Season 4

Jim Infantino:
I've read a little of Define. Let me start that again.

Lionel:
Yeah, cut. The entire episode is a blooper's reel.

Jim Infantino:
I saw the day of the jackal.

Lionel:
Oh, you watched the movie?

Jim Infantino:
I watched the movie. I did. In

Lionel:
Really?

Jim Infantino:
my off time, in my free time, I did. I had to do it in two sittings because it is a bit of a long film.

Lionel:
It's two and a half hours. What did

Jim Infantino:
It's

Lionel:
you think?

Jim Infantino:
an interesting film. Very hard-nosed, really hard-nosed film. And it's funny because it sort of has this... 007 feel. You've got this assassin and this historical kill de Gaulle kind of movement, which I didn't. I had no idea that they want that was an assassination attempt on de Gaulle or that there was an entire movement in France

Lionel:
Oh

Jim Infantino:
that

Lionel:
yeah.

Jim Infantino:
wanted him dead because of.

Lionel:
He withdrew from Algeria. They're

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
really

Jim Infantino:
that's

Lionel:
pissed.

Jim Infantino:
right. What

Lionel:
The paratroopers.

Jim Infantino:
a liberating Algeria, right? Was it liberating or was it just that they withdrew? What

Lionel:
Well,

Jim Infantino:
actually

Lionel:
France

Jim Infantino:
never

Lionel:
got

Jim Infantino:
understood?

Lionel:
out of Algeria. France got out of Algeria and said, we're done. We're not, I'm not sure, but basically, he, de Gaulle got France out of Algeria and the paratroopers or the elite military troops were not amused in any way whatsoever.

Jim Infantino:
Right, right. It was like Cuba for us.

Lionel:
Yeah, it's also like Vietnam. I

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
mean, I

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
think that probably sort of weighed on, well, Vietnam also for France,

Jim Infantino:
with them.

Lionel:
during Dien Bien Phu had happened. And I think De Gaulle was aware

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
of that and said, you know what?

Jim Infantino:
so was this like a colonial thing where Algeria was like cheap labor, you know, you go and live like kings when

Lionel:
Well

Jim Infantino:
you're

Lionel:
that's where, that's where, isn't that where Camus grew up?

Jim Infantino:
Camus is from Algeria. Exactly.

Lionel:
Right,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
I think

Jim Infantino:
which

Lionel:
it's

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
Oran. I think

Jim Infantino:
was always curious about, you know,

Lionel:
that's

Jim Infantino:
because

Lionel:
what the plague

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
is about. I think that's where it takes place. Right?

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
And I,

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
we're probably mangling this horribly, but

Jim Infantino:
Mm.

Lionel:
yes, Day and the

Jim Infantino:
Like

Lionel:
Jackal,

Jim Infantino:
everything.

Lionel:
like every, but even, but we're treading on even more tender toes at

Jim Infantino:
That's

Lionel:
this

Jim Infantino:
true.

Lionel:
point.

Jim Infantino:
That's true.

Lionel:
But yes, there was, if you read the Wikipedia thing about Frederick Forsythe, he was a reporter and actually he covered that. He was involved in the reporting on the OAS, which I think was the organization of the secret army, which were all these dissident military people who were pissed off at

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
De Gaulle for abandoning them and pulling out of Algeria, and they wanted revenge or whatever

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
they wanted. So it's based very much in fact.

Jim Infantino:
Right, right. Even though this guy, the Jackal, is probably completely fictional, right? There's no record of him historically, I don't think. Or,

Lionel:
I don't know. I don't know,

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
but what did you think about the feel of the, I mean, to me, the feel of the film was so interesting.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, what did I call it? Hard, hard, it's like a hard boiled film. It's a, I don't know, it's like, it isn't, it's not like quite like a Hong Kong, you know, murder film. It's, I'm thinking of like Chow Yun-fat, who's this fantastic actor in these Hong Kong films. But it, what I found kind of wild was you sort of, you're sort of rooting for the Jackal, right?

Lionel:
Oh yeah,

Jim Infantino:
because

Lionel:
he's Wile E. Coyote.

Jim Infantino:
he's wildly, he's like avoiding things, he's planning things very carefully and he's gonna get the job done and he's so careful and professional and all this weird stuff, but then he just starts doing this awful crap and you start to hate him and then you start rooting for the cops to kill him. And that was really interesting, I thought, especially for a film of its time. I just thought it was really hard edge for its time. Like

Lionel:
But I

Jim Infantino:
it,

Lionel:
just love the cinematography. I love near the

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
end, it's all these huge street scenes of Paris.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I'm not sure

Lionel:
And

Jim Infantino:
how

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
they

Lionel:
don't

Jim Infantino:
did that.

Lionel:
know how they did that, but it starts making you think of like, that gritty streets of like, the seven ups and the French connection

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
and all those movies that we made at the same time, where you have all these like very sort of, real life, the camera in the streets kind of vibe rather than something that's extensively rehearsed. So it's kind of a mixture of that because you have, you know, you also, but it's, it's not glare. It's not the born identity. It's not high tech.

Jim Infantino:
No.

Lionel:
It's none of that. It's not mission impossible. It's

Jim Infantino:
Well,

Lionel:
not sort

Jim Infantino:
there's

Lionel:
of this

Jim Infantino:
a little bit like the gunmaker,

Lionel:
tiny bit.

Jim Infantino:
you know, there's, you know, the kind of gun that he gets made and how he hides it. And, you know, they has this idea for this for this rifle, basically, this assassin's

Lionel:
And I guess because

Jim Infantino:
rifle.

Lionel:
to a certain degree, we can't really see that movie the way it was seen the first time. Probably when people first saw that, that was like on the level of

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
the Bourne identity. But now, you know, to us, it just seems almost laughably naive. But

Jim Infantino:
Well,

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
it

Lionel:
really...

Jim Infantino:
was it was coming out with the broccoli films, you know, the 007 films right around the same around the same time. So it didn't have any fancy like it had a nice he had a nice car for a while. And

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
then he

Lionel:
but

Jim Infantino:
had

Lionel:
it did

Jim Infantino:
to

Lionel:
have

Jim Infantino:
ditch

Lionel:
machine

Jim Infantino:
it.

Lionel:
guns. It did the

Jim Infantino:
No. Yeah.

Lionel:
license plates didn't flip and stuff like that. Yeah, I thought

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
it was really cool. I thought it was a really fascinating film. I loved the cinematography. I love the pace of it. You know, with so many of the films today, it's just like everything is so tightly, everything just is so propulsive in the movies and so heavily, it's much more relaxed back then.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And it's two and a half hour film and it really takes its time to sort of build up to a crescendo. And I love how fast it ends. It's like

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
the final scene is like, it's like, you know, like 27 seconds long. And

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
also

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
it's like, okay, that's it. I guess we're

Jim Infantino:
And then

Lionel:
done.

Jim Infantino:
and then they never figured out who he was.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
And I thought that was interesting, too, because I thought it was a I thought it was a gap in the writing when the jackal says. Something like send it said it to me at my address when he's when he's first getting hired. There's, you know, in terms of it, I think it was it payment he was going to send or no, he was having the payment wired to a Swiss account.

Lionel:
Swiss bank,

Jim Infantino:
but

Lionel:
yeah.

Jim Infantino:
there was some kind of correspondence that was being sent to his address. And I said, no way, no way does he have an address. You're going to send something to write. He's the jackal. He's, he's like a top assassin. And it turns out, of course, it was a stolen address and with it at a stolen location, it was actually somebody else. Um, so yeah, it was, it was consistent. And, and it was. really kind of brutal in terms of its portrayal of the main character and the portrayal of the movement too. These generals that are sort of hiding out from the French government,

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
they know. And then there's a betrayal in the,

Lionel:
Right, and there's torture.

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
Yeah, I mean,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I bet you when it came out in whatever came out like 72, I bet you it was a shocker.

Jim Infantino:
It was a bit of a shocker today, I thought.

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
but a good film. I thought it just, but a really well-made film and moves the plot along. It's sort of the DNA for a lot of things that I think came after. I think it's Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsythe were the two guys, one of the two main guys who gave rise to this whole genre. I think it was Ludlum who did all the boring stuff

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
and Frederick Forsythe did this. The Odessa file, the boys

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
from Brazil, all this stuff. We talked about the last time. Anyway, so I'm glad you enjoyed it. I thought it was a really interesting trip back to a different era.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, definitely enjoyed. And then I have started the I've started the book by Robert Whitehill. And

Lionel:
book is that?

Jim Infantino:
the name is it's because it's not it's not an obvious I'm literally going to have to look this up and edit this out. Robert Blake. Whitehill. I'm enjoying the book. Yeah, Deadrise. Deadrise is the name is the name of the book. Yeah, and it's a it's got a slow start. So you need to stick with it. It's not he's not. I mean, he drops you in with some with a kind of a shock, but the shock doesn't mean anything because you haven't really connected with the main character yet. And a lot of the beginning of the book is connecting with this main character, which I believe is the main character for a number of books that follow. And there is also this very mercurial bad guy that just seems like a goof kind of a political hang on, hang around

Lionel:
Right?

Jim Infantino:
in the beginning and then you realize is actually kind of a G Gordon Liddy type bad guy. So interesting, yeah, interesting. I haven't been able to read very quickly. I've been just falling asleep because I've been exhausted because I'm getting up at five. I'm

Lionel:
Why

Jim Infantino:
doing

Lionel:
are you

Jim Infantino:
yoga,

Lionel:
getting up at

Jim Infantino:
but

Lionel:
five?

Jim Infantino:
I'm getting up at five and doing yoga.

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim Infantino:
And I've been doing that as an experiment because I thought I had read somewhere that, you know, Some people exercise first thing in the morning because the body builds up cortisol when you sleep. And cortisol is a stress drug, stress hormone. So if you sweat a little bit in the morning, then you can kind of burn that off.

Lionel:
Huh?

Jim Infantino:
Now, I don't know how accurate that is, but it seemed like a reasonable hypothesis. So I thought I would test it out by getting up before everybody else and then doing yoga first thing in the morning. And I think it has a good effect. Plus I'm doing yoga every day. I'm not doing a lot,

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
I'm just sort

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
of

Lionel:
found

Jim Infantino:
doing

Lionel:
that

Jim Infantino:
a little.

Lionel:
if I get up first thing, and I may do this tomorrow morning, it's getting nice and chilly around here. You get up first thing in the morning, you take a nice walk around the park.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
You know, you get in like a half mile to a mile walk. I think it helps set the dials a little bit. It helps sand the edges off a little

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
bit. Because the great thing about exercise is that it's an absolute sense of accomplishment. I did that today.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
There's nothing to ARIA. It's not like Work where like, I don't know if that HTML code is the, you know,

Jim Infantino:
Oh, Jesus.

Lionel:
yeah, exactly.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
But at least with exercise, it's an absolute achievement. I got my fresh air. I got out. I participated in the world outside. I got some exercise. I got some fresh, you know, all that

Jim Infantino:
And

Lionel:
kind

Jim Infantino:
walking

Lionel:
of stuff.

Jim Infantino:
does something to the brain, I think.

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
You know,

Lionel:
well,

Jim Infantino:
walking

Lionel:
yeah.

Jim Infantino:
activates certain thoughts you wouldn't ordinarily have if you're just walking and not also listening to an audio book or a podcast. That, yeah, that is an absolute good, I agree.

Lionel:
And every time I do it around here, I can't listen to anything. It's, it's amazing. I say, okay, I should really load a podcast or a book. I'm like, I can't stand to listen to anything anymore. I'm

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
really tired of listening to people talking. I really, it's really

Jim Infantino:
Speaking

Lionel:
weird.

Jim Infantino:
of which,

Lionel:
Speaking

Jim Infantino:
yes,

Lionel:
of which,

Jim Infantino:
if you'd like to support the podcast

Lionel:
right.

Jim Infantino:
go to

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
patreon.com slash jimifatino

Lionel:
Um, I just, for some reason, I just, I don't want to hear, I've, I've been listening to stuff for decades. And all I want to do is just go out there and walk and just look around and just look at the leaves and look at the water. And I think that I think it's easy to underestimate the importance of the salutary effect of just a human being looking at nature.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm

Lionel:
Aside from all the poetic and the transcendental values of it, I think there's something good for the brain. I think we're creatures that have been hardwired for a gazillion years. to read the landscape and to look at the landscape and to analyze the landscape. And I think if you sit in a room staring at a screen too long, you go a little nutty. And I think it's really good just to go out and stare at a tree for a little while because I think your eye sort of reacts to that. But anyway,

Jim Infantino:
No, yeah, I agree.

Lionel:
so that's why you're doing yoga at five o'clock.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah, and I mean, I like the idea of walking, but I'm really enjoying doing this because it was getting to the point where I was having like hip pain and knee pain. And, you know, it's like, I used to do yoga a lot. And right now I don't feel like I could do any of it, but, you know, I'm just doing a little bit and it's

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
totally

Lionel:
and you

Jim Infantino:
loosening

Lionel:
do it.

Jim Infantino:
up and it works.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
But now you're exhausted.

Jim Infantino:
Well, I mean, the thing is I'm getting up at five, so I go to sleep at nine, you know, and

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
that pretty much nine sharp And so reading, you know until ten is not always

Lionel:
in the

Jim Infantino:
gonna

Lionel:
cards.

Jim Infantino:
work out. Yeah

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
but

Lionel:
So should I read Deadrise? Do we want to?

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I think it'd be great because

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim Infantino:
I think we could have I think we could have Robert on as a guest If we if we do it would be it would be him. He's got it like a lot of books out. So If we at least read one Something to talk about We can find out more of what's in store for the other books. But it is along the lines of The Day of the Jackal. Applebee's Grill is calling me. That's interesting. It is along the lines of The Day of the Jackal. So, I mean, it's in that it's in that milieu, the whole thriller type.

Lionel:
International thriller.

Jim Infantino:
There is some kind of it's a political I can't

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
quite get grasp what's going on, but, you know, there's a sunken ship, you know. And yeah,

Lionel:
Ooh,

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
there's a McGuffin.

Jim Infantino:
And it's in MacGuffin and it takes place on the Chesapeake Bay. So it's all based around Robert's stomping grounds.

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
So

Lionel:
So it

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
sounds like we've got a heavy dose of the, one of the grand days of them all Tom Clancy.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah, there's a bright and it's stuff I just never read. So that I think that'll be interesting.

Lionel:
Well, it's interesting since we have nothing else prepared for this evening. I've read, I mean, I read a lot of Tom Clancy.

Jim Infantino:
Mmm.

Lionel:
I read Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Some of All Fears, and I probably read one or two other in addition to that. Hunt for Red October is a fabulous book. It's a great book. It's a, and it's really different from all of his other books. There's also Patriot Games, which is kind of weird, which is about the IRA, and it's a different thing altogether.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
But Hunt for October is a fabulous book. It's a really good book and a great opening book. I just never dug... With each book he did after that, I lost more and more interest as it

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
went on. Because what Hunt for October is about, it's fun. It's about honor.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
It's about problem solving. It's about, you know, being clever. Um,

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
how do we manage to steal a Soviet nuclear missile submarine

Jim Infantino:
Right, right.

Lionel:
without the Soviets knowing we've taken it?

Jim Infantino:
Well, he's

Lionel:
That's.

Jim Infantino:
defecting, right? I mean, that's is I mean,

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
I saw the movie. I didn't want I didn't read

Lionel:
Oh,

Jim Infantino:
the

Lionel:
the

Jim Infantino:
book.

Lionel:
movie's great. Movie's

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
fabulous.

Jim Infantino:
I mean, Sean Connery

Lionel:
Sean

Jim Infantino:
is lovely.

Lionel:
Connery

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
is

Jim Infantino:
can.

Lionel:
awesome. And Alec

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
Baldwin. What?

Jim Infantino:
I just wanted to mention there is only one actor, anyone, although the main actor in The Day of the Jackal is fantastic. I've never missed somebody, Fox, like Michael, not Michael Fox, but like Jeffrey Fox or something is his

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
name.

Lionel:
never heard of him again.

Jim Infantino:
Never just disappeared, but he was incredible and like sort of a beautiful physical specimen. He was like. not an ounce of fat on the guy and

Lionel:
Oh yeah.

Jim Infantino:
super muscular, really physical performance and amazing, really great acting. But then everybody else, you just don't know. I mean, because they're long time dead, but Derek Jacobi is.

Lionel:
And what does he play?

Jim Infantino:
Derek Jacobi plays the assistant to the detective, the chief inspector.

Lionel:
That's right. And by the way, the chief detective, he's been in other things. In fact, I saw him just a couple of nights ago. He was the abbot of the monastery in the name of the Rose.

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
And

Jim Infantino:
oh...

Lionel:
in fact, he's been in a lot of films. I think a lot of them are French films. That's why we

Jim Infantino:
Mm.

Lionel:
don't know about him, but supposedly like he's a big, big actor in France. But anyway, a hundred

Jim Infantino:
Back to the

Lionel:
October,

Jim Infantino:
hunter.

Lionel:
a

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
hundred great movie, fabulous movie. of a fabulous book, but the great thing about the book is that it's fundamentally a really lighthearted book. There's no hatred.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm

Lionel:
There's sort of this simmering revenge in the heart of the captain, the Soviet submarine captain, but it's not a big deal. It doesn't define his life. He's just somebody who's going to make something happen. But there's nothing grim about it. And then Tom Clancy started writing more books and became more about revenge.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
and disappointment and humiliation. They just got, I just, I never liked them. The great, and I, again, one theme we keep returning to is why do we like the books that we like? And I, I've, for me, I've already said a lot of it's humor, but also a lot of it is about, I don't want to hear about people's humiliating, some traumatic thing that happened to them when they were nine and how that forces them to become a serial killer. I'm just, can we write a book that doesn't, I mean,

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
I'm just. I'm sure that happens and I'm pegging this microphone out, I think. Um, I'm, you know, I'm sure that happens, but can we write a book that doesn't have that? And you do, you have the hunt for Rod October, which is all about honor in, uh, humility. Um, the truth winning out. It's a good, it's a, it's a great book. It's a lot, a lot of fun, but then later on he just sort of became, you know, Tom's book started getting more and more morose and dark. Um, and I, and, and mean and violent and I didn't like it. Um,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
so anyway, I don't know how it, oh, you're talking about, uh, White Hill, Chesapeake Bay.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's, we've got that on the radar.

Lionel:
Okay, Dead Rise,

Jim Infantino:
Deadrise.

Lionel:
got it. And yesterday I was absolutely tormented by that song that I had recommended to you.

Jim Infantino:
Which song was

Lionel:
the color

Jim Infantino:
that?

Lionel:
of noise.

Jim Infantino:
Oh color of noise

Lionel:
So I have this thing where I go, oh, I remember I sent somebody an email about that, and then I spent two and a half hours looking for the email, and I never find it.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
And I know I'm losing it, I'm getting older, so I'm gonna have to lose it at some point, but I don't want it to be just right now. And yesterday I tore the house, I mean, metaphorically speaking, I tore the house apart for like an hour looking for that song.

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
And the way I finally found it, the reason why I wasn't finding it was that I was searching on emails from Jim Infantino. But in this case, the emails back and forth with Jim Infantino, but in this case, it was emails back and forth with Slab Media.

Jim Infantino:
Ahhhh

Lionel:
And noise was not spelled N-O-I-S-E, it was spelled N-O-I-Z-E. And that's why I wasn't finding anything.

Jim Infantino:
Oh, okay. Okay.

Lionel:
And so I finally found it and it was a touchdown. It is one of life's little unsullied triumphs that I may be losing it, but not today.

Jim Infantino:
No, I mean, that's hard enough. I mean, that it's, I think that's excusable.

Lionel:
Yes and so i'm never gonna forget that song again Derek hodge color of the color of noise and i see i recommend that everybody listen to that tune

Jim Infantino:
Okay.

Lionel:
it's about five minutes long and i think you listen to it too and the great things that it's not really a song. What is great

Jim Infantino:
Okay,

Lionel:
it's really fun to listen to it

Jim Infantino:
maybe,

Lionel:
so i do it.

Jim Infantino:
yeah, I don't remember it. So, you know, I'll go back and

Lionel:
It's just like

Jim Infantino:
check

Lionel:
this

Jim Infantino:
it out.

Lionel:
maelstrom of people playing. I think it's two drummers playing this incredibly fast beat, this

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
incredibly fast, very improvisational beat. And just a whole bunch of musicians swirling around and playing these. There is a chord pattern. There is an overall chord pattern. But the Rhythm at which they're playing bears no relationship, no discernible relationship

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
to what the drums are doing. And it really feels like you're Dorothy inside the tornado, inside

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
the twister and stuff. And there's, here comes the guy with the B3 and he just blows by you, you

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
know, playing his B3 as he goes flying past your head. And here comes the bassist and he goes flying past your head. And it's just a complete tornado of sound. And I find it really exhilarating because there's really no way you can tap your feet to it. Like there's none of that, there is nothing to hold on to. There are no grid lines at all in this music in any way whatsoever. And it's really kind of fun and sort of tying back to what I was saying before, it's like when you look at the trees blowing in

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
the wind and there's no pattern to it, but

Jim Infantino:
Mmm.

Lionel:
there's something immensely satisfying about it. There's something unbelievably organic and immensely satisfying watching. 10,000 leaves flip up and down randomly according to wind and air blowing across them. It's the same with this piece of music. It's just, it makes sense, but not in any way that you're used to. So anyway, Derek Hodge, Color of Noise, N-O-I-Z-E. It's on, go to YouTube and just

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
watch it.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I will check that out.

Lionel:
So what else

Jim Infantino:
That

Lionel:
is

Jim Infantino:
sounds

Lionel:
going

Jim Infantino:
really

Lionel:
on? What

Jim Infantino:
good.

Lionel:
about your California lard? You want to talk about something else?

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, that's a boy. I don't really even know where to begin with this. So I sent you I sent you the I have to look up the

Lionel:
the text of the bill.

Jim Infantino:
The bill, even the number of the bill. It is California a B 1757 And... I don't even have the I don't have the latest on it. You see if it's in the news. Um, all right. So no, there, it may, it may be passing. It says Cal, it's the latest, uh, from yesterday, California assembly bill on website accessibility downgraded from potential lawsuit tsunami to 2024 weather watch, uh, so this is new to me. I'm just reading it from JD Supra.com. The synopsis is AB 1757, which would set a standard for website accessibility for businesses in California has been held in the legislature to resume discussion in 2024. This is good news. And this is a short article. I'm just gonna read a bit of it. While Southern California and Burning Man revelers were hit with unprecedented severe storms in August, California legislature has given businesses at least a temporary reprieve from legislation that would likely have caused a tsunami of lawsuits on its own. As we reported, AB 1757 was seemingly well-intentioned to provide clarity around how websites must be coded to be considered accessible to individuals with disabilities and thus in compliance with the UNRWA Act and the Disabled Persons Act, California's corollaries to the Americans with Disabilities

Lionel:
Yeah, the

Jim Infantino:
Act,

Lionel:
ADA.

Jim Infantino:
the ADA. However, as drafted, it had some serious shortcomings that may well have resulted in even greater litigation and liability for businesses that we've already seen and newly imposed liability on website and mobile app developers. So on August 21st, 2023, the bill was held in Senate Appropriations Committee at the request of the bill's author. While the storm has passed for now, we expect to see the bill's return in 2024 and hope revisions we made to actually accomplish the bill's stated goal of reducing lawsuits while increasing accessibility and providing useful guidance to businesses. So... the upshot, because I read the August version of the bill. And it just, I mean, if I had hair, it would stand on end. What it does, so ADA is law. You need to have your websites accessible. And gradually, I've, of course, been coding my website so that type can be made larger and so that the page is readable and so that things are in a hierarchical method. partnered with a third party site called AccessiBee that has a widget that costs quite a bit of money, but solves all your accessibility problems under ADA. And just for people who don't understand that, a website cannot just be sort of useful only to people with all their senses. If you have a problem, seeing, if you have a problem with mobility, you have to be able to code a website in order that a person can tab through the buttons, that it's labeled properly, so that a sightless browser, a spoken browser can tell you what's on the page. Otherwise, just like a building, it's not accessible to people with disability. So, you know, to the best of my ability, I'm able to kind of code things, but once the... user starts to add their own content, you know, they may leave the alt text off of an image and then that might fail an ADA test or what's

Lionel:
The

Jim Infantino:
WCAG,

Lionel:
WCAG.

Jim Infantino:
WCAG.

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
The California bill said all websites for any business in California need to be WCAG AA accessible, 2.1 AA accessible,

Lionel:
Yep.

Jim Infantino:
or you can not only sue the business owner, you can sue the web design. Yeah, yeah,

Lionel:
Yeah, they got a lot of money to

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
go after.

Jim Infantino:
And that means, and every website needs to be audited, not only automatically, not only using software like AccessiB will do, but by a competent accessibility consultant, a certified accessibility consultant.

Lionel:
What are the thresholds on the businesses like you have to have at least 10 employees or more i mean

Jim Infantino:
No, there's

Lionel:
what's the jurisdiction

Jim Infantino:
nothing.

Lionel:
well.

Jim Infantino:
There was there was nothing in the bill about that. It was it was literally and it was also unclear that it would only affect California businesses. I mean, every website is viewable in California. So if your business is in Chicago, but your website is visible in California, can they go after you? That was sort of an open question. And yeah, so I mean, and also like you So it really made it was like, first of all, just relying on software to fix your problems. For some people, you know, increasing your web hosting from say $29 a month to $99 a month in order to include the widget that will make the website fully accessible into WCAG. That might not work for a musician out of Arkansas who just wants to tell people when their band is playing.

Lionel:
Yeah, but you're not going to know he's going to sue that person.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, except that if they do, they under that under the California law, they not only come after that person, they could come after me. And I have hundreds of sites up there. So that's hundreds of lawsuits, potentially. And

Lionel:
Thank

Jim Infantino:
all

Lionel:
you.

Jim Infantino:
I have to I just have to have faith that none of my clients are high profile enough for anybody to come after me. But that's it's really I contemplated I'm like, oh, timed it. What do I do? I can drive an Uber. I can work at Starbucks. I can

Lionel:
Truck

Jim Infantino:
do

Lionel:
driving,

Jim Infantino:
something else.

Lionel:
it's really cool.

Jim Infantino:
Drive a truck.

Lionel:
Well, this is one of those extraordinarily rare events on this podcast where this is a topic where I actually know something. So I work for a university system and I work not only for a university system but also for a public university system. And this is a big topic with

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
universities which is the accessibility of web pages.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
It's a big deal. Accessibility in general is a big deal. And there's a million directions in which this conversation can go. But what I can tell you is that really recently the Department of Justice issued yet another dear colleague letter to all the universities, I think many of the universities in America.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
Now, despite its warm and fuzzy sounding name, a dear colleague letter is not the letter you want to get.

Jim Infantino:
Hahaha

Lionel:
The dear colleague letter is the DOJ saying, we've had it with you people.

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
And this is like, I don't think this is the first dear colleague letter they've sent. So the whole point is that if somebody violates the ADA, it's the Department of Justice that has to bring the lawsuit. The Department of Justice basically, long story short, American universe, the There is much criticism to be leveled against American universities about the accessibility of their information resources, which

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
includes not only their websites, but their other software that's used by universities, and even things like fax machines and ATMs and things like that. That should be accessible. And there have been... many very high profile lawsuits brought against American universities for accessibility. And I forget whether it's the American Association of the Blind or the American Association of the Deaf. I'm not sure, but one of those, they're definitely serious about it. They're getting plaintiffs to bring cases and they're winning big awards. All you have to do is just look up accessibility lawsuit university and you will get a fine list of many, many universities that have been walloped over the past few decades

Jim Infantino:
Run.

Lionel:
over accessibility issues. And I've been directly involved with this as part of my job duties at some of the places I've worked I've been involved with accessibility issues. And there's many things I could say. I think the most important thing is that one thing I tell people is that the most important, well, it doesn't really impact what you're talking about. But what gets people really unhappy is when the student says, hey professor, I can't see this assignment you gave us cause I am colorblind.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
So I can't see this thing. And

Jim Infantino:
Yep, contrast.

Lionel:
the professor says, well, take a different class then.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
Eh, wrong answer

Jim Infantino:
Wrong

Lionel:
professor.

Jim Infantino:
answer. Yep.

Lionel:
wrong answer. So a lot of it is not technological. A lot of it is what we call administrative, which is the, from a university standpoint and universities know this, the, all the universities I work with, they have a disability coordinator, an accessibility coordinator,

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
which is great because you want a human being. If you're

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
somebody with a disability and you encounter a problem, it's going to be a stressful, unhappy situation. and you don't want to be talking to a chat bot. Okay. You want a human being that you can talk to. And they all do. And they all have the coordinate. And then what the coordinator has to do is the coordinator, the second most important thing is to have a very good email address, a memorable email address or a website address. Because what you're gonna do is you're gonna pound that email address and that website address into the cranium of every living creature in every employee of the university.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
and you're gonna teach the faculty and staff, if anybody comes up to you and mentions anything that could be remotely related to being a problem with disability, you stop and you call me, or you refer that person to me, but get that person to me and let me handle it. Don't say something like, well,

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
maybe anthropology is not a good major for you. Wrong answer. wrong, just don't say anything, just refer the student or refer the employee to me and let me handle it. And yeah, there's a couple of basic things. Contrast is a big issue. I mean, I tell people that 90% of accessibility can be put on a business card and kept in your wallet. And people have fought me on the tooth and nail. One, black text on a white background. Do not deviate from that unless you have a really good reason that you need to second off the bat you can't indicate anything purely by the use of color.

Jim Infantino:
Right?

Lionel:
That's the other big one perhaps the single most important thing in the world don't use pictures at all if you have to use a picture. The picture has to have all text on it.

Jim Infantino:
And it has to be a description of the picture.

Lionel:
Right, the alt

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
text has to be meaningful.

Jim Infantino:
it can't just be like keyword stuffing or this is all technical, but that's interesting. You know, I violate one of those. I violate one of those. I do not underline my links in my web designs because I think it looks awful.

Lionel:
Yeah, but

Jim Infantino:
But you kind of have to do,

Lionel:
you

Jim Infantino:
you

Lionel:
have

Jim Infantino:
kind

Lionel:
to.

Jim Infantino:
of have, because otherwise, or you have to, yeah, yeah.

Lionel:
or some other indication,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, there's some

Lionel:
a different

Jim Infantino:
indication

Lionel:
font,

Jim Infantino:
that isn't

Lionel:
it's bolded,

Jim Infantino:
right or bold.

Lionel:
whatever,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
but it has to be

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
something that's not related to color. It has to be something which is a shape change.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
So it's that, and there's a lot of other differences. There's a lot of other things to watch out for, but that's 90% of it right there. I mean,

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
the most important thing is that you have somebody who's gonna talk to the student and say, okay, what's your problem and how are we gonna fix this? And

Jim Infantino:
And

Lionel:
then go

Jim Infantino:
there's

Lionel:
ahead.

Jim Infantino:
also people with epilepsy, right? I mean, you actually need to be very sensitive not to be creating like flashing graphics.

Lionel:
Yeah!

Jim Infantino:
There's a ton of things like that.

Lionel:
Right, but the big ones are hearing impairment and audio impairment, visual impairment. Those are the two giant ones.

Jim Infantino:
Absolutely, but the WCAG has been evolving. So it's

Lionel:
Mm.

Jim Infantino:
not, you know, what was okay for accessibility five years ago is not okay

Lionel:
Yep.

Jim Infantino:
anymore.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
So you need to stay on top of it.

Lionel:
You do.

Jim Infantino:
Slab Media uses a widget. You can check it out, slabmedia.com. There's a little person, people have probably seen these things now. You click on that and then it changes the view of the website depending on. you know, your personal preference. And of course that widget is highly accessible and it comes up first to a tab browser and things like that.

Lionel:
Well, the fascinating thing, the thing that I find fascinating is the relationship. If I could, if I could summarize it as small number of words as possible to be, we're all disabled

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
because we've all benefited enormously from the changes that bet that have been spearheaded by disabled people. A lot of the features that we love most in the gadgets we use and the technology we use were originally designed to help. people with disabilities, like backup cameras.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
If you're mobility impaired, let's say you have a problem with your back and you can't turn around, a backup camera is great, but a backup camera helps everybody.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
And the fact that on your keyboard, you can just hit Control plus and Control, zooming in and out now is so effortless. You can just use gestures and just expand

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
and contract things.

Jim Infantino:
Or even expanding the size of the text on a properly coded website. You can,

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
yeah,

Lionel:
it's

Jim Infantino:
you can,

Lionel:
tremendous and

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
all that stuff was done for people with disabilities and done for the elderly, which is, but they benefit everybody and they're so, you know, lit keyboards,

Jim Infantino:
Yep.

Lionel:
all these things, everybody loves them. And so, because sometimes you meet up with resistance and people are like, oh my, I got to do this to my website, it's just for people

Jim Infantino:
Well...

Lionel:
with disabilities. Like, dude, it helps everybody.

Jim Infantino:
Interestingly, I got started in web design because I read a book by a guy named Jeffrey Zeldman called Designing with Web Standards back in 1999. Or I may have read it in 2001, but he worked on the w3.org. He really founded

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
that with a number of other people and they started creating standards because at the time, remember, Microsoft had a browser and Netscape had a browser. Those are the main ones. Mozilla, was there a Mozilla browser

Lionel:
There's

Jim Infantino:
back then?

Lionel:
Mozilla,

Jim Infantino:
I'm not sure.

Lionel:
there's Netscape Communicator, and

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
there is Internet Explorer.

Jim Infantino:
Right, they all had different rules in terms of how to interpret HTML. And Jeffrey was like, this is garbage. We need to have unified, even Microsoft was even launching their own form of JavaScript, which I forgot what they called, ActionScript or something like that. And it was flash all over the web, which was completely standards free. And, uh, Zeldman was like, no, here's how you code a webpage. You separate the style sheet out from the content. Your content should have no code relating to appearance at all. No layout in your code. All the layout happens in the style sheet. And so I found that, I found that fascinating because at the time it was really like inventing the Gutenberg press. It was really inventing a completely new form of publishing information, literally. And here was a guy who was saying, here's, here are the standards. These are the standards we all need. And here's why.

Lionel:
Great,

Jim Infantino:
You know,

Lionel:
the best practices.

Jim Infantino:
best practices, you can separate all your, uh, action script out, your, your JavaScript out, you can separate all your style sheet out. And one thing for accessibility, nobody seems to have done is kill the style sheet. Because if you kill a style sheet on a well-coded web page, There should be nothing but an outline of the content. Right now we have reader view, right? Some websites or some apps you can click on reader view and then it sort of has a style sheet that simplifies everything. But in theory, if you just remove the style sheet from a page, you would have black and white, black text on a white background in Times New Roman with all the links bright blue and underlined and it would look like crap, but it would be very accessible.

Lionel:
Yep. And I remember probably eight years ago, there was a company that we were talking to that that's what they did, which is when people went to your website, if they clicked on the accessibility button, what this website, what this vendor would do was in real time, suck in all your code of your HTML pages and re-display it

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
exactly like you said, which is Times New Roman, you know, and everything. everything in screen reader format,

Jim Infantino:
Yep.

Lionel:
stuff like that.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, well, it's I mean, on a well coded website, it's simple. There's usually well, there's a series of now. Now there's like 82 different style sheets. And there's the ones that are included from Font Awesome and from Google and from, you know, Google Fonts and all these others. So it's a little more complicated, but you could in theory. Rewrite the hetero on the fly to just kill the style sheets. Anyway, who cares? But.

Lionel:
Well, I think we all care, because I think it's a fascinating topic, which is that this has been a long and painful dialogue that I've been

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
a part of. And people have really fought this. In my experience, people are

Jim Infantino:
Sure.

Lionel:
like, oh, we got to do this.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And

Jim Infantino:
Why

Lionel:
I'm like...

Jim Infantino:
high contrast? High contrast,

Lionel:
It's like...

Jim Infantino:
right? I mean, I want really light, really thin, like Helvetica 100, which

Lionel:
Yeah!

Jim Infantino:
is like the thinnest hairline version of a typeface.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
And I want it to be in kind of

Lionel:
Dark

Jim Infantino:
light

Lionel:
gray

Jim Infantino:
gray.

Lionel:
on

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
an A crew background. Seriously, I've gotten

Jim Infantino:
Pattern

Lionel:
to the point.

Jim Infantino:
to background.

Lionel:
I'm, I'm

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
seriously, I mean, I'm seriously getting ready to write a letter to like the Atlassian

Jim Infantino:
Because

Lionel:
corporation.

Jim Infantino:
that expresses me, that's my inner style, that's who I

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
am.

Lionel:
I, you know, this vendor I work with all the time at last, and I want to send him an email thing. Do you guys know about access? I, I can't

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
read. I mean, I'm hitting 60.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
I am 60. I'm, I got one foot firmly planted in the land of the disabled here, kids. My eyes, I've had multiple operations on my eyes, and I'm finding this stuff really hard to see. And so, but anyway, back to the original thing, which is that. I think it's a really interesting thing, which is that after a while you just get used to it and people adopt it and they start building it in and they say, okay, yeah, we're going to naturally do that. Yeah, let's not put pictures in here because we don't really need the pictures and it just causes it just gets everybody unhappy. And as I said, I think it's amazing how it's it has benefited everybody. And made for better websites. and also just all the features that have been designed. There's millions of them. That also is a fascinating thing I love thinking about too, and I'll stop after this because now I'm just free-form ranting.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
But I just love looking at a bicycle, like looking at a modern bicycle

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
or a car, but a car is kind of complex. Bicycle's a little easier. Look at a bicycle today and then look

Jim Infantino:
you

Lionel:
at the bicycles that were being made in like 1900.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And you just realize that there are thousands of minute little improvements that make the modern bicycle so much more useful, durable, just so much better than a bicycle in 1910. I mean, the bicycle in 1910 was great, but the bicycle today is just absolutely fabulous. It's lighter, it's stronger, it's more maneuverable. You can do more things with it. And it's the same thing with all the technology, with these websites. We just get better and better at it. And we make better websites. And people fight against these things, like accessibility standards. But they're actually pretty, and they probably fight against your guy doing his W3 standards too. But you know what?

Jim Infantino:
they did. Yeah,

Lionel:
Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
but

Lionel:
things

Jim Infantino:
they

Lionel:
get

Jim Infantino:
but

Lionel:
better.

Jim Infantino:
they it was adopted. It was adopted.

Lionel:
It's adopted, and then things get better. And finally, I'm so happy that Apple has been forced to put a USB-C adapter on their

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
phones.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
Yes!

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
Humble! The giant has been humbled.

Jim Infantino:
Hahaha

Lionel:
You've got to dress just like the rest of the great unwashed. You've got to mingle with the rest of us proletarians.

Jim Infantino:
hahahaha

Lionel:
And you have to put this filthy common USB-C plug on your gorgeous golden phones. But no, I'm not bitter. I'm not angry about it at all.

Jim Infantino:
Well, as our previous guest Chris Chandler has said in one of his songs, we are all only, we are all able-bodied, temporary. How's that for like a closing comment? Does that work?

Lionel:
I think, yeah, it's pretty good. But

Jim Infantino:
Well, I mean for the, for this

Lionel:
if

Jim Infantino:
subject.

Lionel:
it's a closing comment, you're not supposed to say stuff after it, that's

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
all.

Jim Infantino:
right, yeah. and scene.

Lionel:
Cut!

Jim Infantino:
Well, yeah, I've run so, are you?

Lionel:
There is a code up.

Jim Infantino:
Yes.

Lionel:
Do you want a coda

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
or do you not want a coda?

Jim Infantino:
hit the coda.

Lionel:
And this might get me into trouble and we may have to snip this off.

Jim Infantino:
Okay.

Lionel:
I may have to think about this because I'm always very worried about talking about things having to do with work.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
But what's interesting is the state of Texas has fairly well-developed rules regarding the accessibility of information resources and websites run by state agencies and state institutions of higher education.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
I can probably look them in TAC 213, I'm not sure. I think that may be the project management, but whatever, it's TAC something or other. And one of the interesting ones is there's all these rules. about the accessibility of your software and the accessibility and making sure that you buy accessible software.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
And this has caused tremendous, tremendous arguments.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
Because first off the bat, no software is accessible. If you, again, it's the WCAG and there's various standards you use to judge the accessibility

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
of software. There used to be these things. Now they're called ACRs. They used to be called VPATs. So

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
if you were a software manufacturer, you did a voluntary product accessibility template, a VPAT, that

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
you filled out and you said, yeah, my stuff is accessible because of this. I answer all these questions and I add up all the numbers and I'm either accessible or however much. And that was succeeded, that was superseded by the ACR, which is the Accessibility Compliance Report or something like that.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
But what it basically boils down to is that no software is 100% compliant.

Jim Infantino:
Right. Well, yeah, there

Lionel:
It just

Jim Infantino:
are problems.

Lionel:
isn't.

Jim Infantino:
There are problems. I mean, try to picture a compliant version of the game Myst.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
I mean, or really most games, like Bubble Pop. How do you make that accessible?

Lionel:
Right, so the whole point is that what the law says is that all the software purchased by Texas state agencies have to be accessible or they have to have an exception granted.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
And the exception has to be signed by the president

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
of the institution or their designee, they finally got a designee in there. And what you realize when you read the bill and you read the history of it, and it's kind of stupid because First off the bat is if you want to buy Basecamp,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
is Asana any more accessible than Basecamp? Is Basecamp any more accessible than Asana versus Jira versus monday.com versus

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
this versus 150,000 other personal productivity and task management software? Who knows? They're all inaccessible. And usually you find that people just want to buy the program they want to buy. They don't really care about your accessibility issue.

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
And

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
in this case, they're probably right because probably every other program is equally inaccessible in some way, shape or form. So you get into this vast Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare where, I mean, universities buy a lot of software and the people

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
inside universities buy a lot of software. I mean, faculty go out and buy all kinds of software all the time. So every day, probably two. pieces of software being bought by a university at least every day, two to three pieces

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
of software. And so you set this sort of charade, this empty bureaucratic nonsense where you tell people, you ask people, is your software accessible? And if it's not, why not? And if it's not accessible, what's your plan to address the accessibility problems? And people are like, what on earth are you talking about?

Jim Infantino:
Okay.

Lionel:
I didn't write the software.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
I'm buying it off the shelf. And so the interesting thing is that that's really where this particular law came from, where these particular laws came from, was from the big Texas state agencies like Health and DHS, Department of Health Service, I forget, whatever. These big state agencies that have to... basically every citizen in the state has to interact with this agency at some point. So every citizen is gonna go to the state agency's website and every citizen is gonna interact with the software of the state agency at some point, like a DMV.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm?

Lionel:
DMVs, that website is gonna be used by every able-bodied adult of the state at some point, multiple times a year,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
if it's a DMV. And so many times the DMVs wrote their own software. They had these enormous databases that kept track of welfare benefits, that kept track of vehicles and drivers. And that's what the law was really about because the people who were bringing lawsuits were a citizens of the state, disabled citizens of the state who couldn't make heads or tails of the lawsuit and disabled employees of the agency who couldn't make heads or tails of the software, the backend

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
software that was written to maintain all this data. And that's where the law came from. It was really about custom crafted websites and custom crafted software. It wasn't really meant to apply the situation where you say, I wanna buy Calendly.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
I'm a faculty member and I just wanna buy Calendly cause I wanna keep my, I want other people to be able to book meetings with me. You know.

Jim Infantino:
You know what, but really there's no excuse for software like web-based software like Calendly to not be accessible.

Lionel:
OK.

Jim Infantino:
A lot of these packages are just websites.

Lionel:
True.

Jim Infantino:
They're web apps. And those can be made accessible, absolutely. I was thinking, you know, like Microsoft Word, is it accessible? Probably by now, right? Is it? I don't know.

Lionel:
No software is accessible.

Jim Infantino:
None of it.

Lionel:
Our experience has been, because I think it's an issue with the standards themselves, that they are either A, so stringent, or B, a combination of stringent and poorly defined. Like you're not really sure what they're talking about.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah.

Lionel:
But the general feeling is that whenever people do get an ACR or a VPAT done, you never get a full compliance score. It never

Jim Infantino:
Interesting.

Lionel:
happens.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And so you get into this Kafka as bureaucratic nightmare where people are having to fill out reams of paperwork when all they wanna do is buy a copy of Snagit.

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
They

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
wanna buy some, and they're like,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
why am I filling this? This is total nonsense. Why am I filling this crap out?

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
I can't make it accessible. And it.

Jim Infantino:
You're right, right. And it's functionality I need, yeah.

Lionel:
and it's function I need and every other thing, even if I was willing to use a competitive product, very inaccessible too. So

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
what's this all about? And so, you know, what you eventually get to is a regime where you just immediately generate an exception request. As soon as somebody submits a request, because the law was really written for a different universe. It was written for a different thing, but somehow it would, the law was written such that applied to all software when it really, what it was meant to address. was custom coded software. And everybody agrees that websites are the main, that's the main thing, because websites

Jim Infantino:
Well, I

Lionel:
are

Jim Infantino:
mean, yeah,

Lionel:
custom

Jim Infantino:
I mean,

Lionel:
coded.

Jim Infantino:
that's the lowest. I mean, truthfully, it, yeah, it's, it's the lowest bar. And let me just brag to myself for a minute. I, I partnered with this company, AccessiBee, that you can run audits on all the sites that I have. Um, and what I was finding was, you know, I was convincing my clients to buy, to purchase X number of hundred dollars a year to have the widget to have, like, to just be double safe. And I think so far I have one client that's taken this on. because when I run the audit, I do come out compliant because I have been coding and I've been keeping up.

Lionel:
Yeah, you build it

Jim Infantino:
But

Lionel:
into

Jim Infantino:
that's

Lionel:
those.

Jim Infantino:
not true of every site because some of the sites I haven't touched in, I designed them in 2014. Accessibility just wasn't talked about. It wasn't part of the standards discussion. So, I mean, I've been doing my part, but to be compliant means WCAG 2.1, I don't know what level after that, right? There's A, AA, and AAA.

Lionel:
AAA.

Jim Infantino:
I haven't been paying attention to which one of those. It says compliant, I'm compliant, right? So this California law was really gonna be like, nope, you gotta be AA compliant.

Lionel:
Yeah, that's a pretty high bar.

Jim Infantino:
And all that takes is your user, you know, your client, just uploading the image and clicking save

Lionel:
But going back

Jim Infantino:
without

Lionel:
to the original

Jim Infantino:
filling out the

Lionel:
thing,

Jim Infantino:
description. Yeah.

Lionel:
but going back to many times, politics is, I don't want to say it's theater, but it's negotiation. Like many times people propose bills with the full knowledge that the bill will probably not pass, but they're trying to send a message. They're trying to make a statement. They're signaling. And so same with the DOJ. The DOJ again, like I said before, sent out this dear colleague letter and they said, you know, hey, universities, we've been talking about this shit for like 20 years.

Jim Infantino:
Oh yeah.

Lionel:
When are you guys going to get it together? Because we're constantly being approached by people with disabilities saying,

Jim Infantino:
Oh

Lionel:
we

Jim Infantino:
yeah,

Lionel:
got

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
to

Jim Infantino:
mean...

Lionel:
sue your asses. And you know what? They're right. Because

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
when we actually do bring the lawsuits, we actually do the investigation, the behavior is so, you know, you guys are just falling down. You're not handling this correctly. You know, there are standards here. And yeah, sometimes it's really egregious. Like, you know, These people are just shunted around, they're ignored. And man, if you wanna create a pissed off plaintiff, just do that, just like don't answer their phone calls and don't deal with it. And so I think maybe what California's trying to do with this bill is say, yeah, you know what? The Department of Justice has a point. You guys gotta get your act together. We're sick and tired of getting calls from disabled people saying they're getting screwed by you. And you know what? They are. And we don't have the time to bring your stupid little lawsuits because we're busy trying to take care of more important things in this state. So why don't you just get your act together and start doing accessible resources from the get-go. And that's how the dialogue goes.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
So anyway, so you let's sit on this. for a couple of days and see if you think it's worth including, but I don't think I said anything that's terribly.

Jim Infantino:
No, no, I think I thought I thought it was good. And for once we were talking about something important.

Lionel:
Yeah, or something that I deal with on a daily basis.

Jim Infantino:
Oh, yeah, but I also it is pertinent and it is important. I mean, the Web

Lionel:
It is!

Jim Infantino:
is how we get so much information. And if you're cutting out 20 percent of the population because they're colorblind or they can't see or they have epilepsy or they have cognitive, you know, disabilities of any kind, you're it's just or mobility issues. That's the other, you know, I think about a veteran coming back with, you know, just can't use a mouse. And you haven't made you haven't designed your software or your or your website to be accessible to that person,

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
it's just wrong.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
So it is, yeah, it is, it's an important time.

Lionel:
And here's one last part of it, which as I said, accessibility benefits everybody,

Jim Infantino:
Hmm?

Lionel:
because we all use these accessibility features and they're great for everybody. But

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
the more important thing, but it's even more broad than that, which is that. Organizations need to be able to listen to their people. Organizations need to be able to hear the complaints of their stakeholders. And this is an important thing in a university. A university, it's a weird kind of organization. It's,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
you know, I don't wanna

Jim Infantino:
sort

Lionel:
get too

Jim Infantino:
of profit

Lionel:
deeply into

Jim Infantino:
driven,

Lionel:
it.

Jim Infantino:
but also

Lionel:
Well, it's even weirder

Jim Infantino:
not.

Lionel:
than that. It's like a little mini city and it's all these shifting populations, it's people coming and going.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
But the key thing is you gotta listen to these people and how well are you listening to them and how well are you getting information to them that they need and how well are you processing problems and complaints? And it's hard to do. It's hard to do because that's what I do all day. I mean, that's what we all, what a lot of people in universities do is we, people come to us with problems. Hey, I tried to go to the, I tried to click on that thing you told me to click on. It's not working. Oh, here we go again. Or, you know, the student says, hey, you know, I tried to submit my paper, but it didn't work and da da. Hey, I was supposed to get this financial aid, but it hasn't appeared. What do I need to do next? You know, the mark of a good institution is how effectively it processes those. And to a certain degree, the accessibility, the disabled are like a canary in a coal mine. Because if you see, you know, if a disabled person brings a lawsuit against your university backed by the American Society for the Deaf or whatever,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
It's first off the bat, it's going to get your undivided attention. And it does. And second off the bat, that's a bellwether. It's a bellwether for your entire institution. Okay. How did we do by this person? And if we, if we didn't do well by this person, what about everybody else?

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Disabled or otherwise? Are we, how well are we at the fundamental task of listening to people and solving their problems? And the answer usually is not very well. Or certainly there's room for improvement. Maybe we're all challenged, but the first step is to know how challenged you are.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And sometimes institutions don't even know. They don't even know how disconnected things are. And that's why I think the disability lawsuits sometimes are really good, because they really force the, it's like an electric. jolt to the institutions that no, you've got to pay attention. This person had a complaint. They went through the they made reasonable efforts to make their complaint heard and they got screwed. So if it happened to them, how many other people is it happening to and what and how you're going to fix this?

Jim Infantino:
Interesting. I mean, you know, I have not been posting transcripts for all of our podcasts. But I'm totally gonna be posting a transcript for this

Lionel:
For

Jim Infantino:
one.

Lionel:
this

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
one, yeah. Anyway, sorry about that long winded thing, but I think it's again, to a certain degree, we are we all benefit from the efforts of the disabled.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And the trials and tribulations they go through, they benefit everybody. You'd be better if they didn't have to go through trials and tribulations to begin with. But if you're going to have a whole bunch of lemons, might as well make lemonade. Anyway, I like your I like your closing thing about we're all disabled. We're we're all disabled.

Jim Infantino:
We're

Lionel:
And so we're only

Jim Infantino:
only

Lionel:
temporarily

Jim Infantino:
able-bodied

Lionel:
abled.

Jim Infantino:
temporarily. Chris Chandler, that man.

Lionel:
That man. OK.

Jim Infantino:
All right, Lionel,

Lionel:
OK, James.

Jim Infantino:
I will see you next week.

Lionel:
Okay. See you there. Bye.