2034 – Empowering Neurodivergent Individuals with E.B. Graphics and Consulting’s Rebecca Prejean

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1:05With us right now, it's Rebecca Prejean. Rebecca, you are the CEO and founder of EB Graphics and Consulting. Ten years, you've been doing good work in the world. Your website is ebgc.net. Rebecca, it's great to have you. It's so great to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you today. Yeah, well, I love what you do. Go ahead and share what you're doing to make the world a better place. in a nutshell i make sure that people that are autistic have adhd have dyslexia or a whole range of neurodivergent conditions are able to be successful in the workplace so that means consulting with businesses talking to them about accessibility making sure their websites are accessible for people making sure their different assets whether it's internal or external are accessible as well so just making sure everybody can get the information a business wants them to have.

1:59And internally, they can be successful. Yeah, well, I would imagine that there is likely, like if we think about even like websites, and again, kind of front facing user experiences, there are likely some some pretty big gaps out there. What would be some of those notable gaps that you see that are quite frequent that companies maybe don't realize that they're doing an ineffective job at communicating with a percentage of the world that is somewhat neurodivergent, which, by the way, if you want to start there and talk about just what a big pool we're talking about, we would love some education around that.

2:46Fantastic. In terms of the pool that you're looking at, in truth, you have billions of people worldwide that are neurodivergent. When we talk about that, I want people to understand that it's not just one thing, right? It's not just autism. It's not just ADHD. And it's not just neurodivergent conditions in general. We're talking about disabilities. So it could be people that are colorblind. It could be people who have mobility issues, mobility concerns. There's a lot of a pull out there for folks. And if you're a business, it is imperative. that you actually speak to these people and you have access for them.

3:23They don't just sit at home and do nothing. They primarily go on websites. They look at your things. You might not have alt text on your imagery, for example. That's a really easy win for businesses. And all it really is doing are people who are using screen readers, for example. Maybe they have some low visibility, something of that nature. It allows them to hear the description of the image. So if you're a business owner and maybe you have an Amazon store, we'll just use that for example, and you're not using alt text, you are losing out on those folks. And I want people to also understand it's not people who are permanently disabled.

4:02There are folks who have temporary disabilities. So maybe something is happening with their vision. Maybe something is happening with their mobility. Maybe they had an accident that they're working back from. Somebody can be disabled at any point in time. It doesn't have to be a permanent condition, which I think is a huge misconception that we tend to see in this world today. So in terms of like the pool, in terms of the opportunity that's there, it's huge for businesses. You're looking at, I mean, you said it, about 40, 50, close to 60 percent in some cases, depending on what you're talking about, people that have different needs.

4:42So it's really important that businesses take a look at this and really start to think of it as a business strategy rather than just a nice to have. Yeah. Well, I mean, yes, yes. Nice to have. Number one. Number two, business strategy. And then number three, I would say, what are our values, right? If we think about, you know, how and who we connect with and how we communicate our message, I think it's a powerful question to say, well, what are our values? What do we stand for? And if inclusivity, if diversity, equity, and that sort of, I mean, like any of that stuff, making the world a better place, making, I mean, there's a business justification for it.

5:26And then I think they don't even beyond that. It's like, okay, what do we all as a company culture, what do we stand for? And this seems pretty valuable. So you had mentioned a few of these things, right? So alt tags, I think are very, very critical. Hopefully there are some good tests that you might be able to run on your website to, to identify some of these gaps. Do you know of anything that someone could say, you know, maybe there's a free tool or something like that they could use to scan their site or what do you recommend? I mean, I know this is what you do professionally, so I'm not like saying, okay, how can people do what you do for free?

6:03How can people go around me? I'll usually say this, but there are definitely some tools that are out there. There are definitely some companies that are out there. I do recommend primarily people do find some buttons and it doesn't have to be, I always like to say, it doesn't have to be like somebody who does a full audit of your website and charges you thousands of dollars. truly doesn't have to be that way. I even offer in some cases like free audits. There are other people, accessibility consultants that do the same just to kind of give you a map of what you need to look at. And when we talk about auditing, I also like people to understand, again, it doesn't have to be like a full blown audit, but it does need to exist.

6:45And I say that because some people will use like AccessiBe as an overlay, overlays of those types that are like, well, if somebody needs it, it's there, it's on the website. It actually leaves a lot of different little gaps. It only addresses, I think about 30 % of disability concerns and accessibility concerns. So that is in general with overlays. And that's what people will generally use to be like, well, you know, this company gave me this audit, like an accessibility audit, and it said this overlay I can fix it. So we're good. And that's not necessarily the case. So that's why I recommend people do find somebody, there are low cost consultants that will do this for you, just to give you a kind of an idea of what you're looking at to start off.

7:32Well, yeah. And certainly, you know, listen, if you're a business leader, you're well on your way, don't muck around on this. I Fire an expert, get it fixed right. This matters. And just so I, Rebecca, you'd mentioned a few things. Obviously, you know, we think about learning styles and that's going to be pretty significant. Where does video play in this? I'm a very big proponent of short video with captions on them. Any other considerations when we think about like video? And again, just kind of more of this multimedia approach to being able to connect with people and work with their learning style.

8:16Yeah. So I'm a multimedia fanatic. You can probably not find somebody who is more excited about a flashy video than I am. I like making them. They're great. The one thing I tell people a lot is to make sure that when you are doing any kind of multimedia, you're doing it with purpose. so it's always fun in our minds to maybe have music on in the background of a video especially if it's something short you know and animated it's like oh well it's fun you need to have the consideration of being able to turn that sound off repetitive and emotion type things they need to be able to have maybe a secondary option to that because some people who are neurodivergent some people who have adhd even though some that have sensory processing things going on is this distracting to them?

9:02And when we start talking about multimedia animation in particular, we also have to think about are we sending clear messages? So is it just kind of a good icon that we're using there? Is it a solid image that somebody can look and see, oh, they're telling me to go this direction or they're telling me to go to this thing. So when you're talking about multimedia, it's really in my mind about giving options, things for people to turn off if it's distracting, things that like if you have a GIF, for example, or JIF, however you want to pronounce it, you have the ability to turn off. It doesn't continuously loop because again, it's distracting.

9:42Again, it can pull away from attention. It can actually be a hindrance to what you're trying to do as opposed to something fun and engaging. Yeah. Rebecca, what does, you know, when you're working with someone, And do you mind maybe sharing a story of someone that you worked with and kind of what the opportunity was, what you were able to do? And certainly if there's, you know, obviously we want to do this and know or somehow measure that we're making an impact. So I don't know if you have any insights on that. Yes, I do. And what I'd like to say is this. I like to work with a lot of smaller businesses from time to time, too, because they tend to be the ones who are just like, I don't have a clue where to start.

10:22right and so I was working with a small business company one time um is actually a friend of my father um who had a business and they were like hey we want to kind of get into this accessibility thing we're not sure what to do can you help and so we did start off with a very small accessibility audit no surprise most of their website most of their assets completely inaccessible um and that extended to pds that extended to just external facing things like their actual faqs that they have on the website for people to go to pretty much i'd say about 90 of what they have was not accessible and so what i did for them and i know it's a little concerning but what i did for them was i created like a roadmap and i tell everybody to do this when it comes to accessibility as a consultant, I want folks to go all in.

11:18I want you to completely commit. However, I understand that budgets are what they are. And I understand that the reality of the world is what it is. So I developed a roadmap for them. So the first thing that we actually started with was what are your current goals as a company? What are the things that you're focusing on right now? What are your main products? What are the main things that you're marketing? So pretty much what are the main things that are in people's faces right now that we know really need to be accessible to kind of get this return on investment that we're doing right now. And they did have a couple of products that they were pushing some marketing strategies and were like, fine, let's start there.

11:56So we did do minor things. We updated the website so that things were color contrasted, still within branding, but things were color contrasted. Videos had alt-text, captions, all that good stuff. In terms of their products, what we went ahead and did is we made sure their descriptions were accessible. People were able to use keyboard navigation to actually access them. I created some simulations for them as well that were accessible. So there's a whole range of things to do. But we focus on those products first because at the end of the day, those are the things that people really need to see.

12:31These are the things that right now you're pushing. And they're a good test. They're a good litmus test because it's immediate to see whether or not, you know we've seen any change we've seen things like that and what I do like to build in as well is metrics I love metrics am I learning and development girl at heart so I believe in measurement and I believe in data and so what we did is we worked with the sales team work with marketing to see if there was any increase there were any bumps you know in terms of use purchase all of these things and we were able to measure that now in terms of accessibility measurement measurements measuring return on investment you have to make a commitment to the data and you have to make a commitment to actually farming that data and following that data I usually recommend you do a 30 60 90 day approach right something easy something digestible so that you can see all right so we started here where are we right now in 30 days let's talk to our sales people who are really the boots on the ground right and see are they getting any different types Are they getting any different types of clients coming through?

13:40Are they having any issues kind of explaining anything in the realm of things that we've changed? Are they having problems at all? If they're saying no, they're not having problems, if they're seeing new types of people, new demographics coming in, you can pretty much gather that it's going to be from that change. and then you kind of keep monitoring that throughout. And if we see continuous increases, that tells us we are on the right track and we should continue. So with that particular company, we ended up seeing a good 30 % increase in their revenue. Actually, internally, we saw a really good increase of about 40 % in productivity from their people because we didn't just do changes on the external, we did changes on the internal as well.

14:27So, you know, people could actually use simulations. They can use videos. And folks on your internal aren't going to necessarily ask for help. They're not going to ask for accommodations. They're not going to say, hey, this isn't working for me. They're going to try to just push through it. And that can be a huge detriment when you're talking about your salespeople. I'm like, these are the people that should be explaining your brand. And if they're just sitting there with no help trying to push through, you're not going to get the best potential out of them either. So we actually ended up seeing a really good return on investment.

15:01And I still have that client to this day. And we're still going through our roadmap. Happily, we've added some different things. So it's been really great. Yeah. You know, before we go, I love, Rebecca, I've really been enjoying what we've been talking. I've been looking at some of the stuff that you've been sharing on LinkedIn. You are a really great follow on LinkedIn. in. And one post, I hope you don't mind just taking a couple of minutes to talk about, and it kind of stems from what you were talking about. But you talk about fundamental attribution error, where we look at, and this is especially, I think as leaders, we need to be particularly mindful of this cognitive bias, right?

15:42That leads us to believe that just because someone's capabilities or demonstrate, or they show to us in a particular way that we don't mislabel that or assume that they're being lazy, they're being this, they're being forgetful, they are just this kind of a person. It's, you know, likely, you know, again, kind of giving people the benefit of the doubt and showing an extending grace where we can, right? I think it's just so valuable, but you did share a really great post about this. I wonder if you could just take a minute or so to talk about that. Absolutely. And I'll just share a little bit more about kind of where I come from.

16:26You know, part of the reason I got into this particular phase of life is because my son is autistic. And, you know, we went through a bunch of different things trying to get him support and trying to get people to really see him and not just identify him as, well, that's the autistic boy that's there. And he might be doing this just because he's lazy or he's just obstinate or he's just stubborn or all of these things. Obviously, that stuff exists. We all know this. But I really started to kind of get an idea of the fundamental attribution error from even seeing him. People just assume things about him.

17:09We've seen it even in his school recently where they see him, but they really see him as his disability. So they don't see him as a person. And as leaders, as business owners, as founders, as all of these things, we have really got to step back from that. And as you mentioned, it's about giving grace. People grow, people change. You have to give them the opportunity to do so without making that snap judgment of, well, I've met people like them in the past and they're just lazy. Like I worked with somebody like that two years ago and she was just a lazy person and just didn't want to do it or just didn't want to be bothered.

17:49Making those snap judgments, it does a few things, right? It can be demoralizing to the person that you are making the judgment about because at that point they can sense it. They can sense that you think that they're lazy or that they're incapable, right? People have a sixth sense. And so they're like, well, my leader doesn't even like me. They automatically assume these different things about me. And that completely creates friction. It creates chaos. And it does nothing in the way of productivity or success for anybody, for the business or for them. Rebecca, are you providing, so obviously you provide UX leadership here.

18:27Do you also consult in and around just like kind of like workplace culture, best practices, that sort of thing? Yes. Oh, my God. How wonderful. Okay. So that said, just because we're short on time, let's make some connections here. Your website is EBGC. So much more than just graphics. It's the consulting piece. I think that, you know, again, I think folks in this audience really should grab some time with you to maybe evaluate some of these blind spots that we've got within our organization. Obviously, our user experiences, our workplace culture, leaders, I think most of a vast majority of us don't want to do harm, right?

19:13We want to be fair. Um, but I think it's sometimes it's just, again, it's, it's most of these just logical fallacies and biases that get in our way. Um, and you know, when we're aware, self-awareness and able to be critically thinking about these types of things, I think just creates a better environment for everybody. So Rebecca, what are next steps here? Next steps. Um, of course, people can reach out to me via email, via my website, um, on the contact form or through LinkedIn. Perfectly fine. I'm always available, it feels like. And in the next few weeks, I'm actually launching a community where professionals can sign up, subscribe, schedule some time with me individually, and learn all things about accessibility.

19:58And that can be workplace, design, whatever the case may be. You know, we're going to have resources, templates, webinars, all the stuff. So really excited about that. But as you mentioned, it's really just about starting somewhere and realizing that everybody's a person and everybody should be able to succeed. Rebecca Prejean, your website, EBGC.net. Rebecca, it's been a great conversation. Hopefully, we've made some effort out there already with this conversation. But again, folks can go directly to your website and engage with you. And let's fix some of these things that are going on in our world.

20:37Well, thank you, Rebecca, for the work you do. Thank you so much for having me.

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