Coty Craven

Inclusive Community Builder

Empowering teams to create inclusive content and products with a passion for developing kind and rewarding communities that companies thrive on.

A head shot of an androgynous person with short hair, faded on the sides and longer on top. They are smiling and wearing a royal blue shirt.

© C. L. Craven. All rights reserved.

My resume. Content in link.

Work

As a product manager and producer at Epic Games focused on accessibility and inclusion, I strove to ensure content was welcoming and accessible to a global community of developers. I had the privilege of serving as co-lead for the disability ERG and worked across multiple teams on accessible content creation, marketing efforts and access and inclusion guides.As the founder and former owner of award-winning media outlet, Can I Play That?, my work has driven change in the gaming industry. I have led diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility workshops at Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Duke University and I was invited to present at GDC 2021. I've created access and inclusion guidelines and guides for multiple industries, including games, tech, higher education, and writing and publishing.As a writer, I had the privilege of penning the first accessibility review to appear in a major games media outlet with my review of the Xbox Series X for IGN. In the spring of 2021, I was invited to bring my work in accessibility to the literary world when I delivered a workshop on accessibility for writers at ASU's Piper Writers Studio.I'm fortunate to have been the recipient of multiple awards for access and inclusion, including the Xbox MVP award and the Women in Games Global Advicacy Award. I was named one of GamesIndustry.biz's Game Changers and I recently had the privilege of being profiled in the book, 5o Women in Technology.

How One Becomes
Sarah Mead

Cover for How One Becomes Sarah Mead.

Sarah is an independent and successful queer woman. At forty-years-old, she’s just secured tenure at the university and she’s recently gotten engaged to Sam, a transgender man. Everything is going exactly as she hoped it would and she revels in this life she was never supposed to have. Sarah is the eldest daughter of a cult leader but had the good fortune of being born Deaf and, as her father told her, not of marriage quality. She left the cult at fifteen and never looked back. Until her aunt, the closest Sarah has had to a real mother, asks her and Sam to give her estranged sister and her young nephew a home. Her sister is fleeing the cult and her husband who has beaten her for a decade.Now faced with having to help her sister, who is nothing more than a stranger to her, and house a child, which neither Sarah nor Sam have ever wanted, Sarah fears Mina will derail everything good they’ve got going. How can they take care of a woman who knows nothing but violence, fear and a cult’s bastardized Christianity? How will their relationship endure what Sarah is certain will be the hateful scrutiny of her religious sister?

Praise for How One Becomes Sarah Mead

“Craven brings marginalized communities into sharp focus in this big, warm-hearted novel about what it means to be a family, and how the forces of diversity and inclusion can erode intolerance and hate.” — Melissa Hart | Better with Books: 500 Diverse Books to Ignite Empathy and Encourage Self-Acceptance in Tweens and Teens

“Sarah is the kind of character I wish publishing cared more about. She’s determined and kind and has her own struggles. Her disability isn’t the plot of the story. This makes the book even more gripping. The writing is a testament to what #OwnVoices is all about.” — Robert Kingett | Author & Editor

“I’ve wanted a book where it just happens to be that people are Muslim and they’re living actual lives that people live. Having human experiences and they happen to be Muslim. Because that’s reality, whether people want it or not. Genuine people having human experiences. The reconciliation of that is beautiful in this writing. I haven’t ever seen my story and a depiction of who I am as a Muslim portrayed before and it’s a sacred experience of feeling that I am real, I am valid, that comes when we see ourselves existing in fiction and that’s what I saw in this book.” — Krista Schaaf | Diversity & Inclusion Advocate

“A lovingly crafted glimpse at the strength of family, faith, and love. These characters embrace their intersectionality and flaws, and grow in beautiful ways throughout this novel as it examines the difficulties and discomforts of truly unconditional love.” — Tuğba Hamid | Social Worker and Educator

“Courtney goes beyond predictable picket fences with How One Becomes Sarah Mead, and bravely reflects the dance of colorful lights that shine through the tenacity of human narrative.”

About

I’m Coty and I’m a writer, producer, and accessibility expert. I live in Michigan with my dogs, Tali and Tater, the best girls. In my off time I love writing, slowly chipping away at my ever-growing gaming backlog, hiking, and binge watching the same five shows over and over again.

Two dogs, one on each side of me. We are wearing wearing matching purple outfits with rainbows and unicorns on them.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR WRITERS

Are you unintentionally keeping readers from your content?

Accessibility for Writers is a living document by C. L. Craven

If you search the web for information on creating and maintaining an author website you’ll likely be overwhelmed by the results. There are over 200 million results for the essential author website components. And most of them all say different shades of the same thing.You need a bio page, you need a contact page, you need a mailing list/newsletter, you need to sell your writing, you need to link to your social media profiles, and you need an area where visitors can learn about news and events about you and your writing.The unspoken rule of author platform creation? You design it with your ideal reader in mind.You know what else all of these search results have in common?Not one of them mentions website and content accessibility, which begs the question, does a person with a disability not fall into your vision of the ideal reader? Not likely. I don’t think most people actively set out to exclude anyone.But we do exclude people. Millions of them.Let’s talk about statistics (US statistics based on current info from the CDC):

45 million people have a disability that impacts their mobility in the US.
35 million people have a cognitive disability in the US.
19 million people are deaf or hard of hearing in the US.
15 million people are blind or visually impaired in the US.

1 in 4 adults in the US have a disability

That’s 1 in 4 people that may be visiting your platform that need your site and its content to be accessible. 1 in 4 people who may want to be a part of your community of readers but may be shut out because your site might be inaccessible. Or not as accessible as it could be.
A recent study found that 70% of disabled people and those with a strong emotional attachment to disabled people will click away from inaccessible content and not return. The same study found that people are willing to spend more money and be more loyal to brands they associate with accessible content and sites.
So now you’re wondering how you remedy that, right? Good! That’s why you’re here! So let’s break down accessibility for every important element of your site.

Your Host

Before you can work on accessibility for your site, you have to have a site that allows it and makes it as easy as it can for you to implement.- WordPress depends on the theme you're using. Some are more accessible than others and it's easy to get it wrong if you're not familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. For WordPress themes beyond their annual themes, it's best to consult an expert.
- Squarespace requires a bit of research to make your content accessible. As with WordPress, for Squarespace customization, it's best to consult an expert.
- Wix offers some pretty robust accessibility options.
- Weebly, well, according to their forums, they’re “working on it” after putting it to a community vote.
- Carrd makes it very simple. Everything but alt text is built in and alt text is right there when you add images. Carrd does require knowledge of markdown, but guidelines are right there available for you under your text entry box.

Make Your Content Accessible

Alt Text for All Images

Alt text allows visitors to your site with visual disabilities to access your images. Alt text is a concise description of an image. Your author portrait? Describe what you look like, what you’re wearing. Shots of your book covers? Describe the colors, the pattern. If it’s a photo or artwork of a scene, describe the scene.I was talking once about the importance of image accessibility and heard the comment, “They’re blind, how are they even going to know there’s a photo? Why describe it if they won’t ever see it?” Sheer ignorance of this comment aside, let me explain why it matters.Screen readers or operating system accessibility features read websites to users. If you don’t add alt text to every image, the visitor will instead hear the image file name. And who wants to hear “IMG_59432.jpg” when visiting your site?It also matters just because it’s the right thing to do, but I won’t lecture you on that. You’re here, learning, after all.

Social Media Image Accessibility

Ensuring your social media content is accessible is just as important as having an accessible site, as social media is now the main method of discovery for so many writers. Luckily Twitter and Facebook make that very easy, as both provide an easy way to add alt text to your image posts.

Twitter

To add alt text to Twitter images, all you need to do is add your photo to your post and then click the "add description" option. You can add alt text to GIFs on Twitter as well and you do so the same way as images. Twitter is rolling out an option to toggle a reminder to add alt text to all image posts too. If you don't have it yet, you can use the browser extension Alt or Not for desktop reminders.

Facebook

Facebook alt text for images is very similar to Twitter. It also automatically does a very rudimentary AI powered automatic alt text should you forget to add your own. However, this is about as helpful as YouTube’s auto-captions, so it’s always best to just compose it yourself. The other day I was testing the AI alt text feature and when posting an image of a gray t-shirt with the text, "Get Uncomfortable," the AI generated alt text read, "This image may contain text."To add image alt text on Facebook, compose your post as you normally would and then click the “edit image” icon. From here, you’ll find “Alt text” listed right along with all the other image options.
Facebook also allows you to edit alt text in case you forgot to add it and want to replace their auto-generated text. To do that, all you have to do is find the image you posted, click edit, and you'll see the option.

Instagram

Instagram is the trickiest platform for adding alt text because it hides the option. To add alt text on Instagram, you'll need to choose your image and filter as you usually would and on the screen where you add the caption and tags, all the way at the bottom in tiny letters you'll see "Advanced Settings." Tap that, scroll a bit to "Accessibility," and tap "Write Alt Text." If posting to Instagram from desktop, finding the alt text option is much easier, as it appears without any digging.Like Facebook, Instagram has its own very basic auto-alt text. Instead of hazarding a guess as to what's in the image like Facebook does, Instagram simply lists your name and the date you posted the photo. Not so helpful, right?Also like Facebook, Instagram allows you to edit alt text on previous posts. Again, to do this, just navigate to the post you'd like to edit, click edit, and you'll be able to change alt text or provide it for images you forgot.

A note about alt text

Keep it short. Twitter gives you 1000 characters for alt text. Facebook and Instagram allow an unknown number of characters. A general rule is to try to stay within 300 characters. Be as concise as you can with your descriptions while still conveying all essential info and context. Practice your best Twitter composition skills and keep it short and sweet.Also, make sure you’re including alt text on any images or infographics that contain text. Screen readers work by reading text through a site’s coding and therefore will not read the text in an image.And one last thing: there’s no need to say “Image of” or “Photo of” because these devices will indicate that to the user.

Alt Text for Infographics, Charts, Cartoons, and Text Images
Above I mentioned the character limitations on various platforms for alt text. They're quite limited, so what do you do if you're one of those super creative types that writes and creates cartoons or art? What if you like making educational infographics? Worried alt text will stifle your creativity?Don't be!There's actually a super easy solution to this predicament. Go pay a visit to Yi Shun Lai's Medium post, "Licorice All-Sorts, Definitively Sorted."See what she's done with the body of the text? If she'd posted her art without thinking of accessibility, or without thinking creatively about accessibility, it would have just been an image post either lacking alt text entirely or with superficial "Cartoon ranking types of licorice" alt text. But she decided to include far more people that an image post often does by describing every single element and its context in the body of the document. This allows not only blind and low-vision visitors to enjoy her work, but people with reading or other cognitive disabilities too!
Alt Text and Social Media Management Apps

Here's the least fun part of creating accessible social content. The vast majority of social media management apps don't make any accessibility info easy to find. If you want to find out if any management apps allow for adding alt text to images or captions to videos, you'll either need an account with them already or you'll have to contact them to ask.

Screen Reader Text Accessibility

There is a very unfortunate trend on Twitter for people to use stylized text for their usernames and bios and tweets. This presents a myriad of accessibility issues, ranging from simply appearing as a series of boxes on Android devices and Chromebooks, to being difficult to read. The biggest issue that this trend presents though is how this sort of text sounds for screen reader users. Listen to the video in this tweet from Kent C. Dodds:

The video shows the device narrator speaking a full description for every single letter that isn’t the standard Twitter text style. “You. Mathematical sans serif italic small t. Mathematical sans serif italic small h. Mathematical sans serif italic small i. Mathematical sans serif italic small n. Mathematical sans serif italic small k. It’s. Mathematical script small c. Mathematical script small u. Mathematical script small t…” You get the point. All that and we’re only 3.5 words into the tweet.Would you want to spend five minutes of your time listening to this just to read a simple tweet? No, you probably wouldn’t. So why would you force anyone else to? I can’t think of a quicker way to make a person close your tweet, so this practice is best avoided.

Social Media Hashtag Accessibility

If you use Twitter or Instagram, you’re very familiar with hashtags. They’re a large part of how your posts find their intended audience. They’re searchable and quite handy if you have a question for, say, the #WritingCommunity, and they allow you to essentially give your posts a subject. But did you know that you should be capitalizing the first letter of every word in a hashtag? Even if that capitalization isn’t grammatically correct, make sure you make this a habit. Why? Because by capitalizing the first letter of each word, people accessing your content through a screen reader will hear them as individual words instead of the screen reader speaking each letter of your four-word-long hashtag. So do hashtags #LikeThis and not #likethis.

Blog Content Accessibility

The actual content of your blogs and websites might actually be the simplest place to implement good accessibility practices because there are only a couple rules to adhere to.- Never release content that is PDF-only unless you are certain you have properly structured it for screen reader use. You can do this using the Accessibility Checker in MS Word.
- Always use high contrast colors and clean, easy-to-read fonts. Sans serif is best.
- Stay away from highly saturated background colors as they will be a massive barrier for visitors to your site with low-vision (they're a strain for those of us with great sight, if we're being honest).

Social Media Video Accessibility
In recent years, many have moved on to video content instead of relying solely on text and image content. While videos are great and a super engaging way to connect with your readers, they also take a bit more work to make them accessible.
Facebook
Facebook makes it very easy to add a caption file to videos when posting from desktop. When posting from mobile, adding captions is, unfortunately, not possible.To add captions to your video all you have to do is add the video as you normally would, click "Add Captions," and then you'll upload your file. That's it! And don't worry, I'll discuss how to get a caption file in a bit.
Twitter
Please note that this section may not be accurate, as the accessibility features available for Twitter users change and break on a regular basis.Twitter also makes it very easy to add captions but again, only via desktop posting.To add captions to a video tweet, add your video as usual and then you will see a little "Upload caption file" text down in the bottom corner of the composition area below the video. Click it, add your file, and you're done!
Instagram
Instagram doesn't allow users to add captions. Yep, you read that right. No in-app captions to be found there. Just some pretty bad auto-captions. So how can you still make accessible videos on the platform? Easy! Google "Instagram caption app" and pick your favorite. Through one of dozens of apps, you can create what are called open captions (meaning they're always open/on as opposed to closed captions which can be closed/turned off).Open captions aren't ideal because they don't work with screen readers, so DeafBlind readers will not be served by them, but with the choice of no captions or open captions, open captions are better than nothing.
TikTok
Unlike Instagram, TikTok has its very own in-app caption editor and it's great. It starts you out with auto-generated captions which you can then edit for accuracy and add punctuation. And I encourage you to edit them because as good as TikTok's auto-captions are, they're still inaccurate and without punctuation.I also encourage you to use the in-app feature as opposed to the same app you use for Instagram because TikTok's caption editor was built with accessibility in mind while the dozens of available captioning apps appear to have been designed to make captions look pretty. Pretty captions matter far less than functional captions to those of us who rely on them. Function over form in captions always.

Subtitles, Captioning, and Transcripts for Videos, Podcasts, and Vlogs

Writers and book bloggers seem to be gravitating more and more toward video and audio content and podcasts are more popular than ever. Whether it’s a vlog, a chat with readers, or an interview, it’s prime content for your site whether you’re a budding author or a writer with a few novels under their belt.The problem with this? It’s often inaccessible and when it is accessible, that accessibility is of poor quality. Luckily, this is not an impossible problem to solve.For videos, all you need to do is make sure all of your videos are captioned. There are a couple of ways you can go about this too.- Use a professional captioning and transcript service like Rev or my go-to, 3Play Media.
- Do your own captions in YouTube or another video editor.
- If you publish a lot of this sort of content, for $30 a month, you can get access to a new-ish app I absolutely love—Descript. Descript is a video editor with caption and transcript creation and editing abilities. The best part is that you don't need to know how to caption to use it. You only need to know how to edit a document.
You’ll notice that I didn’t say “just rely on YouTube’s auto-captions.” Why? Because they’re bad. They’re very very bad. Unless you speak in a crystal clear and completely nondescript American accent, YouTube auto-captions will butcher many of your words.Captioning services like Rev or 3Play cost anywhere from $1.25 to $2.50 per minute of content and usually come with a quality guarantee. There are also a myriad of free captioning apps and software. Amara, for example, is completely free and allows you to crowdsource your captions from your fans and followers. Want to do your own? Follow a few simple guidelines and it’s surprisingly easy to do. Subtitle Edit is free and super easy to use software you can download and compose your own captions in a whole host of formats (YouTube uses the WebVTT format). You can also create and time your own captions from within YouTube.What are the guidelines for doing your own captioning?- Use a sans serif font like Arial.
- For standard definition videos stick with 22 pt. font.
- For high definition videos double that to 44 pt. font.
- No more than 37 characters per line AND break up your lines of text with the natural flow of speech.
- Never never never censor your captions.
- I’ll say it again. Never censor your captions. It is not up to you to decide what kind of content people who rely on captioning can consume. If you or your guest curse, caption it. If you don’t want to caption it, it shouldn’t be spoken in the video.
- Along the same lines of never censoring your captions, never correct speech. If someone says “y’all” you type “y’all.”
- Indicate a change in speaker with the person’s name or a very brief description of them. It is not necessary to include a speaker label with every line, only when the speaker changes.
- If you use music in your videos or podcasts, give it a brief description e.g. [Slow acoustic guitar music]
- Never use the words, “Sound of…” No [Sound of tires screeching] [Sound of birds chirping]. Simply describe the sound.
(Looking for a deep dive on captioning guidelines? The BBC offers a wealth of information on proper captioning and are the gold standard.)A super easy way to caption your video content is to simply do a copy edit of YouTube’s auto-generated captions.Need help doing podcast transcripts? Visit Web Captioner, a free web app, that allows you to generate free .txt files of anything spoken into your mic while recording a podcast. As with YouTube’s auto-captions, once you’ve got this .txt file, all you need to do is copy edit and you’re done.It’s also helpful, and for podcasts with no video, it’s necessary, to provide a time-stamped transcript. Look no further than any TED Talk for a wonderful example of a time-stamped transcript.

Why Good Captioning Practices Matter

You'll notice I've said you shouldn't be relying on YouTube's auto-captioning feature for your captions, right? You may be wondering why they even offer it if not for you to use.The issue here is one of quality. Auto-captions lack punctuation and are rarely accurate, especially if there is more than one person in the video or if the video is not strictly scripted. Accessibility aside, relying on auto-captions actually hurts your content's SEO.Time and again, as a hard of hearing person, I'll learn of new video content, a new series on on the web, or a webinar I really want to attend. I'll get there, find it's only got auto-captions, and immediately leave. Why? Because it is incredibly exhausting to have to actively listen to every single word spoken all of the time. And because if I'm being honest, I'm just sick and tired of content creators seemingly not even realizing there might be Deaf and hard of hearing people interested in their videos. Having to ask for access over and over and over again is enough to turn anyone off from any content, no matter how great it is. The last thing most of us want is to make anyone come away from our site or channels feeling like we don't see them, we don't care about them. Making the effort to provide proper captions will go a long way in winning you a new fan and follower.

Use Text Styles for Content Navigation

What on earth does this even mean? I mean styling like headers to arrange content hierarchy. When you think of headers you probably consider them to be simply a way to title your content or introduce a new section, right? They are these things, they help content flow in an attractive and logical manner but for visitors to your site using a screen reader and many people with cognitive disabilities, they serve a much greater purpose.Headers organize the hierarchy of all the information you have on your site and they serve as a guide for screen readers. They also let visitors using screen readers skip easily from section to section. Headers are the best way to highlight important content, to draw the visitor’s attention to something specific, and they do so much more successfully for visitors with a visual disability than, say, colored or bolded text.In most visual editors, like the one for WordPress and Carrd sites, you can select the size/importance of your headers, from H1 being the biggest and most important, to H6.Want to practice this? A great way to do so is to head on over to Carrd and create a free site. Stick some text on it and in doing so, you'll see that unlike a lot of site builders, Carrd won't do it for you. You have to decide your own organization, just as I've done here. Want to check how I've organized things here? Just right click on each element and click "Inspect." This will show you the classification of each text element on the page.

About your site colors...

Take a trip on over to Color Oracle (link at the bottom of the page) for this section and peruse the menu for a few.Back?Ok. Now you hopefully have a better understanding of the importance of carefully choosing your color palettes and values. If you’re trying to communicate something through color on your website, be aware that it may fall flat (or fail entirely) for some visitors.Where can you find color palettes designed with the varying types of colorblindness in mind? See links at the bottom of the page.Text

Newsletters

The rules of accessibility for newsletters? Identical to the rules for website content. Luckily, most popular mailing list managers, like MailChimp and Constant Contact, give users a content editor very similar to that of WordPress or Squarespace. Just like your website, the last thing you want to do is present a subscriber with a newsletter email they can’t access because unlike visiting your website where all a user can do is close it and hope to find a better one, email gives us the power of the dreaded spam and unsubscribe buttons. Once a subscriber has hit that button, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever get them back as a supporter of your work.

Contact Forms

On your contact page, make sure that you’re never using only a contact form. These can be wildly inaccessible to visitors with visual disabilities and mobility issues.Make sure to include your email address in addition to your contact form.

In Conclusion

One last note before you jump into making your content more accessible.As we come to rely more and more on the internet as a source of news, information, and entertainment, it is more important than ever to ensure your website is accessible. While there is no explicit mention of websites in the accessibility requirements outlined in the ADA, recent years have seen a tremendous increase in the amount of lawsuits (in 2017 there were 814 such lawsuits). Huge corporations like Nike and icons like Beyonce have found themselves being sued due to inaccessible content.Are you personally going to have a reader that sues you because you didn’t caption your videos or use alt text for your images? If you’re Stephen King or Dean Koontz it’s probably much more likely than it would be for a debut author or a freelance writer. But I mentioned earlier, accessibility should be included in your website simply because you can. You don’t want to be that person who embraces accessibility because you’ve been forced with the “well I guess if I have to…” attitude.In my work doing video game accessibility consulting, I’ve told developers time and time again, regarding deaf/hoh accessibility, if it’s important enough to include the sound in your game, it’s important enough to caption. Same goes for website content. If it’s important enough for you to include on your website, it’s important enough to ensure all of your readers can access it equally in whatever manner best suits them.I hope you’ve found this to be a helpful stepping stone toward making your site more accessible. This is far from a comprehensive guide on making all the things accessible for all the people but I hope it’s a starting point.Now get out there and make your stuff more accessible!

Links

BBC Subtitle GuidelinesTED Talk transcript exampleColor OracleColor Palettes for Color Blindness

Contact

You can contact me at cotycraven@gmail.com or send me a message via this form.

Thank you