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So we have the extra challenge that Kath and I are both going to share 10 minutes.
So I'm going to do the boring corporate stuff at the front,
and then Kath's going to do the interesting accessibility stuff.
I'll be the first to say that I'm not an accessibility expert.
But that's ok because I get to do the boring corporate stuff.
So a quick discussion on what Vodafone group UX does.
We have a very broad remit.
We have 22 local markets and 47 partner markets.
That we do all of the design for.
Especially online, that's the real challenge, because we do the templates. We do the overall design that then gets
implemented into each of the individual markets.
We support all platforms. We support all channels.
So we have an awful lot of UX to do.
And I'm proud to be sponsoring today.
Accessibility at Vodafone.
So we want to share a bit of the work that we're doing today. We only have a few minutes,
So it's going to be pretty rushed through but I'm sure Kath will be able to help with that.
We don't hold ourselves up to be experts or industry leaders - yet.
We're working on it. We think it's important and we hope to get there.
But we're not industry leaders yet.
I have sort of two and a half FTE's right now working on accessibility in the team.
And out of a team of 70 people, with another 4 million euros a year to spend on design,
that's not a massive amount but it's still increasing and getting better and the focus is definitely getting there.
As a manager of a large design team, there is a tension between just getting the products done,
spending the money, delivering to those monstrous product managers
and the big guy at the top of the company.
So deciding how much to spend on accessibility, how much money to put in there,
There is a tension there and that's a decision I have to make everyday.
But by doing it right, it can improve all of the design we do,
and I think that's the important thing. It's not, here's a pot of money for accessibility,
and here's a pot of money for the other design,
by doing it right, they both can inform each other and everything can get better.
Because we have so many markets to deliver to, change is slow at the company.
We do a design for all the websites, it takes a year or two or three for all the markets to adopt that.
So change is slow. So you probably won't see much yet from us. But it's coming.
So what are the goals for us a Vodafone when it comes to accessibility?
If you remember nothing from what I say today, the most important thing for us is that
we are trying to make it BAU - 'Business As Usual'.
If we can add accessibility into everything we do as a standard thing,
then we've achieved a lot of the goals that some of the other guys are talking about.
Just by doing an everyday process. Getting that in there. It can really help all of the design.
And then the other thing that we have talked about already. Reach the widest audience possible.
The numbers speak for themselves.
We have 270 million subscribers, if 20% of those have accessibility issues,
that's an awful lot of people that we're not taking care of.
We should be providing useful and engaging experiences for everyone.
Not just mainstream. Everyone.
Why exclude people. Our goal is to do good work for everyone.
I'll admit, I don't have accessibility goals and objects on my list of KPI's yet.
But I think that's something we can certainly work on. My boss is the Director of Online as well.
Which I think is a really good place to start. So that's something I can do personally to help Vodafone
spread the word and get it out there.
and of course the legal issues.
And finally for me, I think as a large company serving so many people,
across the world, so many different languages, so many different people,
we have a moral obligation and a responsibility to do that.
We're the 4th largest FTSE company in this country, we sell to a lot of people, so I think it's something we should do.
And finally for me, as you can see I'm getting there myself,
the better the sites are the better for me and the better for everyone.
So thank you very much. I'll hand over to Kath to do some more.
Thanks boss. Hi everyone. So just to break it down for you,
a little bit about what we've been up to.
I'm not going to go through all of the slides in detail because a lot of it the other speakers have talked about
or it's stuff you know about already.
But Vodafone is over lots of different parts of the world.
And we're in 19 different countries.
And an agency called Sagentia did a scientific medical survey of our markets. It wasn't done on the back of a *** packet,
they went out and they worked out how many people needed access requirements to use a mobile phone.
And they found out that across our markets there is 136 million people have got some kind of access need.
30 million of those have got a severe need.
But everybody has an access need at some point.
Have you ever tried to use your phone on the beach in bright lights?
We all have tricky conditions.
So really, even though this is about anyone and everyone.
And it is about 22% of people that have got a more permanent access need.
But then as I said, we all have conditions that can come and go.
I'm not going to go through this because you know a lot of this stuff.
Just some interesting things about the different markets.
If you are working for an organisation that operates locally,
in India there's something like between about 40 to 80 million people with a vision impairment
And many people in the developing world are going straight to mobile.
So we really need to think about the mobile accessibility.
And they may not have the latest technology.
Couple of interesting things going on is ICT in Qatar.
It has got a really innovative programme to increase digital inclusion across society.
In our market in Spain, they have very strict access laws,
so what we're able to do is, kind of find out what the people in these countries are doing and kind of
send that out across the markets.
Right. A lot of the time when it comes to accessibility,
people tend to run away because there's a conception that accessibility will frighten the horses.
especially in user experience.
Am I right or am I right?
OK so what are we all afraid of?
I'm quite an old lady in web terms. 1 web year is worth 7 years, like dog years.
And back in the day, does anyone remember Bobby? The accessibility policeman that you......booo....
put your website through the Bobby checker, and it came back and it went "NO!" no matter what you'd done.
And it gave accessibility a really bad reputation. I mean, look at it!
Nobody would want that on their website. Well you know the thing is, you don't want it on your website,
and we know that people with disabilities, people with access needs don't want it either.
You know, because the thing is that everybody wants to use mainstream products,
and as we saw earlier, and I get a bingo point for this - whoever is tweeting about this -
Apple. They are the industry leaders. Is Apple naff?
Is Apple high contrast? Is Apple a bit weird?
No but they have the best universal inclusion in their products at the moment.
And there's no brand damage. There's no difference to the user experience of people who don't have access needs.
So what this is really about is a change in approach. We've got this lovely user experience honeycomb here from Peter Morville
when I give the slide deck out you can check out his fantastic website.
We all know about WCAG 2.0, don't we?
We all know and love WCAG 2.0. What WCAG 2.0 will do is it will take away the hygiene factors.
It will make sure someone can see a button and they can click on it.
Great but it won't tell us about user experience. So what do we need to do.
Have you all come across diagrams like this before?
I bet you were looking at one last night, weren't you?
This is...if you start your changes and your user requirements 1 minute early...
...the further down the line you go the more expensive it gets.
Now if we put accessibility on that matrix. So it looks something like that.
This is changes.
Cost.
And we've got accessibility and usually across the industry, it happens just before a project goes live.
you do a WCAG audit, you might do a user test.
But actually, where it should happen, is around here.
if we take an inclusive design approach to accessibility, we can make more changes and they will be more effective.
Rather than building something without talking to users and then finding out they don't like it
and you have go to back to the drawing board.
So we've taken a user centred approach and we've repurposed the WCAG guidelines to meet our requirements.
What we've found out is that there's a huge overlap between what our users with access needs require,
and what the users who don't have any access needs require.
For example, this is really basic stuff. The biggest changes that we've made, is increasing the contrast and the text size.
Because why grey text? Why?
I'm stuck.....OK, no I'm going to beat Jonathan. Jonathan got another minute!
Ok, I'll just finish on this one.
Every time that you do a session with participants, try to put some participants with an access need in every sample.
We believe by doing this, that we'll educate everybody that we work with because we're asking agencies to do this.
Your company can do all of that. You can read later.
And that's Harvey Nics the show Whippet. Thanks.