Locking in Accessibility Best Practices Early for a Performing Arts Center

VLADO: I want to set the stage a little bit, in terms of the scope for this talk. This is gonna probably be one of the least technical digital accessibility talks that you might hear here. And that's very intentional. Even though I'm the IT director at PAC NYC, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about what PAC NYC is, the best practices and the lessons that I really want to focus on today have less to do with specific technical implementations, and more about both challenges and approaches that my team and I have found effective when collaborating with each other and when collaborating with other agencies. And that's something that I've personally found quite challenging. And ultimately rewarding. And also something that I don't really see written about.

Or really spoken about. At least in terms of the spaces that I've been in. And just a little bit more about myself, before we really dive in. I've been doing IT in the performing arts for about 10 years now. It's a really fascinating in-between space, between something hugely non-technical, such as all sorts of things that you put out on stage, and really getting into every little bit of technology that goes into constructing a building, running it, selling you a ticket, and then helping you have a good and accessible experience. So... It's an interesting niche. But in that position, it's also been quite challenging to then follow the best practices. But also trends that happen in the wider tech sector. Performing arts is not exactly famous for being at the forefront

of technology. So... When I had the opportunity to join the project of constructing the new Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, which is one of the many names that this venue was known as, before we finally landed on Perelman Performing Arts Center, PAC NYC, it was really an opportunity to try to do things from the beginning in such a way that would ensure best practices at the time that we started up, but also locking in certain approaches and ways of collaborating and building things internally and with our partners, that would enable us to continuously improve.

Because one thing that we knew from the start -- and this transcends digital accessibility, IT, or any of the parts of my scope of work -- when you are starting up an arts institution, and that's a great privilege that not many of us get to do. Most arts institutions in most of our cities are quite old by this point. Is... You do know that the minute you open your door, things are already going to be out of date. And one of the reasons for that is: It takes years, sometimes decades, for places like ours to open up. So I want you to keep that in mind. As we go through this talk.

It's really important to understand the physical location of this venue. And a very brief history of how it came to be. So PAC NYC is located... And you can see it in this photo, in the lower left corner. We're looking at a photo of lower Manhattan. Of the location of the 9/11 Memorial.

And it is surrounded by skyscrapers. There's also the transportation hub in the image. There's a lot going on. This location in lower Manhattan, originally inhabited by the Lenape People, before the World Trade Center was constructed, was a bustling city neighborhood. In the 1970s, the World Trade Center opened. And transformed this whole area in ways that really... Permeate to this day. I'm not gonna talk much about the tragic events of 9/11. But soon after, in 2003, a master plan was developed that would redevelop that whole site. We are now 21 years after, and the whole area is still not fully complete. However, back in 2003, a decision was made that in the location where today's PAC NYC is located, the city was gonna build a public performing arts venue. Something that would bring the arts to lower Manhattan. Really for the first time at this

scale. I mentioned how it takes a long time to get things done. Things like this. Our organization was incorporated in 2012. Folks started fundraising, making plans, holding architectural competitions. Construction broke ground in 2017. And in 2023, almost exactly a year ago, our doors opened for the first time. It really took lots and lots of work. Lots of planning. To get this building open. However, the thing to keep in mind is: Construction takes a long time. Everything else waits for construction to finish. And this is a little bit about where our story today really begins. Accessibility and construction. Even though I'm sure many folks will tell you the laws do not provide for sufficient levels of accessibility in our buildings, even the buildings that open in 2023, however... Unlike lots of other parts of work, accessibility and construction is

legally regulated to a certain degree. And it's legally regulated to a degree where certain highly expensive pieces of accessibility that you need to put into your buildings are so expensive that you get sponsors that help you pay for making those places accessible. I'm really sharing this to give you sort of a comparison to what we're gonna talk about soon, in terms of digital accessibility. What you're seeing here is a rendering of PAC NYC, which is a marble cube. And on this rendering, you can see relatively steep stairs going up into the building lobby. On the left hand side, you're seeing a round opening, and a person standing in front of a screen. That round opening is... Our Citibank accessible elevator. This is what accessibility in construction looks like.

It is planned years and years in advance. It's very expensive. It sometimes even gets sponsors, and then those things get built over long periods of time. At the time that this ADA entrance was planned out and given a sponsor, I wasn't even hired at PAC NYC. This predates me by many, many years. Meanwhile, this is what PAC NYC website looked like in September 2022. This is basically an off-the-shelf SquareSpace template that I think an office assistant or someone of a similar job description put together. A couple of years before September, 2022. At this point, PAC NYC doesn't even exist as a brand. You can see here it's called Perelman Performing Arts Center.

I think they may have actually just literally changed that from Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, which was the previous name for the organization. What I'm sharing here is really this difference in terms of scale of the hard physical things that get planned many years in advance. And really what we come in to add, organizations like ours, before we actually open the doors. So... September, 2022. We're looking at a SquareSpace site. There is absolutely no image description of anything on here. It would probably fail virtually any type of automated testing that you would place on it. We did not try. And it is really just there to conform to that very basic requirement. If someone wants to know what this cube under construction is, they can kind of get an idea. It lists our sponsors. It lists important historical

information. But this is not really a website in the full sense. It's not meant to be used to buy a ticket. All of those things are yet to come. So... September, 2022. This is the website. And I get hired. September, 2022. This is what the hard physical things look like. Now, this might look like heavy construction. But this is a very high level of completion of this building. This building has been under construction for almost 5 years at this point.

So... These are... This is actually one of my server rooms. Speaking about the large scope of my work. This is very high level of finish. Right there. Again. September 2022.

DESCRIBER: Around the room... Ladders and construction material. In these various places around the building. VLADO: Basically have our building almost ready to open. Again... Going back... This is the website. September 2022. So we're talking about... How do we build and launch the website in less than 6 months? We're looking at: How do we do this with less than half the team? And again, giving a little bit of an idea of scale, I joined in September 2022. We're talking about 15 full-time staff at this moment.

PAC NYC is now around 90 full-time staff. And make it accessible. Now, as I was writing this, I thought that "make it accessible" being right there at the bottom was almost like a joke about how folks who are giving me the challenge to get a website open... Up and running... And developed...

Think about this. Because this was actually not in the list of requirements. "Make it accessible" is unlike the physical requirements from a building. Not in an organization's legal requirements the same way it is for the physical stuff. That doesn't mean that we're not legally responsible to do so. But thinking back about that scale of planning... Right? Starting with the master plan, 2003. Starting with the organization's founding in 2012. Starting with the breaking ground of 2017.

People tell me: We need to sell tickets come April 1st. Nobody is considering: How do we make the selling of those tickets accessible on our website? Because selling the tickets on the website is the only way you're gonna sell the tickets before the building even opens. So that's our challenge. How do we do it? We start collecting requirements. So I've already mentioned from an organizational point of view: There isn't even a structure at this point to make accessibility a requirement. But I'm fortunate enough to have had some experience in this, to know this is gonna be a big requirement. But going into the actual requirement, what does a website for a performing Arts Center do in the first place? We need to think about...

Why do people go to arts institutions' websites? They want to know what we're doing there and they want to buy a ticket. They want to come and visit us. Our website, as beautiful and as multifunctional as it is, really needs to do one thing and one thing really well. It needs to sell you a ticket. It needs to give you a good seat map that you can understand, whether you're looking at it in a browser or you're hearing it described. It needs to take you through a purchase path. It needs to tell you about the seat you're buying. It needs to tell you about the accessibility features we're offering. And then it needs to effectively process your credit card and deliver that ticket to you. That is -- once you break it down, really the requirement for a performing arts website. Our

websites do tons of other things. They help you make a donation to us. They tell but all the other amazing things, such as our history, our donors, other types of events we host. But at the end of the day, they need to sell you a ticket. How do they sell you a ticket? Well, you need to have a ticketing system. So starting in September, 2022, I had three very important RFPs to write. And then run processes, select vendors, and basically get everyone going. So that we can hit that sell a ticket April 1st requirement. Which... I'll get back to in a second. You know.

What happened about the April first. DESCRIBER: The three companies that they got RFPs from and their logos. VLADO: And then if you want to make sure that website vendor is really doing the best thing that they can to ensure digital accessibility, you need a digital accessibility consultant. So... Starting in September, 2022, we're writing down our goals.

For getting this project up and running. This is effectively the order of operations, in terms of hiring all these folks. Luckily, we had already started the RFP process for our ticketing system. And relatively quickly, come late October, we decided we were going with an upstart company in that field called Spektrix. Before we knew who our ticketing vendor was, we couldn't really run a proper RFP for a website vendor. I mentioned: What does your website need to do? It needs to sell you a ticket. If you don't know what your ticketing system is, approaching a web agency and telling them to build you a website without telling them what type of ticketing system you're running is quite risky. So... Until we had the decision nailed down, we didn't really

have a full RFP ready to go. As soon as we did, however, we had two RFPs drafted, going out to potential website vendors and to potential digital accessibility consultants. As you can see here, we actually have two representatives of those two companies with us here today. Thomas from Equal Entry, and Natalie from Substrakt. But that was a challenging process, to get to that point.

To get to that point in time for those folks to do the work in a fashion that would launch the website in time to sell you a ticket on April 1st. I mentioned that a lot of this -- what I'm sharing today -- is about process. And so much of this is about internal process. Right? How do you get to get buy-in, in an organization with 15 people, without an accessibility manager? And I do want to give a shoutout to our accessibility manager over here. Who has joined after we launched the website. We did not have Paul back in September of 2022. The process with a small team needs to focus on establishing the importance of all of the points that I mentioned early on.

Yes, everybody in the organization has some type of stake in making the website successful. The development team, they really want to get those donations. The marketing team, they want to sell those tickets. But they also want to advertise all the events that we're gonna rent this place out for. And all these different things. Simplifying the requirements, again, to the things that really, really matter helped make the case for hiring those folks on time and making sure that nothing is missed, especially accessibility. So... Our goal at this point is: January 1, 2023. Kick off everything. Now, I didn't put in a third RFP here. But I feel like there's reason to shout out a third... Sorry. Fourth person. Fourth company. Quote-unquote. We hired at this point. Our current digital product manager, Leo, who is in the audience over here. Leo is really the fourth and

crucial ingredient to make this successful. And Leo gets hired as basically a website consultant on hire to build this whole thing and coordinate all those folks. So January 1st, you need to have not just the vendors, but basically a structure to manage those vendors to make this process successful. The road to getting the contracts ready and getting all the folks in the room by January 1 would be unique in every type of organization. But in terms of sharing lessons and best practices that we found, it really comes down to establishing very simple requirements and priorities and basically pushing them through with stakeholders and people who do not have the time of day to think about those things. Because they're opening up a building. So telling a simple story, again, going back to the story of selling you that ticket, explaining the importance of

making that efficiently, and accessibly, in short enough time that allows you to get from September 2022 and your SquareSpace website, to kicking off the new year, 2023, with your ticketing system vendor in place, with your web agency in place, with your digital accessibility vendor in place, and with your project manager hired and ready to go, and to kick off everything.

DESCRIBER: The interior from inside the museum. It's a geode and brown stained glass.

VLADO: I'm showing the rough timeline that takes us from October 1st, basically the moment we select Spektrix as our ticketing system provider, all the way to November 2023, when Equal Entry performs their initial audit of our website. A lot happens during this time. And the important part that... Going back to the locking things early... That we managed to do very early on, while the ticketing team is developing seat maps, while the web agency is doing their scoping and understanding what is the brand here, what are these people trying to say about themselves, what are these events they want to advertise... Is to establish a phased approach. And while phased approach usually means not everybody is gonna get everything they want at the same time, it is what allows you to get to a website launch. Going back to that April 1st deadline, it did not

happen. Why didn't it happen has nothing to do with the website. Building buildings is hard. And we talked about how it took ten years to break ground. Once building construction is ongoing, you start to basically balance your work against what is happening in that physical space. So you're working towards that deadline, and in order to make that deadline, breaking things down into an MVP product and locking in a structure that will allow you to iterate closer to your official opening is what ultimately allowed us to get to a point where we were ready to launch on April 1st. We postponed a little bit, because certain events that had to happen for us to go on sale and launch out to the world had to be pushed back to June of 2023. But we really simplified our

goal in our first initial launch of this website and our first initial launch of selling tickets for events in this venue. We are not gonna do everything. But... If we can't do everything, how do we ensure that we know what works and what doesn't work on our website and how do we ensure that the partners that we're working with are implementing best practices within their ability with that phased approach? Our approach was effectively embedding the Equal Entry team with Substrakt in those early days. And I don't want to tell crazy stories about what that means. It doesn't mean that Equal Entry was camping out in the UK with the Substrakt team. But we had our first digital accessibility meeting with the web agency basically within the first three weeks

of meeting all of these folks. And within those first couple of months, checking in across teams, we ensured that the thing that we're gonna launch with we're gonna know exactly what works and how, and when and if things don't work as they should, that we have a process to basically facilitate a type of interaction that may not be working at the level that we eventually want it to be. In terms of our rough timeline, looking at a phased approach, you're basically looking at launch the website in June, 2023, as a phase 1. Open the door in September, big event in the news, everybody is going crazy. You don't sleep for weeks. Months. And then October 2023, already launch a second phase of this website. The phased approach basically meant that even before the

first phase of the website launched in June, we were already working on that iteration that would ultimately deliver the product that we really want to look at, and really the product that we want to nail through and do a proper audit, that will give us a full scope of what are the things that we are offering out to the world. I wish I could say that... You know... You should just go ahead and audit every little bit of your work. But there's... What's possible and there's what's not possible. Trying to do so, while doing a phase 1 to phase 2, would effectively mean by the time you're done with the audit of phase 1, you've already launched a phase 2. However... Doing that continuous checking while work on phase 1 is ongoing basically allowed us to have visibility

and understanding of what is the state of the work and what are the areas of focus that allowed us to continue and immediately implement many of those areas as we continued the work for the eventual phase 2 launch. What are the advantages of that? The first one is: You get to launch a website and you get to sell tickets and you get to announce yourself into the world. What are the challenges?

There are so many. And while I feel that it was the right decision to make, ultimately, a big challenge of a phased approach was really the fact that as we were getting closer to the opening, going back to our requirements, requirements, requirements slide... Our requirements, they kept on changing. And they kept on developing. Some of that, of course, is completely natural and expected and intentional. You go from 15 people to close to 90 people. You get your accessibility manager. You get your ticketing team. You get your full marketing team. You get performances coming into the building. However, the fact that you're pushing your requirements gathering for phase 2 also means that the work really continues not for six months, like we said at the beginning. You're really looking at ten months. And even though in terms of maintaining and updating websites,

we are now just doing this infinitely, there's a difference really between that... You know... Getting to that MVP, and getting to the best possible thing to launch to the world. And preparing a website to show to folks after 20 years, effectively, of preparation, of a new arts institution. So the pressure is immense. The pressure coming down to September 15th, which was our official opening, is really high. And the fact is... You really want to give those folks who are gonna walk through that door the best possible experience. In full transparency, our phase 2 launched two weeks after we opened the doors to the public. I like to think of it... That we've really given our audiences a quite excellent and exciting thing. You know, seeing almost a brand-new purchase path experience. And I'm gonna get into this in a moment. Only two weeks after

they've visited the building, potentially, for the first time. But that really speaks, I think, somewhat, to what the challenges of phased approaches are. We could have decided that we're just gonna work really hard and we're gonna deliver a thing by June and that's gonna be the PAC NYC experience. But we wanted to be realistic. And we wanted to give the essentials at the time when they were really needed. So it's a little bit about how I see it now, a year or so after the fact. But phased approach really worked here. But it wasn't without its own challenges.

DESCRIBER: Black background, as well as the last one.

VLADO: This is what I'm talking about. We launched in June of 2023. With a built-in purchase path provided by our ticketing provider. Really the most kind of shocking examples... Overall, it is still quite a decent experience, and a lot of our partner organizations who use Spektrix use their built-in purchase path and they make do completely fine. But we made a decision early on in collaboration with Substrakt and Spektrix, and of course, consulting with Equal Entry, that if we were to launch our ticketing on the original April date, we weren't gonna go and build and launch a custom purchase path. And this is what we had to live with. Some of our folks using cell phones had to go through some awkward pages to get through that purchase path. We did

not feel great about it. But we knew that... You know... They could do it. Similarly, this is one of our seat maps. If you've ever been to PAC NYC, and I encourage you all to go, if you can, one of the things that we really pride ourselves on is the flexible configuration of our spaces.

We have three theaters that can combine with one another to basically build completely different theatrical experiences. That is wonderful for all of our audiences. It is also incredibly complex for those of us who operate this venue. And while some of that complexity... Most of that complexity is physical, and it really goes to our production team that makes it all happen, some of it is also touching areas such as the website accessibility and the building of the purchase path. So how do we effectively communicate to folks trying to buy tickets? What are these spaces that they're gonna go and attend a production in? They might visit PAC one month, and they see our theater A combined with our theater B. And then they go another month and suddenly they're in an "in the round"

configuration that looks completely different. They need to have some way to understand that, when purchasing their tickets. Our compromise here was: We're gonna launch with the built-in product. And what you're seeing here are some of the downsides of that. Specifically, looking at accessibility. You don't really have a lot to share with your customers, in terms of visual representation of accessible seating. The image is a little small. So I'm gonna point out: We're seeing on the screen... On the left hand side, a screenshot of a mobile rendering of our purchase path, where certain words are being split into multiple lines. Kind of looks awkward.

You can figure out where you are. But it isn't rendering on mobile all that well. And then on the right side, we are seeing a seat map with a bunch of colored dots representing seats. The accessible seating is really shown in two versions. One is a little wheelchair icon, and the other one is a companion seat indication, with a small c. It doesn't really intuitively tell you what those things are. Moving into October of 2023, we launch our phase 2 website, and I'm gonna show you shortly the improvements that we've made. But we finally go ahead and perform a full audit with the Equal Entry team. This was basically the challenge we looked at after nine months of work. For us, the really important thing was that the left side column, the blocking issues, was only 10 issues

high. And just for the folks... In terms of what we're seeing on the screen... The graph is showing major and minor issues. Sort of both equally high. At about 72. And then only 4 advisory issues. We took this in stride and as a challenge. And we got to work. These are some of the examples of what Equal Entry found. And again, giving you an idea, this is starting in October, 2023.

DESCRIBER: A graph that has all of these different types of issues. Now we're on a table that has the priority -- results breakdown for priority scenarios.

VLADO: At this point, and this is again taking us back to the whole planning of this thing -- we have worked really hard and really closely with the web agency, Substrakt, and Equal Entry, to establish how to tackle the issues, once they're identified. And because they were building the purchase path themselves at this point, we were able to start addressing those issues. I'm gonna give you a couple of examples of what those things mean in practice. So I mentioned the accessible seating icon. We found that the accessible seating icons were not announced by the screen reader.

An obvious issue if you're trying to provide multiple types of accessibility to a person both in person at the venue and at the point of sale on the website. There was another slide, and I apologize for missing it. The approach following that audit moved from doing these major changes, sort of phase 1 to phase 2, into more iterative improvements. Our timeline shifted from getting our audit in November of 2023 -- we were given three months to work with both Substrakt and Equal Entry. To fix the issues. And get into a second corrective audit, which I'm happy to say corrected all of those glaring blocking problems. We were left with some of the minor issues. And with quite a best practices document to use as we continue iterating on the website. Some of the

areas that were identified weren't necessarily problems to be fixed in code. They were practices to be implemented across the organization, cross-departmentally. In an interesting way, we got back to the beginning, as I was describing, planning the website project. Because ultimately, even though this project was led by a small team of us, who brought it together, it's ultimately the different stakeholders across departments of a performing arts organization that in so many ways determine whether things we put out on our website are indeed accessible. So a couple of examples I'll give you have to do with biographical images that get associated with every person that we work with for a show. So you get a little bio block. And those folks provide images to go with them.

Generating image descriptions for that was an interesting challenge for us. Because it was hard to really nail down whose responsibility it was. But not just whose responsibility it was. Whose right was it to make those descriptions and get those descriptions approved by the folks. So...

The cross-departmental collaboration, basically getting the buy-in, was an interesting challenge. And basically a mandate we received, following this audit. Another one had to do with items that really transcend the website. Right? We identified certain issues with our captioning, with our YouTube videos. That wasn't something that really falls under website development. It wasn't something that Substrakt can help us with. But the team that generates those ultimately got to learn quite a bit from this whole process that we kicked off through our website development. As we moved on into the year... So we're now in 2024. I'm gonna give you a couple examples of things that we keep on working every day. DESCRIBER: This is an image of a pop-up on their website. VLADO: Go beyond the website.

We've given ourselves space in the purchase path to illuminate those. And give folks a good idea of what to expect at PAC. We have very recently, only a couple of days ago, revamped the accessibility preferences that any visitor can add to their profile. At PAC NYC. And we worked with Paul.

Again, so thankful to have Paul on board now. To figure out: How do those preferences actually go to a record where someone can actually act on them, right? Because, again, moving from something that can be seen to some action that a visitor actually experiences is super crucial. Going back to the seat map key, I mentioned that very early on it was kind of hard to understand. So moving from the initial one, where we were showing a wheelchair seat icon and an access seat icon that doesn't really tell you what that access means, we've gotten to a more specific breakdown, where we've got companion seats defined, audio described locations, open captions, ASL, depending on the offerings of a specific show. Those icons might be in use. Lastly, as part of this whole thing, we've

really tried to do an almost interdisciplinary approach to accessibility from the side of my department. So when you come to PAC, and many other institutions, you're gonna see different accessibility technologies implemented. And some of those are gonna be ALDs. Captioning options. In our case, we've implemented a virtual tour that we're seeing has a big accessibility component.

Customer service is a big part of it. And so these are some of the technologies that we've been implementing and iterating on, since we've opened. We've actually replaced our ALD and captioning vendor since we've opened, because we've found mostly technical issues with those vendors. And lastly, the website continues growing. And our ability page is really the one source of truth, in terms of what to expect when you come to us -- keeps developing. And that iterative approach is something that I think we've successfully established with the development of the website.

And we maintain it now, like I mentioned, in perpetuity. The websites are forever. Sometimes. Lessons learned very quickly. Get your requirements in order. And get that buy-in, and try to get those decision makers who may not appreciate things that they're not aware of.

Because they're not legal requirements in the same way that that accessible elevator is. Explain to them that this is important, because it helps you do what you really need to do, which is sell that ticket. Find ways to structure interdepartmental collaboration at that early stage. If you have that early stage without a lot of folks in the room, the important people need to all be on the same page about: What is this deadline? How do we get to that deadline? And then ultimately, last lesson that I took from this is: Be ready to pass it on once those right folks are on board.

So... Once we actually built those teams, educate them. Why did we make those decisions? And how can we now pass on some of these best practices that we've learned, and have you implement them in your own work? So... That is what I had for my portion of it. I don't want to call it the end, because we are passing it over to the other side of this experience. I really want to have you all give a big round of applause to Natalie from Substrakt, who is gonna tell you what it's like to be a web agency doing all of this. So... NATALIE: Thank you. I will not take credit for being the whole web agency. I do very little. And by very little, I mean... None... Of the actual

building of websites. But I appreciate you kind of framing it that way, Vlado. Hi. I'm Natalie, the director of client engagement at Substrakt. I'm the one who is lucky enough to meet people like Vlado at the very start of their journey, at that slide where he's like... Okay. We have to find a ticketing vendor, a web agency, an accessibility consultant. I'm the one that jumps in at that stage and says... Choose us. And I'm really lucky at Substrakt to be in that role.

Because I can say that Substrakt is... Actually one of the leading agencies on accessibility.

DESCRIBER: Tiles that have organizations that they've worked with.

NATALIE: Digital agency. We build websites. We build purchase path products. And other products.

We offer digital consultancy services. Sort of strategic planning, user testing, all of that good stuff. We do it all exclusively in the arts and culture sector. And for that reason, we understand accessibility because we get to be specialists. We get to think about one specific sector that has specific user groups. Mostly in the performing arts, a little bit in museums and galleries, and we get to think about these things. And I mention this specifically because Vlado brought up sort of... Regulations and policies. We get to do these things across the UK, mostly. A little bit in other parts of Europe. Canada. And here in the US. Part of the reason why we're fortunate to be international in that way is that we get... We have to put (audio drop) policies for digital accessibility in lots of different regions. Because every region has their own policies.

Every region has their own boxes. That they need to tick. And if you have to meet requirements in lots of different regions, it means that you also get to see how many of those tick boxes are falling short of what is actually possible when it comes to accessibility, and what... You know... Is an actually usable experience for a user. We're really lucky at Substrakt, too, to get to work with some of the biggest arts organizations in the world. So... Organizations like the PAC, organizations like the National Theater and Shakespeare's Globe in London, the Museum in Toronto. These are organizations that are big enough, that think about these things, before they come to us. Because of the scale that they think about accessibility, and because we

have access to their users, we have access to what we need to do to be able to push the bar. Sort of set the bar. Beyond ticking all of those legal boxes. We're lucky enough to work with clients who have the luxury, like PAC, of being able to say to us on the first day that I met Vlado...

This is an accessible first project. We're gonna higher an accessibility consultant right away, and they're gonna be with your team right away. And we want to make sure that we're setting the bar here. We're not just ticking the boxes. We're not just sort of keeping in line with the law. We're doing this in a way that's gonna push everybody else to do better. And that was really exciting for us.

And we are really fortunate to work with clients who let us sort of set the bar in that way. I will also say, though, that... That doesn't mean we get it right. We really encourage our clients to go out and get third parties to audit them and to embed in the process, because there's always ways to improve. And we can make sure that all of our clients are in compliance with all of their sort of regulatory bodies and regional policies and whatever they are. But we're not setting a bar, unless we have people come in and say... Okay. You've done a really good job over here. And think about this over there. And actually... Our users are saying that this would be better for them, and not this. And we want our clients to do that. We're not gonna be pushed. We're not gonna keep

raising that bar unless our clients are doing that. And we're really lucky to work with PAC for that reason. And we're really lucky that Equal Entry was involved in this project for that reason too. Because we get to see those blockers. We get to think about that. We get to take that knowledge into our next project and keep pushing and keep pushing. And for that reason, we've sort of landed on some core principles of digital accessibility at Substrakt. And that's what I will focus on, and I won't talk at you for too long. That's what I'll focus on today. We're talking about beginnings. I will sort of talk a little bit about how Substrakt has come to develop our philosophy of digital accessibility. And it's sort of useful that Vlado talked about buying tickets and seat

maps and purchase paths. Because it was when we developed that product that PAC uses, which is called Viaduct, that we really changed the way that we thought about how we develop across the board and how we guide our clients across the board. And one of the key principles that we came to was: Accessible experiences deliver a better experience for all users. And that's something that we discovered and continue to discover every step of the way when we do user testing in anything that we build. It's not about... I mean, it's great to make something accessible for some people who it wasn't for before. But... In doing that, you're actually making things more usable for everybody. And that's the way that we really like to think about accessibility. And that's the

way we try and sort of push our clients along to think about accessibility as well. And as I said, that origin story started with a product called Viadukt. Excuse me. That's the product that PAC uses as their purchase path. In tandem with Spektrix. And the reason that we started thinking about Viadukt as a product in the first place -- again, I'm very fortunate to say we, because it wasn't me personally, but one of our brilliant developers -- is that a lot of our clients do use out of the box ticketing systems. And they're great. And nobody goes to work at an arts and culture venue for the cash. For the money. They're not wealthy institutions. They're expensive products. And so it's tough to be able to do something custom. It's tough to be able to

make something as accessible as you want it to be. And we thought... Okay. What can we build out of the box that is accessible first? In its thinking? And we thought about how the best way to be able to do that was... And our first sort of mission was to do lots and lots of user testing.

And lots and lots of focus groups. And we worked with a number of organizations in the UK that sort of guided us on this. And we broke it down into various groups. Those groups included... Yes, by the way, I'm a person from a digital agency who is using paper notes, because that's how I roll.

So we broke it down into a few groups of users. One of those groups were people who identified as having mobility considerations. One of those groups were people who had hearing considerations. One of those groups were people who had visual considerations. And we had a group of users who identified as being neurodiverse as well. And we tried to put these groups together based on people who consume arts and culture. Who is turning up at these venues? Who is visiting these websites?

And what we came away with was a question that was overwhelming to everyone at Substrakt, which was: How do we create a product that is going to respond to such an enormous and vast array of different user needs? And the first thing that we had to do was consider what they told us. So I want to show you a little bit... A few of the things that we heard most resoundingly from these groups. So... DESCRIBER: A mockup of different web devices.

NATALIE: I wanted to get to the seats. This is something where... Seat maps fail. They fail hard.

Most of the time. There are lots of seats in a venue. Some of them are going to need... Are going to have stair access. Most seat maps will say: Stair access or no stair access. Lots and lots of people can handle a couple of stairs. Or a few stairs. And it's really unusual to have something as simple as an accurate representation of the number of stairs. And if you do that, an enormous number of people suddenly have the ability to make decisions for themselves. They know themselves.

They know what they can handle. And this is going to be the theme of what we heard. We just... We know ourselves. Just give us the information we need at the point in our journey that we need it, to make the decision that's best for ourselves. A lot of purchase paths are built sort of thinking about these things as a monolith. These are the needs that policies and regulations have told us we need to address. This is what we're doing. And we're not gonna think about anything else.

Any of the gray area. Any of the nuance. And that theme does pop up in what we heard from these user groups a lot. We heard from people who are hard of hearing. I want to know how close to the seat a speaker is. When was the last time you saw a speaker on a seat map? It's unusual. But speakers can really impact the use of a listening device or a hearing aid. And this is something that people want to know. We heard from every user group, lots of user groups -- I want to be able to call the box office if I have a question. We hear from a lot of our clients in early stages -- we didn't hear this from PAC, to be fair to them -- but we hear from a lot of our clients: Build us something

that will make people stop calling. You have to put someone in a venue that's gonna pick up a phone. Sometimes people just need reassurance. And they need to talk their needs through with somebody who works at your venue. And it's not just about making sure that person is there to answer the phone. It's also about making sure that that person knows how to make that call.

What's the number? What hours can I call? Give them the information that they need at the stage of their journey that they need the information. Everyone across the board, across these groups, said to us: I want to plan every part of my visit in advance. This makes perfect sense.

This is logical. And by every part of their visit, they mean from the moment they turn up, so are they parking a car? Are they getting off of transit? Are they walking from somewhere? To when they enter your building with their ticket. So how they're gonna get to their seat or navigate around an exhibition. To when they leave. Don't abandon them when the show is over.

Give them everything they need. Let them plan in advance. People with visual considerations said: I want to know how close the seat is to the end of the row. Very reasonable request. If you cannot build a seat map that's navigable or compatible with a screen reader, it's not useful to somebody who can't see that seat map. And they will make that call. You don't want to make it.

But you should still let them make. People with visual considerations also wanted to know which seats were best to see captioning in. So... If you're gonna offer a captioned performance, that's incredible. It's way more useful to tell people what the best seat is to be able to make use of those captions. People across the board told us that they want to know which doors were closest to the restrooms. Another really simple and easy thing that so many people need across the board. And not just restrooms. But your bar or your elevator or your escalator or your aisle -- a quiet room, which is another thing that lots of people wanted to know -- is there a place in your venue that I can escape to? If things just get a little bit overwhelming, or if I just need a

minute? People put a lot of work into making sure all of these things are available in their venues. And then they don't tell the people who need them or want them in the place that they need to have that information. Which is when they're buying a ticket. So... I'm gonna show you how we took some of that thinking. And pumped it into the product that PAC uses. And lots of institutions, I'm happy to say, around Europe and North America now use... You saw some of this from PAC's perspective, in Vlado's presentation as well. I'll jump through quickly. But this is an amazing thing that not just ticketing platforms, but lots of ecommerce platforms don't have. A button that says access info. That you can click and get all of the information and plan that

visit in advance. Everything can just go into one place at the very first stage of a ticket buying journey. I also have bright and front and center on this slide: That keyboard and screen reader support is crucial to every single stage here. DESCRIBER: This is a mockup of their website.

NATALIE: If you can't navigate it with a keyboard, it's probably not useful to the people who need this information the most. If you click that access info, it doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to give people all the information that they are going to need to make the decision at the next stage. Again, it feels almost too obvious to have to say.

But it needs to be said. Because it doesn't exist out there. And lots and lots of arts venues don't think about this stuff. And this is the kind of thinking we're trying to sort of ingrain.

DESCRIBER: The mockups of the website. NATALIE: Seat maps are so tricky.

DESCRIBER: Discussed by the presenter. NATALIE: Vlado talked about these too. Seat maps are something that I wanted to lean into as an example of what we did. Because they were the most daunting for our developers. There are so many things going on in a seat map. If you want to make them accessible, you do have to make them accurately represent all of those things I just mentioned. How far away is a seat from a bathroom? How many steps precisely are you going to need to navigate in order to get to your seat? All of these things. Super important. And you have to be able to click through them with your keyboard. And a screen reader needs to be able to tell you every single detail of what is going on in that seat. And Viadukt really is one of the only things

out there where you can pick your row with a key or a section with a key, and everything -- the name of all of those sections will be read out and everything exceptional about those sections will be read out. And then it will take you over to selecting a row and then it will take you over to selecting a seat. Being able to select a seat, click through every single seat with a keyboard, and have every single identifying feature of that seat, the seat ID, the cost of the seat, anything exceptional about that seat -- is it great for an interpreted performance? Is it obstructed view?

Is it near a speaker? Whatever it is. Have it read out. By a screen reader. Is really, really crucial. And so this is something that we leaned into, hard. And of course, the most interesting thing that we found, too, after we did that user testing, we did our seat map user testing primarily with people who had visual considerations -- we then went and tested it across the board, and it was easier for everybody. It's just easier for everybody. So many user groups were like... I need keyboard access too. Because I have this thing that impacts my mobility. Or it's just my preference. Because this is how I think. And this is how my head works.

And accessibility for some became usability for all. (audio drop) sort of the ultimate conclusion... That we came to when we went through all of this is that: Audiences who feel less anxiety when they show up at your venue are going to like you more. They're gonna come back more.

They're going to experience a work of art and culture in a happier way. They're gonna be able to embrace it more. You know, Vlado said the goal of any website is to get somebody to buy a ticket. And we've all had the experience of wanting to buy a ticket. You already have us as a venue.

We're already hooked. Before we've landed at your website, we know we want to see your show. And by the end of our journey, we're sort of cursing at you under our breath, and we're bringing that into the experience of showing up at your venue. We're bringing the anxiety of not knowing where we're gonna park, of not knowing how the experience of getting to our seat is going to be, or what sitting in that seat is going to look like, based on our particular circumstances. And you don't need your audiences to have that baggage. Walking into... I don't know. A joyful musical or a thoughtful play or a beautiful exhibition. That's not what your audiences are looking for. And they're going to simply like you more if you make sure that you're sort of reducing that anxiety

every step of the way. The best way that we've found to do that for our clients is to make sure you're thinking about usability for everybody. And not just sort of accessibility that checks boxes, based on regulations. And I know we're running low on time. So I'm gonna leave it there.

(APPLAUSE) PARTICIPANT: Hi. Thank you for showing this really effective example, which is also impactful at the revenue level. Of why these things matter. I think that the most difficult thing is always conveying exactly what is the ROI and why this should be a priority, rather than the endpoint checklist. So if you can share any thoughts on why this project was structured from accessibility as a building principle, and then how you sell this effectively, because we know that it results in this. But it's a difficult road to -- or a different conversation to have with companies that are not aware. NATALIE: Yeah. I mean... From my perspective, in having sort of... Eyes over a really wide variety of arts and culture venues across the world, this last slide, lower anxiety equals increased conversions, is really the crux of it. Right? I

mean, you can't... It's great to sell somebody a ticket. But the goal -- and as Vlado says -- you need to sell somebody a ticket. That's the goal of the website. But the ultimate goal of the organization is that... What's the next thing you're gonna sell to that person? What's the next ticket they're gonna buy? Was it a happy enough experience that they're gonna make a donation as well? Or buy the merch as well? Or whatever it is? And we're lucky enough to have clients who have gone off and done sort of... Perception research. In their audience bases. After they've done things to make both their venues and their websites more accessible. And the data... It comes out in the data. Right? People do have less anxiety walking in the door. Which means they're

in a position to enjoy whatever you're giving them. Inside your building. More. And then they do want to come back. It's not daunting to think of buying a ticket to a show next time around, that they might be on the fence of. Because it was such a terrible experience the first time around. And it feels... It feels like a little hyperbolic to talk about a ticket buying experience to be so bad that you're not gonna do it again. But I do actually think in 2024, we've all had ticket buying experiences that are so bad that you're not gonna do it again, if you're on the fence about a show. You're definitely not gonna make a donation to that institution. And so... In sort of the perception research, the audience perception research that

our clients have done after doing this sort of thing, you do an audit, you make the fixes, and then you test. You find out how your audiences are actually receiving this. And they are coming back more. And they are just happier with what you're giving them. And that ultimately is all you can do. Right? Give them a good experience. Give them experience to get to your doors. Give them a good experience inside your doors. And they will come back and they'll spend more money. That's it. Yeah. BEN: Awesome. I'll take one question from online.

This one is actually kind of a multipart. So let me see if I can condense it. Is PAC NYC a public institution or private? I heard you say that some aspects are regulated. Is the website also regulated? I think you touched on that in your presentation. But maybe you can recap that a little bit. And what does the regulation of a public website look like? Do public institutions need to meet certain minimum standards? That's a lot of questions in there. I don't know if you want to take a stab at that, Vlado. VLADO: Yeah. I'll take a stab at it.

The question: Is PAC NYC a public institution? It is a specifically US-based answer. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization. Which means no, we're not a public institution in a way that we probably would be in a lot of other countries. But we're also not a for-profit corporation. We are governed by a board. And our legal status is one of a non-profit organization. As such, I don't believe that we are under any specifically higher requirements than another website that would be doing the same type of work that we do. That wouldn't be a higher requirement than that.

If we were a for-profit theater, I don't think our requirements would be higher. But I believe that we are under the same type of legal requirement that if our website did not conform -- and we are aiming to be WCAG 3.0 compliant -- if somebody complained to us that we're not accessible in a certain way -- I don't think we would be under a higher requirement to fix that, just because we're a non-profit ourselves. But I will say that I am not an expert on that legal bit. So if you do know more, do let me know.

BEN: Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it. Bye.