Podcast appearances and mentions of Jeff Adams

How is AI transforming accessibility for indie authors — and why should you care even if you consider yourself able-bodied? What happens when the tools designed to help people with disabilities end up making everyone's creative business better? Jeff Adams, accessibility expert and romance author, explores how AI is opening doors that were previously closed. In the intro, Spotify Audiobook Innovations; The Economics of Convention Life [The Indy Author]; Friction in your Author Business [Self-Publishing with ALLi]. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How ending a long-running podcast made space for more writing — and how to know when it's time to let go of a good thing What accessibility really means for indie authors and why your digital content might be excluding part of your audience How AI agents like Claude Cowork are removing physical and cognitive barriers for authors with disabilities, chronic pain, or limited energy The culture of shame around AI use in the writing community and why blanket anti-AI statements can be ableist Practical tools including NotebookLM, ElevenReader, and ChatGPT for marketing copy, metadata management, and multimodal research Exciting futures in personalised reading, real-time translation, and AI browser agents that could change how everyone interacts online You can find Jeff at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jeff also now has a SubStack at contentforeveryone.substack.com Transcript of the interview with Jeff Adams Jo: Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, and the co-author of Content for Everyone, a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs to produce accessible and usable web content. Welcome back to the show, Jeff. Jeff: Thanks so much, Jo. It's good to be back. Jo: It is. You were last on the show in March 2023, so over three years ago now. Give us a bit of an update on your writing and publishing business and what it looks like at the moment. Jeff: Sure. I think the biggest thing that happened is that my husband Will, who is also a writer, we ended the Big Gay Fiction Podcast at the end of 2024, after 470-something episodes. It was basically time to do that. So we both focused on writing from that point. In 2025 we had some of our biggest successes in getting writing out into the world. I refound my groove—my difficulty in writing went away finally. We talked a little bit about that back in 2023 too. Will started a new pen name and started producing again, and it was really good to be able to move in that direction. Jo: Was this the hockey romance that really hit at the right time? Jeff: You know, I wish I could have capitalised more on Heated Rivalry when it came out, but I did get hockey books out, and I think I did get to ride that wave a little bit there too. Jo: Yes, and if people don't know about that, that was a super popular streaming series. Was that based on a book? Jeff: It was, yes. Rachel Reid was the author of that book and that series that then Jacob Tierney optioned and made into what fairly turned into a global phenomenon at the end of 2025. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Although I particularly liked Red, White and Royal Blue. That was the one I liked. Not so much into hockey. But anyway, I just wanted to ask you about the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. As you say, you did hundreds of episodes over many years. You and I met over podcasting. You've had lots of connections with people. You ended it, and I know you struggled with ending it, but it sounds like it went really well for you. So maybe you could talk a bit about— How do you know when it's time to end something—a good thing rather than something bad? Does that make more space for writing, essentially? Jeff: It absolutely did make more space for writing for both of us, in particular for me because I have a day job. I balance everything on the creative side with the day job. Will and I had been talking about it for over a year. It just was like, it's really time. After nine years, getting to that 470 mark, we thought about trying to get to 10 years and we thought about, if not 10, then getting to 500 and ending on a milestone. As we looked at everything in our creative business, it was like, this is fun, we enjoy it, but we're not getting as much out of it as we might be if we were actually also writing books, which we also really want to do. It became a time thing and what was the best use of the time. We absolutely miss it occasionally. The whole Heated Rivalry thing, I would've loved to have had episodes to talk about that on, but in the long run, it was worth it. Jo: I mean, one of the things with a podcast, particularly around fiction, was that it was a marketing angle for your fiction. This show is a marketing angle mainly for my nonfiction. So what did you replace the podcast with, in terms of book marketing? Jeff: It was really stepped-up email marketing. I'd always had a list. Will started a list, of course, as he started his new pen name. So it was really turning on that, focusing on that, getting some email marketing with a Bargain Booksy and a Fussy Librarian and a BookBub occasionally to do that work. To be honest, even though we covered things in our genre that if you like what we're talking about, you should like our books, there was never as much of a connection there as you'd want there to be. Even from that book marketing angle, these other things that we can do, it's also a better spend of the money to get those types of promos than it was to continue running the show. Jo: Yes, that is interesting. I mean, obviously I think about podcasting a lot since I have this one, and I put Books and Travel on a hiatus and that was meant to help my fiction and definitely didn't help my fiction sales. But I want to bring it back again because I love doing it. Do you have this hankering sometimes? Do you think you'd ever do the podcast again? Because you are also quite into all the technical stuff and all that. Jeff: It's possible. I've toyed with the idea of doing a short accessibility podcast geared towards creatives, tilting to the same audience that Content for Everyone does. Then I come back and look at the time—is my time better served writing new fiction or perhaps starting a Substack, which I also toy with the idea of, for accessibility stuff? So it bounces around in my head to do another show, but I haven't really decided to jump on that yet. Jo: Yes, and I think that waiting is really good. As you say, you quit a big thing and you don't have to rush to fill it again. I love that you guys are writing more books. So I wanted us to talk about that up front because I know people who listen to this show—I encourage people to start podcasts if you want to, but equally it can take a lot of time. So that's fantastic. Now, you mentioned accessibility, and I feel like the word can be quite difficult for people. So let's just start with a definition. What is accessibility? Why do you care and why should we care? Jeff: So accessibility is really about making sure that whatever the thing is, whether it's something out in the physical world or in the online world, that everybody has access to it. Access to the information, access to getting into a building or being able to cross the street appropriately, whatever that is—that the accessibility of the thing is high. So that regardless of who is approaching it, they can interact with whatever the thing is. If we put that into the digital world, it's about making sure that text on a screen can be perceived by anybody, whether they're trying to read it visually or if they're trying to read it through a screen reader or through a braille monitor. Whatever that is, they need to be able to interact with it, get the information they need, do all the functions of whatever it is on the screen. Check out on Amazon, check out at their favourite e-commerce place, be able to get the products in their cart, check out, et cetera. For creatives, it's about the things that we do: the websites that we build for ourselves, the e-commerce platforms that we use, our email marketing, our social media posts. Making all of that as accessible as we can so that we're not perhaps missing a part of our audience or our prospective audience from being able to engage with our work and in turn, hopefully, buy our books and enjoy our books and become a fan. This became important to me because of my day job. I hadn't really considered this—like, I think most people don't—until I started working at UsableNet. It's going to be 15 years I've been at that company come this autumn, and I really started to see the impacts because UsableNet is all about accessibility on the digital front. I really started to learn, being a project manager for them, what all of that meant and how it impacted people who couldn't buy something online, couldn't book a hotel room, couldn't book an airline ticket. It just really became something I got passionate about. I ended up writing the book because I realised that nobody talks to creatives about this. Nobody tells the independent author what they should do to help make their digital stuff accessible so that they don't miss people. I never expected my day job to interact with my creative side so much, but this certainly has over the last few years. Jo: I mean, has it got better? Like we said, you were on here three years ago. We did talk about some of the things around EPUB formats and taking off DRM and what we need to do on our websites—labelling images, for example, and that kind of thing. Do you think accessibility has gotten better? Jeff: I think the awareness of it has improved, both within the creative community and in the broader web ecosphere, that the awareness is better. There's so much knowledge that needs to go into creating something that is accessible. Sometimes there's so much that you have to think about with colours and alt tags on images and all the little bits and pieces, if it doesn't really come to muscle memory, it's easy for it to fall off. There's a survey that's done by WebAIM every year about the top one million homepages out in the universe, and they surveyed those for just the things that an automated scan can detect, which is a small portion of overall accessibility, and the number of errors across that top million actually ticked up this year. Even though there's all these laws around the world—people get sued all the time in the US—the number of errors ticked up for the first time in a few years. So I think the awareness is up, but I think being able to take action on it and make the time to take action on it isn't where it needs to be. Jo: So last time you gave us all those tips. I'll refer people back to that and also to your book Content for Everyone, which has got loads of great stuff in. I wanted to talk to you for this show because I was sitting watching Claude Cowork—now I use Claude Code a lot more—but updating 140 titles on IngramSpark, where me clicking things and there's like 15 clicks per record on IngramSpark updates for pricing, is an absolute nightmare. I was watching the AI do the work and I realised this isn't just saving me time, it's actually saving my wrist and my arm from repetitive strain injury. That's when I thought about this accessibility thing. As you mentioned, for example being physically accessible into a building, say someone's in a wheelchair, they can't necessarily get into a building if there's no ramp. I was thinking that for many years, being an indie author, being a writer online, there's also been these physical barriers because there's a lot of plumbing and clicking for us. So I wondered, starting with an attitude around a shift in who this is opening up to— How is AI starting to help people with these accessibility issues? Jeff: Yes, there's so much opportunity around this. We should note, just to timestamp this, that we're talking on 14th April 2026, because who knows what will change, even in an hour from now. I think Cowork was one of the first things that we saw, and that's only been out since the very top of this year. Being able to do actual agentic tasks. Other things have sort of gotten there, but Cowork really opened it up. You mentioned the repetitive stress that you would've had clicking all of those forms on IngramSpark across 140 books. But there's that type of stress, chronic pain, cognitive drain for somebody who may have some cognitive disability and trying to work through that form. The cognitive energy just might drain out and maybe knock them out for several days after trying to get through that, or the tasks take them multiple days to do. Someone who has lower vision, someone who's trying to work through that form with a screen reader—all of that draws energy, draws focus. Now we've got something where, with plain language, we could say something like: here's all my pricing information, I've logged into IngramSpark, go update these books. Obviously the prompt's going to be a little more than that, but in broad terms, that's what we're going to tell it. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: And being able to have it go through and do the thing. If it gets stuck, have it come back and say, “Hey, I've got trouble with this. Please help me.” That can just free up so much of the drains that people can have—the things that can take them out of doing the part of the work that they need to do for an author business. They can go write the book through whatever process you're going to use to do that, rather than getting caught up in something like having to update all those books on IngramSpark. Jo: You mentioned writing the book there. I have this real sense of being an able-bodied indie author in terms of my computer use and my ability to write a whole book, a 70,000-word thriller that I write regularly. We're all special in some way, but I do have a reasonably normal brain where I can do this work without too much strain. It's hard work, but I can do it. I meet people who are now using AI to help them write, to help them organise their work—maybe someone has dyslexia or ADHD or cognitive issues or pain—there's just so many things that I take for granted that don't affect me. I hear from people who, at this point in time in the community, are almost shamed for using AI to write. So I wanted to bring this up to discuss it under the terms of accessibility. Do you have any thoughts on that? Jeff: I have real difficulty with people who will say anything in the broad range of, “I don't need to use this thing, and therefore you should not either.” Which is adjacent to indie anti-AI speak that there is out there. Certainly we're living right now at probably the highest point that it's ever been, where more and more there's a sentiment towards not using AI for whatever the reason is. I totally respect that people can have concerns about the environment and about energy use and water use, et cetera. Not to mention all the other things that are on the more difficult side of AI. To shame someone who may not be able to put their story out there without the use of that AI, whichever one they're using, or to shame them because they're using AI to run part of their business—updating IngramSpark, doing other things like that—I think it can come down to there being some ableism there. Ther is some privilege behind that too, where they're just like, “I don't need this, and you shouldn't have it either.” I want to give people just a sliver of an idea of what this can mean for someone who is disabled and what AI can unlock for them. There is a person on LinkedIn that I follow whose name is Hannah Desmond. She's an ADHD coach and a former software developer, and very recently she posted this on LinkedIn. This is a paraphrase of what she said, but: having something that can meet you where you are and help you bridge that gap is what I think I have found so helpful about using AI. Here's what I keep coming back to. Without that support, I wasn't more motivated or more capable. I was just stuck. That's the bit that gets lost. We've been taught that struggling is how you know you're doing it properly. So when something reduces the struggle, it can feel wrong—even when it's the thing that actually makes the work possible. Because there's a difference between avoiding thinking and being able to think at all. I think that rounds it up. She's talking about her time as a software developer, but you can apply that to any realm of AI when we're thinking about trying to shame someone for why they may be using it. We may not know that they have a disability because we don't always share that part of ourselves. So I really feel strongly about that and how we are in this culture of shame. Jo: Yes. It drives me up the wall, actually. But I will also say: you don't have to have a disability or accessibility issues in order to use AI in whatever way you personally decide is okay—talking to the listeners now. I think Orna Ross from the Alliance of Independent Authors says it well, which is you should have your own AI policy. So you personally decide where your lines are, how it helps you, what you want to keep for you, and what you want help with. I was also thinking in terms of accessibility around money. Again, for many of us, professional cover design, professional editing, professional human-level translation, these are things that are pretty pricey for many people. So again, this makes it more accessible. One of the reasons we got into the indie way and being indie authors was to try and remove the barriers to entry to people who have been excluded from the environment of publishing. So, yes, it is really hard to talk about this, and yet that's why I wanted to talk about it, because— There's so many variables for each individual and there's no situation that's the same, really, is there? Jeff: No, not at all. The things that I may need to do my work in the most efficient way possible is different from the way that you're going to work, is different than the way my husband's going to work, is different than every other person and the way that they're going to work. Which is why any kind of blanket statement about “I don't need something and therefore you shouldn't need it either” can just be so problematic, because we have no idea what someone else is going through. Either it's a permanent part of their lives or maybe it's something that is happening temporarily with them where they might need to leverage other tools. Jo: Yes. Talking about that temporary, I think I really got the first sense of this when I had COVID the first time, which was really bad. I remember I was so sick, the only thing I could do was listen to an audiobook. I couldn't think, I couldn't read. It was really probably months of not having my brain back. Then the other thing that's happened as I age, as women age, is menopause kicks in and the brain fog is a real thing. I've heard from other people too who've said having Claude or whoever, an AI tool, to help with the brain fog is so important because otherwise I just wouldn't be able to gather my thoughts. Again, as you said— Even if we don't need these things now, it's quite likely we're going to need them at some point, given ageing, given the potential for injury and disease. I mean, we don't escape this alive, do we? Jeff: Yes, that's a great point because unless we're extremely lucky as individuals, we're all likely to have some sort of a disability in our lives at some point. I know for me, as I age and my eyes get more and more tired after being in front of a screen all day for work, and then whatever creative stuff I do in the afternoon on a book—when it comes near bedtime and I do want to read, I probably want to do that with an audiobook, much more audio, especially for any long reading project. That can also be like, if I have a long document or a long article to read, I am likely to give it to ElevenReader, let it load itself up, and then listen to it, because I take the information in better than trying to follow words across a screen. Jo: Yes. Jonathan, my husband, now also listens to a lot of academic papers on ElevenReader. Most of us will know it as where we publish some audiobooks from ElevenLabs, or you can also publish other things there. So it is super useful to think about what we can do with ElevenReader. Another thing that I found really useful recently is NotebookLM. On NotebookLM, there is a free tier. You can put various things in there and then create a custom audio. So this is something I've been doing as part of research. You can put in, say, 10 YouTube videos or some PDFs or your book or whatever, and then you can create a custom audio. Then I'll go for a walk and I'll listen to the custom audio, and then I'll go back and look at the detail of what it was. It gives me the framework of whatever I'm thinking about on a broader level, and then I can come back to the details. So again, it's this multimodal approach that can help us manage our energy, I guess. Jeff: And it's all about the managing of the energy, I think, too. That is a great way to think about the accessibility of it all. You mentioned a great use there for NotebookLM. That could also be putting your book in there and having it help you build a world bible or something like that. Or building marketing materials off of that. There's a lot of things now that NotebookLM can do in terms of helping you create FAQs maybe for a newsletter or for your website, and building video stuff off of the material that it has. So there's a lot of options there, and ever-growing options that can be useful for someone to manage any number of the things that they may need in their creative business. Jo: Yes. In fact, talking about Claude, there are a lot of Claude plugins now, skills and integrations. Shopify just released a Claude plugin and many of us now have Shopify stores. I have a lot of products with a lot of different variations and the metadata. There's so much metadata. And again, I'm just so pleased now that I can work with Cowork and get it to actually update directly into Shopify. In fact, coming back, you mentioned updating alt tags earlier. That's something again that AI could help you update—the back list of your alt tags on a website. I've now got my Cowork doing EPUBs so I could finally update all my EPUBs with back matter and all of this kind of thing. So I feel like perhaps we could go beyond accessibility to talk about amplification. All the things that we didn't do because it was too tiring and we just couldn't be bothered, or it would just be way too much work, that now it's opened up as a possibility because of these tools. Jeff: Absolutely. I mean, you look at a backlist as large as yours and the things that you're now able to do. I didn't know that Claude had a Shopify plugin. So the abilities that we have now to maybe do things in the business that we hadn't before. One of the things I've been working with Claude on is rewriting my website and creating a more proper website for Will. I'm really making sure that it is not only SEO prepared but also GEO prepared, with all the metadata and all the backend code schema that it needs so that LLMs can find me, can understand what I do, can understand the books, branch out to the other areas that it needs to. Doing that through WordPress would've been so much more difficult, even with Claude, that to be able to rewrite the site in a way that is going to let me manage it better so that I will do it on a more consistent basis. Whatever that thing is, we're now able to do these things. That could be updating keywords in Amazon or making sure we're aligned across all of the sales platforms that we might be on and things like that, that Claude can do and do well. Jo: Yes, I think marketing is just the killer app really for people, isn't it? I think most authors do not enjoy marketing. I find Claude better for creative work, for strategic work, for doing work through Cowork or Code, but— ChatGPT with marketing copy is very, very good. So I've actually been using that as we record this. I've got a Kickstarter launching next week, so I've been getting it to do ad copy and social media copy and all that kind of thing. This is stuff when you have to produce—give me 20 taglines, give me 20 hooks, give me another 20 and another 20. I mean, we just cannot do it as humans, right? Jeff: Yes, I have found GPT wildly helpful. I mentioned trying to get Bargain Booksy and Fussy Librarian promos. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And you have to give it the marketing hook, and it can't just be the blurb that's on Amazon—it's got to be something fresh, and they each have slightly different requirements. Having GPT—here's the blurb, give me a dozen different options—and then I may take pieces of all of them and create one of my own. But it reworks that much faster than my brain was ever going to try to find the right thing I want to give to Bargain Booksy. Jo: Yes, you are right. Or it says write this in 300 characters or less. Jeff: Yes. Jo: I do exactly the same. That kind of transformative work can be really good. In fact, there was somebody I know who has been rampantly anti-AI for years and then said, “Would this help me? I have to do a synopsis for an agent, so I've got this 100,000-word book and it needs to be a 10-page synopsis. How would I do that with AI?” So I was encouraging her to take each chapter and ask it to summarise the chapter, and of course read through it and everything. But I mean, doing a synopsis once you've actually written a book—that can be super useful. So I think what we're saying is— There are levels of need in terms of both the author and the audience. Then there are levels of your personal use from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of how far you want to go in every area of the business. And in that way, it's just different for everyone. Jeff: Yes, and I think getting to that mindset shift that we were talking about a little bit—it can be so easy to dip your toes in. That one author came to you and said, “Do you think it could do this?” And I think that's the beginning exploratory area for perhaps anyone. People are going to hear us talk about this and it might inspire them to go try something that we've talked about. But these things, whether it's Claude or GPT or Gemini or whichever one it is, you can come to it and say, “I'm an author, I have X, Y, Z going on in my life”—whether that's a disability, whether that's a time constraint because you have a day job and maybe you have kids and a family that need your attention—”I have these time constraints, I want to do X, Y, and Z in my business. How can you help me with that?” It's going to tell you what it can do to help you with that. I would even say, if you have the ability to have multiples of these, you could ask the same question to GPT and Claude, and they're going to give you similar answers in some instances, but they may also have different ones because of the abilities that the different platforms have around these things as well. That can help you make that mindset shift of, “Well, now I see that it can do that. Could it also do this?” And then ask it if it could do that. Because I know for me, Jo, I've taken so much from you and your journey with Cowork that it's like, “Oh, she did that. I wonder if I could do this.” And all of that piles on top of itself. Then eventually I think your brain starts to think on its own, “Oh, I have to do this task. Can Claude maybe do this for me? Let's go find out.” Jo: Yes, and if it couldn't do it for you yesterday, you never know, it might be able to do it tomorrow. Jeff: Right? Because I haven't tested yet its new ability to actually use your computer. Jo: Mm. Jeff: And I'm curious what that might open up. Because one of the things that I've seen that I wish it would do is be able to take the EPUB that's on my drive and actually put it into a platform I'm trying to upload to. Cowork on its own hasn't been able to cross that barrier, but I wonder if with computer use added to that, if it could. Like, “here's the EPUB, upload that over there,” be able to pick it from the file picker, essentially. Jo: Yes. I think, well, a little tip for everyone: I wouldn't give access to your entire file system to the AI. Jeff: That's a good point too. Jo: Yes. I have a Claude folder in my drive and it only has access there. So if you put files in that drive, it might be able to do that. But I know what you mean. I have been using it to help me publish things in German on KDP. Now I can use the browser, so you can actually do that. In terms of uploading the actual file, I know what you mean. These things will change. As we record this, again middle of April, we are almost about to get the next models being Mythos, which might be Claude 4.7 Opus, or also ChatGPT has a new model coming, and these models are getting very powerful. With every shift they can do more things. So as you say, the very first thing to do is ask it, “I want to do this—what are my options?” And some of them, for example, doing an AI-narrated audiobook, ChatGPT and Claude don't do that. You want ElevenLabs or one of the other services for that, but they can tell you what your options are. So that's one thing, but I wondered if you have any thoughts on the gaps that you are seeing. You mentioned one there around file uploads, but— What do you hope might come and some of the things that might be exciting if they arrive? Because you never know, they might be here already. Jeff: There's certainly some movement in some areas. One of the things I'll share is, in March I was at the 2026 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference—CSUN is California State University, Northridge—and they've run this conference for some 40 years now. One of the sessions I went to was from Tara Maisel—I hope I'm pronouncing her last name right. She's a senior project manager in books accessibility at Amazon, and she was doing a session specifically on readability. She had all kinds of statistics and information about what goes into making something readable. One of the things she talked about with AI was the future of personalised reading. If you think about the Kindle app, for example, there's a lot of settings you can make there—font size, colours, brightness, text spacing. There's a lot of tools in there. She was pointing out that potentially readers don't even know what they actually need for the optimised visual reading experience. She sees a world where AI can perhaps do an analysis of your reading behaviour and then help you find the optimal settings. Maybe even multiple optimal settings for, say, if you were reading in a room that had daylight versus at bedtime, and the ways you might shift it. I was almost thinking of this like when you're at the optometrist and they're like, “Which lens is better—this one or that one?” Jo: Oh, sometimes that is very hard. Jeff: Yes. It's that AI could step you through that a little bit to help you find that optimal reading experience in that moment. And then it might even notice, potentially, if you're changing something in the way that you're moving through a page, that it might flag to say, “Hey, do we need to adjust something?” Some other areas that I think are really exciting, for everyone and perhaps particularly for people who are disabled and needing the support of some assistive technology, is what we're seeing in the browsers. OpenAI's Operator has been out for quite a while now, since sometime I think autumn of last year. Perplexity Comet has been around even longer. Then we've got browser extensions from Gemini and Claude that are available, that can let you just type natural language. You know, “Please go find for me jeans in this size that are on sale on this website. Find me the best price for blue jeans on this site and this size,” and it'll just go do it. Which can certainly speed things up for people in the disabled community to find things quickly, to spend time navigating less, and maybe ending up with the AI coming back and saying, “I found these five things. Which one would you like me to buy for you?” Or, “I found this one thing that you do need and it's waiting for you in your shopping cart.” The ability for that on the horizon is an amazing jump from an accessibility point of view. But really it's one of those things that accessibility will then help everyone because we can all just shop that way, if we choose to. These are early days for these browsers and these extensions. The other side of it comes back to basic web accessibility too, because I've seen these types of activities not work so well on a site that may not actually be accessible on its own. A great example is something I ran into with Claude Cowork about a month ago. I was testing to see if it could help me navigate and get things uploaded together for a site where I wanted to upload books, knowing again that it's not going to upload the actual file, but it could fill in the metadata from my master database of metadata stuff. There were areas on the site that it actually couldn't hit the button, because the site itself was also not functional to a screen reader. So there are gaps there. It's early days, but I really see that as an interesting future that'll really help people with disabilities—but again, help everybody too, just manage time better. Jo: I know exactly what you mean there. I've done some collaborative work with Claude Code when it's like, “I can't click the button,” and I'm like, well, I'll click the button—you fill in everything else. Jeff: Exactly. Jo: It's actually quite a funny situation. But goodness, coming back to IngramSpark again—these things need APIs. We need better functions. It's funny because I think a lot of traditional publishers have these APIs or backend upload things that you can do. I'm like, well, we need to get to that with these systems. But I think things will change. Another thing that I think has also shifted is the use of voice. Voice for dictation—it used to be with dictation that you would have to say “comma,” “open quote,” “new line,” and all of that. And you'd also have to make sense. Whereas now I feel like you can just dictate a whole load of things to these AIs and then say, “Tidy that up,” and they will do a lot more than the old situation. So I think voice will also help. Also automatic translation. I don't know if you know this about X, and if you're on X anymore, but just this week they've made it multi-language. So I can read tweets by people who've posted in another language in English. I can read something from Korean or read something that someone French has posted and it gets translated. It has made a huge difference to the content I'm seeing, which is fascinating because I don't think we've ever had this kind of automatic “everything is translated into your language” situation. It's really got me thinking about how [automatic translation] might work for eBooks or other things if the rights are there. I don't know. Have you seen stuff like that? Jeff: There's so much available now with voice and the ability to not have to speak all the other stuff that went with it—comma, full stop, next line. It was a little mind-bending sometimes, trying to think about quote marks and all that stuff. And now it's so good. Different platforms do it to different degrees of ability. Even being able to speak your prompts into the very platforms themselves without having to type all of it. Chronic pain comes to mind, any kind of mobility thing—all the typing would be a drain or maybe even impossible. So the voice ability is so powerful there and unlocks more things. At the same time, those translation abilities—I believe AirPods now have the ability, if you've got the right stuff on your phone, that you could be talking to somebody, they may speak back to you in a language you don't speak, but your AirPods will give it to you in your language. Jo: Hmm. Jeff: Google has, I believe, a live captioning app that you can use. I think there's even a split screen—I don't know if that's available now or something in their future—where you could put the phone on the table and tell it who's looking at what side of the screen, and it'll put the language that I need on my side and the language the other person needs on the other. So there continues to be such a shift in how we're being able to translate stuff that really opens up communication and can open up our books to so many more people. I'm very interested to see—I haven't pulled the trigger on this yet—but how Amazon's auto-translation rolls out and how that's received in terms of the accessibility around our books and being able to put it in someone's hands who doesn't speak—I think it's only English to other languages right now—but who doesn't speak the language it was written in but wants to read that book. We could never, as indies, or really even big five publishers, wouldn't have the money to create custom translations everywhere. But if the AI can help do that and spread those books around so that everybody could have the story they want to read, I think that's such a win for the reading audience. Jo: Yes, I think it's so exciting to think what might be coming, and that's what I want to stay on the side of on the AI discussion. There's enough negativity out there and you can get that information somewhere else, but for me I want us to stay on the positive side of how this helps both the author and the reader. And hopefully the community, to create more and read more and enjoy being human more. Right? Because I find that I do get out more and listen to stuff, or I'm out walking instead of at my desk, and I mean, that's what it's about. I'm pretty excited about the future. How about you? Jeff: I am. I think there are, quite honestly, some scary things that could be out there in the future. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about what Mythos is capable of. But on the other side of it, there are all these advances. I also look back at Google and AlphaFold and what DeepMind was able to do there for science. There's more of that stuff out there, and individually for each of us, spending a little bit of time—and I do have to say, I think you need to spend time on a paid plan because the free stuff doesn't give you the idea of what these platforms are actually capable of. So if you only drop in, even briefly, to experiment on one of the $20-a-month plans and give it your situation, ask it what it can do for you, I think you'll see where, on a personal level, AI will help you unlock some things. It can help you move some things to the next level in your business that for whatever reason you haven't been able to do. You don't have to use it for everything. You may decide that it's still not for you for whatever reason, and that's fine. But I think there's so much to explore here and to let your curiosity run for a little bit to see what's possible and what you might unlock with it. Jo: Brilliant. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jeff: So pretty much everything lives at JeffAdamsWrites.com. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jeff. That was great. Jeff: I loved it, Jo. Thanks for having me..The post Accessibility And AI: How New Tools Are Opening Doors For Indie Authors With Jeff Adams first appeared on The Creative Penn.

As the 2026 Winter Olympics continue and the Paralympics approach, a familiar narrative emerges, one of triumph through determination. But resilience isn't forged by determination alone—it is shaped and sustained by the people around us.Three-time Paralympic gold medalist Jeff Adams reflects on a wheelchair racing event where a chorus of support gave him the strength he needed to persevere through adversity, reminding us that none of us get to our finish lines alone.Adams spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Resilience on May 16, 2021.To register for upcoming events happening online or in a city near you, and to catch up on our archive of The Walrus Talks, visit thewalrus.ca/events.And subscribe to The Walrus Events newsletter for updates and announcements, at thewalrus.ca/newsletters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Building a financial plan isn't about having it all figured out, it's about meeting yourself where you're at and getting started. In this episode of Wallet Watch, host Jessica Rubio sits down with Jeff Adams of TrulyU Wealth Management and Investment Services for a conversation about what it really means to create a financial plan that fits you. Together, they unpack why financial planning isn't one-size-fits-all, and how things like mindset, comparison culture and past experiences shape our relationship with money. Jeff also reminds listeners how small, intentional actions taken now can lead to meaningful long-term progress.

In this special episode of Tech Talk, Henry O'Connell, co-founder and CEO of Canary Speech, discusses the inception, development, and applications of the company. Canary Speech specializes in using AI to analyse speech for diagnosing medical conditions. Henry recounts his collaboration with Jeff Adams, a pioneer in natural language processing, and their combined efforts to revolutionize healthcare diagnostics through vocal biomarkers. The discussion highlights the reliability, security, and ethical considerations of their technology. Henry also delves into potential uses beyond clinical settings, the importance of accurate and bias-free machine learning models, and future expansions into different languages and childhood conditions like ADHD and autism. The conversation emphasizes the transformative potential of AI in enhancing medical diagnostics and clinician support.

One of the major talking points to emerge from last weekend's TCS New York City Marathon was Eliud Kipchoge. Following the completion of his Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star journey, it felt like the end of an era for the 11-time Majors winner, 2-time Olympic Champion and former World Record holder. On this episode of Marathon Talk, we look back on Kipchoge's career—the highs and lows—and what we will do next. And one of the things he's suggested he'll be doing next is running a marathon on Antartica, so we're very fortunate to be also joined by a man who knows a thing or two about South Pole running, President of Marathon Tours & Travel, Jeff Adams joins us to tell us more about how the running tourism industry is booming now, and where he'll be taking runners to next. On this episode of Marathon Talk: 1:49 - Martin and Deena discuss all that went down at the TCS New York City Marathon 13:04 - We look back on the career of AbbottWMM Six Star finisher, Eliud Kipchoge 30:14 - We're joined by Jeff Adams, president and owner of Marathon Tours & Travel. Links & References: Abbott World Marathon Majors Website | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok Marathon Talk Facebook | Instagram | TikTok Martin Yelling | Instagram Deena Kastor | Instagram Marathon Tours & Travel | Instagram

Imagine a world where your voice holds the key to early disease detection, where a simple conversation can offer objective insights into your health. Join us as Henry O'Connell shares the inspiring journey of Canary Speech, transforming how clinicians understand and treat a spectrum of conditions.Chapter Summary:00:00 Introducing Henry O'Connell and Canary Speech02:08 The Genesis of Canary Speech06:56 How Canary Speech Technology Works12:05 Impact of Age, Gender, and Multimodal Analysis16:22 Diverse Applications and Real-Time Results20:29 Future Vision and Integration in Healthcare25:50 Addressing Ethical Concerns and Data Security30:08 Clinical Integration and Objective Pain Measurement34:51 The Impact on Clinical Practice and Patient Outcomes39:52 AI's Frontier: Speech, Multimodal Data, and LLMs43:55 Minimizing Errors and Enhancing Diagnostics47:18 Language Adaptability and Early Detection51:04 Remembering Jeff Adams and Contact InformationFeatured Quotes:“I'd always wanted to apply speech and language to the analysis of human condition and disease.” - Henry O'Connell“We could be returning four or five different scores like a blood profile, the voice profile.” - Henry O'Connell“It's helping us be the doctors we were trained to be.” - Henry O'ConnellBehind the Story:Henry O'Connell recounts the 40-year friendship with co-founder Jeff Adams, a pioneer in speech technology, whose vision to apply speech analysis to human health laid the foundation for Canary Speech. From deciphering Cold War spy messages to building Dragon Naturally Speaking and the Amazon Echo, Adams' expertise combined with O'Connell's experience in corporate turnarounds brought their shared dream to life. The company, even named by O'Connell's daughter, now stands at the forefront of medical innovation, using speech to objectively measure indicators of various diseases.Learn more about Canary Speech and their advancements in AI speech technology at www.canaryspeech.com.Connect With Henry O'Connell:Email: henry@canaryspeech.comCanary Speech Website: https://www.canaryspeech.com/Get In Touch!rob@2docstocpodcast.com

Is your medicine cabinet quietly making you sick? For decades, we've trusted over-the-counter painkillers and prescription drugs as “safe,” but new studies and government statements are raising serious questions. Could something as common as Tylenol actually be linked to rising autism rates? And if so, why is this conversation being buried or dismissed by the so-called “experts”? Studio Sponsor: Cardio Miracle - "Unlock the secret to a healthier heart, increased energy levels, and transform your cardiovascular fitness like never before.": CardioMiracle.com/TBNS In today's episode of The Brian Nichols Show, we go beyond the headlines and dig into the uncomfortable truth: what we put into our bodies doesn't just affect our physical health – it shapes our mental and emotional wellbeing. From processed foods to synthetic chemicals, from fluoride in our water to the pills we're told are “safe,” we explore how modern society is being flooded with substances that were never meant to be there. My guest, Jeff Adams, shares his journey from contractor to natural health advocate, uncovering how Big Pharma and government regulators keep natural solutions off the market in the name of profits. We talk about micronic silver, the role of minerals in the body, and why “you are what you absorb” is more accurate than “you are what you eat.” This isn't conspiracy—it's a wake-up call. We also connect the dots between profit-driven medicine, insurance companies, and the government's role in pushing one narrative while silencing dissent. Why are some scientific findings instantly discredited while others—often backed by deep pockets—become gospel truth? And why do so many Americans instinctively mistrust the medical establishment after the failures and heavy-handedness of the COVID era? If you've ever felt like something doesn't add up when it comes to health, politics, and power—you're not crazy. This episode is about empowering you with knowledge, challenging the mainstream narrative, and reminding you that liberty and health go hand-in-hand. Don't miss this one. ❤️ Order Cardio Miracle (CardioMiracle.com/TBNS) for 15% off and take a step towards better heart health and overall well-being!

This feature interview is with Jeff Adams, bassist for Starship. We talk about the Kiss show at Lafayette's Music Room, 5th Kind, early influences, Jimi Jamison and Survivor, working with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and of course Starship. Apple - https://bit.ly/3rqqZLP Spotify - https://bit.ly/3EJOGBO YouTube - https://bit.ly/3UgqsY2   TIP BUCKET If you find it in your heart to donate to the cause and help fuel the podcast you can do so through our new Venmo and CashApp. Your support is greatly appreciated and will help shine a brighter spotlight on the great Memphis Music Community. Venmo - @‌therhythmsectionpod CashApp - $therhythmsectionpod Thanks for tuning in and supporting the Rhythm Section Podcast.

In this special episode of The Rhythm Section Podcast, Derrick and Jeff dedicate the show to their dear friend and beloved Memphis Icon, Thomas Halfacre, as he courageously battles cancer. They're joined by Becky Croft and Paul Moreau, two close friends of Thomas, to help promote the upcoming benefit concert at Rooster's Blues House Highland on Sunday, June 1st. Becky shares powerful insight into Thomas's journey, their long-standing friendship, and details on how supporters can reserve tables with a donation, bid on auction items, buy exclusive t-shirts, and enter the 50/50 raffle. Paul highlights the incredible lineup of bands and musicians coming together to lift Thomas up through the power of music. This is more than a concert—it's a community rallying for one of their own.   LOCATION Rooster's Blues House Highland 535 South Highland Street, Memphis Sunday June 1st - 5-10pm - $10 at the door All proceeds benefit Thomas's medical expenses   BANDS The Pinch - 5pm Play Rough - 6pm Black 59 - 7pm Almost Famous - 8pm   SPECIAL GUESTS at 9pm John Roth, Jeff Adams, Kevin & Bethany Paige, Paul Moreau, Vanessa Sudbury, Shara Matlock, Steve Rhodehamel, Ken Houston, Ronnie Knight, Seth Kuykendall, Patrick O'Daniel, David Haynes, Tom Slagle, Josh Haynes, Bobby Ireland, Jimmy Fulp   SHIRTS FOR SALE 100 Shirts ready for sale $20/shirt Purchase at event only - first come first serve CASH ONLY   TABLE RESERVATIONS Reserve a 4-top with a donation of $100 Facebook Message Cindy Wilson for reservations CASH ONLY   Thomas Halfacre GoFundMe https://www.gofundme.com/f/thomas-halfacres-stage-four-cancer-fight?attribution_id=sl:752a7b2a-73ad-4a7d-88a7-2609cc6e0b16&lang=en_US&utm_campaign=man_ss_icons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKXeSlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHkNZVR0JdTR2Lj4gAWtdkhZWeb7doj4ROBHNhb5rgZHkykrvMncdT2_JaHIN_aem_x24CqZMX2vrSWPMwowC4pA

In this heartfelt and high-energy episode of The Rhythm Section Podcast, Derrick and Jeff kick things off with another tribute to their friend Thomas Halfacre and his upcoming cancer benefit concert. They share all the details about the event at Rooster's Blues House Highland on Sunday, June 1st—featuring bands like Almost Famous, Black 59, Play Rough, and The Pinch, with special guests John Roth, Jeff Adams, Kevin & Bethany Paige, Paul Moreau, Vanessa Sudbury, Shara Matlock, Steve Rhodehamel, Ken Houston, Ronnie Knight, Seth Kuykendall, Patrick O'Daniel, David Haynes and Tom Slagle. They also dive into how #ILoveThomasThursday and a wildfire group text helped Thomas go viral in the best way. In the feature interview, the guys are joined by Joel Rustenhaven and T-Bone Hood of The Rustenhaven Band. They share hilarious stories about the band's original name drama, how they got started as musicians, their wide-ranging influences, and what it's like performing in the casino circuit with bandmates Eric Westpy and JJ Barnett. From heartfelt to hilarious, this one hits all the right notes. www.rustenhaven.com   From the studio to the stage… The Rhythm Section Podcast is turning 100! Join us as we celebrate our 100th episode with a special live recording — filmed in front of a live audience at Rooster's Blues House Highland in Memphis! Saturday, June 7th. Doors open at 3 PM. Showtime is 3:30 to 5pm EVENT LINK - https://www.facebook.com/events/3488137631328229/?rdid=kMaYRpAxdcyrEQXC&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2F1Ejx8thGFy%2F#   TIP BUCKET If you find it in your heart to donate to the cause and help fuel the podcast you can do so through our new Venmo and CashApp. Your support is greatly appreciated and will help shine a brighter spotlight on the great Memphis Music Community. Venmo - @‌therhythmsectionpod CashApp - $therhythmsectionpod Thanks for tuning in and supporting the Rhythm Section Podcast.  

When cannabis fails a microbial test, the consequences can be costly—lost product, damaged reputations, and in some cases, a total recall. But what if the entire process could be de-risked? In this episode, Jeff Adams, founder and managing director of XR Pure, and national sales manager Joseph Bancheri join TG Branfalt for a conversation about how their X-ray-based decontamination tech is offering a clean, consistent solution for cultivators. With deep roots in X-ray engineering and cannabis sales respectively, they make a compelling case for proactive remediation as a standard step in cannabis operations.

X-ray technology meets cannabis safety. In this episode, XRPure Founder Jeff Adams and Sales Manager Joseph Bancheri join host Aron Vaughan to unpack how their innovative decontamination process is changing the game for cultivators, processors, and consumers. Learn why clean cannabis igoes beyond compliance, offering a competitive advantage.WEBSITE: https://cannatechtoday.com/Make sure to follow our other social media platforms to stay up-to-date on all things Cannabis & Tech Today.https://twitter.com/cannatechtodayhttps://www.facebook.com/CannaTechTodayhttps://www.instagram.com/cannatechtoday

Jef Adams explains his Vampire Theory, talks about medical freedom through his company, and world events and news stories that have led him to his beliefs.

Today we have the pleasure of hosting Mr Jeff Adams, a self-made entrepreneur and an expert on ionic silver and human health.  Along his life path he overcame dyslexia and ADHD to establish a successful construction business.  Jeff's life took a transformative turn in 2007 after meeting a biochemical engineer who introduced him to ionic silver, sparking his journey into health innovation.Jeff, alongside his partner Michele, co-founded the brand Micronic Silver, leveraging extensive research to develop a unique, organically stabilized silver product.  Their company, Nature's Miracle Silver Lining, is renowned for its effective, all-natural health supplements, embodying their mission to offer powerful healing solutions grounded in faith and science.Today we will learn how and why ionic silver is an effective health agent, and examine the historic role of ionic silver in human health, and Big Pharma's attempt to first own and patent the technology, and then later in failing in those attempts, work diligently to suppress this health modality.To learn more about Jeff and his work please visit:www.micronicsilver.comListeners may earn 10% off - discount code coming...

OXYGEN DEPRIVED PEOPLE OFTEN CONTRACT CANCER! IS THERE AN ANTIDODTE- JEFF ADAMS

Henry O'Connell is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canary Speech, which analyzes voice biomarkers to detect various medical conditions, including neurological disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cognitive decline. Their approach looks at the underlying mechanisms of speech controlled by the central nervous system rather than the words spoken. The technology has been validated to correlate with clinical diagnoses at a high accuracy level. It provides real-time, objective assessments to healthcare providers, which could help overcome biases and reveal early signs of the presence of a disease. Henry explains, "Canary Speech is now about eight years old. Jeff Adams, my business partner and friend, and I created Canary Speech to evaluate voice for a range of different human conditions and diseases. We actually established an approach that was unique in the market. Jeff has a history of innovation in voice and voice analysis. He was the lead that developed the first natural language processing commercial tools. He also led the team that developed Dragon naturally speaking, the most prominent tool for transcription services in healthcare. He also led the team that built the Amazon Echo." "With that deep experience and 40 years of relationship together and friendship, we created Canary speech. Canary looks at sub-language characters and elements. We look at 15 million different data elements every minute, and we process those for a range of different diseases, progressive neurological diseases, cognitive health, and behavioral health. We're beginning to build models for children's health."   "Everything that we have built has been built in clinical settings with peer review with organizations such as The Harvard Beth Israel, Hackensack Meridian, Intermountain Healthcare, Cala Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, Belfast Hospital, and Alster Hospital in Belfast, and also National Institutes of Health in Japan. So, we use those rigorous environments and those clinical settings to build local biomarker algorithms that can identify." #CanarySpeech #Biomarkers #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #Alzheimers #Parkinsons #CognitiveDecline canaryspeech.com  Download the transcript here

Henry O'Connell is the CEO and Co-Founder of Canary Speech, which analyzes voice biomarkers to detect various medical conditions, including neurological disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cognitive decline. Their approach looks at the underlying mechanisms of speech controlled by the central nervous system rather than the words spoken. The technology has been validated to correlate with clinical diagnoses at a high accuracy level. It provides real-time, objective assessments to healthcare providers, which could help overcome biases and reveal early signs of the presence of a disease. Henry explains, "Canary Speech is now about eight years old. Jeff Adams, my business partner and friend, and I created Canary Speech to evaluate voice for a range of different human conditions and diseases. We actually established an approach that was unique in the market. Jeff has a history of innovation in voice and voice analysis. He was the lead that developed the first natural language processing commercial tools. He also led the team that developed Dragon naturally speaking, the most prominent tool for transcription services in healthcare. He also led the team that built the Amazon Echo." "With that deep experience and 40 years of relationship together and friendship, we created Canary speech. Canary looks at sub-language characters and elements. We look at 15 million different data elements every minute, and we process those for a range of different diseases, progressive neurological diseases, cognitive health, and behavioral health. We're beginning to build models for children's health."   "Everything that we have built has been built in clinical settings with peer review with organizations such as The Harvard Beth Israel, Hackensack Meridian, Intermountain Healthcare, Cala Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, Belfast Hospital, and Alster Hospital in Belfast, and also National Institutes of Health in Japan. So, we use those rigorous environments and those clinical settings to build local biomarker algorithms that can identify." #CanarySpeech #Biomarkers #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #Alzheimers #Parkinsons #CognitiveDecline canaryspeech.com  Listen to the podcast here

In the News with Mike Dakkakwww.itnshow.comJeff Adams joins ITN to discuss his experience with the amazing healing powers of silver.ITN is proud to partner with Micronic Silver. Click our affiliate link https://www.micronicsilver.com/?af=PUTU6 to begins shopping now.Cue Streaming: Network + Premium Channels for $59.99/mo. No Contracts. https://Inthenews.mycuestreaming.com/apply.Purchase Dr. Stella Immanuel's products at https://marketplace.drstellamd.com. Use promo code ITN and save.Shop Richardson Nutritional Center anti-cancer products now and save at https://rncstore.com/itn. Discount code for ITN viewers will be applied at checkout.We are financing the war against us. Give your money instead to companies that care about America and Americans. http://patriotsmade.com/KIM.Your support allows me to cover the news the MSM tries to suppress. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/itnshow.Standard Disclaimer: No material in this episode is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your medical professional before beginning a healthcare regimen.  

For many veterans, mental health challenges can appear after their service.So imagine if depression, anxiety or even diseases that result in cognitive decline could be detected from just the sound of our voice. And, all of this it could be easily accessed through your phone. Well, it's happening- within the new, AI-powered, voice analysis app, Canary Speech.We talked about it's benefits for veterans with co-founder and acclaimed scientist Henry O'Connell. He described how together with Jeff Adams, a leader in speech and language technology, they combined expertise in neurology and speech technology (Henry at the National Institutes of Health, and Jeff leading Amazon Alexa's speech AI team) to explore how this type of speech technology could be used in medicine. We took a deep dive into how Canary Speech works- analyzing the vocal tones far beneath the actual words we speak. And we learned how this app can serve as a useful tool to track our mental health. We even learned how the classic cartoon, “Winnie the Pooh” helped in the process of creating this innovative app.For more on the Canary Speech app and to try it yourself, check out: https://canaryspeech.com/ Contact Canary Speech co-founder Henry O'Connell here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryjoconnell/ For more veteran stories and military news check out: https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets To reach CBS Eye on Veterans, Host, Phil Briggsphil@connectingvets.com Follow: @philbriggsVet @connectingvets See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Henry O'Connell, CEO & Founder of Canary Speech, a healthcare technology company that has raised $26 Million in funding. Here are the most interesting points from our conversation: Origins at a Bagel Shop: Canary Speech started when Henry and Jeff Adams, the lead developer behind Amazon Echo, met and discussed the future of using voice to detect diseases. This meeting laid the foundation for Canary's vocal biomarker technology. Incredible Speed and Accuracy: The company's AI-driven platform analyzes 40 seconds of voice data, delivering results in milliseconds with 93-96% accuracy for diseases like Alzheimer's, mild cognitive impairment, and Parkinson's. It's revolutionizing early diagnosis. Real-time Patient Insights: Canary Speech enables doctors to assess multiple conditions — from neurological diseases to anxiety and depression — during a live conversation. This allows for more comprehensive care without additional time-consuming tests. Global Reach and Language Capabilities: Canary Speech's models are already being used in multiple countries and languages, including English, Japanese, and Spanish, extending healthcare accessibility to underserved regions. Strategic Partnerships with Microsoft: Microsoft's investment and integration of Canary Speech into the Azure platform have expanded the company's reach globally. They're now exploring partnerships that could further embed Canary's solutions into healthcare systems. The Transition to SaaS: After two years of project-based revenue, Canary Speech transitioned into a SaaS model, allowing for recurring revenue streams and long-term scalability in healthcare and call centers. //   Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.  www.GlobalTalent.co  

Want to add strategic pricing to your marketing tool box? Go to InteliChek or call 877-827-7273 and ask about our InteliShare Series!   InteliShare  contains all of our promotional tools that you can use to promote your favorable prices, including our InteliAds, the printable flyers that you can show off in easel displays, InteliMedia, for your Digital Media Boards AND InteliWidgets, so you can show off price comparisons on your website and even let your customers schedule from the widget.   Summary The conversation covers various topics related to fixed operations in the automotive industry. The participants discuss the recent Amplify 2024 event, the importance of the four golden metrics in fixed ops, the impact of Reynolds products on dealership success, and the focus on customer experience. They highlight the benefits of using tools like Service Price Guides, GoMoto, and Advanced Service to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and enhance customer satisfaction. The conversation also touches on the integration of Reynolds products, the value of Reynolds' customer support, and the role of technology in streamlining processes and improving productivity. The conversation focused on the various tools and technologies provided by Reynolds that have greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of fixed operations in the automotive industry. The use of advanced service, Service Touch, and video MPIs has increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and boosted sales. The integration of AI into the service process and the acquisition of ReconVision have further enhanced the capabilities of Reynolds' tools. The conversation also highlighted the importance of transparency, accountability, and customer trust in the service process. Overall, Reynolds' tools have revolutionized the way fixed operations are managed and have resulted in significant improvements in the customer experience and profitability.   Takeaways Reynolds products, such as Service Price Guides, GoMoto, and Advanced Service, play a crucial role in improving efficiency, increasing profitability, and enhancing customer satisfaction in fixed operations. The integration of Reynolds products streamlines processes and reduces complexities, leading to better results and higher dealership gross. Reynolds' focus on customer support and the development of its associates contribute to the success of dealerships and the satisfaction of customers. Tools like GoMoto and Advanced Service provide opportunities to improve transparency, increase customer engagement, and drive customer retention. The use of videos, pictures, and e-approval in customer interactions helps to educate and engage customers, leading to higher closing ratios and improved service outcomes. The automotive industry is evolving, and dealerships need to adapt by leveraging technology and providing a seamless customer experience to stay competitive and retain customers. Reynolds provides a range of tools and technologies that have greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of fixed operations in the automotive industry. The use of advanced service, Service Touch, and video MPIs has increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and boosted sales. The integration of AI into the service process and the acquisition of ReconVision have further enhanced the capabilities of Reynolds' tools. Transparency, accountability, and customer trust are crucial in the service process and can be achieved through tools like video MPIs. Reynolds' tools have revolutionized the way fixed operations are managed and have resulted in significant improvements in the customer experience and profitability.   Sound Bites "Dealerships sell hours. The more hours you sell, the more money you'll make." "Reynolds products are closely intertwined, taking out the complexities and helping dealers make more money." "More tools give your guys and gals in the front lines better results." "Dispatching, know, no favoritism. Get equal access to the ROs and sometimes technicians are caught in situations and other dealers or other places where they're fighting, you know, a human dispatch system." "Customers get happy and our technicians get paid." "You can't manage what you can't measure."     This episode is possible with the help of VISPERIO Performance, which provides tailored solutions to ignite Automotive Dealership Fixed Operations Performance & Profit.  Find out more at: https://visperio.com/

Want to add strategic pricing to your marketing tool box? Go to InteliChek or call 877-827-7273 and ask about our InteliShare Series!   InteliShare  contains all of our promotional tools that you can use to promote your favorable prices, including our InteliAds, the printable flyers that you can show off in easel displays, InteliMedia, for your Digital Media Boards AND InteliWidgets, so you can show off price comparisons on your website and even let your customers schedule from the widget.   Summary The conversation covers various topics related to fixed operations in the automotive industry. The participants discuss the recent Amplify 2024 event, the importance of the four golden metrics in fixed ops, the impact of Reynolds products on dealership success, and the focus on customer experience. They highlight the benefits of using tools like Service Price Guides, GoMoto, and Advanced Service to improve efficiency, increase profitability, and enhance customer satisfaction. The conversation also touches on the integration of Reynolds products, the value of Reynolds' customer support, and the role of technology in streamlining processes and improving productivity. The conversation focused on the various tools and technologies provided by Reynolds that have greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of fixed operations in the automotive industry. The use of advanced service, Service Touch, and video MPIs has increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and boosted sales. The integration of AI into the service process and the acquisition of ReconVision have further enhanced the capabilities of Reynolds' tools. The conversation also highlighted the importance of transparency, accountability, and customer trust in the service process. Overall, Reynolds' tools have revolutionized the way fixed operations are managed and have resulted in significant improvements in the customer experience and profitability.   Takeaways Reynolds products, such as Service Price Guides, GoMoto, and Advanced Service, play a crucial role in improving efficiency, increasing profitability, and enhancing customer satisfaction in fixed operations. The integration of Reynolds products streamlines processes and reduces complexities, leading to better results and higher dealership gross. Reynolds' focus on customer support and the development of its associates contribute to the success of dealerships and the satisfaction of customers. Tools like GoMoto and Advanced Service provide opportunities to improve transparency, increase customer engagement, and drive customer retention. The use of videos, pictures, and e-approval in customer interactions helps to educate and engage customers, leading to higher closing ratios and improved service outcomes. The automotive industry is evolving, and dealerships need to adapt by leveraging technology and providing a seamless customer experience to stay competitive and retain customers. Reynolds provides a range of tools and technologies that have greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of fixed operations in the automotive industry. The use of advanced service, Service Touch, and video MPIs has increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and boosted sales. The integration of AI into the service process and the acquisition of ReconVision have further enhanced the capabilities of Reynolds' tools. Transparency, accountability, and customer trust are crucial in the service process and can be achieved through tools like video MPIs. Reynolds' tools have revolutionized the way fixed operations are managed and have resulted in significant improvements in the customer experience and profitability.   Sound Bites "Dealerships sell hours. The more hours you sell, the more money you'll make." "Reynolds products are closely intertwined, taking out the complexities and helping dealers make more money." "More tools give your guys and gals in the front lines better results." "Dispatching, know, no favoritism. Get equal access to the ROs and sometimes technicians are caught in situations and other dealers or other places where they're fighting, you know, a human dispatch system." "Customers get happy and our technicians get paid." "You can't manage what you can't measure."   Music: Cast Of Characters-Funk Flingin' Famous Cats-Jump Street Wayfair-Solina Thruline-Just Like Me   This episode is possible with the help of VISPERIO Performance, which provides tailored solutions to ignite Automotive Dealership Fixed Operations Performance & Profit.  Find out more at: https://visperio.com/

121 - Marty Friedman In episode 121 of “Have Guitar Will Travel”, presented by Vintage Guitar Magazine host James Patrick Regan speaks with guitarist extraordinaire Marty Friedman. In their conversation Marty tells us about the Drama album and the tour for that album that begins after his appearance at the 2025 NAMM show in Anaheim the end of January. They discuss Marty's beginnings in Washington D.C. and his parents record collection with its lack of rock and roll. And Marty talks about DC Area guitarists like Danny Gatton and Jeff Adams. Marty tells us about how he met Mike Varney and how Mike helped Marty's career. Marty also tells us about how Mike hooked him up with Jason Becker and how they started Cacophony. They discuss the now defunct studio Prairie Sun which was Mike Varney's home studio. Marty tells us about his time living in Hollywood in abject poverty teaching seminars at GIT. They talk gear Jackson Guitars and Engl amps. Marty tells us about learning the Japanese language and gives us insight into Japanese guitar shops. Marty explains how he broke into the Japanese television market and explains the Japanese music market to us. . You can see tour dates and find out all about Marty at his website: martyfriedman.com And the link to Marty's biography (that comes out in December) is: dreamingjapanesebook.com . Please subscribe, like, comment, share and review this podcast! . #VintageGuitarMagazine #MartyFriedman #Cacophony #Megadeath #guitar #Guitar #FenderCustomShop #EnglAmps #GuitarHero #theDeadlies #guitarfinds #JacksonGuitars #haveguitarwilltravelpodcast #guitarcollector #Travelwithguitars #haveguitarwilltravel #hgwt #HGWT . Please like, comment, and share this podcast! Download Link

In the intro segment, Jeff Ward and I recap the Celebration of Life for Pete Mendillo and give thanks to all involved. Then, we segue into the interview with Jeff Adams where we talk about the Kiss show at Lafayette's Music Room, 5th Kind, early influences, Jimi Jamison and Survivor, working with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and of course Starship. https://www.facebook.com/jeffadamsmusic   HOW TO SUPPORT If you find it in your heart to donate to the cause and help fuel the podcast you can do so through our new Venmo and CashApp. Your support is greatly appreciated and will help shine a brighter spotlight on the great Memphis Music Community. Venmo - @‌therhythmsectionpod CashApp - $therhythmsectionpod Thanks for tuning in and supporting the Rhythm Section Podcast.  

"Your first commitment is to spend time in prayer." - Jeff Adams, Head of Veritas School "There'll be amazing days & days you question it all. But we must keep moving forward, staying creative as educators." - Jad Touma, Assistant Head of Children's House Montessori School

In this episode of the Better Man 365 podcast, host Jeff Adams is joined by Joe with a profound discussion on the struggles men face with pornography and sexual addiction. They explore the shame and challenges associated with these issues, emphasizing the importance of open dialogue, accountability, and faith in overcoming them. The hosts share personal experiences and insights on how feelings and societal pressures can lead men down dark paths away from their faith and personal integrity. They advocate for honesty, accountability, and reaching out for help as key steps towards recovery and freedom from addiction. The discussion underscores the power of faith, the Holy Spirit, and community support in the journey towards healing and living a life aligned with God's word. 00:00 Introduction to Better Man 365 Podcast 00:44 The Challenge of Discussing Pornography and Sexual Issues 02:06 The Role of Feelings and Faith in Overcoming Addiction 03:12 Understanding the Nature of Human Creation and Desire 05:16 The Journey Towards Freedom from Pornography 09:43 Accountability and Community in the Fight Against Addiction 13:44 Personal Testimonies and the Path to Freedom 21:17 Concluding Thoughts and Encouragement

In this episode, we are joined by Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini, online and digital accessibility experts who work at UsableNet, whose goal is to “make the digital world more accessible and usable.” Jeff and Michele recently wrote and published their first book together, an amazing guide to all things digital accessibility, Content for Everyone: A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content! Jeff is the Accessibility Operations Direct at UsableNet, as well as a queer romance author and podcaster. Michele is Vice President of Delivery and Accessibility Operations at UsableNet, and has over twenty-three years of experience working with accessibility projects in digital spaces. Together, these two authors and accessibility experts offer so much info in this episode for anyone (and everyone) interested in broadening their knowledge of accessibility online. We at KWL learned a lot, too! We discussed all things digital accessibility, their book “Content for Everyone,” how making small changes makes a big difference, how to think about accessibility, all about alternative text, headers, and images, and much, much more! This is a great episode for anyone wanting to learn more about accessibility online and in their own writing life. To learn more, visit Jeff's website.  

In this captivating episode of the Better Man 365 podcast, hosts  Obie and Jeff embark on an insightful discussion about the ongoing rebranding of the initiative. Tune in as they unveil the transition from traditional annual events to a dynamic engagement model. This new model, encompassing podcasts and community activities, is aimed at fostering continuous growth among men. Joining the conversation is Jeff Adams, a pivotal figure instrumental in shaping the content and social media presence of Better Man 365. Together, they navigate the evolution of the platform's identity, examining its profound impact and the strategic pivot towards delivering regular, impactful content for men. Delving deeper, the hosts explore the platform's initial event-centric approach, which boasts renowned speakers and entertainers. However, they emphasize the paradigm shift towards offering consistent support and resources tailored to men's holistic development in various spheres such as business, relationships, and spirituality. Furthermore, they shed light on upcoming events while underscoring the significance of discipleship and camaraderie among men. Drawing from personal experiences, they reflect on creating inclusive spaces where men can connect, learn, and evolve. As a testament to their commitment to men's growth, the hosts emphasize the availability of free curriculum for men's groups and outline a visionary roadmap for expanding their influence. Ultimately, their mission is to inspire men to unearth their purpose and live authentically through the transformative power of faith and community. Join us on this enlightening journey as we empower men to embrace their true potential and embark on self-discovery and fulfillment.

Leaves from vines and secret tunnels - feel all the feelings with Janet and Dante as they are joined by composer, Jeremy Zuckerman and original show editor, Jeff Adams to talk about the Avatar live concert tour and the iconic music that makes us laugh and makes us cry (especially Janet). We'll hear more about Jeremy's super airbending music powers and what it's like to put the score at the forefront of storytelling and truly capture the essence and emotions of the Avatarverse. There may even be a couple special performances from Jeremy and Janet… FORESHADOW REPORT: there definitely will be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dive deep into the journey of faith, prayer, and transformation with Jeff Adams, Joe, Marcos, and David on the Better Man 365 Podcast. In this episode, the conversation unfolds organically, addressing the struggles and victories of men seeking closeness with God. From debunking traditional expectations to exploring the true essence of relationship with Jesus, this raw and heartfelt discussion goes beyond surface-level spirituality. Join us for an honest dialogue that may resonate with your own journey. Subscribe for more real conversations with real men!

The Twelve Plays of Christmas, hosted by Jeff Adams, is a countdown of the twelve best Christmas plays by the Icebox Radio Theater. It includes (but not in this order) A Ghost for Christmas, The Gift of the Magi, A Christmas Carol, Season of the Elf, Lance Manley & the Case of the Sorrowful Santa, Candy Matson: Jack Frost, The Christmas Room, It's a Borderland Life, Danny McIntyre Meets the Molecule, Yens & Dougie's Christmas on Main Street. Nero Wolfe & the Case of the Slaughtered Santas, and The Super Happy Sugar Elves. Partial funding made possible in part by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. For more information, visit Icebox Radio.org.

Today we interview Warren Burnett. Warren has recently dropped his first Songcard titled ‘Into The Unknown'.In this episode, Warren tells his story.About the ArtistInfluenced by Michael Hedges, Dave Matthews Band, Days Of The New, and Robert Johnson. With Melodic tones and forestry original sound beautiful campfire melodies.Warren has written 10 studio albums over the years and also founder and calibrator of Dark Brook Music as well featuring Maliki Norton and Jeff Adams lead guitarists on many songs on his first 2 albums and 7th . With 100s of live guitar videos on YouTube featuring Radio and TV interviews and on stage performances . With alternate tuning technique's and finger-style to flat pick with slide guitar to mandolin, dulcimer and keys.Warren Continues today still in his melodic musical path daily writing and exploring new boundaries of the guitar weekly with the outdoors as his practice space or in the cabin in the woods. Creating music over the past 24 years for the ever Changing Seasons of New England. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit unlockyoursound.substack.com

We live in a time when everyone seems to be looking for high tech solutions for every problem. Maybe it's due to all of the new tech that has come out in recent decades with lofty promises of new frontiers, or the fact that so many of us are removed from regular interaction with the natural world, but I genuinely believe that technology is more over-applied and responsible for more problems than it usually solves. For that reason I always like to see when professionals advocate for low tech solutions and a return to basics and analog methods, especially when working with nature.    Today I have the pleasure of introducing two guests whose work I've admired for a while and who co teach a online course called low tech erosion control which focuses on the approach and techniques that are approachable for almost everyone to reverse and regenerate landscapes suffering from water erosion.    First up, there's Jeff Adams, who is owner/operator of TerraSophia LLC, a watershed restoration and landscape contracting firm based in Moab, UT. He has a depth of experience in permaculture, watershed rehabilitation, water harvesting, erosion control, and educational programs. With over 20 years of field experience, Jeff brings a practical and integrated approach to each project and course he does.    Along with him we're joined by Neil Bertrando, a regenerative specialist who has focused on integrated water harvesting, agroforestry systems, homestead production gardens with season extension, medicinal pollinator habitats, and ecological restoration for over 12 years. He has been a permaculture instructor at OSU since 2014. He holds degrees in Biology and Environmental Science and owns an ecological design and education firm, RT Permaculture, specializing in effective and regenerative landscapes.    Together we start by digging into each of their unique paths into working in ecological restoration in the American Southwest and the Great basin regions. They each describe the challenges of their climate and context as well as the historical and current sources of degradation of the surrounding ecology that is often behind the restoration project where they work. From there we systematically walk through the site assessment process of reading the landscape and understanding the local ecology to begin the project design.    Both Jeff and Neil describe the ways they develop a plan of action including the information they gather and how they assess different implementation strategies, especially from the low tech options and working with materials found on site.  We also talk about one of my favorite and often overlooked aspects of project design, which is the maintenance and revision strategies over time, as well as how to design with them in mind. This discussion is full of practical advice that you can use to get started on your own watershed restoration project at a manageable scale,

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They say love makes your heart sing. Well we here at FMKlit say that loves makes your heart sing in 5-part harmony with high-energy choreography and a 32-bar tap solo, which is why today we're doing Broadway! For this showstopper of an episode, we read "Broadway Dreams - A Powerful New York City Romance" by Leigh Morano and "Love's Opening Night: An M/M Romance (On Stage Book 2)" by Jeff Adams. Our hosts discuss the potential for conflict in a puddle of water, casual murder, and how being a creeper is apparently romantic. Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/fmklitpod

As much as 20% of the population has a disability – Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini discuss how to expand our content to include everyone.

With over a billion people living with some form of disability worldwide, it's more important than ever to make sure your content is accessible. Today we speak with Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini, authors of Content for Everyone: A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content. //Draft2Digital is where you start your Indie Author Career//  Looking for your path to self-publishing success? Draft2Digital is the leading ebook publisher and distributor worldwide. We'll convert your manuscript, distribute it online, and support you the whole way—and we won't charge you a dime.  We take a small percentage of the royalties for each sale you make through us, so we only make money when you make money. That's the best kind of business plan.  • Get started now: https://draft2digital.com/• Learn the ins, the outs, and the all-arounds of indie publishing from the industry experts on the D2D Blog: https://Draft2Digital.com/blog  • Promote your books with our Universal Book Links from Books2Read: https://books2read.com  Make sure you bookmark https://D2DLive.com for links to live events, and to catch back episodes of the Self Publishing Insiders Podcast.

Jeff Adams, who you may know as one half of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast, is also a credentialed expert in web accessibility, and he's co-written a new book, Content for Everyone.This book is for creative people to help ensure that all your online content, from websites to social media posts, is accessible to everyone.We're going to talk about the top four things you can do to make your web content accessible, and spoiler: they're really not difficult.Then, of course, we've got tv and book recs, because that's what we do here.music: Purple-planet.comCoupons! Honeylove.com/SARAH - Get 20% off! Join our Patreon for complete mayhem, shenanigans, and more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writers and readers are a diverse bunch, and we all want to do our best to make sure our content is accessible to all. But how do we do that when it seems like a huge (and time-consuming) challenge for an individual creator? Jeff Adams gives some tips for getting started. In the intro, making […] The post Content For Everyone: Accessibility For Authors With Jeff Adams first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Mark interviews Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini about their new book, CONTENT FOR EVERYONE: A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content. Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, reminds listeners about sending THEIR reflections for forthcoming Episode 300, a personal update and a word about this episode's sponsor.   You can learn more about how you can get your audiobooks distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.   In their conversation, Mark, Jeff, and Michele talk about: Their new book, released March 1, 2023 entitled CONTENT FOR EVERYONE and who the book is for Their backgrounds working at Useablenet and how it relates to this new release Jeff's Big Gay Fiction Podcast, which has been going on for eight years now Pioneering digital accessibility with UseableNet Thinking about accessibility as an opportunity or a basic expectation It being hard for Jeff and Michele to not notice accessibility issues out there on the net The genesis of the book and how it became a collaborative effort between the two of them Conveying a message in the widest way possible so that the widest number of people can consume it The importance of color contrast for people with low vision Considering the different ways different users interact with a web page A good rule is "do not rely on a single sense when you communicate" A theme running through the entire book: Being true believers in that if you know WHY you have to do something, you'll be a lot more committed in doing it An approach to consider if it feels too overwhelming to take on the task of making one's work more accessible Accessibility is about reaching as many potential customers as possible All of the conditions that might be creating a temporary disability How the only wrong thing to do is to do nothing The oddness of the situation where someone who requests something in a more accessible format is asking a favor rather than just laying out a fundamental expectation The idea of thinking of an accessible format as an "extra task" rather than a basic and fundamental task The importance of progress over perfection And more... After the interview Mark reflects on a few specific learnings he took away from it and ways he can grow and improve/expand upon his mindset related to accessibility.   Links of Interest: Content for Everyone UseableNet WebAIM's Contrast Checker Jeff Adams (& Will Knauss)- Big Gay Author Podcast Jeff & Will on Draft2Digital Self-Publishing Insiders Live (Blog)(YouTube) Episode 293 - The Capacity to Unlearn and Relearn with Diane Devenyi Findaway Voices Submit YOUR reflections for Episode 300 Buy Mark a Coffee Patreon for Stark Reflections Best Book Ever Podcast Lovers Moon Podcast The Relaxed Author Buy eBook Direct Buy Audiobook Direct Publishing Pitfalls for Authors An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores Wide for the Win Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books This Time Around (Short Story) A Canadian Werewolf in New York Stowe Away (Novella) Fear and Longing in Los Angeles Fright Nights, Big City Lover's Moon Hex and the City The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles   Jeff Adams is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. As the Accessibility Operations Director for UsableNet, a company focused on making the digital world more accessible and usable, he consults with clients around the world about digital accessibility. In addition, Jeff's a creative entrepreneur as an author of queer romance and queer young adult fiction and co-host of the Big Gay Fiction Podcast. Michele Lucchini is the Vice President of Delivery and Accessibility Operations for UsableNet and oversees the teams responsible for ensuring client's success in their digital accessibility program. Michele's background is rooted in software development first and moving to team and operation management later. Thanks to experience gathered in over two decades, Michele is an expert and helping companies, from the largest to the smallest, making their digital experiences accessible.   The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 

Episode Show Notes In this episode we cover:  Why accessibility is important What is assistive technology Easy ways to make our content more accessible How to use alt text The four main principles of accessibility This week's question is: Tell me something interesting you've learned this year. Recommendation of the week is: Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias Apple Kobo Amazon UK Amazon USA ***this show uses affiliate links Find out more about Jeff, Michele and accessible content: Content For Everyone Buy the Book Here Color Contrast Checker Rebel of the Week is: Angel Ackerman If you'd like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com 1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Wendy Karas. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you'd like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack   Transcript: Sacha: This is The Rebel Author Podcast, where we talk about books, business and occasionally bad words. Hello rebels, and welcome to episode 180. Today, I'm talking to Jeff and Michele all about accessible content and making our books, our social media, our websites more accessible for more readers. But first to last week's question, which was: what book has gotten you out of a reading slump? Carrie says, "I'm still in a slump. I'm always so tired by the time I have time to read that I can read a few pages before I shut down. I think I need an audible subscription again." Heather says, "The book that recently got me out of reading slump was the rage read that was Iron Widow, and it was just what I needed." Claire said, "Another Stupid Love Song by Miranda McLeod and Em Stevens. Last summer, I was racially abused on my way home and followed to the train station by a group of white man." I'm already fucking livid reading this. "It was really traumatic, and I fell into a deep depression afterwards. Stopped going out, stopped writing and reading." I hate reading this. I'm so sorry. "But then I saw Miranda mention that she had a new age gap romance. And the part of me that felt curious about stories began to wake up when I started reading the straightforward writing style, fast pacing and promise of a happily ever after made a good book to start with." I seriously don't know what the fuck is wrong with people. Like, I'm not going to get into a whole load of politics and opinions right now, but just know that reading that made me really crass, and I'm really sorry that you experienced that. I'm really really glad that reading and story and happy ever afters have helped you to at least heal a little bit from that experience. This week's question is: tell me something interesting that you've learned this year. We are heading towards the end of the first quarter. What the fuck? And so I want to know, what have you learned this year? It could be something small. It could be something not at all about writing. It could be anything really. So yeah, it can be about yourself as well. Let me know what you have learned about something this year. Okay, the book recommendation of the week this week is Guava Flavored Lies by JJ Arias. JJ is a fuckin master of bickering. This is the same JJ who interviewed me in the Ruby Roe launch episode. And JJ is coming on the show. We are literally just in the process of booking a date. Oh my god, I had the pleasure of reading Guava Flavored Lies in audio, and it was so good. It was the breath of fresh air that I needed. And okay, so let me tell you about it instead of just keep fucking ranting about how good it is. It's a contemporary romance, sapphic romance, contemporary sapphic romance with two Cuban families rowing. They've got a shit ton of like history, familial history, and like generational arguments between them. They're both pastry chef families and they own like pastry shops. The bickering went back to school girl days, and I've just never read anything where the bickering was so real and so funny and so brilliant. And I just like I literally laughed, and I don't know, I don't know. I think it actually will go down as my favorite contemporary romance that I've ever read. I loved it that much. It's kind of rivals to lovers as well. Yeah, enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers. Probably rivals to lovers, I would say. Just because there are no like stabbing knives. But it is just fantastic. So if you are looking for an example of dialogue that is sharp as fuck, and bickering that is just fantastic between two love interests, this is the story for you. I highly, highly recommend this book. Of course, links will be in the show notes. So in personal news and updates, I'm sick again. Literally can't fucking believe it. Woke up a couple of days ago feeling like rough as a dog, and I just honestly, I really want this to be a positive episode. I hate being whiny, you know what I'm like, I like to charge forward at 1000 miles per hour all of the time, and always look to the goal, to the future, to the whatever. I just, I'm struggling this week. It is a struggle. I am exhausted again. And I genuinely don't think it's any one thing in my life particularly, I just think it is the fact that it's all combined. And I really need to fucking slow down or like, not slow down, but just like take something off my plate before I crash and burn, because I sort of feel like this is a mini physical burnout. I have decided to reduce boot camps slightly. Instead of going five times a week, I'm gonna go three times a week for now. And I'm going to move one of those to the weekend so that I get a little bit more time in the week during the working days so that I can, you know, not work in the evenings so much. But yeah, I'm really over being sick this year. It is alarm bells to me. I am acutely aware that this is a problem and that I need to have a holiday or take some time off. The problem is I'm really shit at taking time off at home because my office is at home. So, you know, that's why I like to travel because then the office isn't here, the temptation isn't here. It's probably a very privileged thing to say. But you know, I do struggle to take time off at home. It just is what it is. It's a fact. So that's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I don't feel well, and I would like to not be working today, if I'm honest. But there are things that need doing and things that have deadlines. So on I go. In terms of what I've been working on, I have started The Villains Journey. I'm super excited. I have been trying Rachel's method, which I know you guys will have heard about last week on The Black Herron. Oh, no, no. So for those listening on the podcast, you won't have heard about this yet. But for those on Patreon, you will have heard about it. So in the coming episode, Rachel and I discussed the fact that she started writing 500 new words a day on anything. They can be any project. And I was like, oh, that's amazing. And basically, if you do it every single day of the year, I think it's about 182,000 words a year. That's like three books, or more if you write nonfiction and shorter word counts. And I'm not going to do it every single day, I'm just trying to do it every working day. And so yeah, I have started The Villains Journey, and I'm already 3000 words in. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm not supposed to start writing this until May, you know, and at this rate, I can go to May with about 20k in the bag. So feels like a lot to me. I'm very, very happy. I'm about 19,000 words into the second Girl Games book. This is the one that I already had 30k in, but no, as you know, I more or less scrapped it. I have salvage some of the stuff from the first version, and so yeah, I'm 19,000 words into the book. I've been doing about 5000-word days, which is great. And using a write to sprint in the morning, and that's really been helping. So yeah, I feel pretty good about the writing projects. And it's really nice to be writing words. I find that I get to a point where I'm exhausted and don't want to write anymore, probably because I burned so hard, and then I like get very sick and tired of doing the marketing or the entity or whatever it is, and want to go back to doing the drafting. So it's a good schedule to have to be able to switch between the two. So when you hear this, it will be my birthday week. And I am considering, given that I'm not feeling very well, that I might take a couple of days off. I don't know, we'll see. I would like to go down to London and go to the Big Waterstones and like spend some time in there, but we'll see. I don't know whether or not I'll actually get to do that. But it would be nice to, so we'll see. You know, given that I'm not feeling very well, I think that is probably everything that I'm going to update you with this week. So the rebel of the week this week is, and I have to say, I did pause for a second and have to reread the name, It's Angel Ackerman, which when you write it and you read quickly, very much read as Angela Ackerman. Not Angela Ackerman, ladies and gentlemen, it's definitely Angel Ackerman. So let me read Angel's story to you. "I work in the Stitch Fix warehouse in Pennsylvania folding clothes for eight hours a day. I'm a former journalist and needed a low stress job that could allow me time and energy to pursue my own creative interests. At the warehouse, which Stitch Fix refers to as Hizzies, with cute names for each, we are the Buzzy Hizzy, but there is also the breezy, the hoozy, the dizzy, and the fizzy. I'm allowed to listen to podcasts, and so as a writer, I discovered The Rebel Author podcast and many others in the industry. "I have racked my brain trying to capture a rebel story from memory and suddenly I realized my whole creative side hustle is rebellion. I founded Parisian Phoenix Publishing in 2021 as the brand behind my paranormal women's fiction series, Fashion and Fiends, debuting with the first volume, Manipulations, in September of that year. "One of my best friends is a graphic designer with an obsession with typography. In her first job as a graphic design professor had invented the name and logo for the company and a complete boxset of the novels in 2008, just to have something to submit for the faculty art show. At the time, I was shopping my novels to traditional publishers and agents, attending conferences and serving on the board of my local writers group. Motherhood prevented me from giving proper effort to that, and the book industry was changing so much in the aughts. "When the pandemic happened, I thought it would be fun and rebellious to self-publish preserve these stories for my now teen daughter. But the project barrel rolled into a full-fledged craft press as more people asked me to publish their books. I asked fellow writers and artists for help with projects being proposed because linking creative communities is one of our goals. "As of 2023 Parisian Phoenix has nine published books ranging from an anthology of marginalized voices, LGBTQ disability, mental health, body image, ethnicity, etc., to a romantic comedy with original photographs, a devotional focusing on how to protect yourself in a violent modern world without violating your Christian values in production, and an 11th book of short stories in the editing phase. Not to mention, poetry, a holocaust memoir, and nostalgic fiction. "Each book seems to host its own rebellion. Our tagline is: publishing unique voices and diverse perspectives. And many of our staff members and peer review board members have disabilities. I have cerebral palsy. My assistant editor has been blind since birth. And we have primarily women on board." This is an awesome, awesome rebellion. And yeah, look up Parisian Phoenix if you are interested in finding out more about them. I think this is such a cool rebellion, and the fact that you are creating communities and collecting people and helping to bring diverse voices into the world is just fantastic. So I absofuckinglutely love that rebellion. And also thank you for listening. If you would like to be a rebel of the week, please do send in your story. It can be any kind of rebellion, something big, something small, or something in between. You can email your rebel story to Becca over on rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com. A huge welcome and a warm thank you to new patron Wendy Karis. And of course, a gigantic thank you to all of my existing patrons. You guys help keep the show running. You make me feel like what I do is worthwhile and having a wonderful impact, so I really, really appreciate each and every single one of you. If you would like to support the show and get early access to all of the episodes, as well as a ton of bonus content, then you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. Okay, that's it from me this week. Let's get on with the episode. Hello, and welcome to The Rebel Author Podcast. We are in for a special treat today because we have not one, but two guests on the show. First, we have Jeff Adams. Jeff is a creative entrepreneur, as an author of both queer romances and young adult fiction, as well as the co-host of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast. In his day job, Jeff's a certified professional and accessibility core competencies by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals. As the Accessibility Operations Director for UsableNet, a company focused on making the digital world more accessible and usable, he consults with clients around the world about digital accessibility. Next up we have Michele Lucchini. Michele is the Vice President of Delivery and Accessibility Operations for UsableNet and overseas the teams responsible for ensuring client success in their digital accessibility program. Michele's background is rooted in software development first, and moving to team and operation management later. Thanks to experience gathered in over two decades, Michele is an expert at helping companies from the largest to the smallest, making their digital experiences accessible. Hello, and welcome. Jeff: Thanks for having us, Sacha. It's great to be here. Sacha: So Jeff, you were first on the show back in episode 55, which I can't actually believe because that was October 2020. Jeff: It feels like a year ago, like years and years and years ago. Sacha: I know. I know. I mean, honestly, time is a lie. I was texting one of my friends this evening who was talking about the movie, Everything Everywhere... Jeff: Everything Everywhere All at Once, I think. Sacha: Yes, that one. And I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that was out like three years ago." And she was like, "Oh, actually, no, it's up for the Oscars now." And I was like, "Wait, what? No, no, no. It could not possibly have been out last year." Though it was. Yeah, time is a lie. It's weird. So normally I ask people like what their journey is, how they came to writing the book. But I'm gonna ask you first of all, like, what have you been up to since then? Because obviously, we know like your journey from the first episode, which I'll link in the show notes. Jeff: It's interesting as I went back to look at 55, and like what was going on in October of 2020. Like, within the month before you dropped that episode, so between the time we talked for that interview and you dropped the episode, we actually ended The Big Gay Author Podcast, which is one of the things we were talking about on that show. Mostly, because with pandemic and other things that were going on, like some of our priorities shifted, and it's like, we weren't sure that show was really relevant anymore. So as it's so popular, now, we learned how to say no and learned when to end something, and put that aside. Big Gay Fiction Podcast continues on. It went into its eighth year last November, so we're 400+ episodes now there. So that's been exciting. I've written the book we're about to talk about. And the neat thing about that, I think, is writing this nonfiction book, I think has resparked my fiction side a little bit, because I've been really stagnant over the last couple of years. I've done some rereleases of some things I got the rights back on, but writing new stuff has really been a struggle. So my fingers crossed, that the nonfiction kind of broke that kind of cloud over my head, if you will, and I'm gonna be able to hopefully get some new fiction out this year. Sacha: I always find nonfiction is a real palate cleanser. Like I adore fiction, but I definitely need to also write nonfiction, because it gets me excited to go back to the fiction. Otherwise, I do tend to find it's a bit of a burn. So Michele, have you written other books? Or is this your first one? Or? Michele: That's the very first one. Sacha: That's exciting. Michele: The last thing I wrote was my thesis at the university. And that was far from exciting. Well, actually, it was in home automation, so it was actually an interesting topic. But I've always loved writing, but I never dedicated myself enough to call myself like a producer or a writer of a proper book. Sacha: So before we dive into the questions like about the book, then how did you find writing, and writing together? Like what was the experience like for you? Michele: Well, let's also consider that it's not my mother language, right. So it was an extremely interesting experience. So I had the opportunity to learn on many different threads. So one is the challenge of transferring something that is my daily job knowledge, and the knowledge that has been built across 22 years, that I would use the word dedicate to this topic. Plus, learning the ability to put in words for somebody who is not an expert. One of the limits that I realize I have is that sometimes when you gather so much experience, you can lose the ability to explain and translate it in easy terms. I think that Jeff has experienced the same. I remember the first iteration of our review process, we were asking ourselves, does it make any sense for somebody if it's their first time approaching the topic of accessibility? So it was an interesting learning curve, but it was what made all the project extremely interesting for me. Sacha: Well, you both absolutely smashed it because it's the most meta book possible. For a book on accessibility, it's extremely accessible for someone who knows nothing about it. So you absolutely smashed it out of the park. So well done, both of you. And that is what we're here to talk about. And your new book is called Content for Everyone. And it focuses on the topic of accessibility. So before we dive into some more technical, practical tips and tricks, like why accessibility? What made you want to write a book on this topic? And why is it so important, particularly for the authors and writers listening? Jeff: The whole thing kind of became this big smashing together of my day job in accessibility. But the things that I do on the creative side, so even before the book was kind of a seed in my head to do, I was trying to make sure that my sites, my email, my social media, were as accessible as I could make them. You know, because I'm not technical. Knowing what you need to do and actually being able to do it can be two different things, you know. So, moving through this, and as I talked about content accessibility all the time, it's one of the things I trained UsableNet clients about, is that very topic. It's so in my brain, I can't not see issues almost everywhere I go on the net. No alt text on Facebook, bad color combinations here, things that don't work with keyboard. You know, all these things just keep being in front of me. And I know that nobody sets out to do that. You know, nobody sets out to make inaccessible content that can exclude, potentially, a lot of people. They just don't know what to do. And they don't know what the topic is. So it's like, why don't I try to create something that distills what you can work on, and also to a degree, things to watch out for, because there are things in the book that are--and keyboard navigation is a great example of this, and we'll probably talk about a little bit more about that piece of it later. But you're not going to fix your own keyboard navigation issues, but if you know you have them, you might get a new template or do something to start to mitigate those problems. And so that's kind of where it started. And then one day, as I was talking with Michele, as we do all the time, I was like, I'm gonna write this book. And he was interested, so we decided to kind of tackle it together. Sacha: I love this so much. And like, I think it was such a humbling experience for me to read as well, because my stepfather is disabled, and he uses a wheelchair. And so I have a reasonable amount of knowledge about accessibility in terms of like mobility and physical issues. And so I kind of went into the book thinking, oh, yeah, like, I'm gonna understand. Holy moly, I was so ignorant of digital issues. Like all of the bits and bobs, like on social media. Like just things that I wouldn't even have thought would be an issue. And that's what I love so much about this book is I genuinely feel like every single person listening to this podcast will go away having learned something. So I think it's really important that listeners do go and educate themselves, and buy your book, I read your book, because it's fucking brilliant. So in your book, one of the things that you talk about are the four main types of disability. And I think it'd be helpful for listeners to understand what they are to give some context to the rest of the podcast. And I don't know if you are able just to give some like references to a couple of the numbers, which were really quite significant. And I was quite shocked when I read it and saw some of those stats. You know, and by that, I mean, sort of how many people are affected by disability. So yeah, because this is an important topic. Michele: Yeah, it is. And numbers are shocking. And I think that we can identify four main categories of disabilities, which is mobility. And this is the largest group, so over 13%, almost 14%, of US population as some mobility impairment. So translated into a digital experience, it could be something preventing the user to use emails, or a regular pointing device. The second category is the cognitive disability. And here we are talking about over 10% of the US population. Any cognitive disorder, it could be learning difficulties, dyslexia, and I'm not just talking about very, very bad disabilities, but just simple conditions that are not preventing an individual to conduct a normal life. The third category is the auditory ability. The count is around 6% of the population. And the auditory disability is any form of hearing loss. And last but not least, is the visual disability. Here we are around 5% of the population. So within the visual disability, of course, we include the blind individual categories, but we might have any kind of low vision, color blindness, contrast deficits, and all impairments that are preventing a user to be able to see colors or transfer the content as the mainstream, which is a word I hate and a concept I hate, will experience on this side. There is one more, in my opinion, a shocking number. Beside the fact that with easy math, we are seeing that 20% of the population as a sort of disability. 20% of your audience, your customers potentially have a sort of visibility. But in these 20%, we're not counting all the temporary impairments. So somebody that broke his arm, somebody that is using his mobile phone under the sunlight, and the sun is hitting the screen and he's not able to see as well as he'd be able to see the screen in the dark. We are now also considering that the age of the digital population is increasing year after a year. I always use an example, so my dad is 74. He is active, smart, quick. His expectation is to keep interacting with his mobile phone, for example, as it is right now. Why should he accept that as his sight is becoming a little bit lower, as his precision with the movements might degredate. In the course of the years, he won't be able to use his phone, he won't be able to do what he's doing with his computer. So that becomes a basic expectation. So we need to take that in consideration. So that 20%, actually, is much, much more if we are considering all the, let's call them disability induced by the context of use. Or simply the population getting older. Sacha: I think one of the things that I found enlightening is the term assistive technology and what that captures. Because I think many of us are actually using some of these technologies without even realizing that actually, they are tools that help those people who do have accessibility issues. I know I certainly was like, oh, you know, I was just using this because this is a handy thing. And actually, they're integral to ensure that our content is accessible for everybody. So I wondered if you could talk about what assistive technology is and give some like examples, just to put it into context. Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. It's something that, as you noted, we use it every day and don't even think about it. You and I are wearing assistive technology right now, Sacha, because we're both in glasses. Think about what you would not be able to see if you didn't have your glasses on. Sacha: I really couldn't. Jeff: You know, it'd be a mess. Using speech to text technology, I think we use it all the time. Authors certainly use it a lot to dictate their manuscripts. You know, if you're dictating a text to your phone, and then sending it that way, or interacting with any home assistant, that's part of it. But also for some people who maybe are restricted in the mobility area, they may use speech to text of that kind to literally navigate the web. And that would be what they'd use in place of a mouse is speaking to the computer. The keyboard itself is a big assistive tool for some people, because theoretically, you know, by the rules of accessibility, you should be able to interact with the site completely on your keyboard, without interacting with the mouse at all. So things like that, you know, are some of the high level things. But then each of our computers, if we're on any kind of, you know, modern Mac or Windows machine, or if we're using Android or iOS phones and tablets, all of those have a huge array of accessibility things built right into them. Whether it's a screen reader, Zoom technology, more around voice to text, a whole bunch of things. And I would really encourage people to look in their settings for their computer and their devices just to see the long list of things that are present that people could use to be interacting with their digital content. Sacha: So like what is the consequence of this to authors if they don't engage with making their content accessible? Michele: I think that the easiest to perceive consequence is they may leave out of the door a good portion of a potential audience or potential customers. But besides the numbers, beside the, let's say, business aspect, I like to think about the impact on potential reputation. Michele: The impact on the idea that the audience, the customer, might have on just ignoring categories of people. So we need to, I think that it is time for us to all get sensitized on the fact that we need to build a more inclusive world. I mean, it is everyone's responsibility, it is not Jeff's, it is not Michele's, it is not Sacha's responsibility only. It is not an expert's responsibility only. Everyone can provide a contribution. So, in my opinion, the impact on the reputation is probably getting to be the most prominent one. And this is what my advice is. Jeff: If you think about the whole idea that not doing this excludes people, and of course, I think all of us creatives really want to be about inclusion. We talk in the book, we talked to four different people in the book who have different disabilities, and in some cases, different multiple disabilities. And one of the things that struck me was speaking to one of my fellow authors in the queer romance space. They were trying to interact with courses, you know, there's a whole array of courses available to independent authors for ads, and for marketing here, and marketing there, and writing craft and all these things. And repeatedly, they are not finding courses where like the live courses don't have live captions through whatever venue it is. And certainly Zoom is really good at live captions for any call that you're doing there. But even in the replays, captions or transcripts weren't available. So they either, you know, don't get to interact with the training at all because they're deaf and hard of hearing. I mean, they've got hearing aids, but those only give them about 30 - 40% of the full picture. So they either strain to hear that content, and try to work on it, which of course is taxing and tiring, or they abandon it all together. And they really feel like they're not getting information that other authors get because, you know, they're not included in that experience. Sacha: Yeah, transcripts is a real sticking point for me, because when I first started the podcast, I used to do transcripts for the show. But at moment, I only have school working hours, and you know, each transcript for an episode is a two hour job. You know, when you do four a month, that's a whole lot. That's more than one working day, and I just can't afford the time. But it is something that I provide for courses. And I do try to make sure I do video audio transcript, and you know, all of that stuff. It's very frustrating for me because I would like to have the sort of AI transcription software be more accurate because I can't just transcribe and leave it and put it up because there are things still that don't make sense. It's not accurate enough. And obviously, outsourcing, it's costly. So that's one of the things for me that I know that I could change, and I would really like to change. But obviously, it's a costly exercise one way or the or another. So we know that it's important to make sure our books and websites and social media are accessible to everyone. So what are some easy wins that people could take away from this episode? Anything practical that we could do to make our content more accessible? Jeff: You kind of hit on one of the things there in what you just said around auto generated. Auto generated anything doesn't make it accessible. Auto generated transcripts or captions are just riddled with mistakes. They come close, they're about 95% of the way there, and they're a great point to start the editing process, but they're not complete. And they will leave your audience feeling the same way, like if you just put out a first draft of a book without any copy editing and without any fixes to it. That's also true for alternative text because Facebook and Instagram, for example, will put alt text on anything you upload to it, and it's horrible. It'll be like, "might be one person standing outside with a beard," because they've got a beard on their face. And they'll just kind of tag that on the end. And it'll also try to read any text that's actually in the image. And if you think about those very popular book promo graphics right now with the book in the middle and all the little arrows pointing with like tropes and plot points and stuff. Sacha: I posted one of those today. Jeff: The AI will actually read left to right, trying to read each line of that, including the book title and the bylines, and present that. That's what Facebook offers. So you need to make sure on social that you're cleaning up the alt text that's present there so that it's not just some real garbage that's sitting there. Then another key I would give, knowing how everybody loves to use emojis, really limit the use of them. Like put them at the end to like finish the punctuation on a post or a sentence or something. Don't start with them, because especially for screen readers, each emoji has its own thing that it reads out, that may not be the context that you want it to be. Don't put emojis between the words for the same reason. Also you think about cognitively disabled people and emojis as well. The context and the way you want those to be perceived, if somebody is already having to parse the words you're putting in there because maybe they're dyslexic and they need a very clean line of text, or some other cognitive disability, you're just making it that much harder for them to get the message that you're trying to give because you're trying to add some visual sparkle with the emojis. So I would say that those are my three quick hits on some things that can start to make the content more accessible. Sacha: Yeah, I still remember the first time somebody asked me to put captions on my stories. And as far as I'm aware, they have no accessibility issues, but they used to watch my stories at work, and they couldn't watch them with sound on. I was like, "oh," and I was like, "yeah, sure, I can do that." And then, obviously, there were other comments from other people who were like, "Oh, actually, now I can like watch your story, like watch/read your stories." And like, that was a real eye opener. I just think so much of this is just pure, like, what's the word? Not nefarious, but it is still ignorance. You know, it's just accidental ignorance in a way. But the emojis, I definitely do far too many emojis and I am going to make an effort to make sure they're at the end instead. I definitely start with emojis, I put them in the middle, you don't even think about it. So yeah, now I will be thinking about it going forward. Okay, so you've just mentioned alt text there. But I wondered if you could give me an example of what good alt text is because I do some freelance work managing a blog, and I know that when we have pictures, we're supposed to put alt text on there. I never really know what it is I am supposed to be describing or what I'm supposed to be putting into the alt text sections. So like, how do I know where I'm supposed to use it and when it's not actually needed? And how do I know what a good sentence is to put in there? Michele: Somebody says that finding the right alt text is like an art. And I actually agree with that. There is no magic recipe to define a good alternative text. We always recommend it is important to understand what role an image plays within the context. The context of what? It could be the context of the page, the context of the message we are communicating. So in the case an image is purely decorative, you're just using an image as a sort of placeholder, an extremely nice placeholder, but it's only conveying a decorative meaning, in that case, your alternative tags should be empty. It does not mean that you don't have to put the alt attribute, because if you don't, assistive technology will read the file name of the image, making it very difficult to understand for the final user. But setting the alternative tax as an empty, the assistive technology will know that that image will need to be ignored. So it won't be read. Instead, if the image is conveying a message, an important message, you should describe it with the right message. I mean it was funny for us, not in the context that we found the issue, it was the classic search icon, the magnifier lens, and so the site we were reviewing had, as an alternative text of the magnifier lengths, magnifier length. Instead, there was supposed to be search, because the function of the image was search, it was not magnifying something. So you can just imagine how confusing would have been the experience of a blind user using a screen reader that was hearing that there was an input text field on the page, so maybe that is what I can use to search something, and then magnifier lens. When you experience that, people with disabilities now have a bad website. With very little effort, you can fix it, you can make your site more accessible and more meaningful to everyone. Sacha: Yeah, that's so interesting, because obviously, you derive meaning from seeing the image, but actually, it's the function of the image that's the important bit. I think that's a fantastic bit of learning for everybody to take away. One of the other things you talk about in the book are the four main principles of accessibility on a website. And I think these are things that authors should be aware of. So I wondered if you could just briefly go over them. Michele: Yeah, sure. The web content accessibility guideline, which is the sort of Bible to determine whether a digital property is accessible or not, are four. And actually, those four principles also apply to everyday object accessibility. So the first one is perceivable. It means that any user must be able to perceive the content and the interface of your website. So we just did the example around the alternative text, that falls under the perceivable principle. The second principle is operable. So it requires to provide the ability for all users, independently by their abilities, to operate with user interface. The classic example is, let's consider a motor impairment, and it prevents the user to interact with the mouse. So the site must provide the ability for the user to use just the keyboard to interact and browse the site. The third principle is understandable, which probably is the easiest to understand. So the interface and the content must be understandable to the user. This actually, on some of these success criteria, it becomes extremely interesting because it also covers cultural disabilities. So the use of an easy language and all these aspects are, I think, extremely interesting for authors. And last but not least, is the final principle, which is the robust. It is probably the most technical principle that is included into the guideline, but it is all about respecting the standards, and respecting the core compatibility. One of the things that we always have to remember is that users with disabilities are massively relying on their system. So they are probably not upgrading them 30 seconds after the operative system notifies us that there is an upgrade ready to be installed. They don't do that because the risk of losing the ability to, for example, have the system working as it was working before, it might generate a big problem. Imagine a blind user that relies on his computer or any screen reader to order the food, to book the train ticket, to book a taxi. If after the upgrade, it won't work anymore or won't work as it was working before, considering that learning how to use a screen reader is probably a multiyear experience. Sacha: I find that so interesting. Actually, that's going to make me slightly more empathetic, I think. So with my stepdad, we often help like change bills over and do things like internet swap over, but there's a lot of resistance to like upgrading. And I was like, you need better internet, like you need it. And, you know, I wasn't particularly empathetic about it, but actually I get it now. I get it. Yeah, I can understand because so much is reliant on the existing system. And I'm just like, yeah, well, we can change it and upgrade it and make it better. But actually, when there are so many systems, you know, phone systems and call systems and nurse systems that are based on it, I can understand why there's that resistance and reluctance to change it. And so yeah, thank you for that. Now, I'm not very empathetic person, but I'm going to try very hard now to be better. Yeah, thank you. I've read the book and learned so much and I'm still learning even more. This is a fantastic interview. Thank you, guys. One of the things, speaking of, that I learned was that using color to differentiate isn't always helpful, which blew my mind because I am an extremely visual person, and I actually rely on color to learn. Like when I was studying at university, I would put my psychology studies in certain colors, so that I could close my eyes and picture like my big brainstorm thing, like with all the different colors on it, and then I'd remember the numbers and the words and the authors and things. And so that helps me to categorize and it's how I find books on my bookshelf. And I was ignorant of, obviously, the fact that that's a huge problem for people who are colorblind. So what are some of the things that those of us who are able bodied take for granted that you wish that we would change? Michele: Yeah, relying on color to convey information is probably one of those. Just the color is not enough, you should use something else. Let's do an easy example. So imagine that the style that you have on your website highlights the links only with the color. Let's also make sure the links are underlined, which is the standard, let's say link style, because otherwise, people might not be able to perceive the difference between the link and the plain text. The same when you are providing instructions on how to do something. Recently, I've seen a sign that was suggesting to use the red button. But what if I'm using my interface only on a scale of gray? I will not be able to perceive what is the red button, and I will not be able to distinguish between the other buttons. So again, it is not necessarily a hyper technical aspect, it is the ability to start understanding which are the difficulties. And these are difficulties that you might be able to perceive, not just on the web, but on the everyday life. So this is, I think, one of the nicest thing around accessibility, that when you start learning, and Sacha, you confirmed that before, right? When you start learning it on a field, then you naturally apply it to a number of different fields. And the use of colors is a classic one that you can find on books, guides, instructions, websites, on Facebook post. It is a very popular mistake. Sacha: I think it's so natural for so many of us to, you know, we go through the world with our own rose tinted spectacles on. We go through the world with our own experience. And so often we take that for granted that that's everybody's experience. And it's not. And that's why this is so important because none of us are perfect. We all have things to learn. And I think as long as we are open to being humble, and to putting our hands up and say, "Actually, yeah, I had no idea. I'm going to change that now." I think that's one of the magical things about your book is that you say throughout it that nobody's expecting you to do everything in this book immediately. You can do one little thing this month, another thing next month, you know. And I think that's what's so encouraging because I actually left the book very motivated to try and fix some of these things. Jeff: The thing to remember, and you kind of touched on it there, that we tell you, you don't have to do everything, but it's also a mindset of progress over perfection. It's one of the big things talked about among all the advocates in this space, because you can't do everything all at once. And especially for who we're talking to here, which is really creative entrepreneurs, probably little to no technical experience, working with little to no budget, you know, maybe if they're lucky, a PA who helps with this stuff. But to know you can choose to do nothing on your existing content and always do better going forward, those little things add up. You don't want this to feel like a crushing like, oh god, now I've got two thousand other things to go do. Baby steps, parse out what you're gonna do, what you think the most important thing is, and just do something. Yeah. Sacha: And like, speaking of doing something, I think one of the things that authors spend a lot of their marketing time on is social media. So what are some of the things that we can do to be more inclusive and accessible on social media? Jeff: Really think about that emoji use. I mean, I will tie back to that, because emojis is one of the places that I think most people, if they're going to abuse emojis, it's abuse on social. Put them at the end of the post, don't bury them in the middle of it, so that your message comes through. And that's really what I look at in every instance when I'm thinking about social. It's let's make sure the message you're giving actually comes through. Instagram stories and TikTok, when you can add your own text to those, make sure you're using text that's actually big enough to read. Those stories, you can't pinch and zoom and do all that stuff. And there's so many Instagrams, people type these big, long missives on their Instagram stories, and it's really teeny, tiny text, and I'm like, I have no idea. And if I am not reading it with my glasses on, it's like, yeah, you're gonna lower your interaction with that. Make it bigger text, more screens, whatever that takes to get that across. The same thing when you're doing caption fonts, like I love your caption fonts when you're doing your stories. It's good, big text. I think I could read that with my glasses off, perhaps, which is great. Think about how you're using images and what you're doing with them. Images of text are used a lot, and you know, they're catchy, like those graphics we talked about with all the arrows pointing to the books. But make sure that that message is coming out into the post itself. Because, you know, we talked about using alt text, which is great, but there are people with low vision, who aren't going to use the screen reader to get to the alt text. So for that book example, all of those little pop points that are running around the outside of the book, make that part of the post in a sentence format. You know, "this book features these things," so that it's equivalent information presented. That comes back to the perceivable principle that Michele mentioned. Different people perceive in different ways, so make sure the content is available in all those different perceivable ways. Sacha: So I got halfway there with that trope's post because I put the tropes in the caption, but then I put a tick emoji by each one. I was so close. Michele: You need to read the book again. Sacha: Clearly, I do. Okay, last sort of major question then. Talk to me about font. You've mentioned font, about having it large in captions, but also there are things that we should know about choosing font for our websites or for our books or social media where possible. Jeff: I would say this is less about books and book covers because that's going to the brand and the feel of the book, and that kind of thing. And the book cover itself is really art. And yes, there are certain things you could do, but you don't want to like take away from the feel of your cover for that. When you're promoting the book, you want the text around that art to be properly accessible and stuff. You can't really adjust the font on aspects of social. You've got some font choices on stories and areas like that. But if you're gonna look at font families, for example, like Tahoma, Times New Roman, Verdana, and to a large degree, Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, those are generally well accessible fonts because the things that you're looking for are easily distinguishable letters. So a font where a lowercase L and an uppercase I and the numeral one, don't all look the same. Because then you're gonna start having people having difficulty parsing the letters if they're visually interacting with them. And then, of course, it's a good font size. So you know, well 14 size font on websites and in emails and stuff. Think about are you using on your emails, for example, a mobile friendly template so that somebody doesn't have to pinch and zoom even if you're using a big font, because it's not reformatting in the mobile window well. And if you're doing tiny text, don't go too tiny. Even if you're doing like rules for something, somebody's trying to read that. So you know, be considered about that as well. Very thin fonts, things with big flourishes in them, be wary of those. Those will be much harder for people with cognitive disabilities, potentially, to parse and low vision to parse out what those are. Coming back to like images of text and that promo graphic, if you do have swirly stuff in there because it's part of the brand feel of the book, just make sure you're getting that message in the post and in the alt text so that it's all considerable. Two other things I'll throw out about fonts, and one of these ties back to color, is color contrast. So beyond the use of color that Michele mentioned, think about the color contrast and the ability to discern what's in the background versus the foreground. So if you're thinking about text, does the text pop enough off of the background color to be readable. And I'll send you for the show notes a link to a color contrast checker that's available, you just put in the hex codes for your foreground and your background, and it's gonna tell you if it passes color contrast. It nice little sliders on it so you can darken and lighten text to find the right balance to ensure that those visually interacting can see and discern the color appropriately and not have to like work too hard on it. The last thing I'll mention around text is the alignment of the text. Centering text, especially large blocks of text, we're not talking like headlines, but large chunks of text, very cognitively draining to read because your eye is always have to find where the start of the line is. Same thing with justification because there's inconsistent spacing between words. Left justify it so that I can follow, you know, not so much with the indents because indentations are expected, but you know, start left align copy so that it's just a straight line. It makes for the easiest readability. Sacha: Yeah, do you know I've always hated center justified text and I've never really know known why. And it is actually exhausting to read it. Yeah, that's so interesting. Thank you both so, so much because I think this is a really, really important topic. And I hope that listeners, even if they're only got to go and do one thing, please do go and take one action after listening to this podcast. Well, two actions. One, read the book, and then two, take a take a practical action. But this is The Rebel Author Podcast, so tell everyone about a time you unleashed your inner rebel. And I don't mind who goes first. Jeff: I will say that I prepared better this time than the first time that we did this because I know Will I found this question to be like, oh my god, what is this even mean? I have one for this though. And I challenge everybody after they read the book to start doing this kind of same thing. And it's gently educating people about accessibility. As you learn it, pass it on. Like, even before I wrote the book, every now and then I would talk to an author colleague, a podcaster colleague, about newsletters or things that I saw that just very clearly popped out to me because of this work that I do. Like maybe think about doing this thing different than this thing, to spread the word. And I'm even more kind of out there with it now. Whether it's a colleague, or a business that I that I work with. You know, I use maybe widgets and plugins on my websites to get to make certain things happen. I'll either go look for new ones, or be like, hey, this is bad, can you do something about this place? It's all about gently. It's not about aggressively coming out of the gate and be like, oh, my God, why aren't you doing this. It's like, you may not know this, but XYZ. And that way, accessibility becomes something that we all start to think about a little more. So it's a little rebellion and it takes a little courage to just know you're gonna go reach out to somebody go, can I just give you some unsolicited advice about this? But it's all about trying to make everything more inclusive. Sacha: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And the more welcoming we can be, the better our community becomes, and the more, what's the word, the more appreciated our readers feel. So I love that rebellion. Michele, what about you? You've got to have a rebellion, too. Michele: I do, I do. It might be considered close to Jeff's one, but the message I want to convey is that we live in a world that relies on accessory to use something that has been just purely designed. And we need to stop. The concept of an assistive technology, or even worse, an alternative, it needs to stop. So the fact that the product that you are designing, often we see the main actor as the designer, not the user, is what causes the majority of the accessibility issues. So we need to invest something that is not necessarily related to the technology only, but in the way we speak. And I include myself, I mean, this is a message that I send to myself as well. So to be more inclusive, but in a way that we think we will learn, which could be all the difficulties, all the possible different abilities of our audience, and we try to be more inclusive, but in a way that we don't just consider that if he's not able to use my website, for sure, she will have an accessory that will make her able to. Well, it's not always like that. We can design better, we can write better, we can produce better products to be available for a wider audience. Sacha: Yeah, I love that. And I think the best marketers who are authors keep the end user being the reader at the fore of their design of their books and their marketing campaigns. And you know, they're the ones who are the most effective at this. And so I think that's an amazing rebellion. Okay, tell everyone where they can find out more about you, your book, and anything else you would like to add? Jeff: Absolutely. So you can find all about Content for Everyone at contentforeveryone.info. Information where you can get the book, we're also going to be putting up routine blog posts there to talk about examples that we've seen, news that would be of interest to creatives. So we'll start to have you know that be kind of an ongoing resource to help share even more around the book. And Content for Everyone is available everywhere, eBook, paperback, large print paperback and audiobook. And you should find that anywhere you want to pick up a book, or pick up an audio, it should be there. Sacha: Are you narrating? Jeff: I am actually, yes. Sacha: I love it. I love it. Jeff: If you want more about me, JeffAdamsWrites.com for the fiction, and BigGayFictionPodcast.com for the podcast. Sacha: Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time today, and of course a gigantic thank you to all of the show's listeners and all of the show's patrons. If you'd like to get early access to all of the episodes, you can do so by visiting patreon.com/sachablack. I'm Sacha Black, you are listening to Jeff Adams and Michele Lucchini, and this was The Rebel Author Podcast. Next week I am joined by one of my fav humans, Ines Johnson, and we are going to be talking about business, processes, efficiency, and basically how she is a fucking badass author. So join me next week for that. Don't forget to tune in and subscribe on your podcatcher. And when you have a moment, please leave a review.  

My friends, Covid finally caught up to me this week, and holy moly did it ever knock me on my on my butt. So, today I'm sharing a replay episode. This interview with Jeff Adams was one of my all time favorites - he's a delightful human, a wonderful podcast host, and an incredibly voracious reader. The book we discussed, and this episode, have stuck with me ever since it aired. Follow the Best Book Ever Podcast on Instagram or on the Best Book Ever Website Host: Julie Strauss Website/Instagram   Jeff Adams Website/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Big Gay Fiction Podcast/Big Gay Author Podcast Discussed in this episode: The Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen (Part of the Ivy Years Series) New York City Gay Hockey Association Trouble Shooter Series by Suzanne Brockman (This is a 19-book series that begins with The Unsung Hero.) Love, Simon The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren St. Nachos by Z.A. Maxfield Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda The Extraordinaries by TJ Clune Camp by L.C. Rosen V.L. Losey (Romance author) RJ Scott (Romance author) The MM Author Podcast GRL – Gay Rom Lit Retreat They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall Love, Victor Finding Joy by Adriana Herrera The Dreamers Series Adriana Herrera Book 1: American Dreamer Book 2 American Fairytale Book 3: American Love Story Book 4: American Sweetheart The Hideaway Inn by Phillip William Stover The Hockey Player's Heart by Jeff Adams and Will Knauss   (Note: Some of the above links are affiliate links. If you shop using my affiliate link on Bookshop, a portion of your purchase will go to me, at no extra expense to you. Thank you for supporting indie bookstores and for helping to keep the Best Book Ever Podcast in business!)

In this special episode, Jeff talks about his new non-fiction book "Content for Everyone: A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content" along with his co-author Michele Lucchini. Jeff and Michele discuss why they wrote the book, why it's important to create accessible content for websites, emails and social media posts, and the actions authors and other creatives can take to improve what they are posting to the web. Complete show notes for this episode along with a transcript of the show are at BigGayAuthorPodcast.com.

What do you get when you mix competition, preaching, and church? The Super Bowl of Preaching! Check out this electrifying church service featuring Pastors Tim Dunn, Jeff Adams, Brandon Smith, and Todd Genteman. It is the most unconventional preaching competition you'll ever witness!

Host Joel sits down with John Vradenburg, of the USFWS and Jeff Adams, of Delta Waterfowl to discuss a very timely habitat/drought problem at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which has seen hunting season closures in recent memory. They discuss the complex dynamics of habitat and the animals that use it to get a clearer picture of the situation and the impact on hunters across the region. https://deltawaterfowl.org/drought-forces-hunting-closure-on-lower-klamath-and-tule-lake-refuges/

Episode 44 is the fourth highlight show in a series where we take a look back at previous shows over the past three years.  On this show we look back at Episode 34 - a preview of the 2021-2022 PGA TOUR season, where my co-host, Jeff Adams, and I make some predictions, highlight the rookie class and welcome Andy Pazder, Chief Tournament and Competitions Officer at the PGA TOUR,  who adds some incredible insight into the season.

When Mallard recruits Candy to help out an aviation insurance adjuster, she finds herself flying straight into troiuble. ”Candy Matson: The Insurance Crash,” a re-creation of the classic Old Time Radio script written by Monte Masters. Our program featured Caleb Silvers as Detective Mallard, Jeff Adams as Rembrandt, Jim Yount was Gordon Ayers, Justin Kapla played Folger, Ian Hall was Crantson and Starring, Alea Mackintosh as Candy Maston, Private Eye. Our Sound Effects artist was Evie Conat. Candy Matson: The Insurance Crash was originally aired over the NBC network on January 2nd 1950. Tonight's production was produced and directed by Jeffrey Adams for the Icebox Radio Theater which is solely responsible for its content. Icebox Radio makes no claim of ownership for this play.

Jeff Adams and Anne Gorton sit down with the Crystal Coast Podcast to chop it up about Black Sheep Brick Oven Pizza in beautiful Beaufort North Carolina. They break down all things Black Sheep! We also learned a ton about their two businesses right next door to Black Sheep. The Green Room is a craft cocktail bar that serves drinks on a one of a kind bar top created by former guest Grace Bell. Lastly, we have the Bodega that is right between Black Sheep and The Green Room. It's the perfect shop for a great day on the Crystal Coast. They have wine, beer, North Carolina snacks, gifts and anything else you need for a good time! About 7 minutes into Anne introducing herself the phone rang in the restaurant so we had stop recording and you'll hear a brief interuption to Anne's train of thought, but I promise you didn't miss anything! Please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to podcast. Please visit Black Sheep, The Green Room and the Bodega in Beaufort and be sure to let them know the Crystal Coast Podcast sent you! Find us on Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook @crystalcoastpodcast @Blacksheepbeaufort @thegreenroom.blacksheep