Communication Untangled

Hector Minto, Lead Accessibility Evangelist for Microsoft, joins communications specialist Sue Keogh to explain how AI is transforming the ability to create fast, accurate captions, and how to make your digital content more accessible and inclusive. Plus a trip to the Tate, and how the clarity of their artwork descriptions make everyone feel welcome in their galleries. Have you noticed how captions have become more commonplace nowadays. Influencers add text to their TikToks and Instagram reels so you can understand their content – even with the sound off. Or you might be in a Teams meeting and there will be live captions as it goes along – really helpful if you have issues with your hearing, or maybe English isn’t your first language…or you’re in a new job and just don’t know what everyone’s talking about! My guest in this episode is Hector Minto, and he’s the Lead Accessibility Evangelist at Microsoft. He’s spent his career focusing on accessibility, assistive technology, and disability issues.  The day we met he was giving a talk on digital inclusion at a Lloyds Bank event – so we ducked off into a side room, where he told me about how AI is transforming the ability to create fast, accurate captions and the difference this is making so people don’t get left behind in an ever-more digital society.  He also shares some brilliant tips on alt text, captions and tools to make your content more accessible and inclusive. Along the way, we’ll take a moment to think about Tate galleries– and how the clarity of the artwork descriptions and the font itself help break down barriers and make everyone feel welcome. Show notes About Hector Minto Hector is a dedicated leader in accessibility and leads Microsoft customer and partner engagement strategy for accessibility, growing awareness of assistive technology inside the largest employers across all geographies.  He has worked in the field of Assistive Technology (AT) and accessibility for over 25 years, working with both established and emerging technologies, maximising their effectiveness across the wide range of people with physical, learning and sensory disabilities.  Hector is the current UK Government Disability and Access Ambassador for the Technology and Website sectors. He actively contributes to government consultations on disability inclusion and promotes inclusive design, product accessibility, inclusive hiring practices, and accessibility innovation.  His dedication to accessibility and his influential advocacy for disability rights have made him a visionary leader in the industry. His work continues to inspire and shape the future of inclusive technology. Useful links Connect on LinkedIn Accessibility at work | LinkedIn Learning Accessibility 101 | YouTube  Enterprise Disability Answer DeskAnd thank you toRob Birnie for production: https://madebydbm.com/Patrick Holgado for marketing supportThe Cranes Nest podcast studio in Cambridge: https://www.thecranenest.co.uk/

How do we tell people where to go? Author and transport expert Mark Ovenden joins us to talk about legends of design Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir and the critical role they played in the signage we see on motorways and airports today.You’ll find out how patterns in the tiles on the London Underground were designed to help people with low literacy head in the right direction. We also take a break in the middle to find out why Sydney leads the world in wayfinding for people who are blind and visually impaired.Oh, and look out for a woolly mammoth and a cow named Patience.Picture yourself, walking hastily through a hospital in a town you’ve never been to before, anxious and worried, trying to find the ward where your loved one is being treated.  Or it’s the middle of the night, your hotel is being evacuated, you’re half asleep, and it’s only because of the green lit symbols that you know which direction to run to get to safety.  At the centre of these critical moments in our lives are signs.And I think we have a strangely intimate connection with them. Our minds are on much bigger, more urgent things, but it’s these signs that we are completely dependent on, even if just for a few seconds.My guest on this episode is broadcaster Mark Ovenden, specialist in graphic design, cartography and architecture in public transport. He’s the author of some brilliant books including London Underground by Design, Transit Maps of the World, and 50 Iconic Metro Maps. He’s a mine of information on this subject.Show notesFind out about the City of Sydney’s wayfinding and signage for blind and visually impaired people here.About Mark OvendenMark Ovenden is an author, broadcaster and lecturer whose book sales on cartography and design are approaching a quarter of a million. His 2017 one-hour TV documentary on typefaces for BBC4 was watched by 400,000. Mark brings “joyful insight and accessibility” to what might appear as technical subjects. Mark's infectious enthusiasm “enthrals audiences” in broadcasts, podcasts or lectures. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with a social media following.Born and brought up in London, Mark lived and worked in France and the USA. Before returning to his love of cartography in the early noughties, he worked as a presenter and producer for the BBC and commercial radio stations. As a kid, he built miniature TV studios out of Lego, set up a home radio station, collected old maps and explored abandoned train lines.  Mark became a newsreader/presenter for Manchester’s Kiss102 in 1994; joined Radio 1 in 1998; became a music programmer for MTV in 1999; then a producer at Atlantic252. In 2000, Mark moved to Ministry Of Sound Radio, then went back to TV.The books came next: Metro Maps of The World, London Underground by Design, Transit Maps of The World, Metrolink: The First 25 Years, a guide to London Underground architecture and Metro Maps of the World. He fronted a documentary for Radio 4 in 2018 and produced a book on Airline Maps, followed by one about Underground Cities and a guide to Paris Metro Architecture.More programmes, lectures and books are in the pipeline.Connect with Mark at markovenden.com@markovenden on X@mark_ovenden on YouTube@markonthemaps on Instagram

Why do the thoughts of complete strangers have so much influence over our buying decisions? Trustist Founder Nigel Apperley explains the power of good reviews in your business, how to seek out ‘moments of delight’, and why a 4.7 rating is the sweet spot when choosing a restaurant. Plus! How Ryanair mocks customers for their bad reviews – and still makes more sales. In this episode we meet Trustist founder Nigel Apperley. He has two decades of ecommerce expertise, at places like Slendertone and Waterford Wedgwood Royal Doulton. It was when he was Director of Ecommerce at Kwik-Fit that he really started to see a link between customer reviews and sales. So he ran an experiment. He gathered up Google reviews, and showed them on the website and on screens in stores. And saw an average increase in revenue of over 50%. Bit of a lightbulb moment!  So in 2014 he set up Trustist, a customer review platform which pulls together reviews from lots of different sources to give you stars in Google search results. Which leads to more clicks – and more sales!  Listen to our conversation and discover: The power of ‘moments of delight’ and ‘review gating’ The right time to ask for a review? Why a 4.7-star rating better than 5 out of 5 The impact of reviews on your conversion rate (and how to deal with bad ones) The right question to ask for the most positive and useful response Show notes Read more about Nigel and the story of Trustist: https://trustist.com/about/ Find out how you can use Trustist to get more stars in Google search results, drive traffic, reach more customers, and streamline how you display positive reviews of your business. Book a demo: https://trustist.org/ChrisConsultation See pics from the Ryanair we refer to and see Martha in her pink flamingo! https://www.theinspiration.com/2023/09/ryanair-being-ryanair/ 

Nathalie Nahai, behavioural psychologist and author of the book Webs of Influence, explains how colour shapes our decisions and affects our buying behaviour. And what it is about red that makes it the winning colour? In this episode we’re talking colour psychology and how you can apply these techniques to your own website and branding. You’ll learn about: The colours which imply trust, calmness and wealth Which combinations make us see danger How different generations and cultures respond differently to colour – and how global influences throw all this out of the window And why our brains process a black and white caricature of Celine Dion more quickly than a colour photo. We will also be taking a break in the middle to explore why red is statistically shown to be a colour for winners – great news for Manchester United fans, but not so much for Chelsea… Show notes Visit Nathalie Nahai’s website where you can buy her books, listen to her podcast and discover useful resources. About Nathalie Nahai Nathalie’s background in human behaviour, web design and the arts offer a unique vantage point from which to examine the complex challenges we face today.  Her best-selling book: Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion has been adopted as the go-to manual by business leaders and universities alike, and her new book, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”.  A popular speaker, consultant and facilitator to Fortune 500 companies, Nathalie also serves as a behavioural science advisor and helps organisations to ethically apply behavioural science principles to enhance their business.  Having lectured at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, Nathalie's ability to ignite conversation and offer tools and strategies with which to harness human potential, has helped countless organisations transform how they approach business online, with clients including Google, Accenture, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, among others.  Having co-hosted the Guardian Tech Weekly, Nathalie now hosts the popular podcast, Nathalie Nahai In Conversation, which explores our relationship with one another, with technology, and with the natural world.  She is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

Iain Boyd and Adam Robertson from GOV.UK Forms at the Government Digital Service join us to share best practice in designing online forms to capture information efficiently and ethically. Plus, discover the dark patterns on the web which set out to trick us into doing things we never set out to do.Online forms. They’re either so intuitive you hardly notice you’ve filled them in. Or they take so long to complete that you just lose the will to live.Or maybe you’re the one creating the form and trying to gather the information. People just don’t fill them in properly! How can you work with data that’s incomplete?An organisation dealing with this issue on a massive scale is Government Digital Service, who are behind GOV.UK, the website for the UK Government. More than 13m people use GOV.UK weekly, and more than 1bn transactions are completed a year – things like filing a tax return or renewing your passport. GDS are introducing their new Forms Builder to make Government forms more accessible.Our two guests on this episode are both from GOV.UK Forms at Government Digital Service. They share best practice in designing online forms so that not only do more people fill them in – but you get accurate data too:Adam Robertson, Senior Product ManagerIain Boyd, Engagement Lead at GOV.UK at the UK Government Digital Service and Iain Boyd from GDSAnd in complete contrast to this ethical, transparent approach, you’ll find out about dark patterns on the web, and why Amazon, Google, Meta and the makers of Fortnite are being fined millions of dollars for tricking users into doing things they simply never set out to do. And who’s clamping down on nudges and sludges, biased framing and confirmshaming once and for all?Show notesGOV.UK Forms builder tool: “Create an accessible online form in minutes without needing technical knowledge”Government Digital Service service manual. Accessibility, measurement, research, good design practice…it’s all in here!GDS blog: How we’re opening up access to GOV.UK formsGDS blog: Making it easy to create and publish digital forms on GOV.UKAbout dark patternsVisit Harry Brignull’s website, Deceptive Patterns for a full description of the term and some pretty horrifying examples in the Hall of Shame!The autofill dark patternUK regulators target dark patternsNational Law Review: FTC report shows increase in dark patternsICO and CMA clamp down on dark patterns in the UK

Sean Willard from The Menu Engineers joins communications specialist Sue Keogh to talk about menu design. What big shifts are we seeing in this post-pandemic era? How do the fonts, colours and material they’re printed on affect our choices? And why should every restaurant offer something that lets you blow the budget? Plus! How does Netflix use idleness aversion in their menu to keep us endlessly scrolling through?No one understands more about the psychology of designing a menu than Sean Willard from The Menu Engineers.He’s got over two decades in the restaurant trade. Starting out in a steakhouse at 18, he went on to study at Cornell’s prestigious Hotel School under the tutelage of Gregg Rapp, who laid the foundations for the techniques The Menu Engineers use today to optimise menus.We talk about the huge shifts in menu design in this post-pandemic era. How the fonts, colours and material they’re printed on affect our choices. And why every restaurant should have an item on the menu that lets you really blow the budget.Along the way, we’ll look at how entertainment giant Netflix uses idleness aversion tactics in its menu design to help us pick what we want to watch out of thousands of titles. About Sean WillardSean Willard is a seasoned Menu Engineer dedicated to assisting restaurateurs and hospitality operators worldwide in the creation of optimised menus. His approach melds the precision of science, the finesse of art, the insights of data, and a wealth of industry experience to empower restaurateurs in crafting menus that not only bolster profitability but also elevate the overall guest dining experience.With a distinguished academic background from Cornell’s prestigious Hotel School and an extensive tenure within the restaurant industry spanning over two decades, Sean brings a wealth of knowledge and practical expertise to the realm of Menu Engineering. His journey into this specialised field was cultivated under the mentorship of the late Gregg Rapp, a luminary in the discipline who laid the foundations for many of the methodologies and principles still revered today.Get in touch with Sean via menuEngineers.com, on Instagram or LinkedIn.