Defining and Supporting Accessibility

Transcript for Starting Down the Path - Defining and Supporting Accessibility

Hi. My name is Christopher Patnoe. And I'm the head of Accessibility and Disability Inclusion for EMEA at Google. I'm here to share you my thoughts in terms of starting down the path-- how to build an accessible product and accessible culture.

So if you're new to working in accessibility, welcome. You're about to work on something profoundly impactful for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Even more than a billion, according to the WHO. But it's not going to be easy, and nor will it be linear. Some days will be tough, some days will be really tough, and other days will be simply magical.

This is the best, the hardest job I've ever had. I didn't start with an accessibility professional, frankly, nor am I really that professional. But I've learned some things along the way. And I'd like to share them with you.

But first, the personal story. I'm a failed musician, who had enough talent to think about it, but not enough to do it. Who found that working in technology was a better day job than waiting on tables. So I found myself 10 years at Apple, a few years at Sony Ericsson, making phones, even at Disney Mobile, making games.

But then, I got the best job in my life-- at Google. And it was here, where I learned about accessibility. It was because my product wasn't accessible. A test engineer came into a meeting, turned out voiceover, and I heard button, button, button, button.

I asked, what's that? She said, well, this is a Google Play Music for someone who's blind. That's stupid. How do they use it? And she's, well, that's why I'm here. That was my introduction. And it was a very appropriate way of welcoming me. That's why I'm here, like shame on you.

This is something to be solved. And within a couple of months, I volunteered to take on accessibility for Google Play. And about four years ago, I took on my day job. This has been my passion. It's been my life. I've never looked back.

So now, we're back to the beginning, actually. Actually, even if we do this for a long time, the process never ends. You're never going to be done. The technology evolves, teams change, leaders change, all of the matters that paints yourself.

So if this is true, if all of these thing was change, where do I start? And what can I do about it? Well, the answer is simple-- just get started. Don't stop and don't burn out. I'd like to share a few points that I think about when building for inclusion, especially, for accessibility-- about getting started.

Learning how to influence is tremendously important. It's a critical skill for success in any role. But not so much with accessibility. Here, in my experience, you're stuck on the bottom, and work your way up a little, then go to the top. Then you fell in the middle.

So for me, I think of this as sort of an influence sandwich. So here, the bread represents your peers and leadership. The fixins, in the middle, represent the different layers of management. And that center, the tofurky in the middle, you need to keep it warm, and thus, the biggest challenge. Let me explain.

So the very beginning-- start with those people who are already passionate about the accessibility mission. If you don't know where to start, look at the ERGs. Look for designers, ask around. You'll find people who are doing good work.

Once we identified these people who are doing this work, sing the praises. Help them. Make them successful. Give them visibility and build up momentum. People will want to hear the stories of wins. And frankly, stories about people with disabilities tend to carry more emotional weight. But watch out for inspiration part. That does not do the good that you want to.

As you build up this momentum, you'll also be building a trust. Be a good listener. Be a good partner. You'll develop a reputation for being trustworthy. And you'll start to work your way up the management change. At some point, you'll find an ally who can help bring you to the senior leadership.

When you get to this point, it's important to prepare carefully. Don't go into fast. Learn with that mayo layer-- the people reporting into the CEO leadership. What motivates them is that brand reputation is at legal risk is a competition. And honestly, in my experience, competition is a great motivator.

It doesn't have to be just competition from other companies. It also be competition from other teams inside your company-- other organizations, parallel organizations. Competition is great. Don't overlook it. Learn the language of leadership. Make the pitch. Tell the story. Get the support.

When you get that support, it's easier to build the support for the different layers. You'll have your wind at your back. And then you have the opportunity to make the change. But remember, business is fickle and attention is short.

So there will be a time when that down tofurky in the middle gets cold. So this is the layered management that you need to spend the most time with. They're the ones that have the real world issues. They're the ones who have made all of the compromises between time and quality. I'm going to get it here, I'm going to get it there. These are the people that you need to have the best relationship if you can. Because these are the ones who are setting the priority.

Be pragmatic. Don't always say that I have to win every single time. But also don't be afraid to escalate. Remember, keep the tofurky warm or you're going to have a really awful sandwich.

Next, is when wanting to create an accessibility culture, you will certainly want to have your products be built accessibly. So having a place where people with disabilities are welcome and thrive is an important part of having both an accessible culture, but also accessible products as well.

So when it comes to building accessible products, why don't you go for the low hanging fruit for your application, for your experience. These are certainly things that you can do today. And I'd like to share you a couple of tools that Google has created, that might help you down this path.

Accessibility Scanner is a tool that suggests accessibility improvements for Android apps without requiring technical skills. You open your app that you want to scan, it tap Accessibility Scanner button, and you find items in the app that might benefit from accessibility improvements.

You get to use this app to suggest changes to developers or if you're the developer, you can make the changes yourself. The scanner suggest improvements, such as enlarging small touch targets or increasing contrast or providing content descriptions so the app could be more easily used by people with accessibility needs.

Or, if you are a developer, why don't you let the computer do their thinking for you? You can let the accessibility test framework, as part of Android Studio, do similar kind of works. In the IDE, to be notified of issues, and you fix them immediately-- things like missing labels, and adequate touch targets, poor contrast.

It also, helpfully, provides you links to documentations. You can learn more about how to make these solves, these solutions, yourself. Or if building for the web, it's important they know about Chrome's Lighthouse. It's available and built into Chrome DevTools. It's also a command line interface, a node module, as well as a Chrome extension.

Lighthouse will provide a useful dashboard or giving the sense of how it's going, like the ATF checks in Android Studio with this little scanner. It'll also show you specific areas where you may want to make changes. Again, including links with documentation, so you can better understand your options.

1. So now you've done the first pass. Your product's pretty good. Now, you want to have someone audit the product. This could be done by hiring a professional with an organization with deep expertise in accessibility. Or you might run it by someone on your staff or friend circle if you can't find anyone.

But it's important that you get someone that lived experience, with a lived perspective of the product. Person who uses the screen reader, for example. Every day, we use all the shortcuts, we use all the tricks. Someone like me who doesn't use it every day, I know how to do it the most rudimentary way. And that's not how you're used to use it. So it's important you use it the way your users do. And if you can't be that person, find that person who can do it for you.

And since these people with lived experiences can tell you where it is, they'll be also expert enough to provide you a solution that will help you solve these problems. But how do you do this? You test with people with disabilities. You co-design with them. Heck, you hire them on your teams.

Moving on to teams, the next thing that I want to talk about is the creation of an inclusive and accessible culture. This is an excellent way to accomplish a number of things. A more inclusive culture is one where the presence of people at different dimensions of diversity, age, race, culture, and ability are not seen as tokens, but as core parts of the company's workforce.

And also more inclusive culture is one where it's easier to build products that are inclusive because everyone consider it experiences that are taken into consideration. If you're there at the table, you have the right to speak up. If you're not at the table, speak on behalf. But gosh, it is so much better to have the diversity of humanity as close as you can get around you. It makes your products better. It makes your culture better.

So an inclusive culture is one where you have a diversity of people and ideas. And McKinsey report, in 2020, they said that companies that top quartile for gender diversity of executive teams were 25% more likely to have above average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile-- up from 21% in 2017 at 15% in 2014. This is accelerating.

And in the case of ethnic and development culture diversity, the business case findings are equally compelling. Where in 2019, the top quartile company outperformed those by-- and then the fourth one, by 36% to profitability.

Well, I've not been able to find disability equivalent reports. There's little reason to think that any of this would be different. There's also another benefit to the creation of having accessible products. Because the person on the team with an apparent disability or an acknowledged disability, in my experience, empathy of the organization goes up. Significantly people know it's important. And they'll make the effort to make their products more accessible just by the presence of someone being there.

Once you have a person with disabilities under your staff, you need to remember that accommodation is not enough. That's the low bar. You need to listen to them, to find out what's actually not working. This picture here for me is an example of what happens when you listen.

Given the pandemic, mask wearing is critical for the health of the community. It makes life very difficult for those who sign or especially, for those who read lips. Facial expressions are critical part of communication. But accommodations are normally applied to the person with the disability.

But in this case, the mask accommodation here, the clear screen, is needed on behalf of the person with disability. How does this work? Many companies are struggling with this. I don't have an answer.

But when talking with people who identify as deaf or hard of hearing on my team, there's been a significant amount of anxiety about going back to work in person. In these conversations, the benefits of remote work, dedicated microphones, a captions in meetings, speaker identification, clear faces like this. It's empower them to do their best work.

And returning to meetings in rooms and conference rooms, it removes so much of the things that made them, that empower them to be successful now. There's a lot of anxiety for people that I've spoken to in these communities.

We need to be able to solve these things as a company as many companies there's no obvious answer to these things but the company that does solve it will certainly be at an advantage.

Also, people are complicated. It's too easy and done too often. But putting some in a box and assume all accommodations will work for them. There's a horrible expression called co-morbidity, you might hear. I tried to use the word concurrent. It's a little less morbid.

But if you've met, say, one person, who is blind, you've met one blind person. Some see nothing, some see light. Others, these things like an impressionist painting. There's no reason to think that a single accommodation can be all of their needs.

But also, don't forget that people are multifaceted. They have a shape, a race, a gender, a history, or story. They also may have concurrent disabilities. And that often gets ignored. For example, people who are deaf-blind, they have significantly more difficulties than those who are blind or deaf.

Let's take a look at the amazing Haben Girma. She's a personal hero of mine. She's proof that it takes more effort and creativity. She's created a tech and support system that allowed her to graduate from Harvard Law, and even tease President Obama for his typing skills.

Personally, I'm 51, mildly dyslexic. I need glasses. I don't hear quite as well as I used to. And I'm lactose intolerant. All of these things are made. I'm not just dyslexic. Who are you? What are your needs? Really, what are your needs? And why would this be different for anyone else?

If you've noticed, there's a theme of what I've been saying that could easily be summed up in nothing about us without us or never about us about us. You want to build products with people that you're trying to serve. You want to build your culture with the people and your community in your company. You want to build a riff, never for.

The last thing I want to say about this is once you start down this journey, if you really embrace it, you might find yourself overwhelmed. I did. Because you're going to recognize problems of disability inclusion and accessibility everywhere because it is. Start working super hard because you're so passionate about the work because it is passionate. It is impactful.

But what's important to remember is that this isn't a marathon. You need to practice self-care. You will do far more good to the cause by giving 80% of yourself for 20 years than 200% of yourself for three. So do it for yourself.

And if that's too hard, trust me, for yourself doesn't really resonate, do it for the community. Be intentional in your discipline and your self-discipline. Do it because this way, you'll have the most impact for most of the people in the long run. If not for you, do it for us.

So now I'd like to share with you what happens when you employ talented people with disabilities, with technology, and do all these things right. I might say that Google doesn't always right, but we try. And what I want to share with you here is Live Transcribe. This is created by Dimitri, on the left, who is profoundly deaf and Chet, on the right, who is hearing.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- I'm set. You ready?

- Yeah.

- I completely lost hearing when I was one year old. Technology provides tremendous opportunities to help people with disabilities. I'm a research scientist at Google, and developing speech recognition technology. Speech recognition accuracy finally became so good that I could fulfill my dream for whole life to use speech recognition to communicate with people.

- Hello.

- Hello. How are you?

- I'm fine. And how are you?

- I'm doing good. What can I get you today?

- I would like tea.

Live Transcribe is an application that run in Android. It provides transcription of speech for deaf and hard of hearing in real time.

- Dimitri worked with the speech team to develop that technology. And Google has made strides in the past couple of years, but the app, itself, is what I've been working on. I'm not an Android engineer. I saw an opportunity for something useful and dug into that, and kind of evolved naturally.

[END PLAYBACK]

And it kind of evolved naturally. So Live Transcribe is an application that will transcribe language in over 80 languages. It transcribe over 80 languages. And you can reply by typing your words. It also gives you an opportunity to be notified if an important sound or your name is said.

This was started by these two people, to help them communicate and turn into one of Google's most profound and powerful pieces of assistive technology. But the more we work with the community, we realize there's more advantage and more benefits by continuing with this technology.

So after this, we developed Live Caption, which can provide captions for almost any audio source on your Android phone. It uses a local ASR model, a local speech model, which means no data is ever sent to the cloud. Everything is on the device. And you can see captions from sources that don't provide them. You Can see captions from voice notes or social media or even videos you've shot for yourself.

That's all been rather abstract, but let me show you what can happen when you put these pieces together.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- I hesitated for a few second. And I realized the enormity of it, what it really meant. I'm 55 years old. And for the first time, I was able to call my son.

- This is Matthew. He likes to swim in cold water.

- After a swim, you feel alive.

- Like really, really cold water.

- I also swam across the English Channel.

- But that's another story. Matthew is deaf.

- People think if I got a hearing aid on, I could hear everything. But that's not true. I lip read most of the time. I have two boys. And they play a very important part of my life.

- This is Matthew's youngest son.

- Hi. I'm Harry.

- He lives in Hong Kong and plays rugby.

- I always want to keep in touch with him. Before, I needed to communicate with him through Zoom or WhatsApp. I would try to lip read him. But it's really hard because it's not 3D. It's a flat screen. When I got the Google Pixel phone, because the Live Caption feature.

Harry was the first person I phoned. It was incredible. And we were talking for about half an hour. All of a sudden, he said, dad, do you realize this is the first time we've talked on the phone? I was speechless for three, four second. And I realized what it really meant. I'm 55 years old, and for the first time in my life, I was able to call my son.

[END PLAYBACK]

So that's a powerful thing. The work we do in accessibility can change people's lives. So I want to recap a handful of things I want you to think about as we leave. So first thing you do is get started. Get started on the path.

Learn to speak the language of your leadership, and keep that tofurky warm. Don't stop. Built with the community for your product. Build with the community for your culture, never for. Listen to the community, and don't burn out. Because if you can do these things, you can change the world. Thank you.