This is not the formal opening of the meeting, as Lindy just pointed out. This is budget training. The formal opening will come after budget training. So please consider this the informal welcome. And with gratitude to all who are here. And in particular to Lori and Brian, who I guess will be chief among those who will be leading us through the budget training. So should I turn it over to you, Brian? Yes, and I don't want to, I'm not going to believe the point, but this is really, I'm going to turn this over to Lori. Lori is our business administrator and we've been talking about this budget training a lot over the last few days. So without further ado, Lori. So I'm on page four of the budget packet. This training has typically been focused on how tax rates are calculated and how the budget process kind of comes all together. So I hope that's what everybody came here for. It's on page four is a one page summary that was developed a few years ago with feedback from the board at the time. If this training needs a little bit more improvement, I'm happy to take feedback at the end. But we're really here today to talk about the budget process and how it implicates the tax rates in the towns. So everybody on page four. Okay, so the budget process has several components. The first component is the budgeted expenditures in the general fund. And so what I gave you on this document was the final numbers after last year's budget process. And after town meeting. Yes, Scott.  I'm not sure if everybody who is here actually has access to page four. Is it possible, maybe while you're talking, if someone in the meantime could put up could share a screen showing that page. Does Jim have authority to do that Brian. I do and I'm actually going to pull it up right now. I was trying to figure out who would have the permissions to be back. No problem. It'll take 15 seconds. I'll have it up on the screen here. That's fine. No need to delay. Lori, go ahead. So last year, our budget was $35,430 and $502. So I'm going to just show you what's like at the top right here. Here it is. And it has an a beside it. Do you see that line. So that was the voter approved budget total. When we're calculating tax rates, that's a number that's really important and that number gets finalized so that we're prepared for town meeting. Usually it gets finalized by the first or second week in January. So right now we're in the initial stages of the budget process for this year, but I just wanted you to know that that number for this year wouldn't get finalized until early to mid January. The state has a formula for calculating tax rates and what it involves is subtracting off revenues that are related to the budget and those that are going to help reduce the tax rate. So I'm just going to describe the categories its interest income tuition from school districts and individuals. We have miscellaneous income other which includes things like the E rate reimbursements. And we have some miscellaneous state reimbursements like transportation aid drivers that we get a reimbursement for that, etc. Then there's special ed reimbursements for expenditures. So last year the total of all of those revenues that were in the budget was about 7.3 million. And I gave it the letter B. When you subtract the two numbers it comes up to a local education spending number which is a little over 28 million. So it's basically taking the A minus the B to come up with a local ed spending. That's the number that drives the tax rate. So those are the numbers that the board can control. You can control how much you budget for. You can control some of those budget items have revenues that offset them. But to this point that's pretty much the control that the board has in the tax rate and in the calculation process. The next line is the equalized pupils and what you need to know is that typically that's supposed to be finalized by December 15. Last year was a rare year that there was a software issue at the state level. And so it was until June that we finally received the final equalized pupils that were used in the tax rate. In the memo that I prepared. I gave you the details of the formula. So I just wanted to touch on some of the highlights on that formula. Just so you are aware of those and the formula takes a two year average of our district students. It doesn't count tuition students. The town who sends the tuition students gets to count those students. So it's again just the district students. It gives us some students a value for the number of state play students who come in to the district. Some of them come and go. So they take an actual from the prior year a single year and add that into that formula. They also give us some waiting. And so I was just going to describe what they give for waiting and why there's a state statute that identifies the waiting. So we get an extra point to or 20% for English as a second language students. We also receive some students in this value for poverty and that's a 25% formula. And then we have a reduction for preschool students preschool students are only attending for 10 hours a week. So the state has a reduction of 46% because they're not counted as a full student. When we get going on the state realize that high school waiting is 13% that it costs more to educate a high school student than elementary school students. So they take our high school students and increase them by 13%. And when you get all said and done, they realize we've added in what we call fake students to this formula. So at the end, there's a statewide reduction due to the fact that we want to come back to this total of the real students in this formula. So last year the state reduced by about 5%. It was they had us put in 94.931 as a reduction. So it's subtracting that equals 5% reduction. So that's how we come up to the 1440 students and it's very complicated. I have files a mile deep, but I was trying to abbreviate it so that you guys could better understand why this isn't really just a body count. It's an equalized pupil count. Again, the formula isn't state statue. If a school district in any year has the equalized pupils move downward of a significant amount. The most they have a whole harmless provision, which is a 5% window. So the least you could go down would be to 95% of that number that we're looking at right now, the 1440 for a single year. And then it could go down 5% each year, but if a school had a significant drop in enrollment. That's one way that the formula helps to protect the tax rate. Am I going too fast. I'm looking for nods. I can't really see everyone's face because of the screen share. Okay, thank you. So the other piece of the formula. It takes the $28 million local ed spending and it divides it by the equalized pupils. And that is the local spending per equalized pupil. So you can see that last year the final number for us was $19,531 per equalized pupil. The property yield is set by the legislature. They set this after this, just prior to the session ending and I think it was June. The number changed. We will receive a number for an estimate for next year on December 1. It's the letter from the tax commissioner. So last year, for example, it was about $10,700 when we received our letter and the legislature increased that value before they set the actual tax formula prior to the session ending. And it kind of babbled on. But anyway, so what you do is you divide the local spending per equalized pupil by that property yield. And it comes up with a spending increase that we're spending above that number by 77.59%. And that's G. And when you get all done that. I'm sorry, it's Joe. So let me just ask you a question. So it so what would make that spending adjustment that be at 100 and not be over it. What would have, what would have had to happen. We would have had to spend less in order for that to that adjustment to not be so off. We would have had to spend $10,998 per pupil. Instead of the 19 531. Okay, got it. Thank you. I appreciate the question. Does anyone else have a question before I move on. Okay. So that $177 is the equalized tax rate for the entire Washington Central Unified Union. And that tax rate would be the same in every town if they had a common level of appraisal of 100%. You might be aware that the common level of appraisal at every town changes. It's based on sales in the town through a formula. So what happens is every year in December we receive the common level of appraisal from the, I think it's the tax department, somebody, the property and evaluation department. And so I what I'm giving you here is the common level of appraisal that we received last December. So you will see that Berlin was appraised over 100% callus. East Montpelier and Middlesex are under 100% and Worcester is right around 100%. So the closer they are to 100% means the closer they are to that equalized tax rate. So what happens is any given year, the budget could be finished. And even if the budget was the same as the prior year, if the common level of appraisal changes, and if the property yield changes, then that could change the tax rate. And it's kind of like a moving part. So as we get moving along in the budget process, you'll see this sheet prepared. I plan to have it for the December 16 budget for this year. But what I wanted to show you was how last year ended, just so that you have that as a starting point. So you can see over to the right. I put in current. So what that 18,657 was is the local at spending per equalized pupil in the prior budget cycle. So you can see at Washington Central, our local at spending per equalized pupil went up 4.68% last year. Our property yield, you can see where that went up 3.29%. So the state, if we had increased by 3.29%, then we wouldn't have had a tax increase. That's another way to consider it. But our increase was greater.  It went up from $1.75 to I don't know if you see that on the right hand side. It went up by 2.4 cents. On average, if everyone was at 100% every town. So I'm kind of giving you a lot of data. I'm sure some of you may have questions after tonight and I'm happy to take an email or talk to you personally if you have a question. But I just wanted you to really understand kind of what happened last year. So you can see that down at the bottom, I was comparing the local impact on what happened with the budget. Berlin ended up with a not even a penny increase. Calis and East Montpelier had the largest increases of 4.2 and 5.5 cents. And Middlesex had a and Worcester had a reduction in their tax rate. So just kind of that's the summary of where I am and I'll pause and ask if anyone has questions right now about that. Gloria still again. So is this can I sum it up this way. So there's a complicated thing over which we have very little control which tells us how much revenue we're going to have. And then there's another formula over which we have no control that tells us how what we spend translates into a tax rate. And it's complicated as this all look how much we decide to spend is still the one factor we can control and the one factor that changes. Other changes what what the impact is on the people in the town. Thank you. That's very nicely put. I appreciate that. Okay, I know. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to be sure I was I was following like it. It's complicated. Yeah, and yet this is actually trying to make it simple. There's many, many files that make up this and I and I will explain one town when I get all done so that you can see it from a local level. But this seems to allude people over the years they really seem to need to understand. When we do the budget process what it is that we can control and what it is that we can't control and those items that we can't control when we're going to learn that information. Right. And I don't think I could have summarized it without that. So thank you very much. Okay, and they equalize pupils again we should have that December 15, the property yield, the first pass at that would be December 1. And the CLA would be around December 31. They usually lately have been getting it out before the holidays. So those are the three critical pieces of information that we will get during the month of December. So that's why doing the budget process early is helpful but it really doesn't bring it back to a tax rate until we get those critical documents. Lori, this is, Lori, this is Steve if I can interject one more thing. There's actually another thing that the school board doesn't have any control over. And that's the number of equalized pupils. True. You can you can market your town and get more students but the formula is still pretty much out of your control. So to the bottom of the page if Jim could just kind of scroll that up I would appreciate it. So oftentimes, there's another formula that the legislature has in statute and it's called the excess spending formula. And that is to encourage schools to not spend too much or if they do knowingly then they're going to have to pay taxes on a $2 for every dollar basis. And so what that means is if you're over the spending formula for the tax rate increase it might have been a 4 cent increase it might be 6 cents or 8 cents depending on how far you're over this formula. So over the years the board has really been paying attention to this formula. And I wanted to review last year's formula and then explain a couple of things that have changed. So last year we would take our spending numbered it's letter D which was the let's see the equalized pupils. So what they do is they take three or four things off your spending and kind of hold you harmless to those items. So if you've incurred debt to improve your school. If you have students who are over $50,000 at the time. Now it's $60,000. And if you had new teachers who required the school district to increase the budget for a retirement assessment. That means that they haven't worked in a school more than five years. Then you have to pay an assessment in the budget process. So those three things we were able to subtract off our spending per pupil in order to come up with an excess spending per equalized pupil. So what does that mean, just to get to the point the 19,531 number that you saw up on letter E would become 18,654 because they're giving us credit for things that we've had in our budget that some schools have and some schools don't. So when you get all said and done the state has a number that they provide to us every year and I'll be getting that I think by December 1 as well. So last year if we had spent using this formula over 18,756 we would have been in the penalty formula. We called the penalty formula it's also called the excess spending formula. So we were $102 per equalized pupil below the penalty formula. And I translated that into a an amount so we were almost 147,000 below the penalty formula district wide. If it was in the negative it would have been a reduction or cut that we would have needed to make to get below it, but we were actually below it already by about 147,000. It's pretty close kind of too close for comfort for me. So today I also have been researching some other things. Last March, the board did put on the ballot and the voters approved having our capital fund and our transfers to the capital fund. So that's great news because that puts us further away from the penalty formula. But the special ed number and the new teacher's retirement assessment and the debt actually all change every year. So these aren't fixed formulas. So when you hear me talk in December, I'm going to be adding another row for the capital transfer. So then in the future that can be reduced. And I have a contact Abbey who will at the agency of education. I'm confirming exactly what I'm going to be adding. I'm going to be adding another row for the capital transfer. So then in the future that can be reduced. And I have a contact Abbey who will at the agency of education. I'm confirming exactly what we have to do to make sure that full amount is eligible for this formula. There is some required reporting. And there is an approval process at the state in order to have that $700,000 in this formula, but I'm sure the district would want to follow whatever we have to to meet this requirement. And it's in your best interest. If I may interrupt us for a moment. Could you explain what happens if we cross that excess spending threshold. Yes, so if you crossed it by, let's just say one penny in the district is $160,000. So that's a budget adjustment needed. So if you crossed it by 160,000 instead of having a one penny increase in the tax rate, you would have a two cent increase in the tax rate. And it wouldn't stay locally that money would be in a formula reverted to the state education fund. I don't have all the details on the semantics on how that really, you know, from a cash flow point, but that's the basic overall way that it works. Does that answer your question Scott. Yes, thanks. So that basically for every $1 over it costs you to, and you don't actually get to use those two. But the extra dollar goes into the education fund. I'm using a penny because that's kind of the way a dollar works at the district level. Okay. All right. So then I was prepared to just go through a town of Berlin and just kind of explain how this looks over a period of time at the town. It's on the next page. I just picked Berlin because they're first on the list. So this is showing you over time. Some of these numbers are the same in every town and some are different. So what's the same at every town is the education spending per equalized pupil now that we are emerged district. What's the same at every town is the property yield and the district spending adjustment. So what's different is the common level of appraisal. So you can see that in the town of Berlin in the middle, there's an area where it says common level of appraisal. You can see the trend over time at this town for how the value of the property is comparing to sales. And so you can see that there's impact on the tax, the local tax rate in Berlin. That would be different in every town. So it's it's under the actual homestead tax rate. So you will see that 0.8 cents, which is $8 on $100,000 property. That's what's different at every town. Over to the right. There's also a non residential tax rate. And I'm going to cover what's homestead versus non residential. So the homestead is the home in two acres of primary residents. If you had a business or secondary property vacation home in the town of Berlin. It's considered a non residential property. The non residential properties are have a different tax rate. So while the legislature set the dollar as the homestead tax rate. Last year they set $1 and 62.8 cents. It's up at the top for the non residential tax rate. So, while the budget impacts the actual homestead tax rate. The statewide budget impacts the non residential tax rate. So actually non residents are paying more than homeowners or residents. You can see it's $10 more on $100,000 property. It would go from $8 to $18. So, if I can go through every town, but in the interest of time, I was thinking I should pause here and see if there's any specific questions. Lori, this is, this is Jill again. So I definitely don't think you need to go through every town. At least I'm good. But just going back to what Steven said. So the thing that we're really vulnerable to is it seems to me is losses of students that are too small to allow us to actually reduce a cost of serving students, right? Like, you know, you lose a few students while you still need the same number of teachers, the same number of support staff. You lose a lot of students actually maybe you can make an adjustment, but you lose a few. We're pretty vulnerable to that if we're trying to provide the same service from one year to the next. Is that a fair way of thinking about it? And I think every school in the state is currently seeing a large decline in pupils. I know Brian is planning to discuss this further at the regular meeting. Yeah, it is a very deep concern. I think our, our projection in the near future is that we really need to start to kind of look more at the cost per pupil and try to budget more in line with the property yield So if we're having a large decline in pupils, it's not going to hit all in one year. It's going to hit over a two year averaging. But it's still not good news what we're seeing right now. And I'm hopeful that and maybe Brian wants to speak to that now and again later. I'm okay if we wait till the, till the meeting I'm just trying to understand sort of how to think about the levers that are the ones that we both the ones we can pull on the ones that we're just sort of buffeted by so just trying to make sense of it. Okay. Yeah, and the board has asked or the finance committee has asked that I start pulling comparables and so I was looking at the education spending per equalized pupil and coming up with some comparables for that. And as well as our special ed spending per equalized pupil that information is at the state level. So for December you're going to get a pile of information that I think will be helpful as we are in the mid part of the budget process. Okay, that's awesome. Thank you. Pretty much what I had for the training. I hope it met your expectations or if it didn't, I guess I would love to hear what else we could have done differently tonight or what it is that we would need additional training on and we could have another meeting or Lori sorry this is Jill I found this really helpful the one thing that I think would have helped I think it's not on there but there's a whole bunch of key dates there's like a whole bunch you know you reference various factors or you know whatever I don't can't think of the word for them but anyway the you know the various things that however they get set impact the you know ultimately impact the the final tax rates and the and the impact of the budget would just be maybe helpful on this sheet for you to actually show like you know when to those usually come through because it's to me it's it's just really helpful to understand like we can actually fully understand the impact of what we're doing until all those things cascade through and so just to know the timing of them would be helpful. That would be my only suggestion I found this super helpful I thought I've I've had this explained to me before and not gotten it so this was very helpful. Okay thank you and we do have them all noted on the budget timeline but I will enhance the file so that in the future you'll have this in the file thank you. And I know every year I have this explained to me and then my mind on gets it while during the period when we don't have to worry about it and it's always really useful to to hear it all again. One question I had a way how if you wouldn't mind explaining what voters see when they vote how the how the budget article is actually presented on the ballot. Sure. In Vermont, the budget article is only for budgeted expenditures. And so the voters vote on an expenditure total. They don't vote on an education spending total or any other number. The revenues are still projections, but they actually just vote on the budgeted expenditures. And and floor. Finish with that and then I have a separate question. Okay, um, but I is the legislature still insisting that the budget article. It gives the the budget and then it says this represents an increase of X percent in education education spending per equalized people. I know that wording is identical. We can research it further, but I have not been personally notified of any change to the wording of the article. It is a canned wording. As you mentioned, thank you. Thank you very much. And floor, did you have something. Yeah, I just I just wonder, Laurie, if it for some you before had explained a little bit more about what the common level of appraisal and how it affects by town because not everybody appraises at the same time and it really shows a little bit of that differentiation. Do you mind speaking to it a little bit more just for others. What I put on this sheet sheet sheet is what I'm calling it in a little box down below actually shows you at Berlin that their tax rate is five cents lower than it would have been if their common level of appraisal was at 100%. So I don't know if you see that but the equalized tax rate was $1.776 their common level of appraisal is over 100%. So it saved the town five cents on the tax rate. It made their tax rate $1.723. Is that what you were and then you'll see that number as a positive in Calis because they're under the 100%. Do you want to turn to that page so I could review that as well please. It's the next page, Jim. So in Calis their tax rate is 8.2 cents above the equalized because the common level of appraisal is at 9561. Is that what you would hope for floor. Yeah, I was just talking about like every town has different times where they do, which is a problem kind of in Vermont, right. Okay. Now that especially now that we are unified so that part is but I was hoping that you slowly pending. Yeah. Yeah, so in Vermont, if your town gets I believe it's below 85%, but I'm not 100% sure of then you are required to complete a reappraisal townwide. So very currently we're having a reappraisal right now. But if you're hovering around the 90%, you're not required to have a reappraisal. The reappraisal cost money takes time. It could take a year or two. So sometimes you can see over time everyone pretty much is depends on how you sell your house. So what this is saying in Calis is people are selling properties that a little over 4% more than their value. I don't know if I can explain a different way. So if their house was 100,000, they're getting like 105,000 or 104,000. Yeah, that's what I want. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. So that's what it's saying and it's saying in Berlin that when they're selling their house they're actually getting lower than the assessed value, because it's over 100%. That's a little complicated. It's a tough pill to swallow. So if someone has a personal question and you think of it tomorrow call me. This is this is Steve again, if I can jump in, is that all right, Scott? Of course, Steven and then Kari after you. What I'd like to add, so this is my understanding. So I'm talking from a taxpayer point of view. I think that the common level, the common level of appraisal affects this tax rate. But as a taxpayer between this tax rate and what I'm paying taxes on, it evens out. That's the purpose of the common level of appraisal. So as a taxpayer, I'm not saving any money. I'm paying it one way or another. Because that's what we hear as feedback from the from the taxpayer that, okay, so you're at Berlin, you're at 103%. So your tax rate went down. Well, no, my tax rate didn't go down because I'm paying paying for more than my property is assessed at. You see what I'm saying. I mean, for the savvy taxpayer, they're going to say, yeah, it makes it look good for your school board presentation that we save five cents, but I didn't save five cents. Because I was paying for more property, I was paying a higher property tax than my property is valued at. So it's, it all comes out in the wash. There's no real advantage one way or another. That's what the formula does. If you're being assessed, if your property is being assessed too high, then they make an adjustment that lowers it this way.  So it all comes out in the wash. It's just something I don't think we should harp on as an advantage too much. Intent to have every property in the entire state equalized. That's what the common level of appraisal actually does. It puts towns at parity for the sales in their towns compared to their tax level tax value. So Kerry had a question to you said yes. Yeah, hi everyone. I came a little late and Lori, you were covering this one when I joined but if we could back up a couple slides maybe to the last one before the towns. My question is about the excess spending formula and the impact of the debt allocation. So I'm thinking about the retirement of our U32 debt, which happens next year of course. We've been all waiting very patiently. So if I understand it correctly, that's going to be an expense that we don't occur next year. And it's quite a bit, right? It's over a million, as I recall. No, next year is only 155,000. The primary bond was paid off and it in this 1.1 million reflects the payment off the $9 million bond. Right. And this is, is this the last, the last payment this year? The payment this year that's in the budget is 155,000 that will come off in the future. Yes. Okay. Okay, so it's not, it's not a significant, I mean it's significant. But were you on when I was discussing about the capital approval by the town at town meeting? Yeah, I guess I didn't understand it if you could, if you could. 700,000. Okay. So at town meeting, this new merge district didn't have an established capital fund until town meeting March of 2020 as for the new entity. So we had had the board put a warning to establish a capital fund per title 24 section, whatever. And by doing that, and by following some criteria and following some rules at the state, we can add that as a new line in the excess spending formula. So we'll be able to subtract that 700,000 on, on that formula next year. I mean, this budget cycle. So that that's good news. We're paying, but it gives us, it would give us some buffer against that threshold. Yes, it will. And then the $150,000 debt payment that goes away will reduce the expense, but it won't be, it won't, it will also reduce the threshold. Right, so it's true. Right. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for the way. Lloyd, do you want to continue? I'm all done. That was my presentation. So if I did it quickly, I appreciate all the feedback and the questions. I think it's been a real good interactive meeting. Unless Brian has anything else to cover, I think, I think we're ready to take a break before the meeting. Yeah, I just want to thank you, Lori, for your leadership and your help in putting this together. So I was very informative. Lori, Lori has spent a lot of time with me the last few days to say the least, breaking the new superintendent into the budget here in Vermont and in Washington Central. And thank you very much, Lori. Appreciate it. I have one more question for Brian is you've worked in a bunch of different states or the school finance rules as arcane in other states as they're here. I actually wouldn't say it's arcane. I would say it's very unique and very, I would say that depending on who you talk to with different super intense around the country that I do know, they are very favorable towards the Vermont way it works because I know we talk about equity and it seems that the formula. Well, some, some folks may not like it. And there's always ways to improve things. It seems to be a very good way of doing that doing business with the way the state runs it here. It's definitely much more equity equity based in many ways. Nice to hear Brian. Thank you. Great. So it's 541. We can take a break and I think should take a break until when do we want to take 10 minutes and then get started up again, or do you want to go into a six. Brian, please. I just say one thing is that I'm ready to go whenever everyone else with I just want to let all the board members I did send you an email a few minutes several minutes ago, just to make sure we are addressing something right now but we're on top of it and I'll give a little brief update at the board meeting. Understood. Thank you very much. One question is that we had said to people's o'clock. So we might be throwing them off if we start earlier. So just, we were planning on a break. Yeah. Okay. Dinner. I just want to tell you. Exactly. Dorothy, I will not be at the rest of the meeting.  I had, I was up early. Or it seemed like an emergency. It wasn't, but I lost about four hours sleep and I'm not going to make. So I decided to do this and skip the rest. So see you next time. Wonderful Dorothy. Thanksgiving Dorothy. Yeah, yeah, take care, both of you. Goodbye. So with that, I think let's, let's just recess until six o'clock then. And many thanks to all members of the public who joined. Really happy to see you. I hope you got something out of this. Anyway, see you.


So good morning everybody. My name is Sarah Cannon.  My pronouns are she and her and I'm a web design consultant based out of Birmingham, Alabama So it's really nice to be here on the West Coast where I thought it was going to be nice and sunny But it's more like Alabama weather here. Hopefully it'll clear up by this weekend on Sunday, and that'll be awesome So but today I'm here to talk to you about Designing for accessibility As a designer this topic is something that I've slowly learned more and more over the years And I wanted to share design methods with you today that we can all integrate into our individual design practices In order to create a more inclusive web for everybody a web that can be easily accessed regardless of disability And I always like to say that I am a lifetime student And I'm learning more and more every day about how to make designs accessible So who's this talk for? designers such as myself who work in a layout tool such as Figma Individuals doing site audits for accessible design and basically anyone wanting to sharpen their accessibility skills or Increase their awareness. I want to open the session today with a quote by Tim Berners-Lee that I love so much The power of the web isn't as universality Access by everyone regardless of disability is an existential aspect We are champions and creators of the internet. That's why we are all here at work camp And I believe that we have a moral obligation to harness the power of the web and make it a place for everybody And this is essential to why I feel passionate about giving this talk today Because I've been digging deep into how I can make accessibility part of my design process And I want to encourage others to do the same This topic is just so huge that there's really no way that we can cover everything in a 45 minute session So we're going to cover a lot of best design practices and how they relate to accessibility as well as other tips so What do we need to consider when we talk about accessibility the world is a very large and diverse place So we need to consider a bunch of people when we design that aren't necessarily the average users They could be people with visual impairments such as partial or complete vision loss colored blindness elderly Situational impairment people with auditory impairments motor skills Impairments such as loss of use of missing limbs arthritis broken fingers people with cognitive impairments such as brain injuries learning disabilities seizures literacy people environmental factors such as non-native speakers and People temporarily have that have the inability to listen to audio or read Some people use tools to assist them in accessing the web and content The average user might use keyboards mice and track pads touch pads like touch screens But others might use tools such as screen readers customs cursors or eye tracking There are just so many various ways that people can access content and it's important that we start paying attention to Accessibility in our designs in order to ease the barrier of entry regardless of what tools tools people are using So with that being said how accessible is the web anyway? This is kind of sad and 2021 web AIM didn't access a billion analysis of the top 1 million home pages and found that 97.4 percent had accessibility failures I Believe that we can do better and that we are obligated to we need to dig deep into ourselves and find empathy for end users and incorporate accessibility into our routines in Her e-book giving a damn about accessibility Sherry Burn Harbor says good accessibility is about compliance, but great accessibility is about empathy So good accessibility looks at the product the great looks at the entire user experience from start to finish So if we can try to empathize with any given person's experience We will teach ourselves to make better design choices from the start If you would like to read Sherry's e-book go to accessibility Dot ux design dot cc It's a great resource for anyone who needs to convince themselves or others maybe hire up the importance of integrating accessibility into design practice We need to pay attention to design best practices in order to make the web a better place So we also need to take extra care to think about how our design choices affect the greater community Some of these practices I'm going to go over today. You might already know because they're just good design practices Even so it's good to refresh with an eye for accessibility So why do we need to pay attention to our typography when it comes to accessibility? Typography is the medium in which our content is conveyed So if this content is difficult to read and confusing the consequences are really dire Good typography equals better readability, which equals ease of cognitive load It's really important to convey our content without causing confusion for our users or straining Everything has a compounding effect the more and more difficult the readability is the more frustrated your user will be And if you heard Christina's Demer's talk yesterday, it will use up spoons So definitely check out her talk if you have not already. It's amazing So what are some things that we can do with our typography to increase our accessibility? I have six rules of thumb that I want to share with you today One is to simplify your body fonts ornate body copy can be very difficult to read So simple is obviously better I can see this a lot done in fancy girl boss themes where they have tele-sized seris fonts They make it look cool, but really in fact, they're very hard to scan and read even for an average user Number two is to watch your paragraph widths Too wide a paragraph text makes reading from mind to line challenging You can get mixed up of which line you're reading if you want to keep your width You want to keep your width around 60 to 80 characters I see this a lot in the block editor actually because you can set your block and just because you can make your text The whole block width it does not mean that you should you should make sure that you could constrain it So when you're working in figma and in design and on a grid This also applies so you can have a wide grid and figma and it could be very easy Just span your paragraph content all the way across But really this obviously breaks our rule We want to constrain our paragraph text for readability and trust me the average users will love you for it And don't forget to constrain on wide screens, especially when you're Like when you have a large monitor and you are doing full width and it goes like all the way across You don't want to like have to move your head to read everything or to see everything Make sure you have some constraints in place Number three is kind of obvious that this will increase accessibility But use large body copy It's obvious that small body text is hard to read. You want to make sure your body copy is 18 pixels or higher Small body copy is basically a remnant of the constraints of print in newspapers and magazines But we don't have those constraints on the web people are used to scrolling So on a side note as well, don't make your smallest text like your metadata and your categories below 14 to 16 pixels You want to be able to be People to be able to read your content with ease even if they have some limitations Number four is pay attention to line height This can often be overlooked and people can just end up using default line height Light heading lines can be difficult if they're very far apart And constrain paragraph text is very hard to read The solution is to reduce the line height on your headings and make your minimum body line height at least 30 percent Basically, you need to use your intuition here because different fonts act differently by default, but this is a general rule of thumb Pay attention to it. It'll also make your designs look a lot more professional Don't ever justify your text Justify a text creates gaps or rivers of spacing in the text causing the content to be harder to scan So you want to left justify your body copy. Is that easy to read? When centering don't center text. That's longer than three lines So if it's longer than that, you should just left justify it to prioritize readability It's pretty agonizing to read a very long paragraph that is centered Number six is minimize the use of uppercase text Headlines in all caps are very hard to read. So we want to limit the text The limit the uppercase text that is not user inputted such as categories for metadata So that's capitalized only by css So this reduces the error of a user typing in all caps into the admin Because they can't you know, they can't do it if it's something that is not user inputted And this is kind of problematic if people type in all caps because some screen readers might actually read all caps as acronyms And that makes it very difficult for some people so if you're going to have Some meta that's in all caps such as a category or a date Adding letter spacing to it also helps improve the scan your scanning ability of the metadata with the all caps So here are the typography tips today just to Recap simplify body fonts watch your paragraph widths Use large body copy pay attention to line height Don't justify text and minimize the use of uppercase After our quick typography lesson today, let's talk a little bit about links Links are an important function of the web and very imperative with navigation If it's difficult to navigate your site, you can see why this will be an issue I have six rules of thumb for links to share with you today The first one is to not rely on color only for links or communication Using color only can get lost in gray scale Although the left the link on the left Looks very well defined for people that see color If you viewed on the right in gray scale note that it's very difficult to define from the rest of the text It would be easy if you're colorblind to not even know that link is there If you're going to use color always pair it with an indicator So if you choose a color, that's perfectly fine We all want to have beautiful colors in our designs But make sure there's an indicator with it such as an underline So that's easier to tell that it is in fact a link Here's another example of utilizing an indicator rather than color alone Someone who is colorblind will not be able to tell the top two apart from the access or error message based on just the color So having an icon will make it so that they can Number two is make links easily distinguishable. The underline method is great But underline and bold is even better And if your link is going to leave your site or open up into an external window Adding an icon can be very informative Making distinguishable links to content obviously further enhances the experience of the user And it's an important information does not get lost Number three is don't bold on hover This is something that's extremely common but if you When you do this the hover effect can cause the content to completely shift So if you want your link to be bold have it all ready to be bold and then add a hover state on top of it Such as removing the underline or adding a highlight So it definitely don't reverse the effect and unbolt your link because it'll also cause the same sort of content shift Because bolding and unbolding can move the text Number four is maintain target size minimums Too small target size for touch or mouse And unpadded links are difficult for a lot of users as it requires a very high level of accuracy To click or touch The absolute minimum target size should be 44 pixels by 44 pixels And at least eight pixels between elements An additional padding is even better Sometimes you can say oh, that's more of a development issue But you as a designer can make sure to annotate it for development It's a good idea to be extremely aware of how sites are built and communicate best practices to developers as a requirement So that accessibility doesn't like slip through the cracks on your site Number five is to make focus states obvious First create focus states in your designs One way to do this is reversing That's a a great way to have a very obvious focus state So is using a contrasting outline But be sure to provide development with everything they need to be successful Just don't leave anything up for chance If you don't give developers states sometimes there might not be any I've seen this happen Where someone had a beautiful design, but they didn't include any hover states or any focus states And the design came back from development where there just wasn't any It was just you hover over it and nothing happens at all So you want to make sure that you just don't leave these things up to chance and as a designer Make sure that you take these things into account Number six is don't override cursors Let the user determine their own cursor size as you can see here in your system preferences You can have a normal cursor size and go up to very large. This is very very important for low vision users Because they set the cursor size to the size that they feel most comfortable with that they can see the best that helps them navigate properly Imagine that you're consuming content on the web You have a web page and your cursor is suddenly gone and replaced by a custom design one But say you are have Issues with vision and you need that custom cursor and now you can't track visually where you're even are You're suddenly extremely lost Or even more horrible imagine that the cursor cursor has suddenly turned into a chicken wing True story Iowa has given a site design to audit for accessibility Which was designed by a client's internal designer and lo and behold the cursor was a chicken wing on top of a chicken wing photo Can you even see the chicken wing? This is the stuff of nightmares to me Whether it's a chicken wing or not imagine how bad it would be for a user with low vision Or other cursor needs to have that tool that they use to navigate suddenly change or disappear So luckily we will we were able to convince the client to ditch the chicken wing and go with a normal cursor that way You know people that have um their cursor set to whatever that they feel most comfortable with can See their cursor in the way that they choose So some link tips That we've just gone over don't rely on color for links or communication Make links easily distinguishable don't bold on hover maintain target size minimums Make focus states obvious and as a bonus Don't override the cursor Moving on from links. What about best practices around forms and accessibility? Forms can be a very big source of frustration. I'm sure every one of you here has had a frustration with a form at some point in your life It takes a very big cognitive cognitive load to fill out a form without error So I have four tips to share today on creating accessible forms One is placeholder texts are not labels and they shouldn't replace them Placeholder labels disappear on focus Have you ever started filling out a form and then had to click out of the field because you forgot what you're supposed to be Inputting into it because the placeholder text was used as the label Doing this can cause users to lose track of what field they're entering into And so labels should always stay visible in any state of the form in order to avoid confusion The only exception here is that if it's a one field email sign up And it's coded properly for accessibility But me personally I tend to just avoid that all together and have proper labels on everything that I do Another thing to note Is that you need to ensure the color contrast between the placeholder text and the input value Is obvious that way it's evident whether the text is real content or a placeholder You don't want to end up in the situation where you think you've filled out all the fields because you mistake placeholder text For the actual input and then get an error number two Is explanatory labels help provide more context I worked on a project where you sign up for an academic portal And you enter a username and an email on sign up users were confused about One why they needed a username or what email to use to sign up Instead of just saying username have a more explanatory labels such as your public username That lets them know that others on the platform will actually see What they put in that field this can avoid a situation where they might put Maybe an old embarrassing high school handle that they used to have into that username field And not know that it was going to be public Also having an explanatory label such as your campus email Assist on letting the user know that the email that they actually need to use To sign up is the email that they have from their campus rather than a personal email So this way they don't get an error thrown at them immediately making it Harder for them to complete the form and to sign up So when we did this little change Making this obvious really helped up with sign up retention and support requests number three is Be clear with your required fields With that requirement indicated we don't know what is required and We want more context for our decisions So asterisks are okay But sometimes they can render small but you have to be very careful with them making sure that they're very clear But clearly stating that something is required is even better Also, if there are more fields required than not switching to say optional on the non-required fields works just as well And it reduces clutter We also want to utilize expanded content for further context If we are unsure and need more instruction We don't have any if we don't have any info to have any context to expand So providing further info in a tool tip from an icon lessens the cognitive load of the form And insists with any rules that are needed without leaving the form For instance here you might hide in the tool tip. What do you do if you do not have a campus email? Now you don't have to leave the form to get the information or you know just you know give up Lastly number five when it comes to forms is that if you're going to use placeholder text make it informative Don't let your placeholder text be vague and repetitive Let the placeholder text help the user by giving context clues with the input formatting So instead of saying phone number phone number date date email email You can have phone number with some placeholder text that gives you context clues at what kind of format you want the phone number in What kind of format you want the date in that sort of thing This is very effective in helping people when they're filling out forms So to sum up our form tips for today Placeholder text should not replace labels Explanatory labels provide context be clear with your required fields utilize expanded content for further context And if you're using placeholder text Please make it informative for the user Moving on to color and contrast Here's a section that i'm extremely passionate about because you know color and contrast are extremely major elements that create design So you've seen a lot of girly thing today girly themes today low contrast elements It might look pretty, but it's not that easy to read And even worse is if it gets into a trendy handwriting font Color and contrast matter. That's why there are guidelines To what we need to hear to We haven't talked about the wcag guidelines yet But they have an accessibility success criterion This is extremely important for when you're not only try to audit a site for contrast But when you're designing from the get-go contrast ratios matter We want to always meet level double a criterion or level triple a when needed You can find the whole document at w3.org Slash tr slash wcag 21 It's great to browse through even though it's a little bit dry, but it's very important So what we want to try to hit on every single one of our designs is level a criteria So the visual presentation of text at least 18 points or 14 point bold has to have a contrast ratio of 4 to 5 to 1 Texts and images of a large scale have a contrast ratio of at least three to one and for non text such as different components Of user interface like form fields icons, etc They we want to have them to have a contrast ratio of at least three to one So people don't skip over them and they can see them So always look at your contrast ratio no matter what this goes for everything with just a few exceptions for AA compliance You want to have that contrast ratio of least 4.5 to 1 And you can you see how here on the left this button that's a light blue doesn't quite meet the success It's a 2.02 to 1 it fails everything But if you darken the button you can pass a lot of With a contrast ratio of 4.98 to 1 So this is essential for our users with low vision or vision impairment such as color blindness So how do we find out our contrast? Well, if you're using figma, there is a figma contrast checker plugin simply titled contrast And this with it you can select two layers and run to get the contrast ratio and the wcag compatibility So if you have say a brand color that's very light and you want to darken it for compliance You can check that contrast and see okay. I need to darken it so much in order to make it compliant And there are certain tools that you can use to darken your color I like to use a quick tool called pine tools comm slash darken color And here you can add any amount of black into your brand color and get a value that is darker It also has a light and color tool as well. It's a very rudimental Web tool, but it's great to use for brand colors where a subtle shift in color can mean being AA compliant Color can get easily complicated Especially when you're working with previously established brand colors Sometimes it takes showcasing to a client what colors their brand can work In different scenarios. So here's an audit for a client's brand colors for small text to meet AA standards You can see that the colors sometimes only pass in certain combinations And you really need to go methodically through and establish what is and is not in compliance In order to get the best understanding of what your design choices can be and using these brand colors There's a tool called contrast grid that will help you with this methodical checking You can go to contrast dash grid dot eight shapes dot com and input your color choices And it will tell you how they interact together as well as their level of compliance There's also a figma plugin for that called contrast grid It's pretty powerful. So I don't necessarily recommend using it for anything client facing Because of how quickly confusing this grid can be to some of them But for my own sanity when working with color, it's a great resource to get ratios quick Let's take a look at a use case where I had to audit a client's design where their brand color is orange Not just orange, but orange on a peach background not a white background a peach background Orange is a very bright color And it can be very deceiving where you might think that has enough contrast. It doesn't So I did take a look at its contrast ratios and made some adjustments Let's just take a look at how difficult orange can be and how nuanced this can be Take a look at these two buttons. For instance, which button do you think has the higher contrast? The black text or the white text? black white white I heard both If you said the black text on the left, you're right and it's by a long shot That's that's kind of crazy to think about how It's like basically double the contrast of the white text on the button But visually we tend to like the on the orange button You know, we kind of avoid sort of the halloween theme going on You know, it just makes it a little bit more like clean looking to us But its contrast is just way lower than the other one So for this client's audit, I took their blank brand colors and showed the contrast for all of them when they were combined with each other I determined that we needed to make some adjustments for our orange as you can see in the upper left That it does not pass at all in any way Not small text, not large text Like they're they're cut the two colors that they want to use just do not have enough contrast when working together So we have some options here we can either lighten and wash out this peach color or we can kind of Darken the orange and keep the peach color. So we're going to give these options to our client In order for our large text to be able to have a contrast ratio that is needed So we end up just darkening the orange just slightly and you can see here It is not that big of a difference But when it goes to grayscale, you can see that it definitely is a little bit darker But it's just enough to push us over the edge so that we are compliant The difference is very subtle, but it does solve our contrast contrast dilemma here So you don't have to read all this, but when I presented to the client after documenting the audit I'm like, okay, we now have this option to use even though we had to modify the brand color very slightly We could keep the peach background You know, this is a very controversial thing sometimes because when people have their brand colors They are in love with them and they don't want to modify them But sometimes in order to keep the aesthetic you might have to make some little changes It's in order to keep the client happy and make sure you reach compliance A great basic primer e-book for diving into the world of color and contrast is color accessibility workflows by Jerry Cody And you can get on a bookapart.com. It's just a very small primer And it's great for just wetting your feet into the world of color accessibility workflows But if you're looking to dig down deeper into color theory on the web I highly recommend the website colorandcontrast.com There is a ton of information on color and visual perception I have learned a lot from this site when it comes to color theory and I think it's a great resource So while we're still on the subject of color and contrast We also want to make sure that we think about users settings for dark mode and light mode In their system settings on a mac they can set appearance dark or light as their preference And we can actually utilize this and create beautiful versions of our site that honors that user's preference You can see how this is targeted with the prefers color scheme media theory query We can really pay attention to our site designs no matter what mode the user is set and create a great experience in every situation By loading additional styles We can also make sure we want to do this as well for high contrast mode And a user system settings they can select increase contrast as their preference This lets the user determine that they want everything to be high contrast as much as possible And as designers we can utilize this setting and Introduce a more high contrast style sheet Such as one that is actually AAA compliant for their upping the accessibility standard for these users And we we can do this by targeting the prefers contrast more In media query and introducing an alternative color scheme inside that media query This is very important for low vision users So i'm only going to briefly talk about content accessibility Because you know sometimes the designers we have controller content and sometimes we don't But we can all really know we all really know that too much information can definitely lead to cognitive overload And the structure of the content matters greatly in reading and accessibility No one wants to get lost get frustrated confused. No one wants to have to think too much No one has to not be able to access what they need Or no one wants to read or listen to a novel when it can be explained simply So we have some content tips today We want to provide Skip to nav or skip to main content links for screen readers We want to simplify and keep our paragraph links to a minimum If we want to provide deep content we can link to it on a separate page where users can go if they want to dive deeper But no one wants to read or listen to paragraphs and paragraphs of text And they're likely most not going to most just not going to do it. Anyway, they're going to skip it And not even read it or skim it But people who use screen readers will often listen to text sped up And if your site is wordy, can you imagine the amount of time it would take for someone to get through it? A lot of time so keep your Content simple and your paragraph links to a minimum Also, don't use complex words or be superfluous in your writing Make sure you're writing as simple. This is also good for non-native speakers and it will translate more accurately with language tools Maintain a consistent navigation so users don't get lost Ensure all necessary information is visible and accessible to users on On devices that don't support hover states such as touch screens And that we don't so we don't hide any content under hovers This obscures information for people who might need it And always always use clear headings that are in order without skipping any don't go from h1 to h4 Really just organize your content into clear and orderly sections and that will tremendously help screen readers navigate your site So alt text is used with images to describe images to lower non-vision users We want to make sure that all images are that are part of the content have alt text So this is highly important to convey your content But we don't want to put alt text on images that are not necessary for information No one wants to hear description of design element like decorative squirrel when you can just leave that off Make sure your alt text and copy complement rather than duplicate each other Say you have a website that talks in detail all about Jupiter's moons and lists their names And next to it you have an image of Jupiter and its moons You don't need to name all the individual moons in the photos alt text as names are already noted in the content So users using screen readers don't need to listen to a list of the moons named twice and to in order to understand what's in the photo Video and audio are important content types Some tips here include that you always want to include transcripts and subtitles This is very helpful for you users whether user has permanent hearing loss Or sometimes are in an environmental situation such as a plug setting without headphones You always need to include transcripts and subtitles so your content can be consumed And use audio descriptors in your videos whenever you can This could come in a form of a voiceover describing what someone in the video is doing Bonus points for asl is included in your video. You can reach even a wider audience that way And I want to empathize this strongly. Do not auto play your videos This is incredibly jarring to some users put the power into the user's hands. Let them control the video's play or not There are many resources about audio and video and you can access videos about good practices on rootedinrights.org access that It has some great resources for including transcripts and audio descriptions And lastly when it comes to content try to keep it gender neutral If you ever need to illustrate a persona for instructional content Keep it gender neutral and call the person maybe jade and doe instead of john or jane There's just no reason not to take this one extra step towards inclusiveness Motion is making a comeback in web design css is making it pretty easy to do How are people with cognitive impairments like brain injuries or learning disabilities? Vestibular disorders and seizures motion can be extremely jarring and making people confused or even sick I'm not advocating against motion. It can be beautiful tasteful and even helpful for the user But something we need to be aware of is the reduced motion setting A user that needs reduced motion to make accessing content easier can set reduced motion in their mac accessibility settings And with this setting we can target css animations parallax and just to slow or eliminate certain motions We can use do this by using the media query prefers reduced motion With this media query we can target animations and transitions And basically respect the user's wishes not this is disoriented or sick when accessing our site's content If you want to dive deep into motion its implications tools and best practices I highly recommend the talk making motion inclusive by val head Check it out on event apart.com. It's fabulous Dyslexia is also something that we need to take into account A lot of people struggle with dyslexia and it can make reading comprehension extremely difficult Luckily, there is a font that's open an open font license Called open dyslexic which is created specifically so that the letters have weighted bottoms Assisting the brain and comprehension and readability Anybody can use this font. It's open source And this font is starting to gain traction and it's even seen on the Kindle app Here are some screenshots of my Kindle app on my iphone I open the font preferences and I change the book to open dyslexic and that is just um, it's a great tool for people that Um needs some help in reading How great is that? There's even a browser extension for the font that changes copy and web pages So we are gonna i'm not saying that we need to make all of our Copy open dyslexic font, but so how does this apply to us as designers? Well, we want to make sure our site can be altered by browser extensions And that all of our content is in text form and can be changed by the browser extension That and so that way none of our texts are inside images, which we all know we shouldn't be doing this anyway But I wanted to let y'all know that this tool is out there and people are utilizing it And it's pretty revolutionary revolutionary for some people, especially for Children learning how to read So you've been putting in all this hard work to make your designs accessible How do we make sure that we hand them off to our design development? That to development so that nothing gets lost in translation. Well, we can annotate our design files We can annotate them for accessibility before handoff You can find many kits for annotation in figma such as this accessibility annotation kit by indeed or you can build your own Handing off designs to development, which is much documentation as possible ensures that all the effort that you're putting into creating a more accessible web Is not lost This way the site will be built with the best accessibility standards as possible while also maintaining design integrity There's really no right or wrong way to do this But just do your best to pay attention to detail Work with your development team determine what types of annotations they appreciate on handoff and make sure that the communication is best as possible And always with your design before handing off create an accessibility checklist A one one y project.com has a great checklist for your site or any sites that you might be auditing be sure to check out this really informative site and make sure that your designs meet their criteria A the topic of accessibility is just so huge that I can never cover everything in this talk So in case you missed it yesterday check out sally thones talk a rookie's reflection It's never too late to learn. She has a ton of accessibility resources and her enthusiasm is very inspiring So we've gone through a lot of content today But really what we need to remember is that no matter where you are on your team Whether you're a design dev qa content or if you're even building on wordpress solo We need to all work together in order to make the web a better place for everyone So when it comes to design designing with this accessibility in mind It takes a lot of effort in a small village But it's so worth it because in the end you have contributed to a more inclusive web I'm a forever student and I've loved getting to learn more about designing for accessibility And so I really hope that this talk has inspired you in some way to put some of these practices in place So thank you Do we have time for questions? Three minutes. Does anybody have any? Whoa, what do you do? What what do you what is your approach when you have a client? I know you do consulting or audits or whatever When you present that information to a client like your orange and peach and you're like look And they're like, yeah, no or they you know say well That's not as you know, they want accessibility But they're like resistant to it for design purposes or for whatever reason. What's what's your approach to that? Um, a lot of times you can talk to them about How they might will be limiting their audience and sorry like get with them on a business level Um, but when it comes to clients that I work with we talk about accessibility upfront from the very beginning And I think that's very important when you're talking about doing some designs for somebody Talk about it upfront up first and say This is a focus that I have making the web a better place for everybody And just letting you know that this is going to be a focus of your designs or the focus of your audit And making sure that everybody knows that that is something that is going to be established upfront Is also a good way to convince them one more You you mentioned in your talk a color contrast plugin, but I went to wordpress.org and I put in color contrast And I couldn't find it. Oh, it's a plugin for figma to design tool Okay, it's not for wordpress or and then for checking color contrast for your website Which tool do you recommend the most to give you that number score? Um, you can use the one that I mentioned the contrast grid It's an online web page and you can just input in your numbers and it'll give you contrast So if I google contrast grid, I'll find it. I think it's contrast dash grid dot com. Okay And basically you can take your hex values and put them in and then it'll give you the values Okay, thank you All right. Well, thank you everybody And I hope everybody has a great rest of the day and enjoys lunch


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to discuss the downturn of the economy and has it been caused by the millennials not wanting to buy cars as the finance minister, Nirmala Sitaraman has said. Somebody else has pointed out that we seem to be dipping in terms of sales from biscuits to booze to bikes. Is it also the millennials don't want to buy bikes as well or biscuits? It appears that they also don't want to buy booze. One would have imagined that they probably take Ola cabs once in a while with the laws that there are for traffic. So if booze is going down, biscuits are going down and this entire thing is at best a spin and we know that the data shows that millennials want to buy cars because they are buying used cars. So essentially this is shall we say headline management. I think Manmohan Singh has called this that the government should spend more time with the economy than managing the headlines. Would you say this is another of those exercises? Well, they have obliging media to oblige them and pass on a certain kind of create or manufacture consent and therefore when you have that kind of an obliging media out there, a compliant and pliant media out there, why wouldn't you manage headlines? I think that it's great that you say something and then it comes out exactly in the same fashion. You know when you say manufactured consent, I think you're being too kind. Yes. We at the moment are not manufacturing consent. We are actually manufacturing myths. Absolutely. That the mythology is not just about the past but the mythology is about the present as well and the economy is a classic example of that. We managed to shall we say tweak the GDP figures by changing the baseline as we know for a lot of issues. But you can do it only once. You can show that now we have gone to a new baseline which shows that the past three years we did better than anything else that happened earlier. And what happened is that it pushed up Chidambaram's performance as well. I mean that was one of the side effects of trying to do that. So now of course he has to be put where he is in order to shall we say diminish the cluster. But you know the point that they're making is you can do this once. But if you do it, if you look at it in a longer time frame, finally the trend cannot be hidden because one time repair shall we say of this kind cannot go into a long-term change because ultimately the baseline can shift but it cannot change your trajectory. Is that what we're seeing now? I think that not just the data, the data manages headlines as you said and that data can very easily be questioned because if you remember I think the Prime Minister's advisory council came out with a report in which it gave the back series and that report was deleted from the website and it was said this is not official and a new back series was released which showed lower growth in the previous years than what was shown by the Prime Minister's advisory council's own report. And so there is that headline management which quickly therefore disappears because journalists are not doing the job, they're not asking the questions and they're actually propagating what the government wants. But at the end of the day if people cannot buy biscuits, if people are not buying cars, if they're worried that the next day when they go to work, if their boss tells them that you have to stay till 12 at night and they say, no I can't because my child is unwell, they can't say it anymore because they're scared that they'll lose their job. So no amount of headline management, no amount of numbers management is going to change that feeling that people have at this moment. Well that headline also said, the economic times headline you've talked about, I think you said of the Germans, also talks about bikes and briefs. They are really far more fundamental. Absolutely. And it does also show not only the automobile sector which of course is the key sector being hurt partly because from cycles to trucks all of this is fallen but if you look at for instance housing, now that has taken a huge hit. That takes a hit that steel and cement take hits and these are the key sectors of the economy. Now in this it's clear the demonetization really killed the informal sector or deeply damaged the informal sector. Absolutely. And this is also now becoming much more visible. Absolutely. I think one of the things that just to go back to the point that you made about briefs and bicycles and biscuits. Another economic columnist Andy Mukherjee of Bloomberg he I think mentioned on social media or probably he wrote about it how toothbrushes, the replacement of toothbrushes that cycle has increased. So people are not replacing toothbrushes. There is more data to show that people are moving from higher branded soaps to smaller soaps. So everywhere this is happening. Toothpaste is not selling. We know that the phenomenon Baba Ramdev of Patanjali. What has happened to him? His urban sales this year is negative. Growth is negative. Rural sales growth is half of what it was last year. So I'm saying all over we see that FMCG fast moving consumer goods it's declining. Last quarter in their investor call Hindustan Unilever actually said that they use what is called the R word, the recession word, which no one in the stock markets wants to hear. And they said that we are slow down proof. I think they said we are recession resistant but not recession proof. Now why would they go out and use that word unless they're feeling the pinch? Coming back to the point that you raised about housing. Now we know that what housing does is that it creates it's one of the biggest generators of employment. Bad quality employment. It's not as if it's great quality employment. We know how workers in the housing sector actually live exist. But it's still employment especially for people who in the non-harvest or the non-sewing season do not have work. Seasonal workers.  They also do things which are kind of invisible. Like for instance there's a house that was being built opposite my house and every morning I used to hear these Bhojpuri songs. And because there are options available you can actually buy a sim only to listen to songs. So people would buy multiple sims when they came to the city. They would make long distance calls, they would buy sims to just listen to music or to watch YouTube on their phone because that's the life that they lead. When they go away what happens? That also collapses. Forget about the guy who was sitting there selling tea in the morning or bread and an omelet to the workers out there or makes rotis and sells them in the evening. That guy is dead too. I mean that business is dead. We know that after demonetization across cities you would see vendors having shut shop and gone. CMI's report actually showed a drop in unemployment. This is interesting because as we know unemployment is a function of labour force participation rate. So as Mahesh Vyas wrote that the amazing thing is that unemployment actually dropped after demonetization because people left. They were no longer participating in the labour. So they were not looking for jobs. So if out of 100, earlier 50 people were looking for jobs and 42 were getting it. Now 40 are looking for jobs and 38 are getting it. So it looks like the unemployment rate has gone up but actually people are just so, the conditions are so dismal that they've left and this actually probably started earlier but definitely demonetization is a kicker which really affected the rural economy because people who would come to urban areas didn't have jobs and they went away. It had a great political dividend for the BJP but...  By that time the narrative had changed to Pakistan and so on. So you could tide over that to surgical strike. Even in 2017 in the UP elections there was a benefit because what it did is that in an Indira Gandhi-esque fashion, Narendra Modi was able to project himself as in fact he said that he used exactly the line that Indira Gandhi had used. So it was in fact at that point of time it was really felt that he's done such a grave, he's taken such a grave step, inflicted so much pain on us. It must be in the long run... Good for the... ...dividend of the nation and they're willing to... And maybe there was a bit of a shudder for it as well. There's been so much inequality that has developed over a period of time. There is this argument that the rich are suffering also. So that has been argued that that was there. But without that I would say the basic thing was that they felt this is a strike against various things like hoarding cash, black money. People believed black money was money. They did not really believe that black money was gold, or property, exactly. Or in a bank, or actually in a bank. And as we know now the black money strike didn't lead into anything. But nevertheless it made people feel at that time that something was going to happen which hasn't. But it did affect the informal economy greatly. And that has the consequence we are seeing today in terms of its negative fallout on the economy. So I would actually say that even more than demonetization it's actually GST which has had a worse impact. In fact demonetization we know within one year more or less the cash was returned into the system. And there is an informal arrangement that happens in the rural areas. Definitely. I know some of my friends who are essentially grain traders. One of my friends, his family is a grain trader. He is a journalist but his family is a grain trading family. So I said that how is demonetization affecting informal credit systems? Credit systems existed. And at times like these actually there's an informal, I would say what would be called a moral economy that comes into play. Yes, there's an exploitative relationship. It's not as if it's... But it's still, though cash is not a big exchange, there is still an exchange of good reserves. But what GST has done is essentially, what GST has done is essentially killed the small entrepreneur. You know this is something which people haven't really understood. And I think I would like you to explain this a bit. What it has done is that circulation of money that a small person makes, that has been held up because it's now, if it takes say for instance three cycles for him to realize back his GST benefit, that means a huge part of his working capital is locked up in the GST payments. And that is not a net loss but it's a loss of his circulation. It's essentially exactly what you're saying. Now the interesting thing is again, that it's not the small entrepreneurs who have been affected by that. There are a lot of middling, people who actually probably make one or two crore rupees in terms of their retained profit a year. I'm not saying their income, personal income, but basically what happens is that GST makes you pay taxes in advance or every month, even if it's not in advance every month. Now what it does is that you realize the input credit that you have is refunded to you after 60 days. And we know that it hasn't been refunded at all, which is why the finance minister has in this budget and later in her mini budget said that we'll return it in 60 days. That means it wasn't returned. So working capital has actually been, I mean there are people in the stock markets, great votaries of this government who have said that all we need is the government should return the money, that it is locked up in GST. It's been locked up for six, seven, eight months. Now imagine that if you've paid, I was actually asking, I know vegetables are not part of GST, it's out of that system. I asked my local vegetable vendor called Pawan that, what is your total turnover and how much you... So he said that I make as in my profit is about, I would say, 1,000 to 1,500 rupees, depends. So I make about 35,000 rupees a month. But my turnover is approximately 15 to 20,000 rupees, which is dhanda, as he says. Per day. Per day. So 20,000 into 30, you can imagine, takes you to what, 70 or lakh rupees a year? Yeah. That puts you into GST bracket. Now obviously vegetables are not in there, but there are many, many, many businesses which are like that. Let's say carpenters, right? Carpenter, you do that, no one's going to take you because they don't get input credit if they bought things from you. So a bigger business is not going to buy from a smaller vendor, simply because... That's the other part. Yeah. In fact, it forces you to buy from bigger parties and that's a second strike against the informal sector because they cannot provide services easily because that input credit then doesn't come to the... So what has happened is as I was reading in a paper that approximately 50% of people who are below the threshold have registered for GST because being outside the threshold, not registering for GST means they won't get business.  So what do you do? You go to a bank, claim working capital loans, pay GST with that, you're finished in three months. So after industry has got finished. So this part of the equation is not so easily understood, shall we say, but what's called the pink papers because they are not the people who are dealing with this. Again, I don't know whether it's not understood because they understand that this is a process by which it leads to formalization. They're happy with that. They're happy with that. Now we know formalization increases inequality. It's as simple as that. The truth is that in a country like ours, if the small entrepreneur has to pay full taxes, he cannot compete. He or she cannot compete. We know that. Here we are not talking about full taxation. We are simply talking about GST. GST, exactly. Which is held. Even if he wants to pay taxes in full, we are talking about working capital. Exactly. And because he circulates his capital very fast, he survives. If he can't circulate it fast, he's finished. That's also the smallest. But the smallest of the people, the smallest of the people, someone gave me an example that there was an office which would basically buy tea from the vendors outside the office and distribute it inside the office. Now there's a limit on the amount of cash that you can, transaction that you can do in a day. So they say that if we buy tea from this person in cash, our cash is getting locked up in this because we can't get input credit on the tea we're buying. So what they did is they put a machine. So that guy shut down. So these are things which occur. Small things which are shifting. But you know, Modi government's main creditors, they are formalizing the economy, which is why they've got, shall we say, support from the the pink press and the relatively well-off sections. Leaving that part out for the time being, we'll come back to this another day. The last point that they wanted to talk about is you talked about the R word recession. Now the argument has been that since economies like India are still growing, they are not stable economies. Therefore what we should look at is not recession but growth recession. And what we are seeing clearly is growth recession that we are coming to the lowest growth for in the last six years, even government statistics. We are seeing a loss of demand which is only increasing. And you are seeing already three and a half lakh, 350,000 people unemployed in the auto-wile sector. You already had a recession in the housing sector. And you also saw the public sector, which could be used to pump the prime pump, that their surplus has been taken away in terms of buying other public sectors. Which means what the government has done is to cover its deficit by using the resources of the public sector. Which means that they cannot also now create demand because they don't have the capital that money will be taken. Now this all of it means today that you don't really have an ability to prime the pump. And what you are seeing, if it also translates into shortfall of tax revenue, and this is what the GST revenue seems to show, that you have a fault, then the question is how do you make this up? This is the key crux, key question that we have. So I would argue that, and this is being argued by people from the left and the right, that in a situation like this where you might not have a recession because technically it will have to be two quarters of negative growth to be called. It might not happen in a low... It might not happen, but it is true that sectors of the country are facing recession. So it might not be an overall, but automobile industry has negative growth. We know certain places which has negative growth. And I think large number of people have negative growth of real income. So the point is that in a situation like this I think that all you have to do is print notes. I know I said this on... Is that taking away the reserve bank surplus? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what they did. And the point is that this is not an argument made by heterodox economists or left economists. This is being made by Ben Bernanke. It was made by Larry Summers. Last people to be called leftists. The point is you have to forget about this ridiculous thing called the FRBM which tells you that you have to keep reducing your fiscal deficit to I think bring it down to 2% or something over a period of time. No government believes in that and therefore they push their actual expenditure on to other entities which are not in that balance sheet of the budget. Now the point is you have to forget about it. The only two years where we have had good growth and employment actually are the two years when the UP actually spent money it gave that stimulus without that there is no way at all that you can do anything about it. The problem that lies of course is the global financial markets don't like this. In India or at least the people in power at the moment including the people in the reserve bank actually feared the shall we say the unhappiness of rating agencies more than anyone else. So they're not so afraid of the people as of the rating agencies. So here's another thing that let's look at why governments are scared of rating agencies because what happens is that the risk premium attached to an equity market that goes up. So essentially money flows out automatically now since a lot of the money that is being put into India are through passive funds where there's no active thing out there which is putting in money. So when the risk premium goes up the money will flow out. So therefore that's their fear. The truth of the matter is that in 2009-10 when money was put into the markets I think the sense it's a drop to below 10,000 or something like that it was somewhere around 9,000 it went up to whatever 21-23,000 points right. So it's people come looking for earnings so if you have earnings they're going to come whether you do it through as you said fiscal deficit, printing notes it doesn't matter. The idea that they won't like it is true they don't like it because it appears then that why do you need the private sector? If the state can do all this that's their fear. This is the issue that capitalists don't like it but they love it when the earnings of companies go up and I'm saying that basically because the belief that getting capital will become more expensive therefore you have to keep the laws of capital essentially the financial markets happy. Which again is an absolute myth because whatever the... We are on the same side of that I'm saying the orthodoxy as in the heterodoxy that is a conservative view But the orthodoxy today is saying I think that it's only the orthodoxy in India which still holds on to this. If you look at what the American orthodoxy is saying what the European other than the bank heads everyone is saying spend. Well don't forget the Germans. The Germans are not in the scapegoat. Thank you Adiddo for being with us. We have to continue this conversation for much longer because as we know the clouds of recession are only going to be darker. It doesn't look like it's going to be lighted in the short run not with the policies we still see of managing headlines but not managing the economy. Thank you very much for being with us. This is all the time we have a news click today. Do keep watching news click and visit our website.