How to Generate New Revenue for MSPs Text Transcript Note: There is no significant information presented visually. Only the person speaking is shown when they are speaking. The chat log is presented at the end of the transcript. >> Stuart Crawford: Alright everyone, we're here live on uh Facebook and streaming here on Zoom. So as everybody's getting on like to see uh all the names coming in all the some of the old names some new names which was great, Anthony. It's fantastic to have everybody on. uh welcome everyone to our weekly Ulistic uh high performance training i'm calling it. I still have to come up with a better name for it but maybe we'll do something around the Ulistic Insiders group now that we have on Facebook and uh and our weekly training here. So I see uh, I see a bunch of names uh Shane from Dallas is on. Hey Shane. I think uh every every well you know Anthony you know Shane >> Anthony Buonaspina: Hey Shane. Yeah of course >> Stuart: um i don't know were you part of our high performance club when Chris uh from Winston-Salem was part of our group? I don't think you were He - Chris - is on and a few other few other guys. Anyway we're getting started folks we're recording today's session and we're also streaming it on our Ulistic Insider's Facebook group. My name is Stuart Crawford for those few people on the call that may not know who I am and joining me today is my good colleague Anthony Buonaspina from LI Tech Advisors on the beautiful Long Island island. >> Anthony: Yes >> Stuart: I want to go there, Anthony, because I have a- I want to go and spend some time in Montauk. >> Anthony: Okay. You have to quarantine yourself for 14 days though. ( laughs ) Getting into New York >> Stuart: After watching uh The Affair and watching what was the other show that was out there? Revenge. I want to go to Montauk. >> Anthony: Oh yeah, oh yeah. At The Affair you gotta eat at the uh what's it? The Lobster Roll. And have Allison's serve you. >> Stuart: Is that a real place? The Lobster Roll? >> Anthony: It actually is a real place but it doesn't look like what it looks like on TV. >> Stuart: Yeah >> Anthony: There is actually a Lobster Roll out there. >> Stuart: I have to- I have to go and once once uh the quarantines are lifted i'll make a trip out there i looked at b- Airbnb and they're like they were like $5,000 a month for a place out there so. >> Anthony: Yeah. Some nice places >> Stuart: I think I think I just i'm going to crash on your sofa I think. >> Anthony: That's fine. >> Stuart: Maybe, maybe have your wife run me over at the same time. >> Anthony: Yeah that's a very good possibility yeah. >> Stuart: Anyway, let's get started get into uh you know what we're going to talk about today. um as i uh said in my emails today we're going to introduce some new ways that your MSP can generate revenue and also keep you out of trouble because uh what Anthony's going to share with you today believe it or not as an MSP you're- you- you could be responsible for uh an ADA violation or ADA compliance violation with your clients websites and applications and things you do online. So we're going to help uh identify some of those things that uh you should be aware of as well but Anthony before we get started give us a quick intro of LI Tech Advisors because you and I have known each other for a number of years now. It seems like a number of years maybe like a couple but uh seems like a lot longer than that but for the people that don't know who you are tell us a little bit about LI Tech Advisors >> Anthony: Well, okay um First of all, based on Long Island uh it's New York um we pretty much uh you know we're an MSP. I've been around 30 years. I was an MSP before the MSP definition came out. um we were always like never sold hardware really and just offered services and so on uh managed services always did annual commitments um we still do you know that and uh you know some break fix. We deal with schools mainly, a lot of private schools which's why we're going crazy right now um and also we do uh you know custom software and then also for the last uh 10 years or so ADA compliance. For the- making sure websites are accessible um and uh you know that's pretty much it in a nutshell. >> Stuart: So tell us for those people that are not familiar with ADA give us the history of ADA because it goes back before websites like we're talking we're talking about everything from like handles into in restrooms and parking spots that's all part of ADA right? >> Anthony: Yes um you're talking back uh you know it used to be called the Rehabilitation Act back in the '70s and that was signed into law and uh you know that was where you had uh curb cuts you have uh handicapped spots um and you know major changes to buildings that needed to be done in order to be uh you know for people with disabilities to be uh accessible. And what happened a few years ago is that that now turned into where the Department of Justice pretty much said that the um websites now can be considered as places of accommodation meaning that they are basically brick-and-mortar. So if that's the case ADA now kicks in where websites need to be accessible to the general public and due to that there have now been many lawsuits. For example if you go into a restaurant and it doesn't have uh the you know ramps or something like, uh the bathroom's, the height- the counter height is not uh good enough, the doorway is not wide enough, you could sue. Same thing now with a website. If your website is not um ADA compliant um you'll you're gonna end up with a problem. um you get served a letter and sued and sued again, so that's why it's important to uh making sure your home base, your website, is compliant and also your clients' websites. Especially as an MSP. um give you an idea too i mean let me take a few steps back. A person with a disability - it could be a blind person, could be a mobility impaired, it could be cognizant, it could be deaf, they all need to be able to access a website and my first thing 10 years ago I had no clue about any of this. I said how's a blind guy even see a website? How does he use a cell phone? Well they can and I was totally amazed at this is that it was my cousin who was blind for about 15 years now he went blind because of a mold spore all of a sudden uh you know went into a coma woke up uh you know in january if through christmas and so on uh and totally black couldn't see a thing and from that point forward i mean he learned how to operate and computers and so on and i had an opportunity years ago um where somebody contacted me a technician from like tennessee who asked me uh for his help if i go to a client locally because he couldn't do it because he's blind and i said wait you're an i.t guy how are you supporting uh you know he he started giving me a rundown i then um went to my cousin who was blind i said you know anything about accessibility at that point he hit me and said what do you think of course i do so from that point forward about 10 years ago i've been working with him um on you know i learned everything i could about it got my certifications um even Jonathan who's on the school now also is a cpac certified accessibility expert um the whole thing about that too is that you know a blind person for example can navigate a website using something called a screen reader what screen reader does is actually reads what's on the screen whether you're in a browser whether you're just on a desktop windows desktop even your icons in your email your outlook and so on it reads what's on there using a screen reader the screen reader though only works if you're on a website for example if your website is designed properly using the standard html um you know requirements and stuff like that as guidelines they're called wik from the w3c there's guidelines out there for making a website accessible now if those guidelines are not followed then what happens you go to a website and those screen readers don't work that's where the problems come in and the problems get multiplied when a person with a disability a blind person for example again and I keep using blind the reason is that they account for like 95 percent of the problems you- if you can make a site accessible to a blind individual um you've made it accessible for like 95 percent of the uh of the disabled population um. So you know again you know if they go to a website and they um you know go to a field let's say first name, last name, and so on those fields aren't labeled in the background um they won't see them. The screen reader won't be able to read them that's why it's important to just follow all these guidelines - the basic HTML. Here's the other thing too is that by doing this to a website and you know designing it properly um for ADA compliance, you're also making it uh accessible to Google. Google's blind >> Stuart: Google- Google- Google loves ADA work that we do >> Anthony: Yes. Yeah absolutely we even Stuart even said what our site there's some kind of health monitor or something that Google uses that says ours is one of the higher sites out there as far as health um. Overall health of it as far as you know from an SEO standpoint. You know you're basically making um you know your website accessible to Google to read it >> Stuart: And Google- you said Google is blind right >> Anthony: Google's blind yeah it reads the website so it's important to do this so it's a win-win situation, all right. Accessibility right now is it's intended it really benefits all users regardless of their ability or disability um and you also you know you have to have a continued commitment to accessibility in order to protect yourself with the company all right so you know even though once you fix your site and so on you have to have that commitment so that when you make a change and so on or you make/add a new button you know that you have to tag, it you have to- for an image if it's a beach scene with somebody walking a dog you have to describe the image in the alt tag. It says and you know each scene it's a person walking a dog um so the thing is you need to be dedicated to this as far as that and then what happens is that it becomes a no-brainer adding another page to a website and so on it doesn't by default it will be accessible um. >> Stuart: So we've before carry on just if anybody has any questions any questions the Q & A panel I have open on my screen here... Feel free to drop a question in there we have also the chat and uh we were a little late getting the stream going on Facebook. Rookie mistake I guess for me but uh that's okay we'll we learn from these things going forward so now we're streaming the the new Ulistic Insiders Facebook group if you haven't joined that group make sure you head over to Facebook and join that group as well so Anthony um lots of stuff and I mean yeah you're right the um the SEO benefits of the ADA compliance are from what I realized was an added bonus it was great um but let's talk about uh before we get into the opportunity let's talk about what MSPs should be doing and what your guys are doing to to tell your clients because you said something to kind of profound a while ago to me and you say a lot of things that are amazing but this one really just stuck out uh was that the MSP could be sued if their websites - the client's websites - are not compliant. >> Anthony: That's absolutely true even if - even if you don't manage their website. Okay, because you are their uh technology expert all right that's how you're presenting yourself to them. So if they uh their website gets sued for non-compliance they could turn to you and bring you in on that lawsuit um i've seen it happen um and it's a tough situation to be in so what you want to do is avoid that from the beginning like what I do is I do a quick check of my clients' websites - I do this on a regular basis. And then send a letter to them, an email uh that states that their site's out of compliance and I recommend that they get it into compliance. All right at that point I'm off the hook. I told them about it, I made them aware that their site is you know >> Stuart: you don't make sign a document saying they acknowledge that you've made them aware of that? >> Anthony: In some cases I would uh but just the fact that I get an email back stating that you know "we're going to look into it" or "yeah now we're not interested in it" is enough in my case because have I have written confirmation that they uh you know either accepted it or uh didn't take my advice >> Stuart: Okay um because you're the - you're the technology advisor the VCIO, the VCTO, whatever you want to call yourselves >> Anthony: right >> Stuart: So it's just not network monitoring and dark web scanning and >> Anthony: No we look we're all inclusive >> Stuart: You own everything >> Anthony: Yeah yeah even if stuff that doesn't even apply to us we'll they always call us first and then we'll make a suggestion they'll call so and so they do this and better than us and or they do it and et cetera et cetera but in this case we told them to contact their website designer. At least um you know not that we're gonna make the fixes but the website designer should go be able to go in and make the appropriate changes um. They can work with us to do you know go further into um you know checking it out and certification but if uh some - in a lot of cases - they'll design a new site from the ground up and that's when you really have to get accessibility from the ground up. Somebody in there to make sure they know what they're doing because that's when it's the cheapest doesn't cost anything to add accessibility to a site when you're building it all right it's when you have to go back afterwards. There was a Target uh department stores here in Long Island that was sued for six million dollars. um it cost them 21 million dollars to fix the site because it's a very complex site it was very difficult to go back in there they were using divs and other things which were very hard from an accessibility standpoint uh encoding to fix. Whereas if they started you know fresh it would have been an easier choice all right especially with calendar pop-ups. We worked with American Airlines a while back who uh you know we just told them look use this calendar pop-up it's accessible all right just implement it properly and you're good um >> Stuart: Those are examples of you know large companies what about I know you had a i know you had a winery that you that... >> Anthony: ...Yes one of my clients now and after two years I kept telling them I said listen um your site's not accessible right. They didn't care they you know they had no they said no why bother we don't care they didn't care um so what ended up happening uh they ended up suing like 26 wineries here on Long Island uh what happens is a lot of like drive-by uh attorneys a bunch of them in New York City that hire a person with a disability that they go check out websites in this case they checked out um wineries and they sued it they sued all of them. And the average lawsuit was around $25,000. So this attorney made a lot of money all right the now the um winery had to fix the site. They did fix it by using a plug-in which still the site is broken they don't even realize it now once you've been sued, statistically speaking, there's a 25% chance of getting sued again in that same year. Because if you didn't fix the site or if you have no um accessibility statement on the site that says look I'm taking steps to fix, it you're you're another target okay so that's why it's important about making sure you take proactive steps. But as an MSP, it's very important that you alert your clients to the fact that their site um needs to be checked it needs uh you can even do the quick check yourself I can give you the link uh do a quick like one page check and usually that you know shows up some errors and say look you need to address this - this is a thing. >> Stuart: So there's an opportunity here for MSPs that that may have a web development side of their business to go and talk to them about making those changes or designing a site from the ground up or partnering or partnering with a firm like yours who could do that work. >> Anthony: Yeah what I'm finding too just in general that this is a great foot in the door. This- this is- this is a differentiator in our case from another MSP on Long Island which is a lot of them all right so when we go to a company a customer I'll look at like a healthcare uh company i went into now besides just looking at the MSP side of it the servers and so on >> Stuart: wait wait wait wait wait you're not doing dark web scans? >> Anthony: Oh yeah... >> Stuart: Doesn't every MSP do dark web scans? >> Anthony: Of course! Everybody does that but like you know what everybody's heard that but when you talk about hey you know your website is a brick-and-mortar, you can get sued on that they go "what are you talking about? No we can't." Then you start showing them statistics, give them some links. I have a whole video I made up which um we made it uh un-branded so anybody else can add to it which we need to update for 2020 but um actually we should just make it perpetual, but the thing is um it's important to have that um this way you can educate your uh clientele. But the healthcare one is - specifically healthcare - is a major target for ADA so you know we went in there and told them like hey you, besides doing this your website's also not compliant you know that right? "What do you mean nobody else told us that what makes this?" I said well this is one of the things we do uh but you know we don't do the website for you but we you know we're checking it out we can also help certify it. um you know we've worked with several companies like that and it helps us - it's a foot in the door. That's the main thing. Whether or not you get actual ADA work is irrelevant because you know you got in the door and you're doing your MSP work because they realize that you're looking out for them on many levels. >> Stuart: So, let's paint the scenario and this is like i'm sure this is a common every day - because I mean I work with guys like you all across the world, Anthony, as you know they they come to me with a great idea hey we and I- I'm not I mean I'm going to pick on "dark web scan" because that's the flavor of the week right? >> Anthony: Yeah >> Stuart: "You know I got I got something really really unique uh don't tell anybody else but i can scan the dark web for password vulnerabilities." Great you and everybody else does that right? But here's what I see is that uh you know not everybody's offering what you guys offer you know as a as a potential way in like webinar like we did that one webinar for that one client uh a month ago that was their best attended webinar in a long time because that's what people they- that's what people care about. They care about that kind of stuff >> Anthony: Yeah >> Stuart: Right and if you if you pr- if you practice pure story branding on it the you know the villa- the villain now is the lawyer who's looking to sue companies and you're the you're- you're the guide or the MSP listening to this program is the guide to help make their uh make their clients look like a hero by not getting sued. >> Anthony: Correct yeah yeah and it's very important also to understand that there's steps you need to take okay um if you do get a letter okay it's very important. You can't just ignore it you have to take steps and um you know there's like a five steps you need to do. uh one is also you know contact an attorney uh second thing is make sure you start immediate steps to remediate your site um also put on a usability accessibility statement >> Stuart: Well you should have that you should have that before that, you know. >> Anthony: Absolutely yeah i'm just saying even before you wouldn't have gotten the letter maybe if you had the accessibility statement >> Stuart: yeah >> Anthony: um but the thing is at least if you do you can say look i'm taking proactive steps to fix the site um you know and also like there are many sites out there some of them are charging $8,000 a month also to just fix the site on an ongoing basis. um you know they are they're you know some of these sites are just selling a plug-in or a quick fix some of them are doing for free you pop a little plug-in in that does not make the um site accessible alright that's very important um you know so you've got to make sure that uh what you're doing actually fixes the site and you've got to make sure somebody you know like uh has a CPACC certification that's the uh you know they have a certification for people that know about accessibility, the accessibility guidelines that can sign off on the site to say like you're all right you are uh good to go at this date and time and stuff like that. But going forward after that you got to make sure you keep checking the site on a regular basis. >> Stuart: But isn't it true Anthony, that we could be it's like- it's like COVID-19, right? I'll kind of relate ADA to Coronavirus right. I can go get tested today and be negative... I walk into McDonald's later on tonight... I stand next to some guy and all of a sudden tomorrow i'm- i'm positive you know. So ADA works the same way I could be I could be compliant today but I make one change to the website I had one blog post now I'm out of compliance. So how do you stay up on top of that? >> Anthony: Now that's a good analogy actually - yeah a perfect analogy um what happens is that again if you're a COVID and you're staying at home all right, you're good, right? As long as you're not touching anything you're isolated you got a you know a body protection on okay um the thing is if you're not making any changes right yeah >> Stuart: You're in your bubble, right? >> Anthony: You're not making a change to the site there's nothing changed nothing's uh you know no problems there. It's when you make a change, even as simple as a blog post or an image you add an image or a button or something right away then you could break it that's why it's important the person that's making that change knows a little bit about accessibility or you have a company that um can check it on the way. But we- our philosophy is teaching a fisherman to fish. We got enough business uh on the ADA side um and again our whole thing is raising awareness and just letting other MSPs know about this at this point to run with it. But we tend to like teach the dev team as we're going along if somebody has like a monthly agreement with us we have a help desk they can call us up and stuff. We don't just answer the question, we teach them look once you like when you put an image up you have to put a description on it all right if it's a decorative no you don't you have to - put a null. So we explain that and after that they won't call us on it again they know to do that going forward uh if the dev team changes uh that's where the problems come in then you've got to retrain that person. But again we're even telling companies that are hiring to make sure you hire somebody with accessibility knowledge. Especially in somebody's designing a website or even the GUI and so on. I mean they all have to make sure it's accessible. The other question i get all the time - does this apply to phones apps. Absolutely. Yes >> Stuart: Anything digital really. Video like this video here that was put up on YouTube needs to be accessible >> Anthony: It has to be captioned. One of the reasons too is that we use Teams a lot now. Teams actually does auto-captioning as you're on the on a meeting with Teams it'll auto- caption uh which is great. The um other piece of it too is that you have another reason that people get sued it's very important that this is a paramount is that you gotta let your clients know that when their front desk their reception their Q A their Q A team, whatever, needs to be trained on this. There was an issue uh several months back where a hotel chain - I don't remember the name uh I'm actually maybe not say the name of it but what they did is they put up a job interview web page all right where somebody can go to get hired and... >> Stuart: I think I read this on a lawyer's website. >> Anthony: Yeah well what happened is that the webs- the the page was not accessible all right the fields were not um uh tagged so the person who's blind called up that hotel chain and said like i'd like to apply for that job uh and then the guy said well you know we have the form online. He says no i can't see the form because i'm blind. The guy said uh wait you're blind? We can't hire you That's a double whammy. >> Stuart: ( chuckles ) >> Anthony: Number one the immediate lawsuit you know uh instead that person being trained should have said oh you know what we understand completely we do have an accessibility statement up there um you know that says we are working towards fixing that immediately. Meanwhile can i help you put that application in for you? Okay you got to defuse the situation. You don't want to piss somebody off that's how you get lawsuits. >> Stuart: So who's doing these lawsuits obviously you know a lot the law firms themselves are not launching. What are they doing to get these lawsuits going? >> Anthony: Some of the lawsuits are you know the lawsuits themselves can't a lawyer themselves can't launch it without a plaintiff so the plaintiff they've been hiring actually people with disabilities to go out and look at sites. Specifically now the real estate industry uh they're looking at uh different they even uh get art galleries were targeted believe it or not. 46 art galleries um so the um you know what they have to do as far as like uh you know it comes down to like I said your person with disability if they call and ask for some help give it to them. If not, that person can hire an attorney firm or go to the foundation for the blind or go to some organization that they're familiar with and suddenly that organization is going to sue on their behalf. Okay so what you need to do is make sure um you know you're courteous and receptive to them you know you always have to defuse it - that's what attorneys tell me to do you defuse it at the phone all right when somebody calls up you defuse it at that point. So it's important to have the accessibility statement and that will have on it a phone number, an email address, methods of contact and also the status you're at as far as you know uh what you're working on towards compliance and where you're at with it so you know things that you know uh have issues right now but you're working towards fixing them okay. um common accessibility issues again like might be a button that just says log in. We did a job for Morgan Stanley a while back. Their app their login button didn't say "login" okay it said - visually it said login - when you turn the screen reader on on an iPhone, all right it actually said uh "guitar." all right log out button said um "saxophone" - whoever it was was into instruments in the back end. That software programmer. >> Stuart: um that's that's typical for web designers they don't think that way. >> Anthony: Correct that's why education is very important going forward you if you teach a fisherman to fish you tell them once that those tags mean something especially in SEO >> Stuart: Yeah I've seen too many image where is says "image1.jpg jpeg" >> Anthony: Yes and from a screen reader sometimes sometimes those things are paragraph long and you can imagine having to hear every single letter and number reading read to you before you get to the actual button. it's crazy yeah. >> Stuart: Exactly it's crazy crazy crazy. let's um so let's shift gears where's the opportunity, Anthony? How are how are you guys going to market what are you guys doing obviously you do webinars like this but you know how was how are you using the ADA compliance part of your business to generate new business for you? >> Anthony: Well webinars is a big thing I mean we before the COVID had hit and so on I was doing uh webinars for uh the Hauppauge Industrial Park uh association. um which is like 50,000 businesses and so on and I was one of the speakers at their um trade shows and so on and that was it put me aside um and I was able to basically glean some business off that. uh Melville Chamber of Commerce I've done uh webinars with them so just getting out there and uh again not making a sales pitch but just making it um informing people you know raising awareness. It means a lot and what happens out of that i started getting leads. I went to a lot of the functions basically Stuart, on stuff you taught me is to get out there more go into these uh you know now it's a matter of webinars I'm on a lot of different um meetings and stuff like that even the HIA is having another - their next trade show is all virtual so I'm going to be part of that. But it's a matter of getting out there and being engaged. To my clientele and even potential clients, I send out newsletters um again raising awareness about the ADA. Any of the proposals I send out and so on may have a little bit of the ADA associated with it saying that we also did a courtesy review of your website. And again it's a very simple thing to do WAVE has a - there's a tool called WAVE -you can go out and even for your own site or a client site, use it, it gives you a - it's an automated tool only about at the most 40% accurate, but it will show you um your you know problems. Guaranteed they will find problems if it doesn't find them on the home page you put in the contact us page. Usually finds issues. >> Stuart: It's like it's like an MSP doing a network they're always going to find problems. >> Anthony: Exactly yeah >> Stuart: So that means that's great I mean and and uh people are receptive you mentioned earlier it's opening the doors to new opportunities versus going in there and doing the exact same thing everybody else is doing like a free dark web scan Anthony: Yeah yeah I mean I could do them too but the thing the ADA actually sets us apart because most people don't even know it's a thing and they appreciate the fact that I brought it to their attention and they want to know what the steps are and I have an email, I have a canned email ready to go all the time to clientele with everything in it the video and so on and the steps they need to take, a document as well an attachment and i send that out. And plus we have the website that they can land on send them that link and it's also a matter of you know getting out there writing articles um i've been trying to do as many as i can um you know just to you know again being out there being the expert on this um and even if you're not an expert, just telling you know now that you I've taught you guys about this tell your clients about it. Even if you don't know 100% everything about it just tell them this is a thing you can send them the links that um you know we could supply you and stuff that show the you know the W3C website and the guidelines and what it's all about. A lot of attorneys out there um you're giving the information out too as well. >> Stuart: and and where are the uh where are the hot spots right now because the last time we checked it was New York and Florida, they still kind of the primary two states are getting the majority of the lawsuits? >> Anthony: New York, Florida, California um you have um it's all over the country basically though. I mean even small little stores a little luggage store in California got sued. Here was a shoe store on Long Island um small little mom and pops are getting sued now because... >> Stuart: And they go after them because they'll pay they'll pay right? >> Anthony: They'll pay yeah because what's going to happen is the big guys if you go after the big guys they have attorneys. They have attorneys that work for the firm that are going to fight back okay and then tie you up in court. But the attorneys these drive-by attorneys are learning now is that they are going after little guys because they don't put up a fight they just pay the uh the ten-thousand, fifteen-thousand twenty-five up to fifty-thousand dollars is what the suits are going for um so you know that's that unfortunately it's an unfortunate uh truism and even now in the event of COVID and so on everything with the shutdown it's still active and still happening. So it's important to take steps now >> Stuart: So yeah so we there's a good opportunity out there um we got we know the you know that we know what we need to do here um I think uh you mentioned you mentioned a few tools and uh would you what what was what was the website again? >> Anthony: Oh yeah well one of the things is the w3.org that's the w the number three dot o r g okay um that's one of them uh as far as the uh you know they should be going to the web con- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. That's all the guidelines are okay um as far as the other one is a uh you know WAVE uh it's from Webaim. Actually i'm gonna throw this over to Jonathan right now because he's the expert on this as far as he's does all the testing and so on, Jon can you pick up on that I know he's wandering in the chat so yeah Jon I see your mute went off go ahead. All right give me another second if not I'll just jump in but um okay so basically we're dealing with um it's a um Jon was that you >> Jon Buonaspina: Can you hear me now? yeah there we go. Here we are sorry about that guys uh my name is Jon I'm one of Anthony's guys i'm a CPACC certified accessibility expert and uh tell you a little bit about the automated tools out there. uh one that is very popular is WAVE it's the Webaim's proprietary automated software and you could just Google "Webaim WAVE" and basically you go to this site and you put in your URL of your home page or whatever page you want to test and you submit it and it'll come back with an automated report of the issues found on your homepage. And basically automated tools are only about 40% accurate as Anthony said uh but they do give you a good indication of the types of issues that you have on on your website, and it also gives you some explanatory information regarding the types of issues and the things you could do to fix those issues. But it is uh important to have somebody who's knowledgeable about accessibility to interpret uh those reports to rule out any false-negatives and false- positives and to make sure that everything is actually flagged correctly and such by the automated tool. Additionally there are several color contrast analyzers out there - this is a big issue I run across quite often actually is color contrast of of text on its background. This is a major problem obviously for anybody who is a low vision, and as we all know as we get older our vision starts to go, am I right Anthony? >> Anthony: Yes my screens are getting bigger >> Jon: So a color contrast of text on its background and of interactive elements is of paramount importance for anybody who's trying to use your website. And this is something that as Anthony mentioned before - when you fix something uh with persons with disabilities in mind, you tend to fix it for any visitor regardless of ability level. So color contrast there are several out there and we'll throw all this stuff into the the chat for you as well as any follow-up will give you the the links to this information and these tools. Additionally, as far as some of the common issues which you can uh you can bring to the attention of your dev teams today if you want to... Link texts is is one I see very very often where - how often are you reading something and you see a link that says "click here" uh well that's pretty vague isn't it? uh link texts uh by definition are supposed >> Stuart: That's not me Jon, because i'm an SEO guy. I always want to put a very descriptive link there. I saw that, I see that. Now, you're very very aware of that, Stuart. uh so yeah the link text they should be very uh to the point and direct exactly where the destination is, what the purpose of the link is, uh you should any sort of a vague language should be avoided in linked texts. So no "click here's" no "mores", things like that. um additionally like Anthony said before about alternative text for images. If you have an informative image on your page uh you would want to use the alt attribute to provide a written text of what that image is. What's being depicted visually? What information is being conveyed visually by that image? Why is it on the page? So you'll want to provide that obviously for uh low vision and blind users who use a screen reader who need that information uh to interpret what the image is about. Other things uh such as headings uh when we use headings in our in our documents and our websites to to structure and organize the content you want to make sure that they're of uh correct nesting uh so therefore the heading level-one will be sort of the main topic of the page um and then heading level-twos will be main sub-sections and then heading level-threes will be subsections of the subsections and so on. Sort of like a Russian doll type of thing. uh so that's that will convey the structure and organization of the webpage to any blind or low-vision users using a screen reader or other assistive technologies. >> Anthony: And it's pretty much basic HTML. I mean this is... >> Jon: Yeah. This is so basically language this is using the the language as it was created correct, yeah. >> Stuart: Is this what we talked about, Anthony, yesterday on the phone it was you know uh i'm thinking i'm really thinking about re-branding the Ulistic website package - of the Ulistic "KISS" package: Keep It Simple Stupid. >> Anthony: Yeah >> Stuart: The more the more complexities you introduce to anything it the more it uh more chance of going offside with your ADA. >> Anthony: That's absolutely true and also another major problem guys, is this is that if you're using third-party add-ins okay I mean if you're using a shopping cart or something that is not necessarily yours - you're pulling in from a third party - you're responsible for that. Your customers are responsible for that, meaning if your site somebody comes to your site and it's still not compliant but it's because of the plug-in you're still going to sue you. You're still liable for that that's why it's important to choose your plugins wisely and also on your accessibility statement state that the third-party plugins have not completely been tested yet and you're working towards compliance with them, okay. >> Stuart: So what are the great thing one of the great things about working with Ulistic - here's a shameless plug for me - because we get to work together with Anthony's team all the time and every one of our websites we're constantly looking at towards ADA compliance. Because i know i know Shane's on there right now testing his website and a few others. No I know they're probably out of compliance slightly but we're built we're building a new one for Shane anyway so we're doing it from the ground up. But we're always looking at ways to improve the the compliance factors of it and you know make they'll make those modifications then one of the things that every website we have from learning from you is that accessibility statement and I look around at some of our competitors in the MSP marketing space... Not on- they're not really on the ball with that kind of stuff >> Anthony: Yeah and even some of their websites aren't accessible so no yeah their own it's a you have to make sure your own uh website's accessible and that um it's like a shoemaker with holes in his shoes. So you know we're always even with our own website we're constantly making um adjustments to it and uh you know going through it because it's a dynamic site. But I love the idea of what Stuart came up with is a very simple. Keeping a site simple but to the point because sometimes you a site you get to it and it's just so much - it's an information overload and you just really want to get to the point as far as what you need. >> Stuart: That's why we love Story Brand because it forces us to be simple. You know for those that not familiar with Story Brand uh it's a really really really good book to read and that's our you know we have Ulistic to the Story Brand. Well we have a team member that's a certified guide with with Story Brand so uh it's proven to be a very uh very good model and again keeping it simple uh reduce there's a lot of benefits to it reduces the complexity reduces the load time, Keeps you out of ADA trouble, all that good stuff. >> Anthony: Absolutely >> Stuart: So so Anthony you know one of the questions is how do people work with you? So do you have a referral- do you have a program where uh MSPs can work with you? Is it a referral program is it uh >> Anthony: Yeah I mean number one >> Stuart: How does it work? >> Anthony: We do it's basically the easiest thing is a referral program um where you refer a client to us on a specific thing and you know you get money back um because uh this way the liability comes to us also if you're going to be white labeling it is that you know you then are the front liner on >> Stuart: Yeah you don't want you don't you don't want to be white labeling this. >> Anthony: No you just because we're the experts we have the certifications. Now, we have no problem in telling and helping train your company or your if you're a website developer and so on like that what you need to do so you can bring this knowledge in-house. Alright again teaching with fishermen to fish um it may you know if you have a website designer we'll tell you what needs to be done so that you can make sure that person is certified and you bring the knowledge internal okay so you don't have to depend on us. But you it's important to not only fix the site but keep ongoing um checks alright, certifications and um periodically and make sure your accessibility statement is very clear and to the point as far as you know the status of the site. >> Stuart: Yeah exactly so going forward i think actually before we get into some questions uh going forward here's the action items: review your client websites uh if you email Anthony i'm sure uh he'll be more than happy to share that uh template with you um and um and then you know talk talk to your clients and you know just make them aware at least get yourself out of harm's way with that. Make them aware and if they if they elect not to then i like i personally answered like the signing off on it i mean i like the document keep that physical document either in a docusign or uh send them an email get them to acknowledge that that they are they're aware their sites are not in compliance and that release that could- that could release you from you know potential liability down the road um and you know then you know talk to them about ways you do and bring in bring in a team like LI Tech Advisors to help with that. uh and then uh and then also uh you know look at your own site because you know uh you know there's lots of uh lots of opportunity there too and uh and make sure that you have that accessibility statement on there uh and uh you know take the actions to uh protect your business. And then use this as a potential way to get new business you know use it as a marketing resource to educate and to inform. You know as a business owner myself I would probably you'll probably get my attention uh keeping me out of trouble versus you know offer me a dark web scan. Because i got dark webs i get dark web scan offers 10 times a day. >> Anthony: Yeah >> Stuart: and again i don't mean to downplay the importance of that dark web scan don't get me wrong, but this is something where you're different than everybody else and you know this is one of those examples that you can differentiate yourself from every other MSP in the marketplace. >> Anthony: Absolutely >> Stuart: So questions uh so uh i think Jon answered this one on the chat but I'm gonna answer I'm gonna just ask it to you as well: How much do you normally charge your clients and uh for a service like this and or and how much would you charge an MSP to do a work on their one of their clients. >> Anthony: Oh, definitely discounted down um but typically i mean when we go out to a client it's typically anything like two-thousand to five-thousand dollars to you know uh go through an entire site. uh we usually with that we go through certain flows of the site uh you know user journeys, test them out and stuff like that but you know and it we would definitely discount that down to um for existing MSPs that are out there. We also would supply them with a best practices document which we wrote up because we'll have if you got it go to the links on this that i gave you here the w3.org for example, it's very hard to navigate that all right and it's very hard to understand what they're trying to get at as far as what the you look they're looking for. What we did is rewrote that up in layman's terms as far as what needs to be done so we have like a very um uh you know it shows very simple ways to get rid of the low hanging fruit the easy thing to fix problems you know it's an 80-20 rule basically you try to fix like 80% of the problems on the site um and then re-attack the 20% uh you know later on because you can get rid of a lot of the major problems and this uh this document definitely helps with that. So, again you know we do uh I have a price sheet and stuff like that i can send out um but basically uh we do offer a discount down um to MSPs so. >> Stuart: Excellent and uh just in case uh you guys should be aware just in case uh I disappear, we're in the middle of a big storm here in Central Florida so if I'm gone that means the power went out. Not because I don't love you guys I just said the power went out. I'm getting messages on my Teams that some of the power for some of our remote employees are starting to go around around the county so would be pretty very bad we're getting ready for another hurricane you know next week sometime so. You know it's that time of year uh Anthony so, Anthony what's the best way for uh folks to reach you if they want to you know engage with you or follow up or uh and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say you're able to do this for everybody but at least I'm appreciative that you uh have upcoming webinars for a few of our few of my clients coming up. >> Anthony: Yeah absolutely I mean if they want they can you know i have a Calendry link um you can uh which I can basically uh you know give them uh they can set up an appointment with me directly if they want. um or uh just call our office uh which uh you know we'll supply that information as well. >> Stuart: Yeah so if you email uh - and don't do it yet because i got to get the email address set up - but email ADA@Ulistic.com ADA at Ulistic.com. Give me a few minutes to get the email account set up and what I'll do is I'll forward it over to Anthony and then he can reach out to you that way um uh and then we can uh move forward there um. Let's see if any other any other questions or anything for Anthony before we uh we uh wrap it up for today >> Anthony: Yeah John uh was asking about the way we offer a recurring fee approach. Absolutely, because what we like to do this is how we build on this is that we do an initial test right we do a first of all free quick test just to you know do tell you if there's a problem then we do a more comprehensive test. That one you pay for and then out of that you get an idea of what the problems are with the site. You fix them now what we usually want to happen is you engage us it could be a few hundred dollars a month you know usually $800 to $1000, maybe more depending on the client and how much engagement they want but we basically have a help desk at that point you ask us whatever you need to ask us, we work with you, we check things out and it's an ongoing process so it's a month-to-month and then by the time at the end of this period it could be a month it could be six months could be a year depending on how long the site is is that you pretty much have the site compliant now what we do is another test at the end which we charge for but that test is a more elaborate test that actually certifies the site accessible. And then after that if you want to engage us or you at that point i'm hoping that your dev team or your designer already has a certification maybe they went for it they got the test they can even at that point carry it on or we could go and step in periodically and check it out. We also have a company we work with that has actually people with disabilities in some cases like with the airlines they required to have people with disabilities do the testing. So we have a company we would at that point refer to to would bring those people in. >> Stuart: Excellent so yeah so email ADA@Ulistic.com. That email address is up and running now and uh and now what I'll do is I'll intro- I'll introduce you to Anthony that way it's saving Anthony's inbox from getting blown up later as people get this recording. If you email Info- or ADA@Ulistic.com, we'll make sure you get all the right information for uh making sure that your website and your offer you can use ADA compliance as a way to generate new revenue because at the end of the day yeah it's all about uh you know generating that new revenue for your MSP and this is a great way to get your foot in the door and talk about msp services since you know, ADA is not going to sell managed services for you but, in my world Anthony, managed services fixes a heck of a lot of things. >> Anthony: Absolutely yes we're one stop shop for everything. >> Stuart: And and if and if the current IT provider is not talking about this then you can use that as a wedge and say I wonder why they're not talk- what else are they not talking to you about, right? >> Anthony: Yeah >> Stuart: Lots of ways of skinning the skin the cat here so uh great uh thanks John for the feedback there on the webinar great it's always great to do these webinars and good to see you guys on every week. Anthony, as always it's a pleasure. Jon in there as well I think he's still uh still on-board with us. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Next week we have uh i want to say next week we have the Osprey people on. I got to confirm with them to make sure we're going to talk about i- want to talk about a sales prospecting or stuff like that with them watch your email we'll have some stuff coming up. We're trying to get these every week. If you know somebody who has a good topic to share I'll- introduce me to them and I'll be more than happy to uh have them on and use it. Anthony once again thanks again everyone and thanks everyone for taking uh 45 minutes out of your Thursday afternoon for us. >> Anthony: Alright, take care guys thank you. Chat log: 00:40:03 - Anthony Buonaspina: https://wave.webaim.org/ 00:40:11 - Anthony Buonaspina: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/ 00:40:34 - Anthony Buonaspina: https://www.litechadvisors.com/website-compliance/ada-accessibility/ 00:52:23 - Anthony-LI Tech Advisors: https://calendly.com/anthonybuonaspina/ceo-phone-meeting?month=2020-08 00:52:35 - Anthony-LI Tech Advisors: John - YES - we offer monthly. 00:53:08 - Jon Buonaspina: Hi John, Yes we offer "help desk" service where you can ask us questions and we will assist you in the remediation of your website 00:53:29 - Jon Buonaspina: The pricing can be tailored depending on scope of the project. 00:55:22 - Jon Buonaspina: Thank you attendees! Thank you Stuart!