Episode 324 – Unstoppable Music Expert and Website Designer with Dan Swift

The above title does not do Dan Swift justice. Dan also has his own podcast, successful Youtube channel and he has released seven music albums. Talk about being unstoppable! I met Dan when I appeared as a guest on his podcast, Time We Discuss and I knew he would contribute to a fascinating story here.   Dan grew up with an interest in music. For a time he thought he wanted to write music for video games. Along the way he left that idea behind and after graduating from college he began working at designing websites. He has made that into his fulltime career.   As he grew as a website designer and later as a supervisor for a school system coordinating and creating the school sites Dan took an interest in accessibility of the web. We talk quite a bit about that during our time together. His observations are fascinating and right on where web access for persons with disabilities is concerned.   We also talk about Dan’s podcast including some stories of guests and what inspires Dan from his interviews. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I.       About the Guest:   Originally wanting to write music for video games or become an audio engineer, Dan Swift graduated from a small Liberal Arts college with a degree in Music Composition (Bachelor of Arts) and Music Recording Technology (Bachelor of Music).  Dan went on to release seven EP albums between 2003 and 2024. Most recently, "Parallels" dropped on Leap Day, 2024.  Dan has always had a passion for shaking up genres between Eps writing classical, electronic, and modern rock music.   While creating music has always been a passion, Dan took a more traditional professional path as a web developer. While on this path, Dan had a lot of experience with accessibility standards as it relates to the web and he values accessibility and equity for everyone both inside and outside the digital workspace. Having received his MBA during COVID, Dan went on to a leadership position where he continues to make a difference leading a team of tech-savvy web professionals.   In early 2024, I created a podcast and YouTube channel called "Time We Discuss" which focuses on career exploration and discovery. The channel and podcast are meant for anyone that is feeling lost professionally and unsure of what is out there for them. Dan feels that it is important for people to discover their professional passion, whatever it is that lights them up on the inside, and chase it. So many people are unfulfilled in their careers, yet it doesn’t have to be this way.   When not working, Dan enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. They are a very active family often going to various extracurricular events over the years including flag football, soccer, gymnastics, and school concerts.  Dan’s wife is very active with several nonprofit organizations including those for the betterment of children and homelessness.  Dan enjoys playing the piano, listening to podcasts, and listening to music.  Dan is very naturally curious and is a slave to a train of never-ending thoughts.   Ways to connect with Dan:   Time We Discuss on YouTube Time We Discuss on Spotify Time We Discuss on Twitter/X Time We Discuss on Instagram Time We Discuss on BlueSky   Time We Discuss Website Dan Swift Music Website   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everybody. Welcome once again. Wherever you may be, to unstoppable mindset, I am your host, Mike hingson, sometimes I say Michael hingson, and people have said, Well, is it Mike or Michael? And the answer is, it doesn't really matter. It took a master's degree in physics and 10 years in sales for me to realize that if I said Mike Hingson on the phone, people kept calling me Mr. Kingston, and I couldn't figure out why, so I started saying Michael Hingson, and they got the hinckson part right, but it doesn't matter to me. So anyway, Mike hingson, or Michael hingson, glad you're with us, wherever you are, and our guest today is Dan Swift, who has his own pine podcast, and it was actually through that podcast that we met, and I told him, but I wouldn't do it with him and be on his podcast unless he would be on unstoppable mindset. And here he is. Dan is a person who writes music, he's an engineer. He does a lot of work with web design and so on, and we're going to get into all that. So Dan, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Dan Swift ** 02:25 Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am. I'm super excited.   Michael Hingson ** 02:30 Well, looking forward to getting to spend more time with you. We did yours time to discuss, and now we get this one. So it's always kind of fun. So, and Dan is in Pennsylvania, so we're talking across the continent, which is fine. It's amazing what we can do with electronics these days, telling us not like the good old days of the covered wagon. What can I say? So, So Dan, why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of the early Dan, growing up and all that.   Dan Swift ** 02:57 Oh, geez. How far   Michael Hingson ** 02:58 back to go? Oh, as far as you want to go,   Dan Swift ** 03:02 Well, okay, so I am, I am the youngest of five. Grew up just outside of Philadelphia as being the youngest. You know, there are certain perks that go along with that. I get to experience things that my parents would have previous said no to the older siblings. And you know how it is with with, you know, if you have more than one kid, technically, you get a little more relaxed as you have more but then I also had the other benefit of, you know, hearing the expression, there are young ears in the room, I will tell you later. So I kind of got some of that too. But I grew up outside of Philadelphia, had a passion for music. Pretty early on. I was never good at any sports. Tried a number of things. And when I landed on music, I thought, you know, this is this is something that I can do. I seem to have a natural talent for it. And I started, I tried playing the piano when I was maybe eight or nine years old. That didn't pan out. Moved on to the trumpet when I was nine or 10. Eventually ended up picking up guitar, bass, guitar, double bass revisited piano later in life, but that's the musical side of things. Also, when I was young, you know, I had a passion for role playing games, Dungeons and Dragons, was really big when I was a teenager, so I was super excited for that. Yeah, that's, that's kind of those, those memories kind of forced me, or kind of shaped me into the person that I am today. I'm very light hearted, very easy going, and I just try to enjoy life.   Michael Hingson ** 04:30 I played some computer games when computers came along and I started fiddling with them, the games I usually played were text based games. I've never really played Dungeons and Dragons and some of those. And I I'm sure that there are accessible versions of of some of that, but I remember playing games like adventure. You remember? Have you heard of adventure? I have, yeah. So that was, that was fun. Info con made. Well, they had Zork, which was really the same as adventure, but they. At a whole bunch of games. And those are, those are fun. And I think all of those games, I know a lot of adults would probably say kids spend too much time on some of them, but some of these games, like the the text based games, I thought really were very good at expanding one's mind, and they made you think, which is really what was important to me? Yeah, I   Dan Swift ** 05:21 completely agree with that too. Because you'd be put in these situations where, you know true, you're trying to solve some kind of puzzle, and you're trying to think, Okay, well, that didn't work, or that didn't work, and you try all these different things, then you decide to leave and come back to and you realize later, like you didn't have something that you needed to progress forward, or something like that. But, but it really gets the brain going, trying to create with these, uh, come up with these creative solutions to progress the game forward. Yeah, which   Michael Hingson ** 05:43 and the creative people who made them in the first place? What did they? Yeah, they, I don't know where they, where they spent their whole time that they had nothing to do but to create these games. But hey, it worked. It sure. Did you know you do it well. So you went off to college. Where'd you go? Sure,   Dan Swift ** 06:02 I went to a small liberal arts college, Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. It's near, it's near Hershey. It was, it was weird in that my the entire school was about half the size of my entire high school. So that was very, very weird. And then you talk to these other people. And it's like, my high school was, you know, very large by comparison. But for me, it was like, well, high school, that's what I knew. But yeah, it was I went to, I went to 11 Valley College near Hershey. I studied, I was a double major. I studied music composition and music recording,   Michael Hingson ** 06:35 okay, and, oh, I've got to go back and ask before we continue that. So what were some of the real perks you got as a kid that your your older siblings didn't get?   Dan Swift ** 06:45 Oh, geez, okay. I mean,   Michael Hingson ** 06:49 couldn't resist, yeah, probably, probably   Dan Swift ** 06:51 some of the more cliche things. I probably got to spend the night at a friend's house earlier than my oldest brother. For instance, I know my parents were a little more concerned about finances. So I know my oldest brother didn't get a chance to go away to college. He did community college instead. And then, kind of, my sister was a very similar thing. And then once we got, like, about halfway down, you know, me and my two other brothers, we all had the opportunity to go away to college. So I think that was, that was definitely one of the perks. If I was the oldest, I was the oldest, I probably wouldn't have had that opportunity with my family. Got   Michael Hingson ** 07:24 it well, so you went off and you got a matt a bachelor's in music, composition and music recording. So that brought you to what you were interested in, part, which was the engineering aspect of it. But that certainly gave you a pretty well rounded education. Why those two why composition and recording? Sure.   Dan Swift ** 07:43 So if we talk about the music first at that time, so this is like the the late 90s, early 2000s any kind of digital music that was out there really was, was MIDI based, and anyone that was around that time and paying attention, it was like these very like, like that music kind of sound to it. So there wasn't a whole lot going on with MIDI. I'm sorry, with music as far as how great it sounded, or I shouldn't say, how great it sounded, the the instruments that are triggered by MIDI, they didn't sound all that great. But around that time, there was this game that came out, Final Fantasy seven, and I remember hearing the music for that, and it was all, it was all electronic, and it was just blown away by how fantastic it sounded. And And around that time, I thought, you know, it'd be really cool to get into writing music for video games. And that was something I really kind of toyed with. So that was kind of in the back of my head. But also, at the time, I was in a band, like a rock band, and I thought, you know, I'm going to school. They have this opportunity to work as a music engineer, which is something I really wanted to do at the time. And I thought, free studio time. My band will be here. This will be awesome. And it wasn't until I got there that I discovered that they also had the music composition program. It was a I was only there maybe a week or two, and once I discovered that, I was like, Well, this is gonna be great, you know, I'll learn to write. Know, I'll learn to write music. I can write for video games. I'll get engineering to go with it. This is gonna be fantastic. Speaking   Michael Hingson ** 09:07 of electronic music, did you ever see a science fiction movie called The Forbidden Planet? I did not. Oh, it's music. It's, it's not really music in the sense of what what we call, but it's all electronic. You gotta, you gotta find it. I'm sure you can find it somewhere. It's called the Forbidden Planet. Walter pigeon is in it. But the music and the sounds fit the movie, although it's all electronic, and electronic sounding pretty interesting.   Dan Swift ** 09:37 Now, is that from, I know, like in the 50s, 60s, there was a lot of experiments. Okay, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:45 yeah, and, but again, it fit the movie, which was the important part. So it certainly wasn't music like John Williams today and and in the 80s and all that. But again, for the movie, it fit. Very well, which is kind of cool. Yeah,   Dan Swift ** 10:02 I'll definitely have to check that out. I remember when I was in school, we talked about like that, that avant garde kind of style of the the 50s, 60s. And there was a lot of weird stuff going on with electronics, electronic music. Um, so I'm very curious to see, uh, to check this out, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 10:14 You have to let me know what, what you find, what you think about it, when you get to chance to watch it, absolutely or actually, I I may have a copy. If I do, I'll put it in a dropbox folder and send you a link. Fantastic. So you graduated. Now, when did you graduate?   Dan Swift ** 10:32 Sure, so I graduated in 2003 okay,   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 so you graduated, and then what did you do? So,   Dan Swift ** 10:41 backing up about maybe 612, months prior to that, I decided I did not want to be a I didn't want to write music for video games. I also did not want to work in a recording studio. And the reason for this was for music. It was, I didn't it was, it was something I really, really enjoyed, and I didn't want to be put in a position where I had to produce music on demand. I didn't want to I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to lose my hobby, lose my passion in that way. So I decided that was out. And then also, when it came to working in a studio, if I wanted to be the engineer that I really wanted to be, I would have to be in a place where the music scene was really happening. So I'd have to be in like Philadelphia or Los Angeles or Nashville or deep in Philly or something like that. And I do not like the cities. I don't feel comfortable in the city. So I was like, that's not really for me either. I could work in like a suburb studio. But I was like, not, not for me. I don't, not for me. So when I graduated college, I ended up doing freelance web work. I had met through, through a mutual friend I was I was introduced to by a mutual friend, to a person that was looking for a new web designer, developer. They lost their person, and they were looking for someone to take over with that. And at the time, I did a little bit of experience doing that, from when I was in high school, kind of picked it up on the side, just kind of like as a hobby. But I was like, Ah, I'll give this a shot. So I started actually doing that freelance for a number of years after graduation. I also worked other jobs that was, like, kind of like nowhere, like dead end kind of jobs. I did customer service work for a little bit. I was a teacher with the American Cross for a little bit, a little bit of this and that, just trying to find my way. But at the same time, I was doing freelance stuff, and nothing related to music and nothing related to technology,   Michael Hingson ** 12:29 well, so you learned HTML coding and all that other stuff that goes along with all that. I gather, I   Dan Swift ** 12:35 sure did, I sure didn't. At the time, CSS was just kind of popular, yeah, so that. And then I learned, I learned JavaScript a little bit. And, you know, I had a very healthy attitude when it when it came to accepting new clients and projects, I always tried to learn something new. Anytime someone gave me a new a new request came in, it was like, Okay, well, I already know how to do this by doing it this way. But how can I make this better? And that was really the way that I really propelled myself forward in the in the digital, I should say, when it comes to development or design.   Michael Hingson ** 13:05 Okay, so you ended up really seriously going into website development and so on.   Dan Swift ** 13:15 I did. So I continued doing freelance. And then about five years after I graduated, I started working as an audio visual technician, and also was doing computer tech stuff as part of the role as well. And while I was there, I ended up developing some web applications for myself to use that I could use to interact with our like projectors and stuff like that. Because they were on, they were all in the network, so I could interact with them using my wait for it, iPod Touch, there you go. So that was, you know, I kind of like started to blend those two together. I was really interested in the web at the time, you know, because I was still doing the freelance, I really wanted to move forward and kind of find a full time position doing that. So I ended up pursuing that more and just trying to refine those skills. And it wasn't until about about five years later, I ended up working as a full time web developer, and then kind of moved forward from   Michael Hingson ** 14:09 there, iPod Touch, what memories? And there are probably bunches of people who don't even know what that is today. That   Dan Swift ** 14:16 is so true, and at the time that was cutting edge technology,   Michael Hingson ** 14:21 yeah, it was not accessible. So I didn't get to own one, because was later than that that Steve Jobs was finally kind of pushed with the threat of a lawsuit into making things accessible. And then they did make the iPhone, the iPod, the Mac and so on, and iTunes U and other things like that, accessible. And of course, what Steve Jobs did, what Apple did, which is what Microsoft eventually sort of has done as well, but he built accessibility into the operating system. So anybody who has an Apple device today. Troy actually has a device that can be made accessible by simply turning on the accessibility mode. Of course, if you're going to turn it on, you better learn how to use it, because the gestures are different. But it took a while, but, but that did happen. But by that time, I, you know, I had other things going on, and so I never did get an iPod and and wasn't able to make it work, but that's okay. But it's like the CD has gone away and the iPod has gone away, and so many things and DVDs have gone away.   Dan Swift ** 15:31 Yes, so true. So true. You know, just as soon as we start to get used to them   Michael Hingson ** 15:35 gone. I think there is, well, maybe it's close. There was a blockbuster open up in Oregon. But again, Blockbuster Video, another one, and I think somebody's trying to bring them back, but I do see that vinyl records are still being sold in various places by various people. Michael Buble just put out a new album, The Best of Buble, and it's available, among other things, in vinyl. So the old turntables, the old record players, and you can actually buy his album as a record and play it, which is kind of cool. Yeah, they've been   Dan Swift ** 16:07 very big with marketing, too. It's been kind of a marketing, I don't want to say gimmick, but in that realm, you kind of like, hey, you know, this is also available in vinyl, and you try to get the people that are like the audio files to really check it out. I never really took the vinyl personally, but I know plenty of people that have sworn by it. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 16:25 I've heard a number of people say that the audio actually is better on vinyl than typical MP three or other similar file formats. Yep,   Dan Swift ** 16:35 yep. I had a friend growing up, and actually, I shouldn't say growing up, so I was already, like, in college or post college, but a buddy of mine, Craig, he was all about vinyl, and he had, he had the nice, the amplifier, and the nice, I think even, like, a certain kind of needle that you would get for the record player. And you know, you'd have to sit in the sweet spot to really enjoy it, and and I respect that, but um, for me, it was like, I didn't, I didn't hear that much of a difference between a CD and vinyl. Um, not very. Didn't have the opportunity to AB test them. But now I will say comparing a CD to like an mp three file, for instance, even a high quality mp three file, I can tell the difference on that Sure. I would never, you know, I'd use the MP threes for convenience. But if I were to have it my way, man, I'd have the uncompressed audio, no doubt about it, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 17:27 wave forms, yep, yep, yeah. Obviously that's that's going to give you the real quality. Of course, it takes a lot more memory, but nevertheless, if you've got the space it, it really makes a lot of sense to do because mp three isn't going to be nearly as high a level quality.   Dan Swift ** 17:43 Absolutely, absolutely true. And that the way I rationalize it to myself. It's like, well, if I'm going to be though in the car or probably walking around and listening to music, I'm going to be getting all kinds of sounds from outside. Anyway, it kind of offsets the poor quality of the MP justify it.   Michael Hingson ** 17:56 That's true. Well, you know when and mp three is convenient if you want to put a bunch of stuff in a well on a memory card and be able to play it all, because if you have uncompressed audio, it does take a lot more space, and you can't put as much on a card, or you got to get a much bigger card. And now we're getting pretty good sized memory cards. But still, the reality is that that for most purposes, not all mp three will suffice.   Dan Swift ** 18:26 That is true. That is true. And I think too, you have a that the next battle is going to be mp three or a streaming,   Michael Hingson ** 18:33 yeah, yeah, that's going to be fun, isn't it? Yeah? Boy. What a world well. So one of the things I noticed in reading your bio and so on is that you got involved to a great degree in dealing with accessibility on the web. Tell me about that.   Dan Swift ** 18:55 Absolutely. Michael, so I've very strong opinions of accessibility. And this really comes back to, you know, I was, I was at my job, and I was only there as a full time developer. I wasn't there all that long, maybe a year, maybe two, and my supervisor came over to me and she said, you know, we want to start to make things more accessible. And this is like, this is like, 1012, years ago at this point, and I was like, okay, you know, and I did my little bit of research, and there wasn't a whole lot going on at the time. I don't think WCAG was a thing back then. It may have been. I can't remember if 508 was a thing at the in the Bible. It was okay, yeah. So I was doing my research, and, you know, you learn about the alt tags, and it's like, okay, well, we're doing that, okay. Then you learn about forms, and it's like, okay, well, they need to have labels, okay, but, but the turning point was this, Michael, we had a person on staff that was blind, and I was put in touch with this person, and I asked them to review like, different, different web applications. Applications we made, or forms or web pages. And the one day, I can't remember if he volunteered or if I asked, but essentially the request was, can this person come into our physical space and review stuff for us in person? And that experience was life changing for me, just watching him navigate our different web pages or web applications or forms, and seeing how he could go through it, see what was a problem, what was not a problem, was just an incredible experience. And I said this before, when given the opportunity to talk about this, I say to other developers and designers, if you ever have even the slightest opportunity to interact with someone, if they if, if you meet someone and they are using, let me, let me rephrase that, if you have the opportunity to watch someone that is blind using a navigate through the web, take, take that opportunity. Is just an amazing, amazing experience, and you draw so much from it. As a developer or designer, so very strong opinions about it, I'm all about inclusivity and making things equal for everyone on the web, and that was just my introductory experience about a dozen years ago.   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 And so what have you done with it all since? Sure, so   Dan Swift ** 21:11 with our website, we went from having about a million success criterion failures, and we've gotten it all the way down to, I think my last check, I think was maybe about 10,000 so it was huge, huge change. It's hard to get everything as because as content changes and newspaper, as new pages come online, it's hard to keep everything 100% accessible, but we know what to look for. You know, we're looking for the right contrast. We're looking for, you know, the all tags. We're looking for hierarchy with the headers. We're making sure our forms are accessible. We're making sure there aren't any keyboard traps, you know, things that most people, most web visitors, don't even think about, you know, or developers even thinking about, until you know, you need to think about them   Michael Hingson ** 22:00 well and other things as well, such as with other kinds of disabilities. If you're a person with epilepsy, for example, you don't want to go to a website and find blinking elements, or at least, you need to have a way to turn them off, yeah.   Dan Swift ** 22:13 Or or audio that starts automatically, or videos that start automatically, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:19 So many different things, or video that starts automatically, and there's music, but there's no audio, so you so a blind person doesn't even know what the video is, yes, which, which happens all too often. But the the reality is that with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's it's been interesting, because some lawyers have tried to fight the courts and say, well, but the ADA came out long before the internet, so we didn't know anything about the internet, so it doesn't apply. And finally, the Department of Justice is taking some stands to say, yes, it does, because the internet is a place of business, but it's going to have to be codified, I think, to really bring it home. But some courts have sided with that argument and said, Well, yeah, the ADA is too old, so it doesn't, doesn't matter. And so we still see so many challenges with the whole idea of access. And people listening to this podcast know that, among other things I work with a company called accessibe. Are you familiar with them? I am, Yep, yeah, and, and so that's been an interesting challenge. But what makes access to be interesting is that, because it has an artificial intelligent widget that can monitor a website, and at the at the low end of of costs. It's like $490 a year. And it may not pick up everything that a body needs, but it will, will do a lot. And going back to what you said earlier, as websites change, as they evolve, because people are doing things on their website, which they should be doing, if you've got a static website, you never do anything with it. That's not going to do you very much good. But if it's changing constantly, the widget, at least, can look at it and make a lot of the changes to keep the website accessible. The other part of it is that it can tell you what it can't do, which is cool,   Dan Swift ** 24:16 yeah, that's a really good point. You know, there's a lot of tools that are out there. They do monitor the stuff for you, you know, like we on our on our site, we have something that runs every night and it gives us a report every day. But then there are things that it doesn't always check, or it might, it might get a false positive, because it sees that like, you know, this element has a particular color background and the text is a particular color as well. But there's, you know, maybe a gradient image that lies between them, or an image that lies between them. So it's actually okay, even though the tool says it's not, or something like that. So, yeah, those automated tools, but you gotta also look at it. You know, a human has to look at those as well.   Michael Hingson ** 24:52 Yeah, it's a challenge. But the thing that I think is important with, well, say, use accessibe. An example is that I think every web developer should use accessibe. And the reason I think that is not that accessibe will necessarily do a perfect job with with the access widget, but what it will do is give you something that is constantly monitored, and even if it only makes about 50% of the website more usable because there are complex graphics and other things that it can't do, the reality is, why work harder than you have to, and if accessibility can do a lot of the work for you without you having to do it, it doesn't mean that you need to charge less or you need to do things any different, other than the fact that you save a lot of time on doing part of it because the widget does it for you. Absolutely, absolutely.   Dan Swift ** 25:47 That's that's a really, really good point too, having that tool, that tool in your tool belt, you know, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 yeah. And it makes a lot of sense to do. And there are, there are people who complain about products like accessibe, saying artificial intelligence can't do it. It's too new. You gotta start somewhere. And the reality is that accessibe, in of itself, does a lot, and it really makes websites a lot better than they otherwise were. And some people say, Well, we've gone to websites and accessibe doesn't really seem to make a difference on the site. Maybe not. But even if your website is pretty good up front and you use accessibe, it's that time that you change something that you don't notice and suddenly accessibe fixes it. That makes it better. It's an interesting discussion all the way around, but to to deny the reality of what an AI oriented system can do is, is really just putting your head in the sand and not really being realistic about life as we go forward. I think that is   Dan Swift ** 26:52 so true. That is so true, and there's so many implications with AI and where it's going to go and what it will be able to do. You know, it's just in its infancy, and the amount of things that that the possibilities of what the future is going to be like, but they're just going to be very, very interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 27:05 I interviewed someone, well, I can't say interview, because it's conversation. Well, I had a conversation with someone earlier on, unstoppable mindset, and he said something very interesting. He's a coach, and specifically, he does a lot of work with AI, and he had one customer that he really encouraged to start using chat GPT. And what this customer did, he called his senior staff into a meeting one day, and he said, Okay, I want you to take the rest of the day and just work with chat, G, P, T, and create ideas that will enhance our business, and then let's get together tomorrow to discuss them. And he did that because he wanted people to realize the value already that exists using some of this technology. Well, these people came back with incredible ideas because they took the time to focus on them, and again, they interacted with chat, GPT. So it was a symbiotic, is probably the wrong word, but synergistic, kind of relationship, where they and the AI system worked together and created, apparently, what became really clever ideas that enhanced this customer's business. And the guy, when he first started working with this coach, was totally down on AI, but after that day of interaction with his staff, he recognized the value of it. And I think the really important key of AI is AI will not replace anyone. And that's what this gentleman said to me. He said, AI won't do it. People may replace other people, which really means they're not using AI properly, because if they were, when they find that they can use artificial intelligence to do the job that someone else is doing, you don't get rid of that person. You find something else for them to do. And the conversation that we had was about truck drivers who are involved in transporting freight from one place to another. If you get to the point where you have an autonomous vehicle, who can really do that, you still keep a driver behind the wheel, but that driver is now doing other things for the company, while the AI system does the driving, once it gets dependable enough to do that. So he said, there's no reason for AI to eliminate, and it won't. It's people that do it eliminate any job at all, which I think is a very clever and appropriate response. And I completely agree   Dan Swift ** 29:29 with that, you know, you think of other other technologies that are out there and how it disrupted, disrupted different industries. And the one example I like to use is the traffic light, you know. And I wonder, and I have no way of knowing this. I haven't researched this at all, but I wonder if there was any kind of pushback when they started putting in traffic lights. Because at that point in time, maybe you didn't have people directing traffic or something like that. Or maybe that was the event of the stop sign, it took it took away the jobs of people that were directing traffic or something like that. Maybe there was some kind of uproar over that. Maybe not, I don't know, but I like to think that things like that, you know. It disrupts the industry. But then people move on, and there are other other opportunities for them, and it progresses. It makes society progress forward.   Michael Hingson ** 30:06 And one would note that we still do use school crossing guards at a lot of schools.   Dan Swift ** 30:11 That is so true, that is true. Yeah, yeah. And especially, too, like talking about idea generation. I was talking to ginger. I forgot her last name, but she's the the president of pinstripe marketing, and she was saying that her team sometimes does the same thing that they they use chat GBT for idea generation. And I think, let's say Ashley, I think Ashley Mason, I think was her name, from Dasha social. The same thing they use, they use a chat GPT for idea generation, not not necessarily for creating the content, but for idea generation and the ideas it comes up with. It could be it can save you a lot of time. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:48 it can. And you know, I've heard over the last year plus how a lot of school teachers are very concerned that kids will just go off and get chat GPT to write their papers. And every time I started hearing that, I made the comment, why not let it do that? You're not thinking about it in the right way. If a kid goes off and just uses chat GPT to write their paper, they do that and they turn it into you. The question is, then, what are you as the teacher, going to do? And I submit that what the teachers ought to do is, when they assign a paper and the class all turns in their papers, then what you do is you take one period, and you give each student a minute to come up and defend without having the paper in front of them their paper. You'll find out very quickly who knows what. And it's, I think it's a potentially great teaching tool that   Dan Swift ** 31:48 is fascinating, that perspective is awesome. I love that.   Speaker 1 ** 31:52 Well, it makes sense. It   Dan Swift ** 31:55 certainly does. It certainly does. And that made me think of this too. You know, there's a lot of pushback from from artists about how that, you know, their their art was being used, or art is being used by AI to generate, you know, new art, essentially. And and musicians are saying the same thing that they're taking our stuff, it's getting fed into chat, GPT or whatever, and they're using it to train these different models. And I read this, this article. I don't even know where it was, but it's probably a couple months ago at this point. And the person made this comparison, and the person said, you know, it's really no different than a person learning how to paint in school by studying other people's art. You know, it's the same idea. It's just at a much, much much accelerated pace. And I thought, you know what that's that's kind of interesting. It's an interesting   Michael Hingson ** 32:45 perspective. It is. I do agree that we need to be concerned, that the human element is important. And there are a lot of things that people are are doing already to misuse some of this, this AI stuff, these AI tools, but we already have the dark web. We've had that for a while, too. I've never been to the dark web. I don't know how to get to it. That's fine. I don't need to go to the dark web. Besides that, I'll bet it's not accessible anyway. But the we've had the dark web, and people have accepted the fact that it's there, and there are people who monitor it and and all that. But the reality is, people are going to misuse things. They're going to be people who will misuse and, yeah, we have to be clever enough to try to ferret that out. But the fact of the matter is, AI offers so much already. One of the things that I heard, oh, gosh, I don't whether it was this year or late last year, was that, using artificial intelligence, Pfizer and other organizations actually created in only a couple of days? Or moderna, I guess, is the other one, the COVID vaccines that we have. If people had to do it alone, it would have taken them years that that we didn't have. And the reality is that using artificial intelligence, it was only a few days, and they had the beginnings of those solutions because they they created a really neat application and put the system to work. Why wouldn't we want to do that?   Dan Swift ** 34:23 I completely agree. I completely agree. And that's, again, that's how you move society forward. You know, it's similar to the idea of, you know, testing medicine on or testing medications on animals. For instance, you know, I love animals. You know, I love dogs, bunnies. I mean, the whole, the whole gamut, you know, love animals, but I understand the importance of, you know, well, do we test on them, or do we press on people, you know, you gotta, or do you not test? Or do just not you like you gotta. You gotta weigh out the pros and cons. And they're, they're definitely, definitely those with AI as well.   Michael Hingson ** 34:56 Well, I agree, and I. With animals and people. Now, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, we ought to be doing tests on politicians. You know, they're not people. Anyway. So I think when you decide to become a politician, you take a special pill that nobody seems to be able to prove, but they take dumb pills, so they're all there. But anyway, I'm with Mark Twain. Congress is at Grand Ole benevolent asylum for the helpless. So I'm an equal opportunity abuser, which is why we don't do politics on unstoppable mindset. We can have a lot of fun with it, I'm sure, but we sure could. It would be great talk about artificial intelligence. You got politicians. But the reality is that it's, it's really something that that brings so much opportunity, and I'm and it's going to continue to do that, and every day, as we see advances in what AI is doing, we will continue to see advances and what is open for us to be able to utilize it to accomplish, which is cool. I   Dan Swift ** 36:04 completely agree. Completely agree. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 36:06 so it'll be fun to see you know kind of how it goes. So are you, do you work for a company now that makes websites? Or what is your company that you work for? Do, sure.   Dan Swift ** 36:16 So I'm still in the education space, so I'm still, I'm like, in a state school managing a team of web professionals.   Michael Hingson ** 36:23 Okay, well, that's cool. So you keep the school sites and all the things that go along with it up at all that   Dan Swift ** 36:31 is correct. And we have lots of fun challenges when we start to integrate with third parties and got to make sure they're accessible too. And sometimes there's dialog that goes back and forth that people aren't happy with but, but it's my job to make sure, that's one of the things that we make sure happens, especially since I'm sure you've been following this. There's the Department of Justice ruling back in April, but I think it's anyone that's receiving state funding, they have to be. They have to follow the WCAG. Two point, I think, 2.1 double A compliance by April of 26 if you are a certain size, and my my institution, falls into that category. So we need to make sure that we were on the right path   Michael Hingson ** 37:06 well. And the reality is that has been around since 2010 but it took the the DOJ 12 years to finally come up with rules and regulations to implement section 508. Yep, but it's it's high time they did and they do need to do it for the rest of the internet, and that's coming, but people are just being slow. And for me personally, I think it's just amazing that it's taking so long. It's not like you have to redesign a box, that you have to go off and retool hardware. This is all code. Why should it be that difficult to do? But people throw roadblocks in your way, and so it becomes tough. Yeah, it's   Dan Swift ** 37:47 interesting, too. I remember reading this article, oh, gosh, this is probably, this is probably about a dozen years ago, and it said that, you know, the original web was 100% accessible, that it was just, you know, just text on a page pretty much. And you could do very, very simple layouts, you know, and then it got more convoluted. People would start doing tables for layouts, and tables within tables within tables, and so on and so forth. Like the original web it was, it was completely accessible. And now with, with all the the interactions we do with with client side scripting and everything like that, is just, it's a mess. If   Michael Hingson ** 38:19 you really want to hear an interesting thing, I like to look and I've done it for a long time, long before accessibe. I like to explore different sites and see how accessible they are. And one day I visited nsa.gov, the National Security Agency, which, of course, doesn't really exist. So I could tell you stories, but I went to nsa.gov, and I found that that was the most accessible website I had ever encountered. If you arrow down to a picture, for example, when you arrowed into it, suddenly you got on your screen reader a complete verbal description of what the picture was, and everything about that site was totally usable and totally accessible. I'd never seen a website that was so good contrast that with and it's changed. I want to be upfront about it, Martha Stewart Living. The first time I went to that website because I was selling products that Martha Stewart was interested. So I went to look at the website. It was totally inaccessible. The screen reader wouldn't talk at all. Now, I've been to Martha Stewart since, and it's and it's much more accessible, but, but I was just amazed@nsa.gov was so accessible. It was amazing, which I thought was really pretty cool. Of all places. You   Dan Swift ** 39:41 know, it's interesting. Before I started my my YouTube channel and podcast, I actually thought about creating a channel and or podcast about websites that are inaccessible, and I thought about calling companies out. And the more I thought about it, I was like, I don't know if I want to make that many people angry. I don't know if that's a   Michael Hingson ** 39:58 good idea. I'm. Would suggest going the other way, and maybe, you know, maybe we can work together on it. But I would rather feature websites that are accessible and tell the story of how they got there, how their people got there. I would think that would be, I hear what you're saying about making people angry. So I would think, rather than doing that, feature the places that are and why they are and and their stories, and that might help motivate more people to make their websites accessible. What do you think about that as an idea?   Dan Swift ** 40:28 I actually thought about that as well, and I was going backwards between that and and the other the negative side, because I thought, you know, bring that to light. Might actually force them to like by shedding light on it, might force them to make their site more accessible, whether what or not or not, no, but I definitely thought about those two sites.   Michael Hingson ** 40:45 Yeah, it's, it's, it's a challenge all the way around. Well, what was the very first thing you did, the first experience that you ever had dealing with accessibility that got you started down that road.   Dan Swift ** 40:58 I think it was like I said, when I work with that, that blind person, when I, when I first had that opportunity to see how he used the different web applications, we had the different web pages, and he was using a Mac. So he was using VoiceOver, he was using the, I think it's called the rotor menu, or roto something like that. Yeah, yep. So then after that happened, it was like, whoa. I need to get them back so I can, like, learn to use this as well and do my own testing. So the IT department had an old I asked them. I said, Hey guys, do you have any any old MacBooks that I can use? I was like, it can be old. I just need to test it. I need to, I need it to test for accessibility on the web. They hooked me up with an old machine, you know, it wasn't super old, you know, but it was. It worked for me. It gave me an opportunity to do my testing, and then I kind of became like the person in the department to do that. Everyone else, they didn't have the interest as much as I did. They recognized the importance of it, but they, they didn't have the same fire on the inside that I had, so I kind of took that on, and then like that. Now that I'm in the position of leadership, now it's more of a delegating that and making sure it still gets done. But I'm kind of like the resident expert in our in our area, so I'm still kind of the person that dives in a little bit by trying to make my team aware and do the things they need to do to make sure we're continuing, continuing to create accessible projects. You   Michael Hingson ** 42:20 mentioned earlier about the whole idea of third party products and so on and and dealing with them. What do you do? And how do you deal with a company? Let's say you you need to use somebody else's product and some of the things that the school system has to do, and you find they're not accessible. What do you do?   Dan Swift ** 42:42 So a lot of times, what will happen, I shouldn't say a lot of times. It's not uncommon for a department to make a purchase from a third party, and this is strictly, I'm talking in the web space. They might, they might make a purchase with a third party, and then they want us to integrate it. And this is a great example I had. It was actually in the spring the this, they had essentially a widget that would be on the on their particular set of pages, and there was a pop up that would appear. And don't get me started on pop ups, because I got very strong opinion about those. Me too, like I said, growing up, you know, late 90s, early 2000s very, very strong opinions about pop ups. So, but, but I encountered this, and it wasn't accessible. And I'm glad that in the position I'm in, I could say this unit, you need to talk to the company, and they need to fix this, or I'm taking it down. And I'm glad that I had the backing from, you know, from leadership, essentially, that I could do, I can make that claim and then do that, and the company ended up fixing it. So that was good. Another example was another department was getting ready to buy something. Actually, no, they had already purchased it, but they hadn't implemented it yet. The first example that was already implemented, that was I discovered that after the fact. So in the second example, they were getting ready to implement it, and they showed us another school that used it also a pop up. And I looked at it on the on the other school site, and I said, this isn't accessible. We cannot use this. No. And they said, Well, yes, it is. And I said, No, it isn't. And I explained to them, and I showed them how it was not accessible, and they ended up taking it back to their developers. Apparently there was a bug that they then fixed and they made it accessible, and then we could implement it. So it's nice that like that. I have the support from from leadership, that if there is something that is inaccessible, I have the power to kind of wheel my fist and take that down, take it off of our site. Do   Michael Hingson ** 44:31 you ever find that when some of this comes up within the school system, that departments push back, or have they caught on and recognize the value of accessibility, so they'll be supportive.   Dan Swift ** 44:45 I think the frustration with them becomes more of we bought this tool. We wish we had known this was an issue before we bought I think it's more of a like like that. We just wasted our time and money, possibly. But generally speaking, they do see the. Value of it, and they've recognized the importance of it. It's just more of a when others, there's more hoops everyone has to go through.   Michael Hingson ** 45:05 Yeah, and as you mentioned with pop ups, especially, it's a real challenge, because you could be on a website, and a lot of times A pop up will come up and it messes up the website for people with screen readers and so on. And part of the problem is we don't even always find the place to close or take down the pop up, which is really very frustrating   Dan Swift ** 45:30 Exactly, exactly the tab index could be off, or you could still be on the page somewhere, and it doesn't allow you to get into it and remove it, or, yeah, and extra bonus points if they also have an audio playing or a video playing inside of that.   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Yeah, it really does make life a big challenge, which is very, very frustrating all the way around. Yeah, pop ups are definitely a big pain in the butt, and I know with accessibility, we're we're all very concerned about that, but still, pop ups do occur. And the neat thing about a product like accessibe, and one of the reasons I really support it, is it's scalable, and that is that as the people who develop the product at accessibe improve it, those improvements filter down to everybody using the widget, which is really cool, and that's important, because with individual websites where somebody has to code it in and keep monitoring it, as you pointed out, the problem is, if that's all you have, then you've got to keep paying people to to monitor everything, to make sure everything stays accessible and coded properly, whereas there are ways to be able to take advantage of something like accessibe, where what you're able to do is let it, monitor it, and as accessibe learns, and I've got some great examples where people contacted me because they had things like a shopping cart on a website that didn't work, but when accessibe fixed it, because it turns out there was something that needed to be addressed that got fixed for anybody using the product. Which is really cool.   Dan Swift ** 47:07 Yeah, that's really neat. I definitely appreciate things like that where, you know, you essentially fix something for one person, it's fixed for everyone, or a new feature gets added for someone, or, you know, a group of people, for instance, and then everyone is able to benefit from that. That's really, really awesome. I love that type of stuff.   Michael Hingson ** 47:22 Yeah, I think it's really so cool. How has all this business with accessibility and so on affected you in terms of your YouTube channel and podcasting and so on? How do you bring that into the process? That's that's   Dan Swift ** 47:37 really, really good question. I am very proud to say that I take the time to create transcripts of all my recordings, and then I go through them, and I check them for for accuracy, to make sure that things aren't correct, things are incorrect. Make sure things are correct, that they are not incorrect. So I'll make sure that those are there when the when the videos go live, those are available. Spotify creates them automatically for you. I don't know that you that I have the ability to modify them. I'm assuming I probably do, but honestly, I haven't checked into that. But so that's that's all accessible. When it comes to my web page, I make sure that all my images have the appropriate, you know, alt tags associated with them, that the the descriptions are there so people understand what the pictures are. I don't have a whole lot of pictures. Usually it's just the thumbnail for the videos, so just indicating what it is. And then I just try to be, you know, kind of, kind of text heavy. I try to make sure that my, you know, my links are not, you know, click here, learn more stuff like that. I make sure or they're not actual web addresses. I try to make sure that they're actual actionable. So when someone's using a screen reader and they go over a link, it actually is meaningful. And color contrast is another big one. I try to make sure my color contrast is meeting the appropriate level for WCAG, 2.1 double A which I can't remember what actual contrast is, but there's a contrast checker for it, which is really, really helpful   Michael Hingson ** 49:00 well. And the other, the other part about it is when somebody goes to your website again, of course, accessibility is different for different people, so when you're dealing with things like contrast or whatever, do people who come to the website have the ability to monitor or not monitor, but modify some of those settings so that they get maybe a higher contrast or change colors. Or do they have that ability?   Dan Swift ** 49:28 I They do not have that ability. I remember looking into a tool a while ago, and it was and actually, you know, at the school, we thought about developing a tool. It would be like a widget on the side that you could adjust on different things like that. You could do, you could remove images, you could remove animation, you could change color, contrast, that sort of thing. And it just be like a very predefined kind of kind of settings. But in my research, I found that a lot of times that causes other problems for people, and it kind of falls into the the arena of. Um, separate but equal. And there's a lot of issues with that right now in the accessibility space when it comes to the web. So for instance, there was a company, I forget what the company name was, but they had one of their things that they did was they would create text only versions of your pages. So you'd contract with them. They would they would scrape the content of your site. They would create a text version, text only version of your pages. So if people were using a screen reader, they could just follow that link and then browse the text only version. And there was litigation, and the company got sued, and the the person suing was successful, because it was essentially creating a separate argument.   Michael Hingson ** 50:34 And that's not necessarily separate, but equal is the problem, because if you only got the text, pictures are put on websites, graphs are put on websites. All of those other kinds of materials are put on websites for reasons. And so what really needs to happen is that those other things need to be made accessible, which is doable, and the whole web con excessive content. Accessibility Guidelines do offer the the information as to how to do that and what to do, but it is important that that other information be made available, because otherwise it really is separate, but not totally equal at   Dan Swift ** 51:11 all. That's absolutely true. Absolutely true. Yeah. So it   Michael Hingson ** 51:15 is a, it is something to, you know, to look at well, you've been doing a podcast and so on for a while. What are some challenges that someone might face that you advise people about if they're going to create their own podcast or a really productive YouTube channel,   Dan Swift ** 51:31 be real with yourself with the amount of time you have to dedicate to it, because what I found is that it takes a lot more time than I originally anticipated I thought going in, I thought, you know, so I typically try to record one or two people a week. When I first started out, I was only recording one person. And usually I would do, you know, record one day, edit the next day, you know, do the web page stuff. I would go with it, you know, I can knock it out in like an hour or two. But I wasn't anticipating the social media stuff that goes with it, the search engine optimization that goes with it, the research that goes with it, trying to so if I'm if I'm producing a video that's going to go on YouTube, what's hot at the moment? What are people actually searching for? What's going to grab people's attention? What kind of thumbnail do I have to create to grab someone's attention, where it's not clickbait, but it also represents what I'm actually talking to the person about, and still interesting. So it's a lot of a lot of that research, a lot of that sort of thing. It just eats up a lot a lot of time when it comes to like the transcripts, for instance, that was those super easy on their number of services out there that created automatically for you, and they just have to read through it and make sure it's okay. I know YouTube will do it as well. I found that YouTube isn't as good as some of the other services that are out there, but in a bind, you can at least rely on YouTube and then go and edit from that point. But yet, time is definitely a big one. I would say, if anyone is starting to do it, make sure you have some serious time to dedicate several, several hours a week, I would say, upwards, you know, probably a good, you know, four to 10 hours a week is what I would estimate in the moment. If you're looking to produce a 30 minute segment once or twice a week, I would estimate about that time.   Michael Hingson ** 53:11 Yeah, one of the things I've been hearing about videos is that that the trend is is clearly not to have long videos, but only 32nd videos, and put them vertical as opposed to horizontal. And anything over 30 seconds is is not good, which seems to me to really not challenge people to deal with having enough content to make something relevant, because you can't do everything in 30 seconds exactly,   Dan Swift ** 53:41 and what I found too. So this was very this was a little bit of a learning curve for me. So with, with the YouTube shorts that you have, they have to be a minute or less. I mean, now they're actually in the process of changing it to three minutes or less. I do not have that access yet, but it has Go ahead, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so. But what I'm finding Michael is that the people that so I might create this a great example. So I was interviewing a comedian in New York City, Meredith Dietz, awesome, awesome episode. But I was talking to her about becoming a comedian, and I made about four different shorts for her from her video, and I was doing a new one each week to kind of promote it. And the videos, for me, they were getting a lot I was getting anywhere between maybe 315 100 views on the short for me, that was awesome. For other people, you know, that might be nothing, but for me, that was awesome. But what I found was that the people that watch the shorts aren't necessarily the same people that watch the long form videos. So I'm or, or I might get subscribers from people that watch the shorts, but then they're not actually watching the video. And in the end, that kind of hurts your channel, because it's showing, it's telling the YouTube I'm gonna use air quotes, YouTube algorithm that my subscribers aren't interested in my content, and it ends up hurting me more. So anyone that's trying to play that game. And be aware of that. You know, you can't get more subscribers through shorts, but if you're not converting them, it's going to hurt you.   Michael Hingson ** 55:05 I can accept three minutes, but 30 seconds just seems to be really strange. And I was asked once to produce a demonstration of accessibe on a website. They said you got to do it in 30 seconds, or no more than a minute, but preferably 30 seconds. Well, you can't do that if, in part, you're also trying to explain what a screen reader is and everything else. The reality is, there's got to be some tolerance. And I think that the potential is there to do that. But it isn't all about eyesight, which is, of course, the real issue from my perspective. Anyway.   Dan Swift ** 55:41 Yeah, I completely agree. I think what YouTube is trying to do, and I believe in getting this from Tiktok, I think Tiktok has three up to three minutes. Actually, there might be 10 minutes now that I think about it, but, but I think they're trying to follow the trend, and it's like, let's make videos slightly longer and see how that goes. So be very curious to see how that all pans out.   Michael Hingson ** 55:58 Well. And I think that makes sense. I think there's some value in that, but 30 seconds is not enough time to get real content, and if people dumb down to that point, then that's pretty scary. So I'm glad to hear that the trend seems to be going a little bit longer, which is, which is a good thing, which is pretty important to be able to do. Yeah, I completely   Dan Swift ** 56:21 agree. Because like that, the trend right now, it's, you know, people, they want stuff immediately, and if you don't catch them in 10 seconds, they're swiping onto something else, which is which is very challenging, at least, especially for me and what I do. Who's   Michael Hingson ** 56:32 the most inspiring guest that you've ever had on your podcast?   Dan Swift ** 56:37 Michael, this is a good one. This is a good one. So the video for Ashley Mason. She is a social media marketing she created a social media marketing agency. Her video dropped several Oh, it was on October 13. It dropped, and her story was just incredible. She She started a blog when she was 15 in high school. Four years later, she's in college, starts her own social media marketing agency. She starts this business while she's in college, and I think shadow is her second year of college. Her mom is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. At the same time she's in college, she's trying to run this business. She's serving the role as a caretaker. And then you know, you know, life marches on. And she ends up moving forward with this business and with with the attitude, you know that you know life is short and you gotta, you gotta take, like, take life by the horns and just kind of, like, move forward and do your thing and be in just do what you got to do. So her story was so, so inspiring and, and I remember talking to her about and just, like, just amazing. And I'm thinking, like, Man, you've done so much more than I feel like I've taught she's, she's like, man, her mid 20s. I think,   Michael Hingson ** 57:51 well, I won't complain that you didn't say it was me, but that's okay.   Dan Swift ** 57:55 Well, I didn't want to spoil it because your yours hasn't dropped yet. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 57:58 that's a good point. No, that's that's fine. Tell me, with all the music knowledge and everything you have, what kind of challenges do musicians face today in 2024 I'm sure that's a question that has an answer that's evolved over time, yes.   Dan Swift ** 58:19 So I think today, in 2024 I think I think it's a double edged sword. I think one of the really great things is that a lot of musicians, a lot of singer songwriters and music artists, you know, a lot of us are on the same playing field. You know, I can have a hit just as well as the next person. However, that being said, there are so many people out there. There's so many other fish in this music world, you know, that it's hard to get noticed, whereas before, you know, and I'm I wasn't around in the 60s, but I'm guessing, you know, you had bands that were playing, and you had talent scout, and if they liked a band, then they would approach them, and they would take them into the end industry, you know, and the executives would decide what they were going to do, you know, they'd listen to the demo tape or something like that. Whereas now it's like, I can create my own demo tape and it can sound halfway decent, so can the person in the house next door, you know. So instead of competing with, you know, maybe, maybe 5000 other musicians, I'm competing with, you know, millions of musicians. So we're on the same level playing field, which is awesome. We all have this gear which makes things sound great, but there are so many of us, it's hard to get noticed.   Michael Hingson ** 59:22 It's hard. Yeah, I I'm a big fan of Big Band, swing music and so on. Of course, when I think about who are the major clarinetists from the 30s and 40s and so on, you think of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw as the the two that most people have heard about. And yeah, you don't see the same level or content number of people that we see today. So it it's perfectly understandable. On the other hand, I guess. What that means is that if somebody really shines through today amongst all those people, then they must be good   Dan Swift ** 59:57 or have a really good business manager. I have a real. Really   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:00 good business manager. Yeah, that's true that that is absolutely makes sense. So it's interesting.   Dan Swift ** 1:00:07 Real quick you talk about the big band music, and that made me think of this. You know, remember, you'll remember that I said that when I first started really playing music, I played trumpet, and I used to love playing show tunes, because it like the pit orchestra band when I was in high school, and any band, any bands, yeah, any musicals that were set in that era, like 42nd street, for instance, the music was phenomenal. I loved playing that because it was just so much fun to play that style, that the music of that time was just so fun to play. It was just wonderful. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:41 and it still is. And the music from back then, when I compare it to a lot of the Broadway plays today, I don't hear people singing songs from any of the more modern shows, or most of the modern shows, like we had with 42nd street, Oklahoma, the music, man, or or any of those. We don't, we don't tend to get, as I'd like to call it, good toe tap and music like we did back then, which is unfortunate. Yeah, I completely   Dan Swift ** 1:01:11 agree. Now I'm definitely out of my elements. I haven't listened to show tunes in like, 20 years, but, uh, but yes, back back when I was playing those. I mean, it's just some of that music. It just had nice groove to it. It was, like, has a big band, Jazzy kind of vibe. It was, it was so wonderful to play. So wonderful. Yeah, and listen   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:29 to and listen to, well, let me ask you this kind of as a sort of final question. You've been doing this podcast for a while, and you've, you've had exposure to a lot of people. What's some advice you would give people based on all that you've heard and and experienced and dealt with on the podcast?   Dan Swift ** 1:01:46 Oh, wow, that's that's a really, really good question. So yeah, so I started in January of 24 as of today, I've recorded, I've dropped 65 episodes. I have spoken to over 105 people, and recorded 105 people at this point. And one of the really, really great pieces of advice that someone shared was, you know, if you have a passion, just go for it. You know, find the thing that lights you up on the on the inside, and go for it. If you're and I remember hearing this, this next one, when it comes to writers, you know, if you want to, if you want to be a writer, just start writing. You know, don't, don't wait for tomorrow. Just, just start doing it. And that seems to be advice that comes down over and over again. You know, if there's something you want to do, just start to take the steps and just start doing it. You don't necessarily have to, and that's one of the cool things, like talking to these real people in these real jobs, is that you might not necessarily need to have a specific degree to do something. You just need the ambition. Like, again, when I was talking to ginger, I mentioned her earlier, and she talked about, you know, if you're trying to break into, like, a marketing industry, you know, try to try to see if you enjoy as an intern, you know, even if you're there later in life, try to try to go down that avenue. There are other ways to get involved with other organizations, rather than going back to school and getting a second degree or a third degree or a first degree, you don't always need it. And I think that's really, really cool. I think that's some of the greatest things that I've heard. And then some things I've been trying to do, too, is take advantage of what I'm hearing and group these episodes together. So for instance, on my YouTube channel, I have playlists set up, and one of these playlists is like a no degree playlist. So if someone they don't want to go to college, or for whatever reason, they can't get into college, or whatever, you know, they can check out this playlist and see, well, what jobs are available to me that are still, I can still have a career, a very successful and meaningful career, without having a college degree. So I try to set up a number of these. I think I have about 12 different playlists at this point. It's just trying to help as many people as I can. But like that, the inspiring stuff is just, you know, each person has their own story, and it's, they're all just, they're all wonderful stories. And, you know, I definitely encourage people to just check it out, find, find a person that you think might resonate with you, with you, and just, just give them a shot. Great, great stories.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:54 Well, reason I really love unstoppable mindset is because I get to chat with so many people, I learn a lot, and as I tell people, if I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else, and I'm not doing my job, but I do think that the whole idea is that people listening to this podcast or watching it on YouTube, hopefully will recognize they can be more unstoppable than they think they they Are. The reality is we just need to, in our own minds, make the commitment and go for it, and you're absolutely right with that. Well, I want to thank you for being here with us. This has been a lot of fun. Maybe we need to do another one, but this has been a lot of fun. If people want to reach out to you, how would they do that? Sure.   Dan Swift ** 1:04:37 So I have two websites, uh, timely discuss.com. That's the home for all of my podcast stops. So there are links there for the podcast the different platforms, Apple, Spotify, so on and so forth. There's also a link for YouTube there as well. All my social media information is there at the bottom of the page as well. It's inside the footer. If you're interested in hearing some really, really great music, go to dancewift.com I have links there to purchase music as. As stream on all the popular streaming platforms. I recommend starting there. There are several dance swifts out there, so while, no disrespect to any of them, my music is substantially different. So if you want to hear what I've written, your best bet is to start@dancewift.com   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:16 to check out my music. Well, I haven't mentioned it yet, and should have earlier, but I mentioned to Dan at the very beginning. His latest album is called parallels, and it dropped on February 29 of this year. And just this morning before talking to Dan, I told my lovely little echo device to play parallels by Dan Swift, and it did, which was cool. So I really thank you for having it available, and I get to stream   Dan Swift ** 1:05:41 it. Absolutely I'm glad to have it, and I'm just glad people will enjoy it. Well.   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:46 I hope everyone will. I hope people reach out to you and and we, as I mentioned, we'll put your album covers in our show notes, which is really great, so send them over. But I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening to us today and being with us, we would really appreciate you giving us a five star rating wherever you are listening to or experiencing the podcast. Please give us five star rating, and we love your feedback. Please pass it on. If you know of anyone who want to be a guest on unstoppable mindset Danu as well, please feel free to introduce us, let us know who they are. We're always looking for more people to show everyone that they can be more unstoppable than they think. But please introduce us to guests at any time. So again, Dan, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely fun, and I really appreciate your time.   Dan Swift ** 1:06:38 Absolutely. My voice been a pleasure being here. Thanks for inviting me.   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:46 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.