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We are all about Content Management Platforms.
Welcome to "Beyond the CMS," the podcast where big ideas, insightful conversations, and industry-leading voices converge to redefine digital content experiences. Each episode, we sit down with influential thought leaders and innovators from the most prominent CMS platforms—including Contentful, Storyblok, Agility, Magnolia, and more—to explore emerging trends, groundbreaking technologies, and transformative strategies shaping the future of content management.
Our guests are industry experts, visionaries, and key executives who dive deep into topics such as headless architectures, personalization, AI-driven content strategies, composable solutions, and best practices for delivering seamless digital experiences at scale. Whether you're a marketer, developer, product manager, or simply passionate about digital innovation, join us as we uncover actionable insights, discuss bold ideas, and provide a unique behind-the-scenes look into the ever-evolving CMS landscape.
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Chris Bryce: All right.
We are live, and I'm going to-
Cool … reorientate our view
here for the mobile outputs later.
Um, welcome everyone to episode
49 now of Beyond the CMS.
At one point in time, it was future
thinking around what would the
world like be without CMSs, and
now we're like, "Well, I don't
know, do we need CMSs anymore?"
Uh, so we're really beyond the CMS.
Um, just wanted to thank everyone
who's taking some time today in the
Eastern Time zone over their lunch to
check in with us and listen to some
of the thoughts that we have to share.
Um, I'm Chris Bryce.
I'm the founder of Dotfusion,
digital agency in Toronto.
We really love and specialize in working
with large nonprofits and helping them
manage their overall content operations
and CMS integrations, et cetera.
And a big part of that exercise inevitably
is deploying best-in-class accessibility
in everything that we do, and it's
something that we strive to be excellent
at and have not yet reached that mark.
Um, but we're on that journey,
and today we've got Ryan Short.
Uh, he's joining us from Limena to,
uh, help share some of the tooling
that he's built, um, to help everyone
create more accessible experiences.
And Ryan, I know you can
explain that much better than-
…
Ryan Short: I did.
Chris Bryce: Um, but it's really great to have
you with us, um, and just- Appreciate you
Ryan Short: having me.
Chris Bryce: Yeah.
It's a real pleasure.
Um, this will be broadcast on LinkedIn
and as a podcast later, but if anyone
who's tuning in live today has some
comments or questions, ask us anything.
I'm kind of monitoring some
chats on the side for things.
But Ryan, let's kick things off.
Maybe tell us a little bit about yourself,
why the enthusiasm around accessibility,
and the product you've come up with.
Ryan Short: Yeah, absolutely.
Appreciate your time, Chris.
Uh, so, um, really, you know, my story
and, and my, my progression through
from, from a digital perspective
started about, uh, 21, 22 years ago,
and, and I might be dating myself
on my, you know, 45th birthday here.
But, uh, it, uh, it immediately I was
drawn into product design and, and
user experience design coming out of,
coming out of school and, and what that
meant from an information architecture
perspective and what that meant from,
you know, a, an inclusivity perspective.
And, and I, I very quickly- You know, as
I built my career, took a focus around,
um, around strategy and inclusive design,
um, and, and a little bit of a different
sort of path for accessibility as I
was always sort of the, you know, the
UX designer or the digital strategist
playing a role in, in accessibility.
And, and, you know, obviously y-- um,
leveraging a number of tools and, and I
still continue to leverage a number of
tools that, that exist i-in the market
as it relates to, uh, understanding
accessibility and understanding, you
know, the, the issues that, that, uh,
are uncovered, uh, from, from, um,
you know, not conforming or, or not
sort of aligning, uh, whether it's
from a WCAG perspective or, or, you
know, as we look at different regions
from an EU perspective or, um, or
y-you know, in the United States, a,
a different alignment as it relates
to accessibility, uh, requirements.
Um, but, you know, again, with, with sort
of that hat around digital strategy and
sitting in rooms with, um, executives,
either be it myself, um, having the
fortunate opportunity to work, uh, from
a senior leadership, uh, perspective
in a number of organizations and, and
being a consultant for a number of years,
I would, I would constantly hear from
individuals in the boardroom, "Well,
you know, it's great that we're…"
Or sorry, it's rather it's, it's
not great that, uh, our digital
experience isn't, you know, conforming
to WCAG one point four point four.
But, um, it'll have to go on the backlog
because we're really focused on this
bug, or this, um, element of conversion
around the checkout, um, or, you know,
we want to AB test this component.
So, um, accessibility really became a back
burner for, for a number of, um, pieces.
So I said, you know, "Is there a
different way of looking at accessibility
based on, you know, there's all
these-- obviously, there's these
fundamental tests that are in place.
There's the issues that are
found, and there's conformance
studies, um, that, that have to
be created for organizations."
But I said, "You know, organizations
think about uh, their digital
experiences from a journey perspective.
We all think about journeys as an
individual goes from, you know, an
awareness cycle through to comparing
products in an e-commerce perspective
or a financial perspective or, or
any number of digital experiences
through to the point of, you know,
conversion and, and post-conversion.
And I said, "You know, if we look at
accessibility slightly differently
and say, 'Great, these are the issues
that you have, but this is how it's
impacting your overall journey.
This is how it's impacting step one.
This is how it's impacting step three.
This is how it's impacting step five.'"
And when we start to integrate with
things like Google Analytics or Fathom
or, you know, voice of the customer
platforms, then we can start to tie
in real data around, you know what?
We understand there's an issue at
your checkout, and this is how many
people are in your checkout, and this
is some commentary on your checkout.
So now you're getting that sort
of holistic picture as to how, um,
accessibility does actually impact
that overall picture rather than just,
"Hey, it's a color contrast issue."
Chris Bryce: Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And one of the…
Is there, is there a, an awards
program for, like, the most
accessible site out there?
Is there anything like that?
Ryan Short: I mean, uh, our, our…
There's, there's accreditations,
don't get me wrong, for, um…
And when I say accreditations, there's,
you know, if your, if your site is, uh,
to a certain standard, an organization can
say, you know, "We're signed off from that
specific standard," don't get me wrong.
But if you're talking about, you
know, a W3 award that le- that like
exists, per- perhaps not to the same
degree of, uh, of marketing per se.
Chris Bryce: We've, um, had a lot of fun and
success, um, integrating voice agents
into a lot of our projects lately.
Ryan Short: Mm-hmm.
Chris Bryce: That's been kind of
an, an interesting layer around
accessibility as well d- on both sides.
Sometimes that's actually preventing
some people from getting content,
and sometimes it's providing a
whole other way of telling a story.
Um, so that's been kind
of cool in our world.
Something I've noticed over the last
two years that's coming from our
clients as a solve, I think, I don't
know if it's the right way to go about
it or not, but we've been integrating
accessibility widgets onto sites.
And some of the problems they're
creating is they're automatically
controlling contrast and things like
that, and but they, they don't really
know when to do it in the right time.
Do you have any thoughts or feedback on
th- that, those widgets, so to speak?
Ryan Short: Yeah.
I, I mean, there's a number of those
widgets in the market, and I- I'm,
I'm not going to, I'm not gonna stand
here a- and say those widgets don't
have a place, because I think they do.
And, you know, they create a, they create
an experience for individuals, uh, you
know, from a colorblindness perspective
that an individual can, um, can adapt
that digital experience, if you will.
Uh, and there's an associated
understanding from an
organizational perspective.
But, um, I also like to think of that
from a point in time perspective.
And, and what I mean by that, and
where Limena also captures sort of
the, the overall sort of end-to-end,
uh, experience is, i- is sort of that
operational layer a- and that, that
for- sort of full cycle moment, if you
will, from, from an accessibility layer.
And what I, what I mean by that
is, you know, it, it comes down
to an ownership layer fro- from
an accessibility, uh, perspective.
And, and you know, this can
create arguments, or, or it
can create, uh, or, or it can
overjoy people in an organization.
So you take, for instance,
you know, a, a checkout piece.
You take a bug that was found, and, and if
Limena found an issue from, from a page.
Um, the, the path at that point is
I'm defining ownership, uh, for that
specific issue, and, and I'll get into
that in a, in a few minutes when we can
screen share and walk through things.
Um, but, uh, uh, once, once a, once an
individual is assigned an ownership, let's
say a developer Uh, the, the developer
then obviously takes that and, and
Limena can push that issue into Jira or
Linear or a number of other platforms.
So not requiring a developer to have
another platform that they need to
log into, because we all know that
we're, we're, um, uh, we all have
enough technology platforms that,
that we're being asked to log into.
Uh, but a developer can pick that up,
um, and, you know, maybe they're fixing
that one, uh, point around, you know,
that checkout button or that PDP,
um, uh, color variant, uh, change.
And when, uh, when, when that
change is made, the developer
says, "Great, I've made it."
Um, and the, the interesting thing about
that is, again, it goes back to that point
in time that a number of accessibility,
uh, reports will say, "Okay, fix this."
Where we've sort of changed the scope on
that is as soon as that's fixed, Limena
then runs another test automatically.
It comes back and says,
"Great, that's fixed."
But there's also these additional
fixes that are related to that stage
in the journey, and, and those could
be content-related pieces, or those
could be designer-related, um, issues.
So what, what's core and fundamental
here is that the owner of the, um,
issue and, uh, could be varying
people across the organization.
Now, there, there is sort of
one core owner of the overall
experience, and that could be the
product owner or the product-- or
the project manager who's, you know,
facilitating these conversations.
But, uh, when we start to look at an
issue overall, it's identifying that
there's more than one person that's
going to have to work through this.
There's more than one person that's
gonna have to be tagged to this.
And just because a developer's saying,
"Hey, it's done, it's fixed," doesn't
mean that it's actually done and fixed.
So, um, there's also that verification
layer in place, uh, that, um, you know, if
it's an automated test and understanding
that some automated, uh, some
accessibility tests can be captured from
an automated perspective, some are manual.
If it's an automated test, um, Limena
is able to go in, validate that that
was correct, and perhaps say it wasn't,
and perhaps give more, um, information
around how to fix that specific issue.
Chris Bryce: Interesting.
Um, just so folks know, this
is a pretty unscripted chat.
Something just came to mind when
you were, uh, sharing there.
Yeah.
Is there an acknowledgement between
the teams that are responsible for
discoverability, whether that be
SEO or AEO, and the team that's,
that's responsible for accessibility?
Do those come together
at some point of time?
Do they impact each other?
Are they kind of considered separate?
Ryan Short: I think they
do impact each other.
I mean, to, to what degree depends upon
the, um, maturity level, I guess, if
you will, of, of the accessibility team.
Um, and, uh, Limena as a platform
also, you know, when you go
through the onboarding process,
you're defining sort of…
You're defining and can, can continue
to define that maturity sort of level
of, of your organization from, from
an accessibility standpoint, and,
and how those sort of issues are, uh,
spoken about and how the language is
used, uh, throughout the experience.
From, you know, if we're speaking with
somebody that's much more advanced and,
and has that connected layer, such as
you said, between an SEO and, and a,
an accessibility perspective, then, you
know, the LLM is able to talk sort of
at that level, versus if we're drawing
it back and speaking, um, much more
fundamentally, then some of the language
is, is going to walk the user through in,
in a little bit more of a basic detail.
Chris Bryce: Okay.
Well, you have built some amazing
software, and I wanna make sure- Yeah
… we have a lot of time to talk about it.
Yeah.
I've kind of, like, summarized, uh,
Limena as a- an accessibility intelligence
platform, for lack of a better term.
I
Ryan Short: love that.
Yeah.
Chris Bryce: Um, but maybe do you
wanna talk us through the grand
zoomed out version, and then, uh,
we've got, uh, some opportunity
to show a bit of a demo as well.
Ryan Short: Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, it, it, it truly is a, a…
Yeah, I mean, not to play on
words of AI, but, um, but with an
accessibility intelligence platform.
Another way that we've been describing
it as of late in a number of, um, in
a number of client demos that we've
been, that we've been working through,
um, is an operational layer as, as
it relates to, uh, to accessibility.
Ag- again, um, moving away
from that sort of point in time
because, you know, we, we, we speak
with an, a number of companies.
You know, uh, we're, we're doing 15
to 20 demos a week at the moment.
And, uh, the, the number of times I
hear, "Well, we did an accessibility
analysis three months ago or six months
ago, so we're good for another year.
But reach out, uh, reach out in six
months, and maybe we need to do it
again" People update their website
more than, more than once a year.
Yeah.
Chris Bryce: Yeah.
Ryan Short: Uh, y- you know, there,
there's constant, um, there's constant
testing, there's constant, um, there's
constant opportunities for conversion,
um, and, a- and different advertising
that could happen or, or different changes
on a product page that could happen.
Um, so, you know, similar to the
way an organization looks at a
customer journey, that a customer
journey document, it shouldn't
at least be just a point in time.
It should be a living, breathing
document that's constantly sort of
reviewed and analyzed and optimized,
uh, from, you know, an operational
perspective or an HR or, or a marketing
perspective, and so on and so forth.
Um, similarly, you know, there's,
there's journeys in place that, uh, will
constantly be created, um, that should
be further analyzed all the way from, you
know, whether it's an advertisement that
potentially exists, um, online or, or in
a store through to, uh, through to the
conversion point of understanding whether
somebody purchases a product or somebody
goes to the return page thereafter.
Um, and, and e-commerce is really big.
You've probably hearing this through
sort of, uh, my conversation today,
but, um, you know, e-commerce and
transactional, um, uh, data has, has
definitely become a large sort of portion
of how we look, uh, at this platform.
So, um, you know, if I, if I walk through,
if we jump over to the- Yeah, looks good
the experience
Chris Bryce: With this?
Ryan Short: Yeah.
Chris Bryce: Okay, here we go.
Ryan Short: Great.
Chris Bryce: Amazing.
All right, yeah, please.
Um, I can't wait-
Ryan Short: Yeah … to get into this.
Okay.
So, um, as, as mentioned, and obviously
this is just a, a demo version of the
platform where we've, we've simply
just created a site that, uh, that
can produce some, some data for us
through, through today's discussion.
So you can see again, from, from an
overall, uh, platform perspective, you
know, the, the skeleton here being built
into clients, built into programs, um,
and, and from there understanding, uh, an
overall overview, driving into the tests,
the journeys, the issues, the conformance.
And, and we'll get into, we'll get
into a little bit more as we go
through sort of the demo itself.
So, you know, jumping into, jumping
into something like the overview, for
instance, I can immediately see as a, as
a user since you were last here again,
because there's, there's, um, that audit
that exists, and the way Limena works is
when a program is set up for the first
time, uh, whether it's a website or an
authenticated experience or a SaaS app
or, or a- an installable application
from, from an organizational perspective.
Um, the, the idea there is
you're setting a cadence.
Uh, so we create a baseline test, and
then you say, "I'm gonna run this every
week," or, "I'm gonna run this daily,"
um, or, "I'm gonna run it quarterly."
And when you come back as, as an
executive or as a project manager,
you know, you have a number of
things that you wanna look at.
Um, so quickly at a glance, we can
start to see these are some of the
new findings, um, um, that exist.
If we go into the test itself, these
are some of the pages, um, that, that
have issues that we need to look at
some of those specific findings from.
So jumping into, you know, a, a
page itself and in this case, um,
we can, we can immediately see,
one, there's an issue to be fixed.
Um, but as well as mentioned, I, I wanna
be really clear because, um, because
there's, there's a lot of conversation in
the accessibility space around automated
testing versus, uh, versus manual testing.
And with, with, um, you know,
a full understanding and, uh,
and sort of- Putting sort of a
line in the sand, if you will.
Um, Limena is very clear what it can
handle, what it can move through from
an automated testing perspective,
um, using a number of libraries,
um, but also an LLM on top of that.
And the way that works is it's
a bring your own LLM model.
So depending on if a-- depending on
if y- if the platform wa- if you as an
organization wanna use Anthropic, or
if you wanna use, um, Gemini, or if you
wanna use a, a variety of other platforms,
that's set on a program-by-program basis.
Chris Bryce: But the-
Ryan Short: Going into…
Sorry, go ahead.
Chris Bryce: I was just having some
conversations with some friends
like yesterday- Yeah … trying to
describe like what a harness is.
And it's like what you
normally use with Claude or-
Yeah … or ChatGPT is a harness.
It's almost like- Yeah … you
have an accessibility harness.
Bring your own tooling.
You have an interface- Exactly … you
have rules, and you have outputs.
Ryan Short: Exactly.
Very
Chris Bryce: cool.
Okay.
Ryan Short: Exactly.
So then, you know, if we go into the
issue itself, it's, it's starting
to describe some of that issue in,
in more detail, uh, for a user.
And you can, you can see the ability to
send that to the tracker once something
is integrated, or the idea of inviting
an expert, and I'll get into that.
Uh, I'll get into that momentarily.
Um, but as we continue to scroll down
from, you know, this element must
meet minimum color contrast ratio
thresholds, um, and we can see our
WCAG identifier that, that exists.
But going further down, you know, it's
identifying from a context perspective
or from an ownership perspective,
these are some of, uh, the…
This by assigning ownership to a
specific task, um, then immediately
it's beginning using an ARM model, it's
beginning to identify who specifically
should be working on this issue.
Scrolling further down, it's like
what sits behind this issue from
a reach perspective, from a people
affected, from a service journey,
from a complaints, from an obligation.
Um- And then, you know, from a developer
standpoint, because, you know, if I'm,
if I'm a product manager or if I'm, you
know, an executive at an organization,
I don't necessarily need to understand
totally about the developer standpoint.
But obviously from a developer's
perspective, I need that evidence layer.
I need to understand where these
specific elements need to be fixed.
I need to understand the fix itself
that needs to occur, and we, we
want to be really clear about
how to fix that specific issue.
Um, then from a journey perspective,
as mentioned, how the journey works,
um, is, um, obviously this is a journey
that's already been created here.
Um, but understanding across
the pages that can potentially
exist in said journey, where
are those blockers that exist?
What's the criticality?
Um, what are the prioritized barriers?
And then what's the cost of that break?
So once there's an integration layer in
place around, again, that analytics or,
or measurement, then we're really able
to bring forward that information around,
uh, around how sort of this-- how each
step in that journey is, um, is measured
from, from a, from a blocker perspective
or from an operational layer perspective.
Then obviously, you know, if we're, if
we're editing the journey itself, it's,
it's identifying because we understand
from, uh, from my product design and from
my UX and strategy, um, uh, experience
around, around omni-channel design
and, and digital design, that there's
so many touch points just outside
of, um, the website itself as well.
So it's, it's truly understanding
whether it's from a display ad,
or a video, or an email, or a
PDF document, or an app screen.
It's, it's, um, addressing
the accessibility issues that
exist along the full path.
So, um, you know, Limena as a platform
also s-- also reviews documents.
It also reviews display
ads with integrations.
Um, it also reviews video and
social components with integrations.
So it, it's truly that end-to-end
layer to understand where that break
is, uh, for full inclusive design.
Chris Bryce: That's very cool.
I noticed one of the buttons
on the, on the first slide, I
think said, "Check it yourself."
You know, it's pr- right?
I- Yeah
really like that idea, like just
go through this and have the
sensory experience on your own.
Ryan Short: Exactly.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
A- and fr- from a, you know, we
understand that not everybody
knows how to check it themselves.
Yeah.
Um, so whether it's from an audio and
video only prerecorded perspective, these,
these require that additional verdict.
Um, it shows why a person's needed, it
shows the steps are, that are required.
But if, for instance, and I think this
is the last layer to talk through, if,
for instance, there's, there's that
need to pull in an expert from, uh,
from an overall review perspective,
there's that full cycle in there as well.
Um, and by, by inviting an expert, it
brings, um, an accessibility, uh, expert
into the experience, whether it's somebody
internally to your team or externally to
check those things and to sign off on your
accessibility as a, as, as a full picture.
And all of that then lives
within an existing platform
Chris Bryce: Very cool indeed.
Um, some of the highlights that
you were showing me here get me
thinking like, I-- your system
integrates with existing systems.
Mm-hmm.
You bring your own models.
Where would something like this sit
within kind of a composable stack?
So we're often building headless
websites, and does it kind
of get right into our Git?
Is it looking through code?
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about
that so our prospects or clients
that are, are on composable systems
can see how this all fits together?
Ryan Short: Yeah, great question.
So it does.
You're, you're very much correct.
It, um, it, it sits depending, again,
on, on how you integrate it, w-whether
it's from a Git perspective or whether,
um, whether it's something like, um…
Whether it's something like a Contentful
or a Webflow or a Storyblok perspective,
it's connecting straight into that.
Um, and understanding as well
that, uh, there, there's also this
autofix layer in place, uh, once
that integration layer is built in.
So if Limena is able to, um, depending
on the, depending on the connection that
can be made with that specific CMS, for
instance, if, um, if Limena can create
a PR and, uh, and push certain changes
for developer approval or for product
owner approval, then, uh, then it will.
Obviously, if, if the capabilities
aren't there to be able to do that from
an integration perspective, it can…
It won't.
Um, but, but the idea there similarly,
uh, with, uh, with creating a markdown
file, you know, o-obviously understanding
that a number of individuals are creating
websites using Claude Code or using
a, a variety of other platforms in the
market, um, there's also an MCP, uh,
as, as part of the Limena package that
integrates into that full flow to, to
say what, what's working and what's not.
So, so it's caught before going live.
Chris Bryce: I can see that we, um,
have a dedicated demo day, uh, in
our future, 'cause I'd love to get
into this a-as, as a case study.
Um- Absolutely … I know we spoke a
couple weeks ago that you were also
working on a Shopify integration.
I see some of our partners there with,
uh, Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful.
Um- I know we're running a little bit
out of time and you have a hard stop-
Yeah … but if you can just talk quickly
for those folks who are interested
in how did they use your product?
I know you talked about an agency model.
Also- Mm-hmm … how
they can approach you.
What does that look like
from an onboarding process?
Ryan Short: Yeah, great question.
So, uh, currently if you go to Limena.app,
uh, there's, there's a, a couple of
different pricing models, whether
it's sort of a starting pricing model
around, um, around a single domain
feature, around, you know, a- about
a $500 per month integration through,
through to more of an enterprise model.
Uh, we, uh, w- we ask organizations
to reach out so that we can better
understand sort of that, that fit, and
better sort of structure that pricing
model towards your organization.
Um, but a demo can be requested
at, at any time from, from our
website or by reaching out directly.
Chris Bryce: Okay, that sounds really great.
Um, well, uh, I know that
we are out of time here.
I just want to ask you, maybe,
Ryan, what's the best way for
folks to get in touch with you if
it's now or in the future if folks
are watching this or listening?
Um- Yeah … how do they reach out?
Ryan Short: Yeah.
Um, website, www.limena,
L-I-M-E-N-A, .app,
or similarly by email, ryan@limena.app
or demo@limena.app
and, and the demo website…
The demo address goes to
the same, um, set of emails.
Chris Bryce: Well, that's amazing.
I'm looking forward to, uh, working
with you and learning from you
in the future as time goes by.
Um-
Ryan Short: Absolutely
…
Chris Bryce: thanks for making time in
your day to share with us as well.
Um, everyone who's joined
us today, thank you.
Folks in the future, uh, we'll be checking
the comment fields over time and doing
our best to reply, and stay tuned in
the next couple weeks for episode 50.
And, uh, Ryan, happy birthday.
Thank you.
Go have a great day out there.
We're thinking about you.
Appreciate it.
And it's a real pleasure
having you on the show.
Ryan Short: It's a pleasure, Chris.
Thank you.
Chris Bryce: Okay.
Thank you, everybody.
Have great days out there.
I'm gonna just press some buttons,
and we'll see you all in the future.