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- So Kath, I was just going to say with regards to the RNIB working group as well.
That they give peopleÉ
- Actually, what I'd just like to add in there is that we're doing post it notes outside,
you will have met the lovely Veronika Jermonlina from Bunnyfoot.
And Veronica did some amazing research for us at Abilitynet, where I used to work.
And if you don't mind me paraphrasing, she actuallyâ would you like to do it Veronika or shall I?
- Go ahead, yes.
- What Veronika's research found out, is that when she went off and talked to people with access needs
about what kind of phone they used. What emerged was that word of mouth was really, really, really important to people.
So to get a phone, you'd be more likely to go and talk to a friend with a similar access need
rather than go in the shop.
Now this is really exciting because of social media, because all of a sudden you've got a chance for that conversation to go out
a lot broader.
So there's while lots of issues with points of sale,
people have kind of learned to use their own networks and stuff.
- Ok another question? Yes?
Yes you!
My understanding is things like voiceover and rota are actually in terms of the coding, incredibly easy to implement.
A few blocks of code and it can happen.
So my question is how commonly do developers actually implement these features in their apps?
And what can be done to get more of them implemented?
- Leonie?
- It's funny Kath and I were talking about this on the way over here this evening.
Apple have actually done a pretty bloody good thing!
They've made their toolkit for developers accessible by default.
So if you're creating an app, and you use the buttons, the sliders, the widgets, whatever,
that Apple provide as part of their toolkit, they're accessible by default.
And that's made a hell of a difference, because I've just got an iPhone in the past few months and
and I'm discovering for the first time since I lost my sight that
the majority of apps are, if not completely accessible, more or less completely usable.
And that's a real turnaround. And that simple thing that Apple did, by justmaking their toolkit accessible by default.
That has made a tremendous difference. They've also made it very easy so if you're making custom controls
custom kind of widgets for your interface,
it's really just a matter of ticking a few boxes in the interface developer,
to make those things accessible, certainly with voice over and magnification on iDevices.
So if they've done anything, that's probably the most powerful thing they've done to make it
possible to make apps accessible, easily.
- Did that kind of answer your question as to how often it's being done.
- Yes by the sounds of it then, most developers are implementing it, so that's really good.
- Yes. It's not 100% yet but I'd say we're probably 60, 70, maybe 75% of apps
are accessible enough to be usable for the majority of tasks.
- For Apple anyway. - Yes, for Apple.
- And Vodafone of course does sell Apple products.
- Ash?
- So you know, we're talking about the Apple products, I've been a happy Apple user, and iPhone user for 18 months or so
and just by playing around with the settings and menus I discovered
3 buttons, sorry a 3 touch action which allowed me to zoom,
and so all the hassle I had with composing texts and reading notes,
which you can't otherwise zoom,
were solved by that 3 touch action which I did not know it supported.
So the point of sale argument I find is useful, of course it is, but
it's sort of like usability in use, I think. You know, we must have accessibility in use,
because of change in need. And I had a change in need as my eyesight worsened.
And I couldn't compose texts comfortably, etc.
So there is a point I think about discoverability of these features. Even if you have them,
but you aren't exposing them in some way.
And if we aren't detecting the problems that users are facing at runtime, then we are missing a trick
and I think there's still some scratching of the heads which developers need to do.
But on a related point I thinkÉ on a related point, having worked in UX for donkey's years
I have worked with some very good people, who haven't read or know 9241.
And then 13407. Will 8878 build the same route. That actually we can work very well in accessibility but
not know the buzz words not having read the standard.
And what happens next? Is there going to be an ISO version?
So ok, starting off with where you ended.
My slides have been seen by people all over the world.
The Japanese wanted to adopt 8878 as a Japanese standard back in February.
The Australians are really really keen.
For something to become an ISO standard, it kind of needs to be out there for a while.
There's something I love about actually the way these rules work.
Because I love user testing.
So I think you should look at it this way at the moment.
BS8878. Lovely product. Has it been user tested?
We tested it with loads of people who are experts, but what we really want to know
is - does this thing actually work in the wild?
So Leonie is getting 8878 into BetaGov, we've got folks in Royal Mail,
all sorts of organisations to work if you like trying out and seeing if in reality it's working for them?
And actually, people said why aren't you writing a book about it? To me. And I said,
I don't want to write a book about that, I want some case studies
and I want to collect them together. But it's going to take a while for us to get that so,
you can't do an ISO standard until a year has gone by.
So... and when we were last talking about it
a couple of months ago,
2 different ISO committees were fighting over who got the chance to make this into an international standard.
- So... - It's a good thing right?
- Yes, but it just means there's loads of politics that I've got to go through in the next kind of 6 months or so.
- And I think that's part of the question you know - Yes
- Standards get bogged down into this and we talked about this earlier.
It's not necessarily a good thing to call it a standard, and is has all this sort of political and enforcement around it
to just have something out there, out in the wild that is much more...
- Yes. - Aaccessible.
- Yes. I don't really care what you call it. The main thing that I hate about BS8878 is that
you have to pay £100 to get it. I don't get any of that money. Leonie doesn't get any of that money.
- Jonathan, are there like the WCAG guidelines, do you have a cheap cheap shortened version or is that your 16 points?
- Well, actually I've kind of got something better than that. So tonight or tomorrow
I start answering how this works in the wild on my blog.
Because a lot of people have said that it works for huge organisations but what about SME's?
I'm now an SME. So I'm using it to create my website and I'm actually going to be posting up there a series
what I did and actually how this thing has helped me.
You know, eat your own dog food. - Fantastic.
- So, log on to hassellinclusion. - Jon, you also mentioned in your presentation that sometimes
you've gotta get something out there.
Unless you want to be Apple, I think you were saying, the cut and paste, it wasn't there.
Fine. Silly mistake in retrospect. But you know what. It got it out there,
it got the critiscism that got fed back and the product got improved. And I think that's where 8878 needs to be.
Or needs to go through that process before we make it - evolving it into an international standard.
I think it's really important to get that user-testing in. And just make it better. It was a first attempt. I think it's great.
It could be even better.
- Absolutely. You tell us basically. - Fantastic. Okâ
ÉNow, gentleman in the striped shirt. On the end.
Do you think that Apple's decision to make both accessibility kit available to developers
will sort of in future, to demonstrate there's no need for accessibility to be always playing catchup.
And always sort of harking on at the latest technological developments to make things accessible
where it could just become a defacto standard rather than an enforced standard?
- I don't think that it should be about technology at all. We have all the technology that we need.
Apart from very extreme examples to do really good sites. It's about the will and the desire to get it done.
You know to go back to Ash's point. There's a balance there between how much accessibility you build
into the interface.
So it's political will and it's money and it's what makes the money for the company.
So I don't think it's about technology, it's about getting the word out there, and being inclusive and having the will to do it
- Can I put just a note of caution. Leonie's slides, is not all about screen readers.
Apple have voiceover in their products. That is it. There are a few other good things but
there are loads of people who have actually, you know, there are millions of people who have accessibility needs
that their products do not help at all.
So you really need to think about, when you're saying accessible, accessible to whom?
And actually, even Apple have got a hell of a long way to go in actually trying to make something which is actually inclusive.
So just bear that in mind.
- Judith. Did you have something to add to that one? - Yes. In terms of your question you were talking about
if you were going to start doing, you know, playing catch up.
But really what we were looking at, is the ideal in user experience
is you start doing your research before you even have your product early on.
So if you're doing your research early on with people with access needs, then slowly, slowly, slowly
we are going to get to the situation where 'oh we going live next week? Should we do some accessibility testing?'
So as well as it's education for people who are manufacturing these products
it's about ideal user research lifecycle.
- OK. Lady with the long hair? - Hi. I work in a UX research agency and
and one the challenges we often have is the clients come to us, asking us to test for people with access needs,
but they don't have the budget set aside to the study so,
***a few people have mentioned tonight maybe including more people to do that with access needs.
In your experience, what is the ideal percentage and what is the ideal number to cover what has been...
...you know what we are looking for in terms of that? Is it a big group or a variety group?
- Judith, do you want to take this one? - I think if you're looking to cover every access need
then you're looking at a very large study. So on a practical level, it's trying to pick things up. So every time you're doing testing
include people from different groups. I mean, there's different things you can do if you develop your
personas who've got access needs. You can do cognitive walk-throughs with those personas.
You can do heuristic reviews and include accessibility audits. And with each stage of testing,
include people with different access needs. If you want to cover everything off,
you're covering a lot because even, if you think about - say for example - take
somebody who's got motor disabilities. It's not just about what they can functionally do
it's about how they are behaving as a user. So all the usability issues,
their person identity and relationship with technology.
So if a client wants to just do user testing, to make their product totally accessible,
that's not enough, you need to talk to them about the whole lifecycle but you can get them started
say that this will help a lot of people.
- Kath, what about at Vodafone. How are you doing it at Vodafone.
What we're doing is that we're, we are...whenever we can - it's not in every single study and research activity at the moment
that goes on within a team. But we're trying to...I'm not giving you these as the exact ratio,
but say for example, we do small surgeries,
where we just want to test a design idea, and we might get 6 people to come in,
in a day, try an interface out for us and tell us whether they like it or not.
We might put 2 with an access need out of the 6.
So again, you know, completely agree with what Judith says.
And say just to try out and do that. I think the thing is, is that there's a lot of fear around including people with access needs,
because 'ah, if we do it that way, we're not going to get it right' and what I'd say is just get people in
go to - there's an amazing website called "Just Ask" by Shawn Henry.
And it's for UX's. A lot of accessibility information out there is for developers,
and it's not relevant to what you guys do if you're talking about user experience.
If you look at that, what it will do is it will tell you about how to communicate with someone.
What you need to set up. And I'd say just get people in and
give it a try.
- Thanks very much Kath.