All right, y'all I'm gonna get rolling here especially because I'm about to waste five minutes your time just kind of telling you about who I am So I'll just get rolling let people trickle in So everybody my name is Scott speckard I'm here today to talk to you about accessibility most specifically triple a compliance in the you know in the realm of wiccag or Wiccag or WCAG or whatever your poison heard about 12 different ways this this conference So you know no judgment here, but wiccag for today And yeah, we're gonna talk about how to navigate them We're gonna talk about science the art of it all and kind of everything in between so that further ado As promised a little bit myself and a vertically stretched star because I'm bad at PowerPoint But again, my name is Scott speckard and just again a little bit about me I am the director of accessibility and quality at tody creative, which is a full service creative agency in the Washington DC area And a couple of quick things before I start because I'm sure I'm gonna forget the end first and foremost big Thank you to the entire Drupal con team an incredible event as always my first one in a couple of years in person Especially so y'all put on an amazing event. We know this stuff doesn't happen overnight by itself so really appreciate you and More importantly, I kind of have a funny note there at the bottom I know I'm not a lawyer nor am I doctor and I would like to say that because a lot of what we talk about today is around neurodivergence and all types of the four forms of different abilities and disabilities And of course, I just want to make sure that y'all know. I am not a doctor or I've been trained Everything today is kind of my experience and how I've seen it in my expert opinion I'm throughout years and almost 15 years of experience and accessibility and I'm not a lawyer I'm also going to talk a little bit about rule of law, especially the United States So bear with me but always double-check with your legal counsel before you take anything I say to heart, which is just a general rule and So here's just a quick view of our office again We are in DC and I usually like kind of like to start with you know, just kind of a quick You know resume if you will, you know, it's hard when you hear see what's going up there You never met before, you know, who are they to tell me what accessibility is all about So again, we are a full-service little agency. We do everything at Toyota from brand work from strategy to development and UX design and of course our bread and butter is Drupal development So a lot of what we do is centered around Drupal what Drupal can do and what we can make out of Drupal Of course to make more accessible experiences And also I usually like to also mention that you know, one of my favorite parts these conferences is meeting people from all over the world They're from walks of life And so I've really had a great pleasure talking to a lot of you all throughout the week about accessibility and kind of how you all handle it At your agencies and in your kind of shops So again, I'm Scott Spector. I come from Toyota. I like spinach omelettes formula one and public speaking which is great So let's jump into it triple-a compliance. It is scary stuff.  What exactly does triple-a compliance mean? And what is the science of that? How do you do it as a developer? How do you do it from a technical scoping and everything before it hits devs hands kind of perspective? But also how do you balance that with your design teams and not just your visual design but your user experience and everything kind of in between and Then I'm going to kind of show you a couple of examples of how we've executed at Toyota over from last couple years on triple-a Compliance and then I'm going to do something funny and I'm going to try and talk you out of building something with that as triple-a compliant And again, these are my experiences. These are my opinions Please take them with that grain of salt But that is what I am going to try and do today and last but not least I'm going to try and give you a holistic view of exactly how these projects work and how the intricacies are a little different from other Projects you might be working on from a project and account management perspective And also what I'm going to do is try and stay within time, but that will not work So I didn't put it on here because my manager expectations The first and foremost some ground rules and then I promise we're actually going to get into it I want to try and keep this an open format. I appreciate you all coming I know it's the end of the conference and it's not easy to stick around for these last final sessions But I always like to keep these in open format, you know ask questions as I go I've got the lights on my eyes, so I might not see you so feel free just to shout at me But most importantly if you do have a question or a comment it must begin with a compliment about Scott myself Or I will not answer your question Again, I'm not a lawyer nor am I a doctor for the next 45 minutes or so This is the safest place on earth accessibility is a tough subject to talk about sometimes especially in today's climate You know you're you try and you know kind of walk on eggshells a little bit about certain terminology and how you approach situations I want you to know that whether the terminology is disabled differently able you know divergent This is the safe space. We are all here to learn can't do it here, especially at Drupalcon When can we do it? So again, feel free. It's an open and safe space for the next 45 minutes. So All right, so rooting the conversation and rules So rooting the conversation rules wick hag is a finite set of rules Which means we can conquer it in some way shape or form And so I want to talk a little bit about how we've done that from the science perspective again breaking up the science And the art just a little bit here And once we understand those rules we can control them and we can build Experiences and we can do it develop modules and contribute back to the community to kind of conquer this goal Which is you know the rule wick hag to not let it kind of dictate what you do But you know work around it within the realm that you're trying to accomplish So let's jump into it For those of you who are mildly or are not you know super familiar with the cag I kind of want to just to do a very brief overview exactly How this all kind of works together as it is there's a lot of moving parts here So first and foremost You know wick hag is not the end all be all it's actually you know the fourth thing down from a very long line of experts that really focus on Accessibility so if you've heard a wick hag What it starts with is w3c, which I'm sure all of us here have heard of w3c in one form or another and after And not underneath w3c is the web accessibility initiative wai, which I'm sure maybe some of us has heard of And then of course wc ag the web content accessibility guidelines And these are kind of what we all imagine and what we all strive for when we build it when we build or design compliance systems So how does this all kind of you know loop in together? And for today, I'm going to not focus on the different levels the 2.0 the 2.1 the 2.2 or potentially 3.0 coming out I'm more than happy to field any questions on those But I'm just not gonna focus on I'm gonna mostly focus on a double a and triple a criteria across all those today And so for those who are you know the uninitiated the a is more or less the basics You know, we typically find this when devs fall into it by accident, right? They're just really great developers that are their syntax is impeccable that they can develop You know within an engine within a pixel of spec, but they aren't you know, they weren't doing it intentionally Typically we find those to be you know single a compliance sites, you know the bare minimum Double a compliance is the gold standard.  We are here to talk about today And I will warn you again I'm gonna come come back to this at some point and try and talk you out of it because even the WCAG even the WAI initiative does not believe triple a is possible again I took this quote there at the bottom and I'm gonna read it off for those Who might be seeing the recording it they say in their own criteria that it is not recommended that level triple a Conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all level triple a success criteria for some content Now think about that even the people that created this thing believes that is unreachable So we've already kind of set the stage here for what potentially is an unreachable goal here But I promise more to come I'm gonna hopefully alleviate some of that That burn there and talk a little bit of how we could do it But again, I just want to set the stage that you know when you jump into these triple a compliant projects It's not always that straightforward And when we talk about compliance and we talk about accessibility in general, you know again for those who are well Both established and have worked on accessibility projects before you know when you typically get feedback back in any way shape or form It's in one of these four different categories. So whether you're a builder a tester Someone in sales, you know, you always focus typically on these four items Pognitive auditory physical and visual Pognitive and I'm sorry and everything there is on a spectrum, right? You know that the science behind the spectrum has balloon over the past You know decade of defining what the spectrum is in all shapes and walks of life, especially the medical field But when it comes to accessibility, it's extremely powerful to think of all these things as a spectrum Again, I'm gonna get back to this a little bit when you think of cognitive It can be as mild as something like ADD or ADHD something more a little bit more debilitating like PTSD or dementia or Alzheimer's And auditory, you know, there's two main different types of audit of auditory hearing disabilities or divergence if you will And I'm not gonna remember their names. They're very scientific and I tried really hard before the session to remember them But no amount of acronyms will help me figure that one out. So there's two different kinds You know the kinds you typically hear after a rock concert the ringing in your ears and the other type of auditory Disabilities are typically the more dilling kind kind of you know, if you You know if you ever had swimmers here or if you'd stuck a few tip in too far like your doctor told you not to a hundred times You know, that is that build kind of hearing that them users sometimes experience It physical is the most interesting and candidly easily the hardest for me and my team to kind of usually wrap our heads around solutions Because they're so they're so wide and the spectrum is infinitely long for types of physical impairment Because you also introduce a second kind of level there. It's not just physical ability to use your your motor function Like I'm you know full use of your limbs, but it's also kind of dives into temporary versus permanent Right when you think of physical ones, it's easy to think of something like a broken arm And you know kind of how that affects your day-to-day So it's something you think about especially if you know if you're building up an emergency hospital website You know you want to kind of take this kind of things into consideration It really opens up the doors to a lot of different ways to solve problems Invisual of course, and that's probably the one that the most people in the entire world Are affected by of course you have things that kind of come in time like cataracts And you have things that you know partial blindness complete blindness or just you know reduced vision just like needing glasses for Kind of treatable vision if you will and again I want to re-emphasize the fact that all this lives on a spectrum of all different types of variety And I would be remiss not to mention the fact that it is good business I'm going to spend a lot of time today pulling on your heartstrings and telling you exactly why Accessibility is just the right thing to do, but if you take nothing away from this entire talk I want to show you this slide because easily the most powerful one. I will ever kind of great Even though I stole the data and none of it is actually original, but Important things to note here 26% of the entire US population Identifies with at least one form of disability that is sixty one point two million people if and which is about 42% of Adults 65 enough with one or more disabilities And then of course if you go to or more disabilities, you know that the number slowly goes down It really is doesn't isn't that as steep as you'd imagine most importantly those users that we're talking about have an expendable market income market market share of 490 billion dollars So for those of you who've been around and you know paying attention to accessibility will pass five years or so There's a developer a very intelligent engineer who did the math First he found that there was an issue on Chipotle's ordering when you go online you try and order a burrito of Chipotle's Online website or their app they form to check out was actually inaccessible The engineer did all good engineers do an over-engineered a solution to try and figure out how to fix it Once they fixed it He did the math and he's tried to figure out how much money to left on the table over the year and the number was Astronomical it was in the hundreds of millions and this is just because Chipotle no one could check out They couldn't finally put in their credit card number to get out So Chipotle figure this out they fixed obviously but over the course of five or six years when their platform was live They lost tons of money. So again when I talk about accessibility I focus on why it's the right thing to do I think everyone here can agree on that But a lot of these times I leave these sessions and people always ask how do I evangelize this internally? This slide kind of speaks for itself. You put this in front of anybody on your board any manager any CEO You say this is an unrealized market that we have not tapped into Let's jump in to figure out what compliance looks like that numbers It's gonna scare the hair the pigtails up anybody so keep that number in mind again This slide is extremely powerful for any project. I've kind of jumped into Finishing up the science part a little bit. I told you about the rules I told you about kind of the constraints the scaffolding that we live in as we are building accessible projects And I had a million of different examples again None of it original work for myself because I'm actually not the talented one I rely on my talented developers in that row over there to actually do the smart stuff But instead of examples, I'm just gonna kind of breeze through a lightening round of some things that we typically focus on here Using aria liberate and carefully I kind of this is a gray or between my last line this side aria is the buzzword nowadays when you're trying to evangelize a Subject internally or for a client use the word aria people get it people understand that that is you know What they perceive to be the standard an accessible markup? Obviously for those of us who've been around the block a little bit that is not entirely true You want to lean on html you want to lean on the native? Abilities of html to kind of drive accessibility for you and aria is a supplement of that aria is not the native tool That you should be using to build accessible experience in the front end Impactful and meaningful roles and labels this was extremely important if not just from a maintenance perspective I'm creating meaningful roles and labels making sure that the same things from a foreign standpoint are named the same things on a Chordians on everything are clear no one wants to see an accordion that is has a has a label that says ACRD 1 2 3 right it should be called accordion at the very most accordion dash 1 accordion dash 2 or Whatever kind of variety your teams think up, you know Maybe you win the lottery tomorrow Maybe then another dev has to pick this up blind make this clear and make this meaningful and you'll find infinite Savings across entire projects for the longevity that you're working on it design tabbing and reading order I'm gonna get in this a little bit So I'm gonna breeze through this one but make sure that tabbing and reading order is a UX project That's also in the dev perspective You want to make sure that while you're figuring out top-to-bottom left-to-right? How's that gonna work make sure your devs in the room make sure as a UX person is in there as well Basic informational tables every piece of user testing. I've ever done with users disabilities They've always said just you know when in doubt put it in a table Tables are the only thing that's really scaled with accessibility over the course of the web Obviously if you over engineer a table if you kind of try and create something custom It's gonna get a little bit hairy give me a little bit dicey But obviously we all love our seat getter We all love the tool the table tools that are allowed in it just use that when in doubt It's a great way for a system tech to kind of parse through content focus on multimedia Double a and triple a if you ever Google what is the difference between double a and triple a every site you find will say Double a and triple a the only difference is this multimedia kind of component pre-recorded caption making sure that you know There's an alternative transcript for any type of media any type of video That that goes on your site and that is extremely difficult What we found is that when you focus on that from the beginning and especially from the dev stage Kind of moving that up in the line of your discovery process when you focus on multimedia Everything kind of falls in around it once you kind of go down the road of having to figure out How are you gonna create captions?  It really starts to bring the life, you know, this user focused model that I'm gonna go over in a bit User experience and development already touched on accessibility tools I'm actually gonna show you a cool example of that in a second But if you've ever been to the new White House website, I mean you know those bottom left side the contrast tool the sharing links All those things are built in the website. I'm not talking about overlays. I am smart enough to not do that on the stage But building them in natively is acceptable and actually a component of triple a compliance that you could fail if you don't do yourself This is an interesting one and I'm not gonna get into it too much now, but it is it's tough, you know, there's a it's a It is isn't it, you know, there's a lot of different opinions on them People love their own assistive technology. They want to use that to modify the environment around them digitally But some people like the tools built in and handling again It's kind of just goes back to your client who you're building it for the people you're building it for and the types of disabilities They may or may not have Don't forget about zoom making sure your website works at 400% zoom is no easy task I do not envy you developers who have to try and figure that out Luckily, I'm not the person who has to do that again It's those guys who are much smarter than me and most importantly arrange for help when applicable User testing, you know anytime you read any article on the site about how to build How to build accessible experiences They say you must test with people that have the forms of disabilities you're trying to account for which is kind of a no-brainer But you know, I wanted to mention that here as it is You know, it's an extremely important part of the entire triple-a build process I mean as a developer, it's hard to sometimes remember that right you reach an end of a project You're waiting for your project manager to tell you what's next, but you know try and evangelize that within your team Right and this is more of a qualitative component of triple-a compliance just as much as quantitative So when you are building, you know, you reach the end you realize, you know The things are good, but you need to figure out and make sure to confirm that with the people just like you would normal user testing So work with your project managers your account managers your entire team and find a way to get people disabilities to actually use your content It is extremely eye-opening. There's this stuff You'll never think of until you actually see someone try and navigate with the system tech So now I talked a little bit about the science I'm gonna talk about the art and before I talked about how they all kind of come together because the art is Extremely important and it is easily as especially as a developer at the hardest part to kind of get buy into right So sorry, you know what I haven't done one of these live and a long time Already so the art of the matter here Accessible to the design planning is extremely important and I'm only gonna breeze over the design part But I do want to mention that it is probably the one of the hardest things to ask a designer to do to meet triple-a Contrast criteria and still make something beautiful We did a decent job on it a couple of times But for the most part again triple-a compliance with all the rules that conflict with each other make it really hard to build something That is not just black and white right and to go into your creative meetings and talk about how you sorry This doesn't pass triple-a compliance try something a little darker try something a little lighter So how do we conquer that? Accessibility has been a long unlearned past but you know with the support of the team We've really come a long way and here are just some quick takeaways from that Evangelizing accessibility is a team sport. I have had the unpleasant you know Responsibility activity over the many many years and time before that as being the person who comes to the room and says those things You know, it's sorry this contrast doesn't work This logical reading order isn't there when I bring this up on my iPhone and zoom into 400% I always see is white and I can't even do anything else So evangelizing it internally putting someone in charge of it making it just as important as anything else the CTAs Or any type of other affordance, you know, kind of working that into the process the beginning is extremely important And of course what goes along with that is practicing that active listening and relentless empathy. It is For lack of I would say it a little frustrating and again I'm hoping you guys return the favor and letting me be a little honest here It's extremely frustrating trying to you know comply with the triple-a compliant level in design In it, you know, that's it's not something anyone has an opinion on again It's a scaffolding. It's this rulebook that we're forced to kind of operate on every once in a while So trying just to kind of see where the designers are coming from trying to figure out what the devs hurdles are so you can help Conquer them together is extremely important And let the data light the path. I should have put this one on top is easily the most important one Triple-a compliance again circling back to one of those first slides It is extremely important for very specific sets of sites Again, you know an Alzheimer's research site that really you want to focus on that cognitive disability a lot You know some kind of motor impairment Organization, you know does advocacy for groups that are affected by it You want to do research first? So I was recently speaking at a conference and I'm a man who owns a a group of Religious temples in the DC area ask Scott, you know, how do I get this thing? You know, I got a board who's strapped for cash as it is and we can't fit I can't find a way to get that convince them to build an accessible experience to build an accessible website Build accessible schedules for temple on gatherings and such I mean no matter what I do I can't convince them to do it So the easiest answer I gave was just you know figure out the data pull your demographics Temples for me are the more straightforward ones and I you know because the generative the population is typically a little older, right?  You're the community at those are typically the older generation. It's 50 and up So going back.  I'm sure I'm gonna mess it up But going back to that business case slide, right? I can build I can show my boss I can show the CEO of the temple that you know 50% of our entire congregation needs has a need for this 50% of them can't even look at the schedules They just call up ahead. They bother Someone at the front desk every single time they want to see it. That's not right, right? And not only that but if we make our digital experience more welcoming that we can you know kind of dive into that audience You can collect more people for our community and you know You want to engage those users you want more you want more buy-in And the funny part is is typically on what I found in these user testing is when people when people disabilities have trouble accessing a site They'll just move on right? You know, there's no recourse for them. What are you gonna do? I'm you know see everybody can't get through actually some people do I'm not gonna talk about that But you know, it's really frustrating So if you create a digital ecosystem that people can access especially at something like temple where the users are all Very easy to kind of pinpoint and know exactly what they need Focus on that data focus on how long they stay there focus on their age focus on how old their kids are You know because that's typically how that user flow works So again, let the data light the path start with data and work your way back as the easiest way I can talk about design And creating a backlog of features or elements of note, you know, I want to mention this not you know I should have said probably kitchen sink right once you create accessible components, especially triple-a accessible components You want to kind of store that somewhere, right? You know, I've been to a couple sessions today about you know, I'm not today I'm over the conference about you know, repeatable libraries design components like that Create it save it move it to the side so that when you go do your next build just like we all do on every dead build I mean you have that component. You don't have to spend as much time rebuilding it I know that kind of sounds a little simplified But that is very true with an accessibility more so than most every dot every pixel every cta make sure you save it So you don't have to spend as much time there And then you can focus on where you'll drive the most value on the dev side recreating accordions that might not be totally Or again focusing on specific types again start small thinking opponents and work your way out If you're one of the people that like to build puzzles from the outside build the edges first You're gonna be mad at me for saying this but do your best at working small and then building yourself out and Executing the plan these are in in triple a criteria again I'm focusing on mostly the difference between what's different between double a triple a these are the areas need to pay the Most attention to typography. No, you know, I think actually comic sans might be accessible But I'd recommend against it But there's a lot of fonts, you know that that were really tight that are really bold that are really tight together that are inaccessible people that for people with dyslexia or people with visual impairment that cannot You know kind of make sense of these fonts that are just really beautiful to look at sometimes But for people with some certain that are you know diverging some sense it's really difficult So focus on typography contrast is more of a formula So I won't spend much time on that but make sure you kind of account for the newer upgraded You know level of conformance they're gonna ask you to meet for contrast menus menus are extremely important I want to an incredible session on yesterday about the new front-end theme and how they're trying to make on the Drupal Experience the menus a lot more accessible and menus are a big part of triple a compliance So review those as you are designing and of course building tables already talked about beautiful. Don't deviate too much Classic that ain't broke. Don't fix it kind of scenario maps Don't bother call it as re if you can get out of that project as soon as you can maps are incredibly difficult to make accessible They are the big unicorn of the dev and design world and how to make an accessible map I'm is truly difficult and can only I've only seen about one or two that I've really really loved So when it comes to maps, I typically can only try and find a kind of separate solution on an alternative way to Navigate a map or digest that content that is in that map and motion animation is the most important one I say this because in all of our user user testing Motion is the hardest thing for someone with almost every disability across this four I showed you anywhere on the spectrum to really figure out if you do not provide a pause button Especially if you have animating graphics that are kind of in your face when you jump on the page is really tough You know we can sometimes Through some of our work with arts foundations in the DC area for veterans You know we could be found and we've gotten feedback that you know This wasn't too jarring, but I've seen something like it that has induced a PTSD episode From any form of you know whether they're in the military that they had other forms of cognitive You know issues that they were trying to work through you know motion think of spinning globes think of you know beautiful graphics going down the page for those of us who are Lucky enough that we do not fall into that category of you know that potentially triggering something it looks beautiful But for almost everyone else it's really tough and it has serious consequences So when you execute this plan and you combine the science of the art think about stuff like that again as much as you can Get user real users testing now a really quick case study, and I'm looking at time, and I'm running a little hot So I'm going to try and fly through this a little bit This is an example of a triple-a compliance site that Teody has recently built I removed the client logo because it is still in its beta phase that we are hoping to launch soon as soon as it does I promise I will post it on my LinkedIn for the world to see so if you don't follow me yet on LinkedIn connect with me I'd love to chat, but also I promise I'll push this out when I can and I love this site because it is probably one of the Prat ones I'm most proud of that we found a way to combine the most beautiful art that we can with the science that is triple-a compliance And I'm more than happy to take any hecklers that want to try and poke holes in it in which case I will absolutely shovel the question over debris over there to answer smart for me But in that at the same time, you know, this is just beautiful design and beautiful science at play at the bottom left there You can see what I was talking about before there's native tools built into your website the share button the contrasts and the tech side That is a drum. That is a genuine triple-a compliance goal that you have to meet in order to be triple-a compliant But and they're really great, but again, they're a little controversial just like overlays right people want to use the tools That they are comfortable using like Jaws like a video like any other browser extension they use to kind of tackle You know tackle the web if they will so when they're approached with these types of tools sometimes confusing it sometimes actually confuses the software So pay attention to that but again talk to your users do not assume that triple-a compliance And creating one of these is exactly what you need to do because users first which I'm going to talk about in just a second But again, just a couple other humble brags about this beautiful site that we built I'm done And now I'm going to try and talk you out of triple-a compliance totally flippin the bill on y'all so why For anybody who's ever taken on triple-a compliant website I challenge you to say the first thing is why obviously don't be too over too skeptical have a conversation with them Ask them why for a lot of sometimes it is a very valid criteria to me, right? I focus mostly on medicine because that's a lot of that's a lot of where triple-a compliance comes into play for people That need it, you know again very specific user groups of elderly people of blind people of associations for people again Like this mentioned that have PTSD Primarily evaluate why always ask questions, but of course here first and This is one of my favorite ways to kind of tell this story and this is how and again This is one of my favorite examples. We've got a lot of great feedback from it for clients So feel free to steal it the easiest way to kind of talk clients Out of their own way right to make them start thinking about the user and not just some board member who said, you know You know crap all of our competitors are getting sued We need to make this thing as compliant as humanly possible. I went on Google I found triple-a compliance that hasn't looked successful.  And mrs. Chairman I think there's a different way to go about it So I like to kind of root the conversation into physical realm because again that makes things a little easier to comprehend now The year is 1989 I walk up to my front door and I see a doorknob the doorknob I've got I've got arms full of groceries right arms full of groceries I get to the front door and I see a doorknob and I try and you know jiggle it with money a little bit I kick it down and eventually I'm sweating and I finally get in the door eventually with some you know tricky elbow work Drop a bag a bag of eggs. I get yelled at by my partner.  No eggs were harmed in the making of this talk Now this is a very Human and easy way to kind of digest what this would accessibility work is right the in 1990 The ADA actually outlawed the doorknob because it is not an accessible solution again I just gave the example of you know groceries because that's one we can all understand But after the ADA outlawed doorknob, you know, you'll never walk into a new build and see doorknob You'll see door handles because they are arguably sorry objectively just the better design. They're better for everybody So that is exactly what we try and tell our clients when we start the conversation about triple a compliance We root the things and what actually matters and universal design and in focusing that on Situations that matter not just a compliance thing that I saw on Google now putting the user first I actually this I'm full disclosure I stole the slide a little bit from one of my good friends Gareth Ford Williams who worked at the BBC for a while and developed their accessibility program But this is something that really resonated when I talked to with it when I talked with him a couple of months ago And in the UK can't Lee their their accessibility programs are much less focused on the legal system America Unfortunately, almost all of our accessibility work is kind of revolves around who has been sued for what what have they not been sued for yet how can we find ways in for malicious litigation from you know, those law firms in New York just going after people But he had a really interesting view on it and this is again a really great component to kind of verbalize a subject Isn't you know building websites and building designs. It's not about compliance. We don't call it compliance experience design We also don't call it legal experience design, you know Imagine trying to go into a pitch and saying, you know, we've got the best legal experience design team in the world You know step right up. We're gonna do great. You're not gonna win that bit I don't care how cheap you are you're not gonna win that bit It's human experience design. That is why we are here So as soon as you can get them to agree that we're all here to build the best site for the best for the best group of users and Focus on humans a human experience design, you know, you're already you kind of won the conversation already You've got your foot in the door You're having a conversation about humans and the people that use your website So once you've done that you kind of move the conversation away from potentially arbitrary group of guidelines It's you know, let's build this for the people that are going to use it And this one is actually also extremely powerful and mostly applicable to the dev side and that you know We as devs are control of handling disability I know that sounds a little dramatic But the social model for disabilities are that you're in your impairment plus your environment equals your disability, right? You know, if you've you know, there's the great accessibility memes out there where you know It's a town full of all short people and that's just how the town has been for hundreds of years And then one tall person comes in the town and he says well, this this town isn't built for people with disabilities, right? It's it's the same conversation just in reverse, right? The environment itself was not accessible we as web creators or developers web designers have a responsibility To create environment that is accessible for all no matter what or who they are or what they how they navigate the web So again, if you focus on creating that environment you at least take that part of the equation You can make things accessible for all And now this is also kind of just a no add on to the one of the business slides I showed earlier, but I think it's really important and again I want to focus on this idea of Human-centered design huge user-centered design and not necessarily as motive compliance, but this also kind of skirts both So in this chart you can see and just reading out for the further courting here on the left is Text this is the number of people worldwide aged 80 and over will quadruple to 400 million by 2050 So for the first time in history there will be more people over the age of 65 and under the age of 14 So we are slowly but very surely inching towards a world where more people have disabilities And do not when they try and use the web now Can you imagine that as a different business case slide, right? How do you possibly? How do you ignore this as a business development person someone in charge of your finances? You're growing your team and building stuff you want to build it for the most people How could you possibly rationalize building more focused on the 14 and under crowd more than the 65? Before you know it you have got a target on accessibility You have a more refined set of requirements from both a double a and triple a and now we finally worked away out of triple a Compliance and back to a more human center And I'm reaching the end here I'm going to try and leave a little time for questions if I can but one of the other things that I find the Most powerful and this is candidly a little agnostic of what compliance level you're shooting for is this idea of training and workshop Creating this safe space, you know again that that element that I try to introduce the very beginning of this conversation About creating a safe space. I promise you there's nobody more uncomfortable in these conversations than your clients or people that have never heard of Accessibility before what I like to do and again this might not be the most popular pin And it's kind of make accessibility fun make the idea of learning about accessibility a you know a enjoyable Activity so much of accessibility people like me standing up on stages Telling you're a terrible person if you don't build accessible website Or if you do not build design accessible content or print material or anything in between But what I really like to do is take the walls down right trying to figure out you'll have a workshop with people You can see on the bottom left here The these couple of different slides about how we kind of work our way into the conversation color contrast Um, you know pull up a slide of some ridiculous color contrast the yellow a bright yellow on a white and say you know Which one is complying which one is not and work your way to some harder stuff talk about alt text I mean it's kind of disability one I actually really love because it really introduces this idea of Neurodivergence, which is arguably just the hardest one to build around so in this in this elephant This is a common you know psychological You know image if you will we're at the bottom you can't tell how many how many feet that this this elephant has It's an optical illusion Now take that's the intake that and step back a little bit This is a pure and perfect example of how someone who might have just suffered traumatic brain injury again I'm going to focus a little bit in the hospital just because it's the easy example to talk through But someone who just you know had some kind of traumatic brain injury now has to rewire their brain You know they don't always see things perfectly They see the stuff like this as much like done patients with dyslexia people who are you know just getting introduced to the concept Have trouble kind of trying to really fine-tune what they're looking at and so this is a great example of how that works And my favorite is this kind of screenshot of this zoom which I absolutely did not get their permission to put up on the screen here Is a really fun activity I do with some of these clients and this is a very common activity You can find it online and again if you reach out. I'm more than happy to provide you the link This basically it's a program that inverts your mouse So you have to try and trace the mouse and I'm sorry You have to try and trace the star with your mouse inverted so everything left I'm you know you move your left Pardon me move your mouse left the mouse goes right that's up it goes down if you're Nick Wilde you'll cheat and invert your mouse settings and your preferences Just kidding Nick didn't mean to call you out just kidding.  You can see we're laughing at each other You can see that we're having a great time kind of learning about the subject of accessibility We are in this meeting. We are trying to figure out exactly the best conformance level to me for the for this client You know we're talking about the different areas of the site We're kind of trying to put ourself in the shoes of people disabilities and how they navigate the web And can't really you know, I it's a tough again. It's this is a safe space It's a tough subject to laugh about right and I do not mean to not take the subject seriously Obviously, this is a subject that demands the attention deserves, but at the same time You know people react and people you know empathize with the time they laugh Definitely don't remember the slide I had two two slides ago I don't even remember the slide I had two times ago But they do remember the time they laugh with their entire team made fun of themselves and kind of learn what people are like And what how people with disabilities navigating so again, there's all different types of ways to do this I choose I chose this one because it's just you know, the easiest one to kind of laugh at each other at But something like this you know creating that safe space to work with your clients Otherwise, they're just gonna start barking at you saying things like we need triple-a compliance. We need double-a compliance Do you really let's talk about let's have a conversation. I'm gonna laugh at you for a bit. It's gonna be great All right, and Kind of bringing everything together here from a top from a top-down approach I really like just talking a few seconds about project and account management because what is development if not You know supported by an entire team, but it's creative if not supported by team So as a project manager and again just to be aware of I know Developing a perfect requirements for an unobtainable goal This is important to kind of save from the beginning Especially if you really are trying to focus on triple-a compliance, you know making sure that your team knows that this is safe space It's gonna be a tough one But we're all gonna fail a couple of times before we get this right because even the system itself is a little broken Digging in reality is not ambitions. Again, everything I just said for the past 10 minutes It's kind of going towards that goal making sure that you are talking about the reality of the situation You are a fortune 500 company. You probably do not need a triple-a compliant home page You know just to just to have it right there's areas where you can make sure our triple-a compliant The areas that have drive the most value for that certain user segment But you don't need full triple-a compliance again I'm more than happy to go toe-toe with anyone who disagrees and again I will shove them over the neck because he's better at arguing than I am But in any case put focus on where you can go on and where you should go hold back again Just that idea of focusing where you need to don't forget the rest of your audiences again a little controversial But one of the hardest things to do when you're building accessible experiences is remember that you are not just building for people Disabilities there's still 98% of the people in the world that want to enjoy themselves on their site It's not to say you should ignore the 2% not to say you should demote them in any way and their principle of enjoying the experience Everyone has a right to that that's kind of what the legislative system and its soul was built off of even though and practice Unfortunately hasn't really unfolded that way over the past couple years And most importantly introduce a bit of a new type of spectrum and if I challenge you all with anything today And I say this because I totally haven't figured out yet is to try and figure out how the spectrum will work for us as digital creators And in my initial slide when I talked about the considerations You saw a straight linear path there were there as I'm both then you know kind of going you know mild to moderate to severe types of Disabilities, that's not reality. That is not no and very few people again I'm not very few part of me most people when they have a disability they will have more than one disability It will be have ADD, but maybe they also have a physical impairment Maybe they are have severe you know kind of crippling and debilitating depression and also have something else all these things are linked together more than you know So how could you possibly measure it on a linear scale and have to kind of figure out where all these pieces meet? And again, I like the color wheel just the easiest way to describe it many different colors many different angles coming together to To a you know a central point and where they meet so along the way is kind of where you need to build So again, it's just this idea of user-centered design and not just something on a straight scale to a piece and board members Talk about it a lot any talk you any every single talk. I've been to this week about accessibility The idea of early and often comes up in all of them. So again talk about it as much as humanly possible And from an account management standpoint One of the most fun things I've had a Pleasure doing it to the past couple years is really getting clients involved in this and this isn't just with their website and saying You know Scott go get your Drupal team to go build us an accessible website We get to branch out a little bit, you know And again, we're very spoiled that we have our marketing and our all of our communications division on one roof But we've had a lot of fun with clients that really just want to be industry leaders If you're gonna spend all the money to be triple a compliant You might as well really get that ROI and what better way to do that and to push it forward in every single thing You do in your in your marketing advertisements make sure that some with a wheelchair just as much as Everybody else, you know audit your own work and make sure that you are accounting for all all people You know everything from any DI initiative you can think of in your work as an account manager Talk about your quarterly check-ins keep an eye on the legal precedents You know I at least once a month try and read through the big court cases coming through the system Because unfortunately again the reality of the situation right now is that we are a little reactive in America You have to kind of you know the requirements come after unfortunately some big lawsuit like the target one Or you know fiance between how can you possibly to fiance? So again early and often and try not to focus on their legal exposure But make sure you prepare them for it You know really quick way to lose a client is to pretend like there's no legal world out there that Especially if they're in Florida or California where the most cases kind of come through To not mention it. They're just gonna think you don't have the stuff But prepare them for it. You know again focused on the users focused on human-centered design But do not forget that they have real business needs as well and you should So as I'm wrapping up here if you take nothing else from the session start with a Y Don't aim for triple-a compliance with sake of it. Know your goals practice strategy to support them Celebrate the beauty of it and again this kind of goes back to evangelizing the subject from design in the UX team And some designers do struggle to reconcile aesthetic preferences with the constraints of an equitable web Good designers know that accessible design is beautiful going back to that doorknob door handle exam I'm going back to even the site. I showed you earlier. It's a beautiful site I'm whether it was triple a compliant double double a or single a compliant. That's just a beautiful site you know and and why can't that just be the way the whole internet, right and Also think beyond the web again go back to your project and account considerations It's very rarely if ever you know just about your website. It's about everything. It's about the newsletter you send out It's about you know your monthly announcements of being in a PDF that nobody can actually open or have any accessible continent I'm not going to talk about PDFs. I promise to everybody. I wouldn't But rooting your brand and that trust and equity again going back to that example where people will just leave your site If it's not accessible right making everything accessible tells people that this is a safe place to come if you Have some kind of divergence that you need that more accessibility markup to navigate the way and this sounds a little silly But you know there's there's a huge community out there You have a disability you will reach out to your from your community members your peers your colleagues and say you know This website is especially accessible. It's not just you know It doesn't just meet those poor principal perceivable operable understandable and readable or partner robust But it also has something else it has an e at then that e is for enjoyable Enjoyable is a real quantifiable statistic on every website So make sure you account for that and you and you talk about that in your brand you lean into it again Stanley speaking none of this stuff is all that cheap right and if you're building a triple a site You want to make sure you get the most ROI on it So don't just think of it a website think about everything in between Even the communications you put out make sure it's clear language plain language anyone can understand it And last but certainly not least establish a culture make it just as accessible I'm sorry make it just as important about logging your time at the end of the day Sorry, I hate logging my time. I don't want to talk to me make it as important to log your time at the end of the day make it a spot on all of your job ads make it a Specialization but also preach the idea. No, I always say I want you guys to work me out of the job You know get so good at accessibility that there's no longer one-point person You know Scott specter director of accessibility or just a team that all is incredible accessibility specialist So if you see that culture, it's not gonna happen overnight But over the course of a year maybe even a little less the find everyone's kind of really rallied around it It has their own acumen and accessibility of building in design and that is it folks Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate you joining me again, especially in the afternoon session on the last day Drupalcon so before I end any questions. I've got about two minutes All right, awesome. Well, thank you all so much for coming and have a great rest of your week


Thanks everybody for the opportunity today to talk about, I suppose our experience from CERTI from Federation University around grains related trial research. So I'd just like to acknowledge there's quite a few who have contributed to this work and I'll get to a few other pieces as I go. Just a preface to today's presentation. So as stated, work at the Centre for Research and Digital Innovation at Federation University. The presentation is largely based on what was a proposed data quality framework. So I'll work on this in 2017-2018. Elements of that have been implemented since with what we've been doing with online farm trials. So I'll explain a little bit more about that. But just also say that with those data quality improvements, there's been a lot of internal investigation and understanding the data. But also we have an expert advisory group which has representatives of the Australian grains industry, including the Grains Research and Development Corporation, GRDC. They've been really important in helping us and to say that it's a true collaboration and partnership between GRDC and CERTI. OFT started in 2013-14. So we've been working at it for a little while now. In terms of online farm trials purpose and thank John Rivers for this to help provide some guidance. OFT really is around providing enduring profitability for the Australian grains industry, especially growers. That's a key sentiment of GRDC and their reason for being. So it's around accelerating grower adoption of DNA trial findings. So by providing access to that supporting data and information, enacting as a resource for DNA investors and providers. So looking at some of those gaps, how the system can be used as a tool for gap analysis. So things like metadata assessments or meta-analysis on a particular agricultural issue or theme. Helping to connect growers with grower groups and other members of the agricultural industry. And thirdly, avoiding duplication of work. So there's a lot of grains trials research that has been done in Australia. So just a little bit of a caveat. So probably the views I'm going to express today are more from an online farm trial perspective and what we've found rather than the whole grains research space. It's an enormous space and probably allude to that a few times during the presentation. So it's just a little caveat there. In terms of grains research in Australia, there's a rich history. Over 150 years we've been putting in trials. But there's a lot of different organisations who have been undertaking that trial research. A lot of that stemmed originally with growers and government playing a role there pretty strongly. But we've seen more over the last sort of three to four decades grow groups who represent growers of like minds in particular regions or areas of Australia. Universities have played a really strong role in linking and especially around the research aspects of grains. But we also mindful there's a lot of corporate and commercial entities and private partners that are doing research trials and experiments. And lastly, we can't forget the growers. The growers are always doing experiments, even their own paddocks, strip trials, all of these different types of things to improve their yield. However, it's probably fair to say that a lot of trials remain in dark, undiscovered and lost to current and future generations. And one leading agronomist in New South Wales said a couple of years ago that we're effectively going through the third wave of repeating the same research trials. And that was in his career. So it just goes to show that potential duplication or repeating research is something to be mindful of. In terms of grains research trial out there, this was from an external audit back in 2017-18. Literally, there's millions of grain trials out there. But probably it'd be fair to say while some of the research findings are out there and more accessible, a lot of the data and underpinning information aren't necessarily there and easily used for other purposes. So quite a variety of different organisations have been undertaking research trials in Australia. In terms of what is online farm trials, it's had its beginnings in 2013-14, as alluded to at the start, with three initial contributors of trial research data into the system. The focus of the system was really to make trial data and information discoverable. That was bringing that research data and information out of the dark and into the lock, so findable and accessible to the grains community. And currently, there are over 80 contributing organisations to online farm trials with thousands of those trials publicly accessible and available in the one location. So the key drivers there in online farm trials is access, share, view, searching, referring to other data and comparing results. Just sort of some of the key functions of the system which I won't delve into. There's a lot of different grain and crop types in the system. So we have a lot of cereals, forages, oil seeds, pastures and pulses. So there's a lot of different grain production systems and crop types across Australia from Western Australia, across the southern areas of Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania and then up through the north in New South Wales and Queensland. And that just, the numbers here are a little bit outdated, but just gives you an idea of some of the number of trials that we have in OFT. When looking at some of the legacy data at the very start saying that we've been doing trials for 150 years, there's the ability to bring some of that data forward and look at how things have evolved through time. So this is an example published in the Victorian Agricultural Report for 1884, a research trial at Dookie. So where they're able to test 24 different wheat varieties and see how they performed in terms of yield. What we can do is take some of that information that's often captured in hard reports or potentially PDF documents, now bring that into the light, so to speak, and now use that data information to look at different trends and how varieties, breeding programs, etc. have changed through time. So this is just an example of taking that data from that particular report, bringing it into OFT and then enabling people to use that in a free and accessible manner. In terms of data quality advances in the platform over the last three and a half years, just quickly summarise these. What we've tried to focus on is increasing minimum mandatory fields for trial data sets for inclusion in the system. I suppose what's a little bit trickier is sometimes it's a bit of a balancing act because we've got such a diversity of contributing organisations from universities and highly resourced organisations through to smaller growth groups or potentially even individuals who don't necessarily have that level of administrative support and data type systems and management to help them to share some of this data and information. Other things are around trial statistical parameters and the design of particular trials. There's been a lot of evolution in that over the last 80 to 90 years. So we looked at things to enable people to do searches and filters on things like whether the trial is replicated, randomised or blocked. You've always balanced in the acts around dealing with legacy trials, but also trials that have been done in the past but also trials already in the system and the level of data entry with a completely populated for all these fields or where bits and pieces missing. And then you've got new trials where you're trying to maintain a base level of metadata and also data quality. The crop types which we've just briefly shown before, there's quite a diversity of trials with different crop types. So sometimes trials reported against one crop type, but in a matter of fact, there might have been numerous different crop types undertaken in that particular trial. So we've had to update that trial type. So there are what's called demonstration trials, which are sometimes strip trials or might be whole paddocks that growers or researchers look at yield or different crop behaviour. There's a lot more work around precision agriculture, which probably over the last three decades we've seen that become more uptaken by growers. And the main stage is experimental trials. A recent upgrade is looking at authorship and researcher IDs. So there we're looking at standardisation of researchers and linking that to orchard IDs and researcher IDs. Other parts is around trial warnings. So a lot of agronomic trials is potential risks, you know, climates or pests or all different things that can go wrong, put out the wrong chemicals. So we had to also include in the system trial warnings when things didn't go quite right. Just so then people who are using the trial and the data that's behind it know that there's other factors to consider. Some published trials in the system, so we're trying to work with contributing organisations to make as much of their trial data and information accessible. Been doing a lot of work on standardisation of measurement types. So a lot of different observations and measurements around grains and trials research. So we've been doing a lot of work there to consolidate and align those with standard vocabs. That's pieces we're looking at going forwards. And contributors, you know, about a particular report was published, but it might be in a grower group magazine or some other source, but actually the researchers were affiliated with a different organisation. So we've had to actually look at ways to make sure that people have permission to share and publish that information online. Just to also emphasise that there's been quite an evolution in trials. So this is just an example to actually say a lot more rigor in the statistical design and implementation of trials over the last three decades in particular. So what we're finding was that a lot of the legacy trials didn't quite have that level of detail and requirement, but that need is evolving. So we've had to implement new changes in terms of the tagging of trials with those key things around trial replication, randomisation and blocking. Standard sort of experimental design type features. And just to touch on, here's an example of where a trial is being tagged with an unusual adverse event just so that people are aware with the data that's in the system that it could be impacted in some capacity. In terms of trial data and information in the system, the main things that we tend to capture around project details, so some of what we're calling project metadata, we also capture information about the trial methods and how it was implemented, might be the types of machinery, how big was the particular trial in terms of its dimensions, whether it had a number of replicates, et cetera. Trial results, so often whether the particular data that was in that trial, the sort of summary results of that particular trial, whether that includes some key statistical parameters, but mainly around the measurements that I discussed earlier. In terms of soil data, we also access other soil data sources such as a soil landscape group of Australia. So we're able to have that as accessory information to accompany trials. Likewise with climate, what we access is some of the solo weather station data. So we're actually able to have climate data from nearest weather station, et cetera, depending upon where that trial is located. So that information can be accessed and help provide context to the trial for that particular year. The key thing also is around the trial report and attachments. So a lot of PDF, these are all PDF documents that are attached to the trial. And we also provide linkages for that particular trial and crop type and measurements, et cetera, to other GRDC final reports through their system. So that enables people using the system to link to those other resources. Another key part we've been focusing on is with GRDC support, is the terms of contributions. So really important around making sure that trial metadata, so its details about the trial was open. So GRDC has been really strong supporters about this freedom to operate. So trying to make better use of these trials and the data for future purposes. So what we've done as part of this is ask organisations to contribute their trials under fair terms. So those new terms and conditions are CC by 4. That's been a big change in the last 12 months. In terms of actually what was initially proposed in 2018, FOFT had sort of set out five ideals in terms of a workflow. So begun with the data quality framework at phase one to try and tease that out, look at a quality rating scheme, then apply that scheme to all the trials in OFT. The fourth bit was about supporting trial contributors to improve their data quality management. And lastly was about conveying to users how to use that ratings for their decisions and how the data can be provisioned. So a lot of it stems from some impact research that was done in 20s led by Angela Murphy in 2016. We're really flagged that trials without some sort of quality rating would often mean that people would assume that the trials were all according to the latest standardized scientific approaches and techniques and we know that's not the case. So there was those assumptions that were incorrect as a consequence and that everything was equally equal across the system, regardless of who did the trial and when it was done etc. So we needed an approach to provide a bit more transparency about trial data quality in the system. So the thoughts were around a data quality framework and GRDC actually really pushed this back in 2017 about enabling the sharing of information and data as a focus of Grains funded research across Australia. So the focus from that was about how do we increase those research outcomes and discoveries of improved data and how could we apply standards and protocols. Also I wanted to look at how we could support organizations to adapt to these latest applications and technology developments really with a longer term interoperability goal and then actually thinking also how do we adapt some of these data quality principles and perhaps they might be relevant to other parts of the Grains industry per se. And finally it's really about improved grower support so quality data from trials provides advisors and users of this data and information with better strategically better decisions and options. In terms of having to look at data quality aspects sort of went through literature and looked at all the different terms, phrases, definitions of what is data quality. So there was quite a few publications that had different elements of data quality and just was having a look at what things fit best in terms of what we were trying to achieve with online farm trials. So as an approach proposed approach we decided to run with ABS data quality framework mainly because it was at strong linkages with standards for assessing and reporting on statistics. That was a key part that drove it in that direction and that aligns with a lot of the research trials and experiments. But thinking also about how do you present that to users. So I really like the ALA approach to data quality to make it as simple as possible for users to understand and interpret. We're also very mindful low in the approach that the data and information has been contributed to the system by organisation. So how do we manage that in a way to preserve that but also make sure that we provide data in a harmonised and consistent manner. So the integrity of that contributed data was at the forefront of our thinking with that approach. In terms of quality assessment reporting we consider different ways, different techniques whether it was a questionnaire or tool. So you could use some form of self assessment which happens with a lot of different parts of our industries. And that could include a range of experts or tools to support that. We could use metrics which include filters around data quality. Talking about within, between records, tables etc. Or might be around system optimisation and reporting. Different potential approaches. So in terms of an approach that came up with, we looked at those seven data quality dimensions. And essentially worked out five potential questions for each dimension. So those dimensions were institutional environment, relevance, timeliness, accuracy, coherence, interpretability and accessibility. So in a nutshell came up with a total scoring scheme out of 35. So for each question it was a yes or no. Yes equals one, X equals zero. So the maximum score five for each five by seven. And as an example, institutional environment is one of those really tricky ones because of such a diversity of contributing organisations. Thinking about the yeses on the left with the contributor as an example. Does a contributed OFT publishing this data, are they the recognised custodian versus no. The contributor to OFT is not the data custodian. So just set out some questions to help with that appraisal of quality. And this is just an example for institutional environment. I won't show the other components, but just to give you a feel of the yes no type questions that was thinking about in the framework. And thinking about how you might present that. So here's an example of trial data quality statements. We have a lot of people want to know, call things around trial title or project who contributed it, aims and messages. They're key fields that people accessing OFT look for. And then having a data quality rating. And in this particular one, it came up with an overall rating of four. It's just an example. It's nothing definitive. And thinking about a range of different data quality tests. Again, this sort of links off some of the rationale and what's been set out with ALA about things passing or not passing or alerting potential users to issues with trials. And thinking even about also how you present that in a simplified form. So this is what was a proposed trial project record where you have a number of data quality tests. And based largely on the ALA example, where there's been two that have failed ADA portion 59 tick, etc. So and looking for other things that people, when they're, especially in grains trials research, things like trial classification and plot design, a common data interest in trials in OFT. And behind that is this range of data quality tests. So while we have a rating system, this is a range of data quality tests sitting behind it. So I think in total there was there was over 70 data quality tests that could be run. But this, as I said, this was proposed and thinking about how those data quality tests could be implemented within the system. And again, just just then how some of this information might be presented in a clean and curated form to users of trials. So just some finishing bits is thinking about next steps. The idea was to actually have take the theoretical to a technical implementation. While there are bits we have done with GRDC to improve OFT that being perhaps not the entire framework in its own right. One area we're looking at was active trial management. So what I mean by active trial management is helping to work with organizations conducting trials to have a lot of those data quality principles embedded at the very start before something is in the ground growing or they're looking for an effect of a particular thing. So the idea was to actually rather than looking at a cure was actually thinking, well, hang on. Let's actually get in on the ground floor and work with organizations before we have to do a lot of data wrangling. The key part also is around how we guide and support organizations given there's got such a diversity of skills in this space in data management. And we found this right across Australia through other projects and soil CRC other programs. That's a really big issue. But also conveying to users the benefits of a data quality framework is something that you still got to work on. In terms of experience and learning, there's a plethora of open access data relevant to agriculture and grains. And we're accessing some of that, but there's still a lot more that can be linked in. Understanding the terms and conditions is critical about contributing in data, how it's used. Not a lot of people, unfortunately, I think about the qualities of data. I think that's sort of an afterthought in the support of domain experts around the data wrangling, sharing metadata is something we're still working closely with CRC on it. And the services that come out from it. So that all those different components of data management, ownership, custodianship, sharing access, governance, metadata, licensing, quality, the complex issues. There's no straight highway to deal with that. It's always different for every organization and individuals operating in ag research data. And without, you know, with GRDC, I think, you know, it's fair to say that they recognize this isn't a straight solution, but they're really trying to support the industry through initiatives in statistics, data management and access. So great that they're here today. Yeah, just a question is a data quality solution is, is it the carrot or the stick? I'm not, I still don't know the answer to that. But we're really from an OFT and a 30 point of view and I think from a GRDC point of view, really focused on on making the data fair that's a real driver for us at the moment. So finish up there.


And from the Hyperledger community who's joining us today, it's great to be back this year again at the Global Forum and we're going to be talking about lessons from some of the leading, working with some of the both on some of the business and industry thoughts as well as technical learnings. Just moving to speaker introductions. Elyse, would you like to kick it off and let everyone about? Yeah, sure. So I am the VP of Product Engineering over at Consensus Health. I used to work for Consensus prior to that. I've been building software with lots of cool, amazing people for the past 20 years and but am educated as a molecular biologist, so did that for some time as well. And my crossover into technology was, you know, it was apropos that I would end up in health care in the life sciences, I guess, and yeah, so super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yep, thanks. We're really excited to have you on the panel with us, Elyse. Steve? Hello, everyone. Steve Servany. Along with Sophia, I'm a co-founder of Kaleido. Kaleido is a technology company that specializes on blockchain solutions. So while we're here to talk about health care today, Kaleido is a cross-industry solution. It's a SaaS that's focused on helping to simplify the journey for enterprises who are looking to adopt and build decentralized applications and set up their own consortium or business network. So really looking forward to diving into some lessons learned in the health care space and to talk about maybe what we see, some new opportunities that are coming down the road as well later on in the session. Thanks, Steve. I guess one thing I'll add is that Steve and I have been working together in enterprise blockchain space for the last six years ever since really the beginning of enterprise blockchain and we're active in the initial launching of Hyperledger and launch industries first. Blockchain is serviced together and it works with hundreds of clients. So there's certainly a lot of learnings that have been distilled from the first generation of blockchain networks. And now as the industries move forward and adopted, those are really excited to be helping drive really a second evolution or generation of these projects. So in terms of what we'd like to cover today, health care is an industry. There's really a lot of areas where blockchain can solve some age-old problems and pain points with friction and cost of intermediaries. The holy grail in blockchain is interoperability and that can mean different things for different people. But when you're looking at shared data, shared application logic between parties, whether that's public, can be more public data or the most sensitive data that exists, there's been a lot of work in the space over the past half decade seeing how blockchain can help. But the core, similar to other industries, there's a fragmentation of systems or siloed systems and the ability to bring multiple parties together around a common view of the data to provide better outcomes, better client experiences. In health care space, we often talk about bringing together the payers, the providers, the employers, and the patients. So as the networks we're working with are really looking to reimagine health care and life science solutions using blockchain, what has that been looking like? So we'll get into that a bit. And then really spending a majority of the time on industry best practices, lessons learned, looking at technology, solution architectures, usability management and operation. And in terms of outcomes, I think really one interesting thing with COVID over the last years has been the acceleration of digital transformation efforts using these decentralized technologies, moving to the cloud and replatforming as well as launching brand new systems. So with that, I'll pass it over to Elix who'd like to take us through this survey. Yeah, so I'm like, is it a survey, what's happening? Let's get started. A lot of names on it, some of the really big names. It's most important that this, I think the talk has lots to do with consortiums as well and what does that even mean and why do we bring all of these big giants together. But we have consensus health and applied as well, we've helped with many different consortiums. You know, when we have a technology like blockchain, we have to ask ourselves, okay, why are we even using blockchain half of these times and, you know, fundamentally, I'm just happy that an emerging nascent technology and that's so much further along and even in healthcare than people realize is forcing like that reimagination of, you know, industries that are otherwise, you know, a little complacent or have been dormant and are really just jumping into innovation and I'm proud of movement amongst these consortiums that are listed here, particularly the work that they are doing in that patient-provider-payer relationship and how we make that end-user experience better, you know, when we institute a blockchain solution typically, at the core is that trust layer that is missing between these systems and we talk about interoperability, again, as Sophia alluded, it is different for everyone and in what that term means, I always question interoperability amongst many blockchains, many systems that have anything to do with, you know, the system, the blockchain at all. It is this trust layer that we can gather these insights and for good reason the consortiums and the partners that we've had along the way, like the cryptography involved with securing something to the blockchain, everyone feels very confident that, hey, if we share this information, it's going to be safe, if we share this information, it's immutable, can we please centralize everything, unfortunately, so we centralize all this data in order to decentralize it later and this is just the piece step-wise way this gets done.  Eventually, the end goal is, at least for the clients that I've worked with, is that there is this self-sovereignty of our healthcare, like digital blueprint, for lack of a better word off the top of my head, so the sense that the goal is the self-sovereign piece and that we will have the ownership of that healthcare data, who sees it, who uses it, then you get into topics that are like, because I'm sharing this data, I'm receiving some kind of benefit or reward and that leads us into the use cases beyond digital identity management, but into the clinical trials matching, clinical trials have difficulty with recruitment and retention, so we're now using this consortium and this shared data to glean results and compute, which a lot of people refer to as federated learnings or federated analytics. So as far as that goes, the other use cases in our industry in healthcare and life sciences are also around just like that fraud prevention for insurance and due to the verifiable credentials and the decentralized way in which somebody can control their own healthcare data at the end of the day. As far as this slide goes, we talk a lot about how we have these data lakes and then we have these data warehouses and what we're moving towards again by evolving and bringing together these giants and these consortiums and sharing each other's systems because this is a deal like what takes so long in the healthcare transaction is just the fact that some administrative person has to run over to their system and go okay let me tell you if in my system what you said is true and then you can go get your medication or then you can go have your service with your healthcare provider. If we could immediately make that decision on their behalf because we're sharing that information and there isn't that additional administrative payload we can have on-prem, on-demand availability for our end user which is the patient specifically in the healthcare industry. So due to all of that we're trying to evolve these data sets into these derived insights and this derived language of what that blueprint is and mapping to their payer and provider relationships and those payer and provider relationships as they join you know systems and consortiums they are able to better share and better better to accommodate and alleviate those pain points that the patient's going through. These are these are oftentimes very sick people this is oftentimes people that are you know caring for someone's healthcare journey on their behalf and have a guardian or an advocate of some sort so you know for all of us to come together and to alleviate some of these pain points is a tremendous effort and it's going to be good for all of us at the end of the day. So some other use cases that we see you could advance to the next slide. Thank you Sophia. What are these slides? I think there's maybe some stuff missing in here but that's okay. So there you know the other use cases that we see as well is you know the supply chain management where we're talking about medical supplies and pharma and you know track and trace methodologies that blockchain so cleverly employs and and everyone you know tends to appreciate you know when we when we look at blockchain really obvious areas of focus and vertices are you know financial services and then another obvious area of focus is to me has always been healthcare because that's where you know we have the need for an individual to be able to control that information and we have a need for them to be the one that validates that information that's been collected against them. In the use cases of clinical trials matching depending on like the therapeutic area of discussion you know having that distributed thought process of inclusivity of who gets to participate in those clinical trials but also knowing that it's it's crazy because when I entered this industry I just assumed I mean I assumed so many things but the persons getting the benefit of that participation and getting the reward and whatever tokenized way you want to do that you know that is something that we're trying to elevate in like clinical trials and I know pharma ledger I'm sorry DTRA which is like a decentralized trials and research alliance they're you know doing a lot of great work there we have an opportunity to build that space to where if you are participating in that clinical trial you are you know motivated to share your health data to share your journey and we can better you know the outcomes on the other side same with pharma ledger as I was about to mention you know they want to develop things like personalized medicines and you know in order to entrust that my either it's my genomic data or my healthcare blueprint is synthesized adequately what we commonly do is we compare contrasts that against other other healthcare data sets like mine be it from a genetic genetic basis be it from a therapeutic basis be it from you know just a symptoms basis you know there's there's all kinds of beautiful ways that we can we can involve that personalized medication and and catering to the human involved and not to general pop so I think I think this slide or there was a slide I know this is bananas I think what's happening up there um no I mean I don't see like some of the little things but I think then the day like that the the slide is saying it isn't blockchain exclusively is not what solves all these problems but it is that public private nested blockchain combo loco as we say in Texas it's it's going to be the you know it's going to be a lot of things and it's and it isn't you know sufficient on its own um so we've been working you know again that interoperability work word comes back up over and over again but you know blockchain is just is just one piece to this much larger puzzle especially when integrating healthcare systems and um over here to the side in that brilliant bubble of a venn diagram just to give it some flavor because I don't know if you can see it you know it's just those chronic pain points and reiteration is you know cybersecurity privacy identity um compliance and my most important favorite one there is the bioethics of all this all so yeah so that is kind of where consensus health is seeing the industry the use cases involved and I do want to close it out there because I believe we have a lot more from collido and their brilliant knowledge of hyper ledger and the other protocols of blockchain yeah all right um I was just trying to get back to present mode didn't realize the slide was a build I thought there were some issues with uh just images so oh thanks the leaks um so I guess one interesting thing about as you mentioned really what is a blockchain consortia some clients will start our companies will start with an internal project in their own company but then as these projects mature you know they bring in the business relationships that exist in their industry and it can often be you know a co-operative situation so you have you know pay to be efficient around claims or certain types of data sets and so it makes and then they're working ecosystem with the the providers and others so privacy is really important because they want to share needed for the use case but they also need to keep private um you know what's important for them as a business and confidential um so you really enter a lot of interesting situations in in healthcare and life sciences as you know one insight we've seen working you know half decade in this space is that the blockchain layer itself is only 5 to 10 percent of the solution um there there's typically over you know 40 or so components across um the different off-chain layers the decentralized tech and when you're looking at the application apps in middleware and and looking to solve you know different problems and provide different functionalities across those layers so I think in the of enterprise IT is that companies need to privately exchange documents um but you know there's a mismatch that happens the applications are talking to each other so in order to actually get to a successful solution you know how can you do this and build these solutions in a cost effective you know enterprise production grade manner um so what what you're really looking at with the enterprise blockchain solution is blockchain is the beating heart of that and you can you can see that here you know there's the data layers that people often look at you're looking at the transactions and elix mentioned some privacy considerations sending events you know out out and consuming them with other you know back end systems and vice versa and then of course the middle and application tiers as well as thinking about business operations and DevOps for for this whole consortium with the decentralized parties collido is really built to approach um these these problems with the a solution that takes the perspective of the network operator of the consortia and making these business networks radically simple for for the enterprise so enterprise grade and we've been as Steve mentioned working across industries worldwide what's really important for these consortia as they scale and grow is they need to have lots of flexibility and choice so depending on the use case um you know they may start on one blockchain protocol and move to another as they see where they're getting the best tradeoffs between performance and scale and security privacy um and then as they're onboarding new members in their network they typically start with maybe five or six participants across cloud multi region and hybrid deployments as well we offer consortia as a service for health care and life sciences and you can see users and admin perspectives a lot of rich analytics monitoring you can see what's happening across the consortia of health of the network as well as drill down on your own resources um that that you align a site to invisibility to to manage those I think another you know learning from a network operator you really need to look at this as a decentralized multi-party platform and think about the control where and needs to be completely decentralized and then the members have private isolated instances their own of their own resources as I mentioned we really you know phytos built for this in mind and if you look at blockchain as the core you know there's a variety you know 40 different plug and play services across b2b collaboration apps and integration digital assets key management and more that come into play to be able to rapidly assemble these sorts of solutions and we do have a very deep commitment to open source I think this is a good segue to transition to Steve's portion if you'd like to take it from here yeah that yeah Sophia um while you were just mentioning a minute ago really the the full stack problem of building a decentralized solution um you know and there are open source uh hyper ledger is is obviously leading the way there are open source communities focusing on different layers of that problem so as collido we think about the the full stack of the problem I know consensus health does as well we're involved in many of these communities from the protocol layers at the bottom you know through to off-chain pieces like chain link and ipfs and others you know standards bodies things like tokens um as well and I want to spend just a couple of minutes to let you know about an exciting new project called firefly that was it was just announced earlier this week with the hyper ledger global forum here and if you think about that that full stack problem we we see a gap there there's there's been a gap in some of the off-chain plumbing layers that Sophia was talking about a minute ago that are really important in in highly regulated industries like the healthcare industry where you know a lot of those consortia that elix was talking about earlier you know would choose to implement their data flows off-chain but there are just too many concerns uh you know around the fact that on-chain data is there forever the ability to update that data not just not just remove the data if needed that that alone is enough um you know any leakage to to parties you know unintended each blockchain protocol works differently but there are you know considerations and trade-offs there um you know in in in performance as well so so many of these healthcare use cases need high throughput or low latency uh and so for a variety of reasons those those data flows are often built off-chain um and that could mean for you in the past that has meant for you um you know just a lot of work and plumbing and trying to reinvent the wheel and build those plumbing layers over again and firefly is you know the the first open-source multi-party system you may have heard that that term in the industry before but you sort of define that as um you know a larger system that's powered by blockchain so there's still a blockchain running in the core providing you know the core value that blockchain does global ordering finality um and shared shared source of truth the all those sorts of things that blockchains great at doing um there are just a set of other infrastructure run times that are in the firefly node um that take all that common plumbing off off your hands so if you sort of zoom into a firefly node just to give you a quick sense of some of those other technologies um things like private off-chain messaging or exchanging a document between two parties within a network uh how do you do that reliably you know chunk it up a symmetric encryption pkcs seven encryption deliver that across a pipe reassemble it on the other end with pin proofs along the way um using the blockchain for example to to guarantee that the document is the original document um and and so those sorts of of technologies are just there they're just in the box or really encourage you to to check it out we found that um as many as 90 percent of the use cases looking even more broadly across industries have some of these sets of of needs uh and then sitting there at at the core is this very simple api that just comes up um and and you can code your your applications um with with very simple apis to just make those calls uh so if you if you move on to the next slide um so so i mentioned that that blockchain is in the box with firefly again this is this is a new project that was announced it's it's part of hyper ledger um the larger hyper ledger uh community um it it there is a support for the big three enterprise protocols so ethereum variants like hyper ledger basu um as well as hyper ledger fabric which is coming uh and in corda as well if you want to learn more about firefly there is an entire uh half day event uh going on tomorrow friday um it's um it it's if you want to sign up you can see the schedule there at that url will also put into the chat there there is a link directly through the the hyper ledger form that you can get to this it's what's called a co-located event so sort of part of the larger conference but it's it's dedicated as a launch event to firefly so it's a very exciting project that hopefully that's just a few minutes on it but we think it's going to be really important with the idea of these multi-party systems as a as a larger platform that for especially for industries like like the healthcare industry where um you know the data is is almost always sensitive just like Alix is talking about there are other systems that you need to connect to you're thinking about ai um big data you know iot type systems all sorts of other considerations that that you may want to think about so so with that i'll turn it back maybe to sofia who who can help uh wrap us up in the last couple minutes yeah yeah thank you steve um so just wanted to have extend a big thanks to elix for joining us and talking about a consensus health and your perspective on blockchain and healthcare and life sciences thank you steve and thanks everyone who joined the session i hope you have a great rest of the conference day today and feel free to reach out um to steve and myself with with any questions and elix as well um post the session thank you everybody