[Music]
right okay so I'm stay with me the title
of this talk is a little bit misleading
I got into design because of my dad he's
one of the smartest people I know but we
grew up so I grew up in Nigeria and we
grew up I had a computer at home my
father would write 60 70 80 pages of
notes by hand get me or his secretary to
type it up make corrections and we do
this tedious process of digitizing after
the fact in 2009 he came to visit me in
London and he asked me to open the
internet for him because he wanted to
read local Nigerian news but he didn't
know how to use Internet Explorer so
design being accessible is not only
about disability it's about being able
to empower people like my dad it's 2019
now he's got an iPad he dictates his
notes in and so it's a little bit easier
with converting to digitized stuff he
has an email address he sends me emails
we play was with friends he's doing
stuff by himself I used to want to be an
architect so I really like the physical
space and I've been thrilled to be in
Pasadena because there's so much stuff
to look at the International Building
Code has inside of it guidelines that
state that buildings and facilities have
to be designed to be accessible one of
my favorite buildings in London is the
Bank of England
it's from 1794 and it's a grade 1 listed
building so you can't mess with it and
yet this building is accessible
Tim berners-lee who created thee always
credited for the web believes that the
power of the web is in its universality
he believes that accessibility is a
fundamental aspect of it because he
wants access by everyone yes when you
look at information from the business
development forum that does testing all
of the websites that we've tested since
2008 they say 70% of them have failed
accessibility that's a staggering number
for the time that we're in I mean I
looked at a number of websites brands
products things that we love that she'd
know better and they're still not
accessible I won't be naming and shaming
any of them don't worry I was sort of at
a talk by a guy he gave a keynote called
Samuel prune and he was born blind to a
blind father his dad worked in tech so
he's had access to assistive technology
like screen readers since the infancy of
the internet and he said something that
shocked me on the day he said that the
Internet today is less accessible than
it was when he first started using it or
in the early years and my mind was blown
but thinking about it the limitations of
bandwidth the hardware that we ran the
internet on at the time meant that he
had text-based experience largely for
most of the internet and now we've
created these ecosystems the instagrams
the snapchats
I mean memes exclude me anyway because I
don't know what's going on but people
who used to have access to most of the
internet and now being excluded
completely from experiences that they
should have um but you know sort of I've
kind of dived into a lot of things and I
haven't checked with you what you think
accessibility is
my favorite definition is this one from
Sharon rush I like this definition
because a lot of the time when I start
talking about accessibility people focus
on disability on a project that I was on
recently so I do these things
kickoff workshops if I'm creating a
feature a product I like to get all the
people that will be impacted or the
people that will impact on the product
to discuss and agree what it is that
we're solving and then also we need to
look at what success looks like so we go
into the room and I say that I want
accessibility to be part of what success
looks like for that product and one of
the designers asked me if I had any
stats for how many of our customers were
disabled
I was pretty aghast to be honest I was
quite shocked because I wasn't sure
could I say one person ten percent would
I need to get parity at 50% for my
request to be granted the other thing
about disability so if we want to focus
on that as a reason to make things
accessible anyone can be disabled
disability spectrum it's not a permanent
state I like this definition of
disability by the World Health World
Health Organization so it says it's a
mismatch between the features of people
and the environments that we interact
with
now when you substitute environments
with things with products with societies
you start to see that we as designers
are creating disability I travel a lot
and I've been to a few countries and the
only times I feel overwhelmed by travel
is when I go to places where I can't
read I cried in Delhi I was just like
distressed in Israel because when I
don't have any Latin roots or Latin
alphabet to rely on I have no
understanding there's a mismatch between
my features and the features of the
environment that I'm in looking at
Microsoft's inclusive design toolkit
here we start to see some of those
examples of the disability spectrum you
have people that are permanently or have
permanent disability people that have
temporary disability and also probably
the most common which is people that are
disabled by the situations that they're
in so looking at hearing for instance if
I was creating an experience for a
product or something that people are
going to interact with and I wanted to
use audio feedback people who are deaf
someone who's got an ear infection or
just a bartender at a really loud
festival an airport anywhere that you
can't really hear would have the same
challenges with interacting with my
product so you know why should you care
I've tailored this bit for you guys
especially in America because you know
suing is a thing here but I don't want
us to only think about that it could
also be because it's the more things the
right thing I'm a big believer in that
but I knew that that doesn't help anyone
usually especially when we're talking
about people that work for businesses so
I'm going to hit you with this one it's
profitable you can make money if you
think about designing for the widest
possible audience that will use your
products now the next slide I'm going to
show was in this deck before I listened
to Liz Jackson so please don't blame me
so I grew up and I used scissors like
everyone else I hadn't thought about the
concept of right-handed scissors then
one time I'd hurt my right hand and I
tried to use my scissors to cut
something Wow
the pain there had been people who had
been left-handed who had been suffering
for years and I was completely aware of
it unaware of it because I'm
right-handed
so the good grips
were created because you do not need to
have right-handed scissors and they made
Bend money I started learning Spanish a
few months ago and I'm one of those
super keen people when I'm into
something I'm really into it so after
the 10-week sort of begin a lesson my
instructor saw how keen I was and was
like look you can watch like telenovelas
you can look at La Casa de papel and you
can expand your vocabulary by watching
TV so I ran off Netflix put it on and
realized that my listening is
substantially worse than my reading so I
had to use subtitles to get through the
show there you have closed captioning a
feature that was created for people that
were hard of hearing that people are
using in very different contexts we all
think that we're not using products or
maybe you're not aware of the products
that you're using that have been created
or come out of thinking from helping
people with disabilities but I'm pretty
sure all of you here today have used
drop curbs or
Siri Alexa any of these are the voice
assistance even the humble electric
kettle but when I was a kid you used to
have like some mad strength to pull out
the cord from the kettle before you
moved with it and you feel ridiculous
like me and kept forgetting all the time
you had a bunch of accidents all of
these things have been improved and
sewed a lot because of accessibility and
accessible design um when I was working
for Vogue I went to Tokyo to do a best
piece of research and I spoke to a bunch
of users and found out a bunch of things
but this is probably the most
interesting thing I've ever found out
from user research we Japanese society
works quite long hours so we had a spike
in traffic at about 10:00 p.m. at night
when people would go home data's also
expands
so this woman was thrilled where she
could watch her videos on the vogue
website while she was at work if they
had if they didn't autoplay and had
subtitles so no one would know in the
office you have an accessibility feature
once again being used in a completely
different and unexpected context I'm a
designer so let's say I was thinking
about creating something say mobile for
an app which is something that I would
do and it cited that I was going to just
forget about people who might need to
use my product with one arm I look up
the statistics and I'd be that well
there's only 26,000 people in the US
that have one arm so it's not going to
be a problem but I've forgotten that
it's a spectrum when we start looking
all the people that have sprained their
arms broken their arms whatever it is or
people who have babies I mean I went
around to my cousin and she legit cooked
me a meal while holding her baby in one
hand so it's like one-handed operation
everywhere people are using mobile
phones all the time
with one hand that's the number of
people that you exclude actually if you
do not think about that use case 21
million people for people without work
for businesses that care about funnels
that's a huge number to ignore
you're literally leaving money on the
table flushing it in the toilets
whatever analogy you need to let you
think about that if you don't make your
product accessible so clearly I'm not
the first person to have this knowledge
I'm not the only person to have this
knowledge so why do we still have 70% of
our websites that aren't passing
accessibility checks how can we change
that
the thing that I hear most from most of
my designer colleagues is that they know
what they need to do they know that they
need to do things with contrast and
color and think about simple language
but they don't know how they get to do
it but it's also those things where you
can never know what you don't know so I
was blown away you know said about the
news but from Liz about oxer and a few
other things that she said in her talk a
few weeks ago when I listen sorry a few
months ago when I listened to Samuel Pru
I was taken back to a time when I
created a user experience based on
information that I had from user
research we observed that people were
going onto social media they look at
images they click on images they go onto
our website they'd look at the images on
the website they'd make decisions on
what content that they needed to read
based on that those images so I changed
the user experience I bumped up all the
images on the articles I moved the
titles we live the lead image so people
were getting a hit of image image image
image in their journey through the
website I created a visual a more image
led experience for our customers then I
had heard Samuel Pru speak and I was
like oh no oh no oh no oh no even with
all of my interest and my knowledge I
didn't know what I didn't know so this
graph is terrible I didn't create it I
beat up from someone's blog but what I'm
trying to show you is that given the
things that you think you know but
they're wrong and the things that you
know you don't know the actual biggest
gap in your world is the things that you
don't yet know that you don't know
so how do we combat that we need a
diversity of perspectives we need
different people in our experience
design we need different people on our
teams we need different people in the
research that we do you can't think
about accessible accessibility and not
actually bring in the people that have
the challenges that you're trying to
solve for I'm I pay attention to quite a
few things based on my lived experience
I hate navigation that's at the top of
mobile screens because again you know
one hand where am I going to how am I
going to get there but other people have
other things that they're looking at so
if you just have a different set of
people from different cultures different
nationalities different abilities you
start to get a sense of a fuller product
if you can't get access to a range of
people for any reason you can start to
educate yourself on the Internet
there are lots of websites including the
w3c that list out the guidelines for
accessibility they're plug-ins for
browsers like Chrome or you can get
plug-ins for design tools like sketch if
you create design systems and document
them using storybook they've just
released a new version that highlights
inaccessible components within your
system you can get people like me in to
chat to your team I'm very persuasive
and you can get people who call
themselves like accessibility
consultants or whatever to help you lots
of help for those that are going solo
this is probably my favorite thing for
getting education so it lists out the
w3c guidelines but it also gives you
filters so if you want to hit an a a
double a a triple a you can filter and
see what guidelines work for you or if
you want to focus on you and the things
that you can affect because you're a
single designer on a team you can look
at the tab that shows you the things for
designers
or you can go and look at things for
developers it even tells you what to
look for when you're testing this one is
probably the most annoying thing that I
hear I'm very visual so but people tell
me that they think that if they have to
create accessible products that they're
going to be ugly I mean I don't know
about you but if I can't use a website
or a product I'm not going to think
about how beautiful it is anyone here
who thinks that their job is to create
beautiful products I'd love you to not
call yourself a designer anymore just
rebrand as an artist because designers
should be problem solvers we should link
our work to solving problems for the
people that we're creating them for we
should be thrilled at the addition of
constraints we should be thrilled at the
challenge that designing an accessible
product provides to us I've seen people
create designs for small buttons or
business cards I've seen digital
designers create responsive design that
works on big billboards as well as small
mobile we're not clearly worried about
constraints we embrace them over 225
year old building in London is currently
accessible your challenge is far less
complicated and far less expensive ten
years ago I think I came to Los Angeles
for the first time and if there's any
such thing as dyslexia of space I've got
it I don't know left and right
horizontal and vertical I have to think
pause think about it and I get lost all
the time so it's you know sort of 2008
people don't have access to cheap data
so I had to ask people for directions
all the time and I'd ask people where to
go and they'd be like oh yeah just go
five blocks south west or go two blocks
north
and I got really frustrated I didn't
know what a block was and I most
certainly didn't know where southeast
laws today I walked around Pasadena
quite happily using Google Maps and I
haven't thought about whether Google
Maps was beautiful until I decided I was
going to give this talk and objectively
I would say I find it beautiful but I
don't really care because I can use it
and it's also a hundred percent
accessible if you ever think people
think about or tell me is that they
worry that they have to convince
everyone else to do their bit I mean no
product is designed and created in
isolation
unless you're a unicorn in which case
please find me after I need to know your
secrets so it's a fair concern but lots
of the people that I know that have made
their websites their products accessible
actually started out by themselves I
started out alone as a designer you're
in a position of power because you have
control of the thing that people feel
and people see I used to ask people if I
could put accessibility as part of the
success metric or if I could make things
accessible and I always got told no they
tell me oh it's beyond the scope of the
Minimum Viable Product or there's no
time for it right now
it's too complex but when I started
submitting my wireframes that had a
minimum contrast ratio that had multiple
methods of communicating information not
relying only on color that tried to
minimize the errors that people could
make and used simple language in the
micro copy no one challenged me I was an
accessibility ninja so this is probably
the most important thing for me which is
that accessibility isn't a separate
thing
it's as a customer experience person as
a person that's interested interested in
designing a product for a person you're
not doing anyone any favors to try to
design for everyone it's part of the
customer experience I don't call myself
an accessibility specialist or an
accessibility consultant I call myself
what I am a user experience designer
with the greater understanding that we
have of the range of situational
disability where people can encounter
with neurodiversity with different
experiences people at madad and aging
populations you really have no reason to
hide function and information from your
users you should bake in accessibility
it should be part of your process it
should be part of your practice you
should have people that are disabled in
your life you should have people that
are not like you in your life because
once you have those things and you get
that diversity of expand of perspectives
you start to get a fuller picture a
product that more and more people can
use more and more money feeling we
should all care about delighting our
customers and accessibility as part of
that thank you so I'm curious when you
think about accessibility when we look
at the web and mobile and a lot of
technologies that we've been working
with for a while now we have pretty
clear accessibility standards and
guidelines we know how to work for you
know with color contrast and you know to
use the standards that exist but when we
think about designing with emerging
technologies if we think about designing
for augmented reality if we talk about
designing in some cases for you know
conversational or voice you eyes that we
don't have standards for those things
yet
and so do you have thoughts about as a
designer how you should approach
integrating accessibility when you're
working with technologies where you
don't have clear standards yet I'm going
to have to lean back on what I learned
from this just get people that need
accessibility creating the products
because they'll see the things that we
can't see they will help us think about
the things that we don't know and
they'll really broaden our perspective
and help us together come to a solution
that works so I don't have any
experience now in emerging technology
but as I tackle it I'll certainly be
looking to people that have challenges
in that space and figure out what it is
that we need and what standards we need
to create okay thank you so much Cheers
[Applause]
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