The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people live with a significant disability today. At the same time, when WebAIM surveyed people only 53% indicated their products were accessible. While access to communications and technology is a civil right, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the federal court saw a record high in website accessibility lawsuits with 3,225 filed in 2022. Accessible design and technology must be a top priority; otherwise, people with disabilities are excluded from digital experiences and societal inequities are reinforced.
Whether you are taking the first steps toward digital inclusion or looking to further progress on your journey, our panelists are ready to give their candid insights into how we can keep accessibility at the forefront of all product development cycles and create truly inclusive products for everyone. Recently Tech in Motion conducted a webinar on this important topic, moderated by Vish Srivastava Director, Product Management @ Evidation; and including Samantha Emkes Manager, Product & Experience Strategy - Sensory & Accessibility @ Comcast; Jennison Asuncion Head of Accessibility Engineering Evangelism @ LinkedIn; and Tolu Adegbite Product Design Lead, Accessibility @ Meta.
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VISH SRIVASTAVA: How do we define inclusive design and accessibility, and what are some of the consequences of non-inclusive design?
JENNISON ASUNCION: I want to make sure that everyone understands that as the group of people who are defined as people with disabilities. I want to broaden our definition of who benefits from inclusive design upfront.
Keep in mind that there are other categories, for example, individuals with temporary disabilities. You break your arm and can no longer use a mouse for a period of time. Or situational disabilities. You're in a loud place and cannot hear audio. Watching captions definitely comes into play.
With all that said, for the purposes of our conversation, when we talk about inclusive design, we are really talking about the intentional inclusion of folks with disabilities throughout the product development process.
What do I mean by that? During ideation, when you do user research make sure you have folks with disabilities as part of that pool. Absolutely during user testing having people with disabilities is part of that. The next question becomes that is all great but where do we find these people with different disabilities?
At this time there are certainly companies that you can look at to bring in. If you have employee resource groups or employee support groups or if you have people with disabilities or impairments, you have an in-house group of people to lean on.
If you want a definition of accessibility, inclusive design is about bringing in folks and including them throughout the processes. Accessibility is the discipline of making things inclusive and accessible, so it is having knowledge of how people use different assistive technologies.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: What drives that business case around that function both in terms of consequences as well as supporting the business?
JENNISON ASUNCION: Some of the obvious ones: Bad press, the expense to retrofit, upkeep, and all that stuff. Those are some of the obvious ones. I want to focus more on the end users and in responding to this, I want to focus on two examples. One would be if, for example, you have designed a tool that is going to be used in the workplace, this could make the difference between a person with a disability or impairment being able to perform their job or not.
Another topic is issues around privacy. If you have developed a product that has some sort of login and that login flow or the registration flow is not accessible or the purchase flow is not accessible, you are forcing someone with a disability to give up their privacy. They either need to give up their password or credit card information as examples.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: The flip side of the coin is that we often hear that building with inclusion in mind results in better outcomes for everyone. What does that mean in practice?
SAMANTHA EMKES: I think this is something that I feel is often an outcome statement after a product is released. I really like the statement, but it resonates for me in a couple of different ways. One to have come to that outcome of serving beyond potentially the group you were looking to build a product or experience for. First and foremost, what I think is really important to recognize is that we are able to focus on a group and bring that consumer of that product or experience, what they need to be able to access our staff.
Those who are sometimes marginalized or sometimes being solutions for and the added benefit is often that you will find it will serve many. As you have heard I am sure other examples of closed captioning, met for traditionally intended for the hearing impaired, but are used by many.
I was actually in a conversation just before this and heard a statistic that for one streaming service, 80% of folks turn on closed captioning. It is not just the entire population of hearing impaired. It is much larger than that.
But do take it back at how we get to inclusive approaches to come to outcomes that serve beyond the group that we were thinking about, to begin with, I recently was on a project that I got to see come into play where we were focusing on three groups around dexterity, cognitive, and visual impairment.
What was really interesting to see when we were doing those explorations is the outcomes of the design and thinking and the way that everybody came together and started to look around them to the people they worked with even beyond the customer.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: Being differently abled can be a temporary thing and it could be a problem that you solve for many people at once. Live captioning is an incredible example of where many folks can benefit from live captioning.
TOLU ADEGBITE: When you have a curb cut in it does not only benefit the people that use a wheelchair or cane for mobility, but it benefits maybe people who are transporting their child in a stroller or someone who is shorter. It benefits a lot of people.
I think a lot of that happens with inclusive design. You're serving people who have particular needs, but a lot of people who benefit from that when you increase the color contrast of the elements on your app may be people who have low vision, maybe someone who is standing outside on a sunny day cannot see because of the glare on the phone.
SAMANTHA EMKES: When we are trying to create for a specific group, one of the things I recently learned is that sometimes the solution they have makes them feel like they stand out.
For example, we used to provide a large button remote off the shelf. It was very large. Some of our research came to find that they would hide it. They did not want to be out in the public. It was an interesting thing because we are talking about benefiting all, but also inclusion to make everyone still feel included while creating outcomes that benefit them.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: Design for one, extend to many. I am curious about what it looks like to implement these principles into the practice of product development. Maybe we can start with the who. Who is usually involved in inclusive product development, especially in the earlier, stages internally and externally?
TOLU ADEGBITE: Making something accessible or inclusive to people is not the responsibility of one discipline. But I think at every step of the product development lifecycle, everyone has a set of responsibilities. From the very beginning of the procurement process of purchasing software to hiring people at your company, you are not going to be able to have people with disabilities working on your product if they cannot apply for the job at your company. It starts so early on in that process. Making sure that internal tools are accessible so that everyone can contribute to different things that happen at the company.
From the beginning to the very end of the process, having folks recognize they have a responsibility and things they can do to make sure the product is accessible whether they are a PM scoping out a testing stage, whether they are designing features that have multiple ways to use them is really important and, of course, having people with disabilities using your products with diverse disabilities and from diverse backgrounds.
JENNISON ASUNCION: It really is a muscle that is built over time. It is a journey. If you’re just starting out in accessibility, don't expect your first go around to necessarily be the best. You are going to be learning as you go to and what you were saying, holding people accountable in different parts of the process so having someone in design, having one or more people in design and in product and engineering actually accountable for accessibility so their name is beside it, tracking it.
TOLU ADEGBITE: It is also important to recognize that things will not be perfect the first time. You are not always going to get it right. Sometimes people do not actually even want to do things because they are scared of getting it wrong. Getting halfway there is better than not all. Being open to hearing perspectives of people who are using this thing and how to improve it I think is a huge part of that process.
No product is ever perfect on launch, but what you can do is to get as far as you can and be open to hearing the feedback from the people using this technology, giving them away to give feedback and not being defensive about that feedback. I think that is a huge part of the process of creating things that are accessible, recognizing it is a journey.
Instead of asking people who need accommodation to raise their hand, maybe tell people that they can tell you about a need for this forum, just leaving things open and making it possible to provide an accommodation is a huge part of getting over that threshold of being truly inclusive.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: Let's talk about the how. On that theme of starting early, I am curious about what are some of the methods and tools available for testing assumptions early to understand user needs, usability testing, and getting that feedback early in the product development process.
SAMANTHA EMKES: I think there are a lot of tools for learning early. There are ways to iterate and put actual 3D prints in hands with focus groups, really get the feedback early before you are well into the product lifecycle.
I have seen things be so successful when you take the research from the very beginning and take those quick learnings. Similar to what you are all speaking about, progress does not need to be perfect. It does not need to be perfect to research. You will learn a lot with very little and very quickly. Even referencing things that exist that you did not create will tell you a story very fast that you will be able to apply.
JENNISON ASUNCION: Nothing will replace an actual user for assistive technology running through your product. It is great that engineering colleagues and design colleagues learn how to use assistive technology like a screen reader, but at the end of the day, it is an actual person who is using these devices, these technologies. They are complicated. Like every day to know what is really an issue and what is not.
There is a difference between something being, "accessible" versus something being useful. That will only come out of having the feedback directly from folks with different disabilities.
SAMANTHA EMKES: That is why it is so valuable when the companies that we have had experience with and you get to really watch them consume using assistive technology, watching how they will interact. It is eye-opening. Similarly, even with their colleagues, having them go through an experience like that on this topic on your own product in your house is incredibly eye-opening.
JENNISON ASUNCION: Outside of companies, you can also contact nonprofits in your local communities that serve people with different disabilities and impairments. You would be surprised how many people would be willing to help and provide testing.
They will not do it for free nor should they. You should be paying them the way you would pay anyone else. I would say that if your budget cannot necessarily afford one of the "companies" out there who do this for a business, certainly contact nonprofits to serve different disabilities and impairments in your local can community and tell them what you're trying to call accomplish would also help have some helpful resources as well.
SAMANTHA EMKES: I speak about partnering with companies for quick learnings and quick polling of people, but doing focus groups and going to assisted living, working with partners, we have different folks we work with to bring testing for different products that use assistive technology.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: Why if you leave accessibility and inclusion to the end of the product development process, does it result in poor outcomes?
JENNISON ASUNCION: I would say many not all, but many accessibility issues start in design. That has been my experience over the years, and it comes about when you're speaking to engineers, and they will say to you we have to go back to design to check this out. The impact is if you are not considering accessibility from the get-go, you might end up postponing the launch or launch without accessibility because you have to take the time to have conversations and retrofit and change how it is going to work if that has not been thought through from the very beginning.
SAMANTHA EMKES: Sometimes, too even something that seems micro in an experience you are designing for has a domino effect. You have made a decision that is throughout an entire experience. It can get really complicated really fast we're if you get to the end if you have made something inaccessible, it is incredibly difficult to come back and it can change everything 100%
JENNISON ASUNCION: We would not wait until one week before launch to verify security or privacy, so it should be the same with accessibility.
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VISH SRIVASTAVA: The topic that is buzzing on everyone's minds these days is AI. I think AI in relation to accessibility is something that is worth the time to discuss. Let's start with recently Jenny Lay-Flurrie at Microsoft states that “Responsible AI is accessible AI.” I'm curious what that means.
TOLU ADEGBITE: I hear this coming up a lot more in this day and age people frequently think that technology is fair and always unbiased because it cannot think or make decisions. But the people who make that technology certainly have their biases.
When I think about AI, I think about the training sets. AI is only as good as the training sets given it. What if these training sets come from a particular background?
If we think about places that do not have a lot of representation, that do not have anyone with disabilities on their staff, it becomes a lot more likely that the people training these AI models do not represent people with disabilities. Maybe they cannot. You don't understand the experience of someone with a disability. They are the best ones to present their experience.
You have AI eyes trained on the information that has a narrow conception of what a human being looks like, and what they can do. It results in a lot of systemic exclusion. AI is only as diverse as the group of people training them. It is important to remember that we build our own biases into technology, which is why it is so crucial to have diverse groups of people working on technology. Otherwise, technology does not understand what the world looks like, or who it is actually supposed to be working for.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: How do you justify the extra work to stakeholders that do not yet see the need for the product to be accessible?
TOLU ADEGBITE: I think it is only extra work if the team does not know how to properly do it yet. To me, working in this way makes infinitely more sense. If you're looking at accessibility from the very beginning, it nudges you in the direction of your work as a system. Initially, the training might be expensive, but you can say that about anything. It is expensive to become a developer or designer. Once you understand how to do it, your work will move so much faster.
VISH SRIVASTAVA: What are some of the most promising emerging technologies? I know we talked about manual and automated testing. I'm curious about emerging technologies for accessibility and in particular what might be some commercial technologies for automated testing.
TOLU ADEGBITE: One thing I am excited about is seeing the tools that are coming out for describing images. Ideally, everyone is adding alternative text attributes, but in the cases where there are not, I want to caveat this hugely with that bias point. AI is only as helpful or unbiased as the people who trained it. It can go wrong very quickly, but I think it is exciting that we can have a backup plan at all. It can go bad very quickly.
JENNISON ASUNCION: Certainly, I have heard about there is work being done to help with automatic translation of American Sign Language for people who do not speak sign or who do not sign. That is an exciting AI innovation that is in the works. It is not quite there yet. There are some interesting applications for having descriptions for video, not just for still images. That is a huge area as well as much more video becomes described in thinking about how that can be scaled there leveraging some of the technology currently being explored and exploited around providing alternative text transcriptions for an image.