it a very specific Explanation so when a voiceover does this it reads the text in itself and when it gets to link It says link learn more learn more about local breweries and this helps the user that doesn't see that it's a link To understand it better Then we have use cases such as model windows I'll go later on to the model windows themselves, but we have a model window close Close button and the worst case which you can do is that you have an HTML entity Which is a multiple sign and then when a voiceover user comes there. It says multiple sign the user has no idea What the hell is happening a decent version here would be closed a model window But your user doesn't necessarily know that he is in a model window So what we want to do is explain what is actually happening, which would be exit the loaning options The same thing goes with there are these buttons on the bottom that say line, which means borrow and or loan and Instead of having it say that it would be link line You want to have it to say borrow the book and listen to it in salient The other thing is that Skip to content is typically first in your tab index And it's kind of the first sign that you see that our website has been done at least somewhat accessible And you can see when you go to a page and press tab if you get a small button in usually in the left-hand side In the left upper corner, then it's usually usually at least somewhat good But the second one should always be skip to sitemap and as I talked about before blind users want to use use sitemaps to make kind of sense of the whole site before navigating further then we have the issue about radio buttons and checkboxes and This is really about preference the rule of the tomb is if you can narrow an option for example into a simple Yes, no answer you should use checkboxes and if you have more complex options You should use radio buttons with highly informative descriptions And this is this is difficult because the screen readers So actually go through those and it's hard for the user to tell which option is limited to which button So if you have a button and a description and a button and a description or a checkbox and description It's actually hard for the user to figure out which checkbox is which so In our user testing we received mixed feedback about this. So if you can just avoid both one of the myths is that you shouldn't use JavaScript and and This is actually Partially true. You shouldn't use any obstructive JavaScript and you cannot convey any information using JavaScript alone again JavaScript mostly used for For visual visual cues for the user So you should always always avoid that But and the other thing is that if you have Some element or functionally that it's only reachable by JavaScript You have to provide it in some other way that being said 98% of the programs used to Read screens actually support JavaScript. So this is kind of a Kind of a seesaw there All selection must be visible This means that drop-downs are generally hard because usually Most most screen readers actually read all the things in a drop-down menu before actually opening it. So You have to be very careful when using the things like this because they are easy for the User that sees but they might be very difficult for a screen reader user There are some libraries which make make accessible drop-downs But they are quite rare and they are quite old. So you might have some Some compable compatibility issues with modern browsers And the third is that don't use model windows. You can use model windows But you should always treat them as sort of a different page So for example in the earlier earlier example, we had the issue that you don't want to Call it close model window. So make sure you label label it so that the user understands what he's actually doing So what would be next To get started on accessibility and and and I really recommend for all of you to get get to know The web accessibility guidelines you can go go to this address and there's actually tips for getting started There's tips for designers. There's tips for developers and there's tips for content producers and Further reading and other useful stuff, too. We have the a one-one why project that actually that word means accessibility and It's kind of an old project that has been going Back and forth and I'm not even sure if it's maintained anymore, but there's some basic reading over there Then we have a contrast checker checker Which is useful one when you want to see if a color combination actually matches the guidelines Then you have the accessibility checker, which is very good for validating your code And one of the rule of the thumbs really here is that if you write good code It's usually at least somewhat accessible and then the guidelines itself you can find at the w3 consortium site All right, I think my time is up and I thank you at this point and perhaps we move on to questions And before we move on to the questions, I would actually like to say that we need The visual add-ins in for cellular as well So you don't have to limit your questions necessarily to this presentation or or this project but in Accessibility in general Thank you so much Mika. I had one question How long did you have this project for like what was the length of time well to understand that kind of context? we had Some issues during the project about we actually have to move into a complete different development Stay so we we started this doing this at our own own environment And we actually had to move to the Walter so so that made made some delay But I think we did this for about a year and maybe three months or so We're actually still doing kind of the last version. So we this has this was published I think a month ago or so, but we're still kind of making lay less tweet tweaks there How do you feel about the project itself like not having maybe being a developer? But just being part of the project. How do you feel about it? it was it was hard and it was a lot of trial and error and and Believe our developers agree that that this has caused some gray hairs To them because there's a lot of things to dig into account But at the end where we managed to do this and now we can say that we know a lot more So this was actually very good for for the development of our developers and and for me personally I find the issue itself very important and and trying to make their world and the web more accessible So so I like the project itself. Okay, great. Thank you very much Maybe a round of applause for me And we have our next speaker Lisa, can I have a question? Hi me Yeah, thanks. Thanks for a great talk. I had just one pretty easy question Do you have some kind of deep or a condemnation for? auto-generate the site map or is there even tools for that or do you just? Create it like handmade Yeah, that kind of kind of depends on how you're developing WordPress, so I Think actually I'm very good to answer this question in itself since I'm not the guy who makes it But usually you want to do something that gives out the whole site map in itself So not just the uppermost levels, but actually all of it I'm not sure if that answered your question, but Talk to talk to Thomas or henna. They actually know a lot more about this Were there any other questions? Yeah, two questions first you mentioned about the accessibility of deadlines and the first slides Is it a regulation you you have to do that or you just like? Advisory you just good if you do that and the second question you mentioned a few conditions That should be taken care of can you really integrate all of them into one website and just one website would be Accessible for everyone, you know within this condition range. I mean how hard is that is it possible? Thank you answer the first question. Yes, this is a directive, so it becomes sort of Criminal activity to have a service that is not accessible during kind of after the deadlines that I showed so the ad plus one for old services and a different story for new services and ad plus two for old services and Probably as usual in the European Union We in Finland probably are the only ones who actually make the deadline and the other ones come like three or four years after that and Your second question was that can we actually make make a make a make a service that accessible for everyone. Well That's what the guideline really is for obviously we might have some scenarios where a user has such Such a hard time using a service that we count 100% be sure that that it's accessible for everyone, but if you if you can Do the triple a level accessibility and you match all the requirements in that there's there are many requirements Then yes, technically we would have a service that accessible for everyone Hi there. I Just wondered about that because I'm a newbie in this area and you mentioned about the area label Is there some reason why I shouldn't should use that instead of just title attribute? I think it's about how the screen readers read them. So if you use titles and so forth Most of most of the different screen readers might read something like title or h1 or something like this And the why area has been created. It's a kind of a standard to At least try to make all the different kind of services Or the applications and programs similar But you you should probably go check out This because there's a lot of a lot of things things that help you getting started understanding and this this is actually very simple I understood most of the things over there. So I think most of you will as well Hi Actually just a comment to that one I think I my understanding is that some screen readers don't read the title attribute at all So that's one reason not to use it. But my question My understanding was that for the triple a it's really not even meant You're not really expected or meant to have a site that Is triple a in every respect that it's more kind of meant my at least that's what I Thought is that it's sort of meant for specific areas that you might have a Double a website overall, but then you'd have like some specific sections that of for some specific group it might Be triple a but but I don't think There it you're expected to even try to reach that level Yeah, so just by the way was the that The directive is it's is it double a or is it specified what accessible means in in that directive? It actually specifies that the services must be at the double a level So so you're correct in the fact that the triple a is very specific to different kinds of function For example, if you have a video you have to have I don't know what's cuba tulik cause in the English But but you have to have like an audio description of the video itself not just That's the sound in it, but this is one of the things in the triple a and it's kind of Not even like reasonable to do that for everything like like if you imagine that you had to make a service service like like we have For example companies like dream broker that they would have to provide Tools to everyone through to be able to describe a video But you're incorrect in that you're correcting that the double a level is kind of the standard So that's where you have to get and after that the triple a is only like bonus We have a question upstairs. All right. It's the microphone away green.  Could you clarify what is okay like a regular spinner? Yeah Using kind of moving images is the thing you can use Small animations like like you can use a small spinner of this But like big animations that take over all the screen might might be like you can imagine getting like sea sickness When it when you watch what something like that? So if you have a little slow load animation, that's fine But having like a swoosh all over the screen might induce nausea Yeah, parallax crawling is another one too. I actually get nausea from it anyway, even then being disabled Did we have any more questions? Okay, well, I guess Thank you, and we'll have our next speaker


Hi Freedom Family, we have our very first game, live on the iOS and Android app stores, the Clot Thickens. Just search for Clot Thickens on your phone to download it. It has over 200 levels to challenge even the best of gamer, and the point of the game is to infect the human body. You play the bad guy, the bacteria that's trying to circle all the cells, and infect all the body. In the future, you will be able to create your own body. I will have the body of George that I will challenge all of you to infect. We have our own level designer, and that's something coming soon. I would love to hear your thoughts on this game. Tell me down there in the comments below and send links to any videos you make about the game. I'd love to hear what you think. This is the first of many games by MGM Studios, powered by Freedom, the game development division of freedom. Big shout out to Dave Frackia and the entire MGM Studios team for releasing this polished game. It took over a year, I promise the next game won't take a year, and we are going to create many enhancements and improvements to this game based on what you tell us. Tell me down there in the comments below. And now, let's see how I do playing this game. I'm using a tool called Moby's Zen, if there's a better tool, let me know to capture my Android screen. And let's see how I do. Roll it George! Hi Freedom Family! Here I am in the game, the Cloth Thickens on my phone. Meet me is my computer where I am editing my Cloth Thickens video, and I want to start by showing you this game just to help you get a sense for what to expect if you play it. The first level is very simple, it introduces you to the only two things you can do, which is change direction and jump. And the goal of course is to circle all the cells and try to get the bubbles, there's also power ups that will help you solve the harder levels that I'm not going to choose right now, I'm going to save them. And you don't have to collect all the bubbles, each one is just a bonus for extra points. And I'll show you one of the harder levels. I got to about level 20, and as you play this game you will find it is getting a lot harder. So here is a level that has a different kind of cell, it shrinks as you circle it. As you can see I missed all the bubbles, and the goal for those who want to challenge themselves is to get every single bubble. Well let's keep going, let's try level 23. So here's another type of cell, and let's do a power up, let's do this first power up which helps me time my jump. So you can see that white cell has a defense mechanism, it becomes spiky, but I can jump on it when it's not spiky and as soon as it's circled it's no longer dangerous. So let's see if I can finish this level now. So I have to... Oh! I got caught by the spike just as it appeared. Let's try again. Alright, let's try not to get caught by the spike this time. Okay, the spike just went away, let's circle the cell quickly. And let's finish this one off, and we're on the last one. Okay. And we did it, yay, and it was much rejoicing. So the power ups you can get from the store. There is a store which you can use to get coins and additional power ups for money or you can just play the game and there's a little reward that you can get every so often that gives you the same rewards with no money. So just like most mobile games, we have a completely free to play mode where you don't have to pay a penny. You can just come back to the game in an hour or so and get more of these power ups.  When you run out of lives, you will be treated with the Flem Fairy who will give you 25 extra lives. Right now I have 23 lives, so I'm not short of any. And if you click on the little bacteria in the top left corner, I'll move myself here. You can also customize your bacteria, how you look. You can unlock different facial features or you can just click randomize which will make you look a little different. Let's see, who do I like? I like two eyes. Go with this guy, alright. And you can see I have accumulated 1400 coins which I can use to spend to buy any one of these power ups that will help me through the harder levels. Or I can buy a cough pack or an itch pack or I can just buy more coins. Now I'd like to get one of these where it shows me the direction of the jump, I'm going to buy that. So you see my coins now reduced by 50 because I paid 50 to get that power up. So that's the point of the game. There's also, if I move myself again, this thermometer which shows you how close you are to a special prize when you fill it up with all the bubbles, you will get something special. And there's also a reward and here I've claimed five daily login rewards, I'm going to collect it. It gives me 100 coins and these are other achievements I can do in the future. So come on guys, how far can you get? So actually I got to level 40 here. This is my last level that I'm stuck at. Let's try it one more time and see how I do. Let's not use a power up yet. Okay. So it has a lot of these antibody cells and these things that are moving around and it's very hard to time it to avoid, to avoid everything. Try again. Okay. Aye! I can't stay on that cell for too long. But the problem is it becomes a spike and throws me off. Try one more time and then, okay, all right guys, show me your gameplay videos. I would love to see how you do in the clot thickens and I'd love to see if anyone can actually beat the game. All right, freedom family, who am I? I am your Papa George, your George Sunpai, your Obi-Wan George Nobi and many other names you the beautiful freedom family has given me. I am the CEO and founder of freedom for freedom and the freedom family on a mobile device. This is my first time I've ever made a video using my cell phone playing a game. Well next time, freedom family, Merry Christmas to everybody, Happy New Year and one of my New Year's resolutions is to make videos. I haven't made one in a long time but that will change, I promise. What are your New Year's resolutions? Tell me down there in the comments below. Oh, and we have a mission statement, did you know? Freedom is all about helping build your career in this digital world. Roll it! Games is something you will enjoy making with us and until the next episode, I'm George and you've been watching Who You Dreaming But Love. Click that I to partner with freedom and join the freedom family so we can all grow together. You get many perks like position music, you also get epidemic sound, a lot of other access to royalty free videos, sponsorships and many things to help you grow. Just click the links down there in the description below to get involved in our community, our forums, our Discord chat servers, meet our graphics team, meet our community team, all of that on Discord and the forums. What are you waiting for? Get started. And we will grow together as a family because this is the freedom family. You are part of it, we are all part of it and we're all growing together. To get more George, click that big F that will subscribe you to Freedom Central, home of the George show. And PewDiePie gave one of you, Freedom Family, a big shout out. Click that video to see the shout out and to see our new 3D sets for you and click that video to see what YouTube recommends you watch next.