Cat Noone discusses the importance of innovation, inclusive design, and how incorporating accessibility into the development and design of customer facing applications improves the bottom line.
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Accessing Innovation Presentation
Transcript for Accessing Innovation Presentation
Hey, everyone. My name is Cat Noone, I'm a designer by trade. Now a CEO of Stark and Stark is a software company that streamlines accessibility compliance for Teams saving them time, money and effort through end-to-end collaboration.
And we do that in a couple of ways. One is by actually building software. The other is providing the education, and content so individuals can actually do this work and understand why they're doing it, and how to execute on that in a way that's efficient. And the other is community, giving you a group of individuals that are actively doing this work, and trying to make the world a better place.
Today I'm going to be talking about accessing innovation. I think in general, all of the innovation no matter what space it is great. But in most cases, the access that innovation is still very limited.
So the benchmark question becomes not can we innovate, because it's clear that we can, we've landed people on Mars, Oh sorry, landed people on the moon and objects on Mars. But in what ways can we all increase the chances so that majority of people can access innovation as early as possible?
I think there are some areas that we're aware of this already existing. And so with regard to prosthetics for individuals that are limb differences while the innovation is great. 3D printing is one of the ways the access hurdle is removed because it's more affordable. So individuals that need that can access that. And the same is true for software.
But I think for the first time we're actually seeing that, and the pandemic expedited, and put a spotlight on that because more companies and more people than ever actually came onto the internet. So there's a spotlight on that. And so I want to talk about what that looks like.
As I said humanity is innovating faster and more than ever before. If there's one thing that I want you to get out of this talk, it's that accessibility is not a feature, or an exhausting pitch to stakeholders, even though it very, very well maybe. It's a part of the product development process, and it's not a single discipline issue. Such as an engineer or a design issue, it's an entire product development pipeline focus.
And when it's not a focus it's a product development pipeline issue that needs to be tackled. The great thing is you can get started with that right now with the rest of your team. And it starts really simply by educating ourselves, and learning how to apply in our everyday work.
But that starts by acknowledging the existence of individuals, and the right to humanity of those rather humane treatments of those that are different, it's really not but different to you maybe. And we need to make the world's software accessible bottom line, and I'll get into that.
Accessibility is a byproduct of inclusive design. And even if in your organization, the fact that accessibility is the right thing, and accessibility is a great thing, and accessibility is a humane thing. Allowing individuals to access everything that able-bodied individuals able individuals do is the right thing to do, right.
And I think we talk a lot about the just everything in the cryptospace, and everything in modern healthcare, and everything in modern education. But those are irrelevant if the disruption if you will doesn't actually succeed, it is not a success if it doesn't bring it to those that previously weren't able to capitalize on that. And we do that by acknowledging the fact that products need to succeed across abilities not just across platforms. As startups you're very keen to have your key differentiator as being cross-platform, and I know that very well.
But products need to succeed across abilities right like for instance, cognitive accessibility isn't just relevant though it is, but it's not just relevant for autistic individuals, or individuals with traumatic brain injuries. It's for everyone like neophytes who struggle to use the latest technology, or software not yet translated into an individual's native language. Despite living in a particular country.
For instance, an individual may not speak the primary language there, and even though that app is in that country, the individual won't speak it. So how are they going to access their ordering their prescriptions, or keeping up with their educational material or what have you?
Something is accessible because it's usable. And it's usable because it doesn't based on what we originally had mapped out as this persona in our minds. And there are ways to tackle that and mitigate that too that I'll get into it a little bit.
And the thing about disabilities is disabilities aren't always permanent I'm sure many of you have already heard. And so I don't want to beat it into a drum too much but you know temporary permanent, and situational disabilities.
And so you may be an individual building product, or one person on a massive team or a founder stakeholder whatever. You may say, we're building this product, and I'm not going to cater to that group of people. Why would we cater to individuals that are wearing that have a prosthetic arm? There's definitely only like Max 1,000 individuals on the platform that applies to. All hypothetical numbers, right.
But then you look and you dig into it, and you realize that that number compounds it multiplies significantly when you account for individuals that may have a temporary injury on their arm. Maybe in a cast sling whatever it is, and then you watch as it increases drastically. The number skyrocket when you account for parents or caregivers or parental guardians that have a newborn, and only have access to or other use of one arm because their other arm is holding their child.
And so you watch there is just the again, that original image you had in your mind of what disability is completely changes when the framework becomes well, Oh it's not this cookie cutter, Yeah this cookie cutter image I had in my mind. And the thing is the numbers are much larger than I think anybody realizes.
There are I think as of last checking there's well over a billion individuals. I think it's like 1.45 something like that have a documented disability. That doesn't include the massive amount of individuals that have gone undocumented, that haven't seen the doctor for whatever reason it's none of our business to be completely honest. But still we know that those numbers are high it's just not in the data for this.
So how likely are you to have a disability. Well, the likelihood of having a disability increases to 98% at age 90. And if you look at the graph those numbers are not small. But I think we've come to find at Stark, when talking to folks that what plays a large role in this.
And so here on this graph is it's a graph of ages against percentage of people with disabilities. And so blue bars in the graph show people with disabilities in that particular age group. And the gray aspects of those same bars show everyone else, so individuals that don't have a documented disability.
And so one of the biggest problems I think we've come to realize that Stark is that, people don't really understand that-- people in particular in tech don't really understand how to read a graph, how to read data. Which kind of gets dangerous because data is only as good as the questions you ask, and only as good as your ability to pass that information and take action from it, right. Otherwise it's not measurable there's no point in even collecting it.
But this graph shows that if you live long enough chances are you'll acquire a disability. And eventually nearly all of us are affected. And so when we look at these numbers and we look at 0%, and we look at 25%. It's easy to look at 25% in this particular age group, and you're like Oh well it's not really filled up too much, the graph isn't filled up that much. But one thing we need to always do when we see these percentages is ask, what is the number on the other side of the percentage?
And so for this in particular 30.4% of Americans actually over the age of 18 have difficulty performing the activities of daily living. And so we can actually pull these numbers up and say, what is 30%? Let's just say 30% we're not even going to go 30.4%. 30% or rather here, it's Americans over the age of 18, let's see how many there are? OK they're 209 million and then change. And so we say what's 30% of that? Let's see, 30% of 209, we're at 62,700,000. That's not a small number.
And when we're running numbers and catering to a particular group it's important we understand the volume of that. And it's important we recognize that even though it looks like these graphs are on the smaller side as in not bleeding to the other edge, 30% is actually significantly larger. Always look at that other side, and also really getting back to the main point important to recognize that the likelihood is very high that at some point disability will affect you too.
So one of the things that our head of strategy always talks about is, how do you design for your older self, or you're at one point disabled self? I also think it's important that we recognize that accessibility is not at odds with beauty. You should treat it like foundational infrastructure not a bug fix. I think when people-- because that's happened for very long a lot of products that have wrongfully baked accessibility into their product, baked inherent access into their product have not really abided by the foundational principles of design and code.
And because of that, you get a product that just doesn't look and feel good, it feels sterile, it feels very compliancy. And so a core function of ours at Stark is to of our brand is to show that human, and mechanical can exist at the same time. Design and code exists at the same time.
And that through these beautiful illustrations, and beautiful colors, and beautiful typography, big bold accessibility is not at odds with beauty. You don't have to pick one over the other. There is no paradox it's just a matter of you ensuring as a designer and a developer that you're doing your job correctly.
And really I think what we've come to find is that in organizations the climate and the conversation around accessibility is drastically changing in organizations. The conversation is happening at a board level, there is movement happening. A lot of these companies are very old, and have a lot of legacy tech debt and design debt that needs retrofitting.
And we noticed that the way you have this conversation with organizations also is very interesting. That's not to say all of them every organization is different, but there are solid trends. In organizations the conversation around ethics changes team culture. The idea of bad exposure changes minds in the company, and profit loss changes action.
Organizations for a long time have not really invoked change with regard to this until they saw that there was a profit attached to it. And unfortunately, not all organizations will do this simply because it's a good thing simply because it's the right thing. A lot of them most of the companies that we've talked to are eager to ensure their products are accessible. And to ensure that they're not blatantly excluding individuals.
But we've come to find that a lot of them have absolutely no idea where to start. And when they think about this they actually have no idea that a lot of what they're doing is excluding individuals. That they're not ensuring their product, that they're not doing what's necessary to ensure their products are accessible.
Albeit intentionally or unintentionally like there's a mix of them there. But still we've come to find that if we want accessibility to actually be spoken about in the boardrooms, then it needs to be attached to a conversation, not just around profit but around people and profit. Transactional and transformational have to exist together.
And when you're talking to companies when you're talking to the stakeholders as a designer an engineer, you need to have a conversation not just about the profit but about people's stories. And we found that that combination works incredibly well with companies. Overall though profit loss will change action in any organization, especially publicly traded companies, right. Because that changes the market.
But we've come to find that that's maybe not necessarily a bad thing. We can get the transformational stories in front of these organizations that's a win. And if the conversation around profit and accessibility exist side by side in a boardroom it means that so much effort will be put into it and it is
we're at a point where we realize that accessibility much like privacy and security are on par with capitalism. Meaning that they have to exist, and when anything like privacy or security. And in this case accessibility are seen as aspects that can change the way currency behaves. Now you have a very different conversation happening. We want that to be the case.
If the change happens in droves, in just in mass because companies see that they're going to miss out on this windfall, and that they inherently are going to deadbolts innovation, and in turn success which data shows that products that are accessible are inherently more successful shocker right.
If that happens and when that happens in mass so too does the conversation around that. Because you have the individuals in the organizations, and the individuals rallying around it having a conversation around ethics all the while those are the individuals that are building the products. Those are the individuals that have been given the budget to do what is necessary to actually invoke change in the product which will then invoke change in profit, that's important.
And so that's the almost the formula that we've seen. And I think at first part of you cringes, and it should because we should be we should be invoking change, because it's the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in, maybe one day. But until then, we're pretty content knowing that the conversation is happening at board level, and there is this massive wave flooding down the organizations to the individuals that have direct impact on this work. And in turn changing the way individuals access those products.
And because of that and stick with me here, because of that changing the way disabled individuals contribute to the overall global GDP that is the end result. If we have to start at the top by having a conversation, it's more so about transactional, guarantee that the individuals, the working end of the product, and the product development pipeline are armed with the educational material, and the transformational stories to change this, that's a win. It takes time unfortunately, and that starts with awareness.
The great thing is that, as we've said accessibility contributes to the bottom line, and a lot of organizations are seeing that. Like I said if they don't contribute they're going to miss out on that windfall, they're going to miss out on the ability to participate in the market. Because the market will eventually be exclude it.
And so what is the bottom line? What is essentially what will exclude it? Well, the bottom line is Oop, is an increased market reach. It's minimized financial and legal risk. And it's maximized brand value again, there are different levers and different reasons why some of these organizations do these things. However, they're reading, they're realizing that all of these things accessibility contributes to this, it's one of those aspects that contributed one part of that organizational infrastructure.
But we've covered all of that, we've covered the we've covered a quick run through, I should say, of how to think about this. And what we're seeing, at least in the market and with organizations that we speak to. And resting assure that we are making progress.
The question becomes well, I'm a designer, or engineer a product manager, I'm a stakeholder, or a CEO. What the hell do I tell my team? Or what do I do to get started? Well, there's a few quick tips to hit the ground running.
For starters, you got to check yourself, you have to check your biases, albeit subconscious right. There's a lot that we say and we do that is so ingrained in our brains, that we don't even realize it, and it's not until we're made aware by others, or we educate ourselves on these conversations. And these issues being like global issues that need changing, we won't get anywhere.
So check yourself check often, and check early for accessibility issues in the product. You don't want them in your designs or your code base, and you do that with very efficient tools, and a team that's aware, that's the start.
Tests all of the third party products. So don't assume that you're embedded components play nicely with assistive technology even if they're labeled accessible. We've come to find that a lot of people and organizations and what have you are attempted to make their products accessible, or some people even wrongly label it as such.
Just don't assume that what you're baking into your product that wasn't done specifically by you is accessible. Run your product be it website web app, iOS, and through the baked in the accessibility tools that ensure you can check this on iOS in a mobile.
There are accessibility features which actually enable you to turn it on and run it through the product, and determine whether or not it's actually functioning properly. You don't want to just assume out of the gate that it's going to work, and then it ends up in the consumption of one of the customers and it's just a completely jarring, or really shit experience. And then from that matter you might as well have done nothing.
Fucking use alt-text. Yes it's just fucking, and because it's just so infuriating. Adding captions and alternative text to your imagery is a quick win that requires little to quote unquote, "no" development work.
It is a line in your code that can be copied and pasted over and over, and over again. And just replacing the actual description, and obviously label of the text by explaining what it that is happening on the image. So that individuals that are not able to for whatever reason also none of your business. But for whatever reason, are not able to consume the image that you intended.
It makes it as delightful of an experience for them. And you can't have this conversation about you're creating these beautiful experiences these delightful experiences, for who is that delightful for? So fucking use alt-text, it's easy.
Caption this. Make sure all of your recorded media have captions and transcripts, unless you're 100% sure everyone in the meeting has perfect hearing, use captions there more than a meme.
There is software out there that allows you to do this we all with especially with the pandemic, a lot of us have ended up online, and using the likes of Zoom, and Microsoft Teams and, so on and so forth more than ever. The great thing is that a lot of these tools are starting to bake in alternates third party solutions. And others are doing it on their own unfortunately, some of them are what we'd consider craptions, and others are actively improving, which is really great to see.
Without naming names it's a mixed bag, but a really good way is to make sure all of your recorded media have captions and transcripts. And you can either contract have someone do that, or employ a service one of these subscriptions that work with you. And there's sometimes an actual human that's doing that, and other times it's automated. But and then checked by a human. Different services you've got to pick your flavor.
Gather diverse learnings. We've spent a lot of people test before, we've done we've done our deep dive into this. When we're doing user research, it's important to make sure that aside from our team, which should be diverse. It should be a reflection of the-- or rather the product should be a reflection of the team building and it.
You want to ensure that that group of people is diverse. What's more the people that are actually consuming the product, and are helping you test to make sure your assumptions, and the work that you've shipped is valid, and usable, those individuals should be a reflection of who is using it. And that includes disabled individuals.
That's another thing, I think it's important to not shy away from the word disabled. It's a realistic part of life. And there are many ways you can reach out to disabled individuals, and pay them like you would any other individual to test your work, incentivize them in the same way you would anyone else to test your work.
And also reach out to accessibility professionals if you have a question. There are plenty of individuals out there that are more than willing to help you reach your goals. But ultimately just don't do it alone. It's better to ask early and get to a solution rather than shipping something that's your uncertainty of, which goes back to just don't ship shit right.
Get a community of help you don't have to do this alone. Join a community of folks that are devoted to accessibility initiatives, and ensure you move the needle forward. Ultimately, we all share the same North Star, and we all get there differently. But I think as long as the intentions are good then that's what matters.
For the sake of a self plug, the community that Stark has is absolutely phenomenal. So in the lower right hand of this slide is a QR code that says scan me. And that'll take you to our Slack community where you can link up with other designers, and engineers, and product managers, and stakeholders that are actively discussing ethics, and accessibility initiatives, and software, and helping each other with the random day-to-day questions that come up.
What's really beautiful is that a lot of the shame that comes with this entire topic is gone from that space, which I think is important for us as human beings to be able to be vulnerable and not be scared that our vulnerability no matter what no matter who we are is going to be weaponized. And so it's been incredible to watch as the community grows, and a life of its own.
Ultimately, a sustainable solution to making experiences accessible and inclusive will happen only when people of privilege choose to dismantle a system that makes them feel special and powerful.
It in the same way that it was this privileged crew that that has built the system this way. So too it needs to be those with privilege that that change it. The reason why disabled people are the world's greatest innovators, is because they've been forced to redesign and experience that completely mismatched them, that forced the mismatch. And forced them to figure out how to live their daily lives in a way that was not intended to include them.
So if you are an individual that the world can deem privilege. And I think there are a few select groups and that applies to. Use your voice, use your privilege to invoke change. You can do more than you actually anticipate.
Ultimately, make a stark difference. There's plenty you can do to hit the ground running right now. And I hope if nothing else this sparks a conversation for you that you then turn to another person and have a conversation about. And hopefully that has some form of a ripple effect. Much like I said, reach out to people, don't wait, don't do this alone.