Gamifying digital accessibility

Welcome to Gamifying Digital Accessibility: Redux. Called that, because I originally presented this at the CSUN accessibility technology conference, in March.

And what we realized is, because they won’t let you record, it does put you in a situation where if you can’t be there, you miss out on potentially really interesting talks. And obviously I made this one, so I think it’s great. I decided it would be a good thing to do them again as webinars.

Especially because it gave me an opportunity to add more content because, CSUN is very strict about the 40 minute window. So without further ado, Gamifying Digital Accessibility. So our objectives for today. First we’re going to do introductions like we always do, which is always about me. But we’re going to talk about why we even want to try to gamify accessibility.

If you’re wondering why it says A11Y, that’s shorthand for accessibility, because there are 11 letters between A and Y in accessibility. I know, shocking, right? Not a very accessible word.

Motivation is weird. It is, trust me, we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to talk about gamifying and gamification in the wild. We’re going to talk about some success stories from our clients. We are going to talk about the dark side of this, because gamification has a lot of ethical questions. And then we’re going to wrap the whole thing up and hopefully have some laughs along the way.

So, introductions. This is about me. I’m going to use this moment to say that just like this little cartoon, I am a red headed woman with tortoiseshell glasses who is wearing a set of pink kitty ear headphones.

So I started making websites back in 1996. I really like teaching. Teaching tech has been something I’ve been into for a very long time. I didn’t keep it up to date, but I was a Microsoft Certified Trainer back in 1997. So, yes, that means I’m old. Over a decade in accessibility now, and I am a huge nerd.

That will become clear. I view my role as a rabble rouser. Because generally speaking, that’s what I am. My goal is always to change hearts and minds. And a fun fact about me is that I was immortalized as a minor character in a video game. And since people keep asking, the answer is World of Warcraft. So why do we need to gamify digital accessibility?

Because people suck. Kidding. Sort of. It’s because people are humans, right? And humans are wildly adaptable. But we’re also lazy, ignorant, and generally hate change. All kind of a bit like cats, really. And culture change is hard, right?

When we talk about shift left, and again, this is just to make sure we’re all on the same page, right? We mean, let’s talk about taking accessibility and moving it earlier in the process. Not this whole like, “Oops. After we’ve launched the website we’re going to crowbar in the accessibility we forgot about” right? And this is typically what people think I mean when I say do it earlier, they’re like, oh well we’ll just do it right after analysis and before we wireframe everything, and that will just take care of the problem.

But what I really mean is this, right? Accessibility is part of analysis and wireframing and development and testing and launch and even beyond that. Right? You got to be paying attention the whole time. It has to be part of the process.

Everyone with me so far? Awesome. This slide is animated confetti. I like confetti.

So what is gamification, really?

Gamification is behavior management. Yeah, it’s about getting people to do what you want. I know we don’t generally think about it that way, but that is what’s going on. So we’re going to go down this rabbit hole a bit and we’re going to start with Pavlov’s dogs. So this was an accidental but fascinating little thing that happened years ago.

So Pavlov had dogs and he had a bell on the door, outside where he kept them in kennels. Right? So when he would go through the door, it would go ding. Right. And what he found was that if he went through the door, they started salivating, and he was like, what? And it’s because every time he went— Almost, every time he went through the door, he was bringing food.

Right? So the dogs associated the ding sound with food to the point where, when they would hear the ding, they would start drooling. Right. He didn’t even realize he had managed to do a thing here at first. But Pavlov’s dogs is kind of the first time we recognize a type of conditioning that you could do, right, where you associate something with something else, and therefore you can get physical reactions.

Because I like making jokes, this is a cartoon from Andertoons, and it’s a cat sitting on a table pointing at a bell with a bearded man. And the cat is saying, “You ring that bell one more time…” and it’s actually titled Pavlov’s Cat.

So now I want to talk about fetch. Right. This is actually pictures of my coworker’s dog, Humphrey, who is just painfully adorable. Right? But I want you to think about how you teach a dog to play fetch. Right. You throw the ball or the stick or whatever, right? And sometimes they don’t bring it back, right? But when they do, you’re like, oh, my God, who’s a good dog?

Who’s the bestest boy ever! Aren’t you amazing! Right? And you shower them with praise because you want them to recognize that bringing the ball back is the point, right? I think in the case of Humphrey, because there are so many pictures of him with giant sticks that he thinks the bigger the stick, the bigger the reward, right?

And he’s like, look at this amazing stick I found, tell me I’m great! Because he’s now associating bringing sticks or balls or whatever, you know, as something that’s going to get him praised and rewarded. Whether you realize it or not, you now understand the difference between classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

Classical is Pavlov, right? He didn’t mean to do it, but like, because the the bell rang every time he walked in to feed them, you know, they accidentally got conditioned to hear a bell and think of food. Operant conditioning is like training your dog to play fetch. You want something to happen, so you actively participate in rewarding the behavior you want.

Isn’t learning fun?

So let’s talk about what motivates people. What motivates you? We’re going to talk about something called Bartle’s taxonomy. And don’t worry I know taxonomy is a scary word, but it just means types, right? So he’s talking about types of gamers. sS we start with explorers, right? This is about 10% of the population. They respond to things like progress bars.

Right? They love things like maps where some of it’s hidden. Right? And they like storytelling, right? These are the things that get them to engage. Right? This is what makes them happiest. And again, 10% of people. Then there’s the achievers, right? Again, about 10%. This is more on your points, badges, statuses. Right. These people want things like, even the cosmetic rewards, right?

Where if you’re playing a video game and they’re like, well, you know, if you do this set of quests, you can have this special horse that you ride around on, right? Achievers are all about that, right? They’re like, I will put in the time to get that thing because I want the thing. They like prizes. They like mastering things.

The killers, which are thankfully only about 1%. They’re kind of similar to the achievers, right? They want to earn points and they want to progress, but they want to win. And it’s not just they want to win. They want to see other people lose. That is what motivates them. They want to defeat others, right? They like change.

They like chaos. They like adrenaline. And they will find ways to get it. I do not recommend catering to these people, but you will see it show up in all sorts of different places. Socializers is actually the big majority of people, and you may recognize yourselves in this description. The socializers want to interact with others.

They want to meet. They want to cooperate. The reality is they use games as the excuse to do it. Their main priority is actually like working together and socializing. Right. And the game is just kind of a method. It’s a way in, right? In research, they are actually equally happy interacting with AI, controlling a persona if it’s convincing enough, which I think is quite interesting.

but this is all about bonds and cooperation and, like, basically happy stuff. Everyone with me so far? Let’s face it, most of you are probably socializers, which means we’re awesome. That’s more confetti for you. Honestly, maybe you’re all just like me. I want to be told I’m good. A lot. Like, way more than British people think. I need to be told I’m good.

Like all the time. So let’s talk about some gamification you can find in the wild, right? We’re going to start with streaks. I’m going to try to give you these concepts and then give you examples. Right. Because sometimes they show up in weird ways you might not have expected. So this is not my screenshot. This is someone who’s much healthier than me.

But this is the three rings from your iPhone or iWatch, right. Getting closed. It’s like standing exercise and movement, right? But this person has closed them a bunch of times. And what the app does is give you the month and you can actually see visually like how well you did on closing those rings every single day.

Right? it’s there to motivate you. Loyalty cards are actually a form of streaks. You know, like punch nine times, get free sub? Again, gamifying.

So this one cracks me up, right? So, one of my coworkers uses something called Superhuman. It’s a mail client. But what it does is reward you if you hit inbox zero. Right? And I’ve had to blow it up because you can’t really see it in the screenshot, but it says “You’ve hit inbox zero 130 weeks in a row.”

That’s two years! Seriously! But when I asked him about it, he’s not interested in the streaks at all, right? Like he doesn’t care about the 130 weeks, right? What he cared about is that every time you clear your inbox, you get rewarded with a photo. And he said the photos are really beautiful. And that’s actually what he’s doing it for.

This is what I mean. Motivation is different for everyone.

And it doesn’t work on me because I am definitely at inbox not-zero. That has 3640 unread emails. Yeah, it’s bad. Moving on. Let’s talk about merit badges. Did I say merit badges? I mean, achievements. I mean achievements like this. This one says “Achievement unlocked! 40 is the new 30.” Yes, we had that printed on a t shirt for someone’s birthday.

You might recognize this. There are achievements all over the place now in games and in life. It has become more ubiquitous. And they show up in all sorts of different ways, with badges… And this one’s from Yahtzee. It’s got a selection of all sorts of different badges that you can get, right. This one is actually from Kindle, because at the start of the month, I got a message saying, “High five! The bookworm achievement is yours.”

And I was like, the what? Because Kindle now has, like, awards. Bookworm was, “Two down! You unlocked this achievement by reading two Kindle books during the Kindle challenge. What’s next on your reading list?” I was like, what Kindle challenge? I didn’t know any of this was here. And then there was Bibliophile, which was three Kindle books.

And like, obviously, they’re trying to reward you. Look at how much confetti was going on, on the screens. Like I’m giving you confetti, but it’s like way subdued in comparison to what this one’s doing. And this is what I mean. Like, it’s literally everywhere. You know, it’s so hard to avoid now, but if you like achievements and you like merit badges, there’s actually a real life option.

There’s a company called the Rebel Badge (Club) and they actually do like adult achievements, right? They have books and stamps, and if you do well, you can even buy yourself a medal, which I think is fascinating.

Next up we’re going to talk about leaderboards real quick. Leaderboards I think of as clout chasing. Right. These are like the things you hold up to go like, look how awesome I am. I did a thing, right. This is your likes, your followers, your subscribers, your reposts, your upvotes, your shares. Like, when I say this is everywhere,

I mean, like, even top donors show up everywhere from GoFundMe to Facebook’s birthday charity drives, right? For me personally, I find that an invasion of my privacy and I hate it because, like, you know, yeah, I’m probably happy to throw like, you know, 10 or 20 pounds at your charity for your birthday, but I don’t think I need everyone to know.

But this is what I mean. Like, they’re using it by saying, like— you’ll see it where they say, like, the average donation is this, you know, it’s all meant to get you to do what they want. See what I mean? Behavior management.

This is something that was accidentally exposed at CSUN. I had to do so much cutting to make this league fit, and they managed to find out there was a nudges slide. This is the thing that you experience all the time and have probably just gotten so used to that you tune it out, right? But it’s all the messages that come to your phone or to your email, you know, that we often just call the alerts, right?

But so much of this is about trying to get you to do what they want, right? Log back in, listen to our podcast post. Right. The Monday crosswords are ready to play, right, from New York Times being like, if I get you to play this, you’re more likely to keep paying, right? Or the buy two burgers and we give one burger for free.

There’s only two of us. That was not very compelling. But the one I’m going to highlight here is the one from Duolingo, because we’re going to talk about them a lot today. It actually cuts off, but it says “Don’t let Oliver down. Only four hours left to complete this week’s Friends Quest.”

Bit suspicious, that one.

Part of the reason I want to talk about Duolingo is because they are masters of gamification, and they do a lot of talking about and, openness, shall we say, about what they’re doing, and how they get there. And this is one of those things where it actually matters. Right? So I call this, finessing the message. Right?

This is from one of their blog posts where what they found was that a phrase like, “Turn on streak reminders. We will notify you if you’re in danger of missing your streak” didn’t work, right? But when they changed the phrasing to, “Build a long term habit with reminders. They’re an easy way to stay consistent” people turned on the reminders, right?

So how you say things and what you say and how you pitch this actually really matters. If we tie all of this together, I have a fantastic example for you that I found here in Britain. It’s called the Times Table Rock Stars, right? This is for children, mind you. It says “Multiplication and division. Solved.” And I’ve just pulled a part of their website.

It says, “It’s engaging. Kids love earning virtual coins to personalize their rock avatars and move up the rock leaderboard from New Artist to Rock Hero!” How many of those things did they just tick in that little blurb? They’re screaming “We have gamified this to death” right? They believe it works, right? If you need your kids to learn the times tables, then here’s an option, right?

It’s got all the major gamification things in it. So we’re going to talk about how others have succeeded by implementing bits of gamification into their rewards. And to be able to talk about this, we have to do a quick intro to the Silktide Index. So bear with me if you’re used to using it. And if not, well, welcome to a whole new world.

So the Silktide Index is a site you can go to. And we test something like 12,000 different websites, every month, small numbers of pages. Right. And then we give them scores for accessibility. Right. And what it’s there to do is to give you, I think it’s five things that are wrong on your website with some hints about where it is and how to fix it.

And then if you fix those things, it gets retested every month automatically. So next month, you’ll get a new set of five things you should be fixing. It is there to help you. It’s not just to rank people. As an example, the UK councils, there’s about 400 of them. We do the top 30. No one else gets ranked.

But the reason it matters and why I can tell you that this works… So this is leaderboards, mind you. Back in February 2020, I started paying close attention to what was happening. Right. So I have a bunch of data. So in 2020, the average score of the UK councils, like I said, there’s about 400 of them, was 67 out of 100.

And to be in the top 30, you needed an 87, which was— It’s not bad for, you know, getting your automated testing score up. By February of 2022, so we’re two years later, bearing in mind this is the pandemic, and in the UK, a lot of lockdowns, the average score had jumped to 81. And to be in the top 30, you needed a 96.

Looking at it now in February 2024. Half of them are above 90 and the top 40, right, so that’s below where it ranks, requires a 98. And there are six of them who have actually managed to get 100, which means they’re doing everything you need for triple-A that we can automate, too. Wild, right? Yay! I love learning, I love sharing, you know.

Now you potentially know something new. So we’re going to talk about Maidstone Borough Council first. So they actually approached things with a single goal. And while it will potentially sound like the killers I think they’re actually more like, legitimately, they’re more the achievers. Right. Because they set out to get a perfect score and be number one in the Index.

That’s it. Right. They were like, that is the mission. So this is a quote from them.

[Gary Hunter]
“When we started in April 2020, our overall accessibility score was 62. In July, we achieved a score of 100 for double-A and 99.8 for triple-A.”

[Jessica]
That’s just a handful of months. With determination and a plan and a goal, they just shot up there. And the thing is, they’ve remained there.

Maidstone might have been number one, but they’re now 10th and they’ve got a 99. Right. Because, this is what I mean, there’s so many who actually have 100. Like, you know, 99 is 10th. But they got there in 2020 and we’re in 2024 and they’re still there. So they made changes internally by setting a goal and then bringing everything, everyone, along with them, right, by saying this is where we’re going, and then being like, we’ll all go together.

Next we’re going to talk about Kirklees Council. So again, using their language,

[Graeme Murrell]
“We have over 50 websites. Most are managed by teams across the council. Whenever a new person is introduced, we run an intro session and show them where their website sits in the league table.”

[Jessica]
Right. So they’re using leaderboards to be like, see how you’re doing, see how everyone else is doing.

[Graeme Murrell]
“Every six months, we report on the top five and the bottom five websites. The top five websites are congratulated, while the bottom five websites are offeree a four week handholding period to raise their game.”

[Jessica]
I find this amazing. So they’re using the leaderboards to motivate them, right? And then when they realize that some of them are struggling, they actively seek them out and give them additional training.

Right. To be like, let us help you so you can compete better. They’re hitting socializers, and the achievers, right? Brilliant. So we know gamification can work. This is just a picture of the leaderboards and a different kind of achievement that says “50G – Begin to understand” because that’s what the things look like in the actual games.

So there’s lots of things you can do. But now let’s talk about whether or not you should.

This is the dark side. And we’re going to start with peer pressure. So you might remember I highlighted that it said, don’t let Oliver down? Well imagine you play Duolingo and so does your boss. Suddenly those like group quests suddenly become a bit more of a thing, right? this example is not mine. It’s just one I found on the internet.

But the Friends Quest was to complete 45 perfect lessons. And in this case, it says, “You: 45 perfect lessons.” and they blanked out their friend, so it’s not clear who it is, and it says “Zero perfect lessons” and it’s offering a call to action to high five your friend who did zero lessons. And that’s the thing, right?

Like we all know with group projects, oftentimes one person ends up doing most of it. But it matters.

Right. So I’m going to read you some quotes along with everything else that we cover here. This one had to be censored a little bit, but Stephanie Tan wrote an article about her feelings about Duolingo, and she said “The snarky owl even sends you passive aggressive messages between lessons. I— censored —you not. I once received ‘Go on, keep scrolling social media. Let’s see how much Indonesian that can teach you.’ I hate the— censored —owl. But what I hate more is that the whole pushy guilt-tripping thing works. It’s not even about learning Indo anymore. I just don’t want to give Duo the satisfaction of beating me.”

This is a constant refrain that Duolingo’s messaging— this is what I meant about finessing the message —can be a serious problem. They like guilt. I’ve seen this one a number of times myself. It says, “Dissappointed Duo. You’ve let Duo down. Who will be next? Your boss? Your best friend? Your Grandma Betty?!”

Now, I loved Duolingo. I actually got a badge they call Legendary, which means you finished as number one in the top league. Now, it’s worth noting that I decided to do this over a Christmas period, and I played really heavily in the first week thinking I had a good shot at it, and I lost. I came in second, which is just not good enough.

The following week, I was like, well, that’s not going to happen again. And I played all the time, all day, every day for a week, trying to get this achievement, right. There’s a thing. I did get it. And the fact that it was called Legendary, I think is part of the reason I chased after it so hard.

Interestingly, it looks like they’ve changed the name. It’s now Rarest Diamond, right? But here’s the thing. After two weeks of not really learning, right. Just doing whatever I could to rack up points, you know, and fixating on beating everyone else. Right? I haven’t played Duolingo since. So, this is a screenshot of me logging in recently, only for the purpose of making sure I didn’t give them any money anymore.

It says, “Are you sure you want to cancel?” But here’s the thing. I did cancel, and then it started sending me messages again. And they say things like, “Last reminder! Extend your new streak by practicing German now!” And I totally screenshotted that being like, oh, look, last reminder. Do you think that was the last reminder?

It was not. There are so many of them. They never stop and they get weird as they go along. This one I’ve highlighted in particular says, “Yo, it’s Lin.” right? One of the characters from Duolingo, and it reads, “Whoa, you’re ignoring Duo? Brave. We’ll stop sending these reminders for a bit.” They say they’ll stop sending them all the time.

They don’t, and they send tons of them.

So, this is Sahibzada Mayed, and she posted on LinkedIn, like, in the past week or so, and it’s something I really wanted to highlight once I’d seen what she had to say. It says, “Dear Duolingo, why is your cute, playful owl harassing me like a toxic ex? I have always admired the concept of learning a language in a fun, gamified way and I know that it can be hard to keep people engaged and accountable.

However, explicitly using tactics of shaming, guilt tripping, and love bombing is actually quite harmful. ‘You made Duo sad. You made Duo angry. How do you say quitter? It’s been 5 days.’ This is precisely why we need more trauma-informed UX design.”

The messaging matters. Duolingo may think they’re being cute or funny. And let’s face it, the owl is really cute, you know? But even though it works, doesn’t mean it’s right. You know? And I think that’s something that we all really need to bear in mind, because I am a big advocate for gamification. Right? That’s why I wanted to talk about it.

But I also recognize how dangerous this can actually be. So we’re going to talk about the Skinner box. For those who aren’t familiar, the Skinner box is mostly known because rats could push a lever and it would give them a treat. Right? This is the fundamental concept that everyone knows about Skinner boxes. That’s why this is a cartoon rat with a sign that says “Will press lever for food.”

But that’s not really all Skinner was doing. One of the things he was looking at was variable rewards. So, like, what if you press a lever and sometimes you get food and sometimes you don’t, right? Do you keep pressing the lever anyway? Does that sound familiar? This is a picture of slot machines, otherwise known as one-armed bandits, in Las Vegas.

Right? Pull lever, sometimes you get rewards, sometimes you don’t.

This is a picture from Japan, right? There’s a reason I’m explaining that. Don’t worry. We’ll get there in a second. But if you can’t see it, what it is, is a long, long line of capsule machines. Right? The things where you like pop in money and you turn a crank and it, you know, it pops out a thing.

These are a big part of my childhood, but in Japan, they’re everywhere. They have them for all sorts of amazing things. And they have a name. They’re called gacha machines, right? Now, the reason I mention this is because gacha is one of those things that shows up in video games now, and that’s just the term they use for it, right?

These are your loot boxes you might find in games. These are your collectible card games where when you open the pack, you don’t know what you’re going to get, right. They’re all called gacha because of the capsule machines in Japan. See, learning stuff all the time. And you will see this in all sorts of weird places. I kid you not.

Woot does a “Bag o’ Crap” where they’re like, don’t know what it is. And Hobbii, a company that sells yarn, they do something called a “Lucky Bag Whoops” where you can say, like, I want the one that has cotton yarn, but you don’t really know what you’re going to get. And the thing is, people like this, right?

People really like random rewards. When I was working for NCSoft, I made up a game called “Nyerk” right, which was the word they used to censor anything bad on the forums. So, like, it was shorthand for, like, rude. And the principle was simple, like, you could come find me in the game, and, you know, we would literally use a random number generator from 1 to 100 and whatever that number was, that’s what you got, right? I had a giant spreadsheet. Trust me, I was a little too into this, too. But the thing is, people would come in droves when I would show up in the server being like, let’s play Nyerk, and it’s like, what are you going to get? Maybe something good, maybe something nyerk, nobody knows.

And they loved it, right? You could give them totally bad items. And they were just like, yay, because they were so excited to be playing the random game, right? This is what humans are like. We are all like this.

Everyone with me? Yay, confetti! So much confetti.

So we’re going to wrap up a bit. Culture change is hard, right? I’m not going to tell you that it’s easy, and I’m not going to tell you that gamifying is like your silver bullet, right? That you’re just going to be like, dude, we’re just going to implement leaderboards and like, divvy up the departments, and that will solve the problem, right?

It might help, but you need to change things from within, right? That’s what I mean. Culture change is hard. But I want to talk briefly about Aristotle. See what I mean? Huge nerd. So, there’s a concept called Aristotelian ethics, right? Yeah. Trust me, I had to learn how to pronounce that. Now what Aristotle believed was that if you wanted to be a good person, the key was to do good things, right?

And by doing enough good things, it would become a habit. And then you would become a good person, right? And the reason I’m bringing this up is because I think he was on to something. Like, it’s not that I’m going to say that caring is overrated. What I am going to say is that if you can motivate people to do the work, right, to learn a little bit about accessibility, to make changes on the website, to fix the things that have been identified as causing barriers. Right? They’re going to keep doing it because it’s just going to change who they are, right? It’s not going to be because they set out to do it. It’s just going to be because by doing it, it’s going to become a habit, right?

They won’t be able to unsee some of the things they encounter, right? It’s just going to be in their heads from now on. This is the key. You’ve got to figure out what motivates them initially. Because you just need to start this process. You need to start the ball rolling, right? So that they go, oh yeah.

You know, and like, let’s face it, you know, confetti or rewards or badges or any of these things there’s like, you know, “Look, I just went up on the leaderboards” right? Like, seriously, if you’re a business and you think your department or organization or you know, should be on the Index, reach out. I mean, like, if it’s not already there, like, we do expand it from time to time.

And the thing is, like, it can be helpful, you know, it can be the kind of thing where when people look at it, they go, oh, wow. You know, like, we went from 42 to 67, right? That’s great. You know, like, anything that you can do to go, look, there’s a tangible progress being made here. You know, it will change people.

So yes, gamification is behavior management, right? That’s what it is. When I played WoW, I used to make jokes, as a healer, that my ability to heal was my ever-evolving tool for behavior management. Because, if you don’t do what I want, I’ll just stop healing you. See, that’s the thing. When it comes to a reward system, right, there’s actually positive and negative, right?

Like, I tried to gloss over the Skinner box and just focus on “Press lever, get food sometimes” right? But the reality is, you can apply negative reinforcement. I don’t recommend it, but it is something you can do. And if you look at what Duolingo is doing and you see the shame and the guilt, that’s negative reinforcement, right?

So when you look to do this with your own people, you need to be asking yourself, are you Pavlov with the accidental conditioning, or are you Skinner with the electrified floor?

You guys have been awesome. I really hope that you have enjoyed this presentation so far. Again, this is a confetti moment. It says, “You’re the best!” And now I need to ask you…

Has this been working? This is a scene from The Lego Movie. This is Business Unikitty, and it says, “Is this working…?” Does the confetti work on you? It works on a lot of people. That’s why I’m asking. I mean, it works on me. I’m like, yay, confetti! Okay. A couple things I want to plug.

That was a bad pun. We have a new free Chrome plugin. This is a browser extension. It is free. It has over 200 accessibility checks, including WCAG 2.2. And it’s got some quite cool tools in it. There’s a color contrast with a little eyedropper thing. We can show you the focus order, the landmarks, your alt text, and we have simulations for things like visual impairments or dyslexia… There’s even a simulated screen reader.

Right. So you can have some idea of what the experience might be like without having any kind of steep learning curve. It can be really good for finding things fast, and for sharing with other people. I’m going to plug the field guide because I love it. I did put the link here on the slide, but the reality is, if you go to Silktide dot com, it’s just in the resources area. It’s a field guide to mobile screen readers. Right. So essentially what you’ll do is, potentially download the PDF. It’s got QR codes in it, and it’s going to walk you through how to turn on the screen reader on your phone, whether it’s Android or iOS.

Right. And then it’s going to walk you through the experience of things like skip to content links and why you need them, and alt text and how it works. Right? I believe it takes 45 minutes to an hour to go through it, start to finish, but you can pick it up and put it down at any time.

I think it’s a great way to get people to experience something they wouldn’t otherwise.

Also, we have a YouTube channel. Remember how I was on about like those links and shares and subscribe stuff? Well, yeah. As it turns out, sometimes it’s not just about dealing with the, you know, “I’m so proud of myself because I have 10,000 views.” Sometimes it’s actually because it helps show your boss that your videos are worth the time, right?

So, YouTube dot com slash Silktide. Please check out the videos, particularly in my list of awesome is, the one that’s kind of previewed here. It’s Accessible Hashtags. It’s all about using camel case and capitalizing words, but it has a stretch camel. It’s pretty awesome.

And the last little bit of bonus content that I put in here, because this is one slide where I truly had to cut it. This is XKCD, right? And it’s entitled Goodhart’s Law. One person is saying to the other “When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.” And the other one says, “Sounds bad. Let’s offer a bonus to anyone who identifies a metric that has become a target.”

Okay. Time for some Q and A. I hope you all feel like you learned something.

So the first question is, “So in the ethics, I guess, with the council who try to deal with the bottom five websites, are they giving them extra training or giving the team more management?” They’re giving them training, from what I’m aware of. They called it handholding, and I think that’s really what they’re trying to do, right?

It’s not meant to be a punishment. It’s more like a, let us help you get there, which is part of the reason that I actually liked it. I think it’s important that you definitely are gentle with how you approached the bottom five. Obviously, I didn’t want to make the slide massive. but, it’s in the case studies.

But they talked about the fact that it’s not necessarily the bottom five scores, right? Like, they look at it more of like, what sites are popular, what sites are important, and are still toward the bottom, and try to use that to identify the ones that matter as they see it. You have to prioritize, right?

And to take them and lift them up. So again, like, it’s very easy to get into a situation like the way the Index was before we started running it, which is to say that it did name and shame. They’d be like, this is the bottom five websites in this, you know, like this category. And it was something we talked about internally and I am viciously against. I don’t think you actually gain anything by shaming people.

I don’t. I think it’s important that you highlight good. Right. Hence, like the top 30 of the councils. But I couldn’t tell you offhand who the bottom five are, because, like, I don’t know. It’s there to help them, right? If you’re not in the top 30, you can just go look at your own site, right? And be like, what’s my score?

And what are the things that you’re telling me are wrong that I can go fix? And I think it really matters how you approach it. Right. And you’re right to flag it as an ethics question, right? They are highlighting the bottom five, you know, internally. But I think they’re trying to do it as more of like, let us help you.

If I was doing it, I would say that the thing you needed to do is, six months later, right, when you do it again and you’re highlighting the top five and the bottom five, I would remind everyone who the bottom five were last time and where they are now. Right? Because that’s your “We’re all in this together” you know? Like socializers helping each other.

You know what I mean? I would also try to get the people who are doing really well to help the people who were not, be like, “Obviously you’ve learned some stuff, share it with the group.” There’s a bunch of things you could be doing to like harness the passion and knowledge of the ones who are doing well, you know, as a way to pull the group together across teams.

“Not necessarily a question, but using a leaderboard like that can be negative too,” Yes it can, “for management and people in the organization who don’t have sight of issues being fixed or how those fixes positively affect users, they just see, we’re first on the leaderboard, well done, let’s keep it that way.” Yeah. “It’s something to brag about for them, but it doesn’t incentivize them to learn anything.”

That’s valid, anonymous attendee. What I’m going to say here is that, yeah, you know what? Sometimes it isn’t— As I said, there is no silver bullet, right? Leaderboards can be viewed as, “Well, we’re at the top.” I’ll give you an anonymized example. I know someone who does really well. They’re like, generally at the top of the leaderboards.

But it means that their boss is really, really upset if they are not at the top of the leaderboards. Right. And if you’re in a competitive category and there’s quite a few of them, right, that might actually be tough to maintain. And people add content to the website all the time, right, and it like— Moving to a different example, but while my brain’s pumping through a few, if you look at the councils, right, the top six or so from my screenshot are at 100, right?

It takes one duplicated link text. Right? One PDF that’s missing a tag and you’ll be at 99-point-something, right? I don’t get to see the point-whatever. No one does, but it you’re not going to be in that top six anymore, right? So like, you have to be really on top of it. And you combine that with a whole like, and you need a manual audit because whatever you’ve done for, you know, automated testing, while amazing, is only a small portion of everything you need to be considering. But, yeah, I think that you are right about the problem of, like, if you’re at the top, where’s their incentive to learn anything? But it might mean that your team is doing a good job.

Unfortunately, I think negative reinforcement is going to drop into that situation at some point. Because if you stop being number one or at the top of the leaderboards or whatever, that’s when they’re going to care, but not in a good way. Right? “How does this tool compare with other extensions like axe DevTools?” I’m going to call it the Pepsi Challenge. Mine’s better! I would be very happy for you to put them side by side and check them and check what they cover.

Because I can make my own claims about it. But the reality is, my browser extension is awesome. And part of what I’ve tried to do was think about it from the perspective of being someone who does try to test websites, right? So a quick example for you. I have roughly 8 or 9 different browser extensions. It’s really annoying because like they don’t all fit on the thing.

And what I found was that sometimes I have a browser extension for one thing it does, you know, like, no offense, Microsoft, but, I keep their Accessibility Insights specifically for the focus order, right? Because as you tab, it shows it to you visually. So I was like, can I have that? Can I have, you know, the color contrast checking eyedropper thing?

Because I have a different one I use for that. Right? I literally was like, here’s the things I use all the time. Can we just put these into our extension so that we have the tools that people need? So the one thing I do ask is that if you do take the Pepsi Challenge, you play with it and you go, oh man, it would be so amazing if it only had (insert thing). Right? Tell us! We are listening.

“Probably a little weird question. Has Silktide incorporated elements of gamification into their work on their tool set and if so, how?” I’m not sure how much gamification we do internally, but… All right, here’s a Silktide moment for you. We have Slack for talking amongst ourselves, right, and it wasn’t me, someone else actually created a “high five” channel, right? And the high five channel is where you go to congratulate other people, right? To be like, dude, nice job on whatever it is, right? Like, I love that feature. I love that thing you did. You know, I love this design, right? And I personally adore it because, I’m that socializer.

It’s like, I want to be told I’m good. I love “high five”. I think having things like that where you can intentionally call out someone else’s work as good, right? And kind of hold them up and be like, check out this awesome thing someone did, and allow everyone else to kind of enjoy that moment with them is really good and really powerful, and especially if you’re like, all remote.

I think things like that matter. And yeah, okay, there might be some confetti running around the academy and the Index might be getting badges… You know, we’re definitely looking at ways we can put it in, but remember, we’re also thinking about like, not doing anything that would be unethical or create that kind of shame spiral.

Right. Like, that’s why I said when we talked about it right away with the Index, it was like, we will never, you know, call people out for being at the bottom. What we might do is call someone out for jumping like 30 ranks or something and be like, dude, you know, you’re amazing! What did you just do? Can we talk about it?

Can we tell other people, you know, because again, it’s all about like focusing on the really good, right? Like I said before, if you’re going to highlight the bottom five and offer them help, then I think actually it would be a good thing to revisit it and be like, here’s how they’re doing now, right? It’s the reinforcement and positive reinforcement of like, you can do this.

We will help you. “How do you think gamification can work well in a work environment and not be perceived as infantilization or condescending to employees?” You guys are fab. That is a word that I use. So, yay, thank you. Yeah, I think it’s a tough one, right? Like, I think culture is going to come into play.

I think that as an American, it’s much easier for me to be like, yay, confetti. It’s all awesome. You’re amazing. I love you, right? And in Britain, where I live, not everyone is as comfortable receiving praise, let alone giving praise. Right? So it can create a situation where people are made a little bit uncomfortable.

They don’t want to be highlighted. They don’t want people bothering them. So I think some of it is going to come down to where you are and the culture you work in, right? And looking at the language you use. Right. I’ll give you a different example. If you signed on to a new product, a lot of times there is what we call a joyride.

Which is a series of steps that it walks you through so you can understand how the product works. Right? That’s all automated. It’s not a person helping you. It’s just the system being like, oh, welcome here. You should see this button and know that thing, right? Those are usually gamified, right? There’s like ticks for the steps you’ve done and maybe confetti and like, you, a bunch of things.

Right? That happens all the time. And generally speaking, I don’t know anyone who points that out and goes, “That feels like infantilizing me” right? So I think it’s all about how you go about it, and I think if you’re going to do it, you have to believe in it. Right? Like I said, I need to be praised all the time.

So like, I love confetti. I love all of it. I love that when you finish something in the Silktide Academy, you can keep hitting the button to get more confetti. Yeah, I know, I’m that person. Sometimes we just own it. But, yeah, it’s quite possible. Especially if you’re from this island I live on here, that, you know, confetti with like, “You’re awesome” really does not work for you. Like I said, you’re going to have to base it on your team. And I’m quite happy to talk to anyone after this if you want to discuss it. Because, as I said, I think it’s a cultural thing. So you may just want to do it, but, like, tone it down, you know, not the “turned up to 11 American awesomeness” thing.

I will look to see if I can dig up some resources in gamification trauma-informed UX. I don’t think there’s enough information on it right now. But I do think it’s something that, like, people need to bear in mind, you know, that it’s very easy to veer off and, without intent, trigger people’s trauma, right?

Just in the phrasing you use, you know, like, honestly, that whole, like, you know, “You’re ignoring Duo? That’s brave.” What is that, really? Why did they write anything like that? “Is Silktide working with any of the content management system vendors to embed the checks into the content creation process for accessibility? Even gamification for content editors can be baked in when creating the website.”

That’s probably more a question for the devs, but I believe there is an extension and there’s other things we’re trying to bring in so that you can open your CMS and have it run checks ahead of time. I know specifically we do that with AEM, but I don’t know enough about the others. Feel free to write in and we’ll get someone from support or from the dev team to give us some good information on that.

[Jessica looks to the side] No, kitty. [Jessica turns back to the camera] Yes. The recording will be available to watch afterwards. It will be sent out to everyone via email and yes— [Jess picks up her cat and comforts him] —it will be sent out via email with the transcript to everyone who registered, and usually in the next week or so, it will also show up on YouTube if you want to watch it there instead.

Sorry. My kitty is yowling and demanding attention. Zoom is amazing for hiding these things. Okay, that seems to be bottom of the queue. If you guys have any other questions, feel free to reach out to Silktide or email me at Jessica Chambers at Silktide dot com. I love talking about accessibility, and gamification and all of these kind of things.

So if I can help you, let me know. And oh, and last thing to mention, when you log out of here, you’re going to get like a little survey. Please do fill it out. I know we’re talking about gamification, it’s going to ask you to rate it and if you liked it… So yes, we are paying attention and it does matter.

So if you have additional topics you wish we would cover, let us know. And again, apologies for the cat interruption. Thank you, everyone. I hope this has been useful.