Accessibility: The Making
Earlier last year, I was reading an article about Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos executing an exercise for Amazon executives to get rid of Powerpoint presentations and rewiring in them the art of preparing and reading memos. I could imagine employees either getting all jittery & anxious about reading pieces of information ahead, and being ‘subjected’ to torrents of questions such as, ‘Did you read?’ or ‘Are we prepped for this meeting?’
Like some kind of disability, anxiety is also invisible. Anxiety and even panic come to us at the least inopportune time or visit us at the moment, when we know we have something important to deliver. Some of us are well high on the mental toughness swing whilst others pretend to be mentally tough and confident, ‘I am ready to deliver, boss!’ *Chin up*
There is no One-for All. Memos may not be the optimal choice for all employees. Some present well verbally; some require half visualized & half textualized slide deck. Memos are helpful to build strong narratives and to give everyone the access to a level playing field to begin with (people with visual & reading challenges may request accommodation from peers).
One thing that I keep racking my brains about is my and your idea of access. Your rights to access. But as I grew up and became more observant, I realized many of us are not given that many affordances. We may fare well in the financial realm but fall short in the health ones. Some of us are blessed with great warmth of friends and family, others rely on their own selves to find pockets of happiness.
Ease and convenience of access are what we all desire.
We want to be able to open a bank account right from the power of the bank’s re-designed app. We want to be able to chat with the driver who is going to pick us up in a few minutes from our pick-up point. We want to be able to do live help text-chat while we are having an uncomfortable ride partly due to an unclean car and bad drivers. More than want, we ‘require’ options. We want to downgrade or upgrade features so we can improve the quality of our lives based on our individual, familial and community’s requirements.
So why are modern day designs not factoring in access? A large chunk of population is left unaccounted for — elderly people, immigrants with English as a second language, emerging bi-lingual learner, students with a learning, hearing or cognitive disability.
Why is design still mono-lingual? How can we make design an inclusive language for all?
To say there is a one-sided solution would be a futile attempt. As someone who is in business, we like to think our customers as ‘end users’, the ones who actually use our products or services. When these products or services are only designed while keeping ‘normal’ or ‘physically fit users’, our thinking is highly biased and screwed. We haven’t explored the full amazing spectrum of our diverse users who drift between the ‘wants’ vs. ‘requirements’, and our products very rarely fulfill their diverse requirements because of ‘limited’ or ‘one’ option to access products.
Real Cases, Problem-solving Mindsets
Mauqa Online
An app-based service that provides household assistance such as cleaning, laundry, house-helper and elderly care at our own timings. At first, their helpline included only phone number for audio call. Frustrated at this, I stopped using their service. Looking at my service cancellation record, they instantly reached out and listened. Through rapid iterations and multiple products’ feedback, they made their helpline inclusive by adding an Intercom, email address & a phone call button. In addition, at their back-end, they made a note to contact this customer (me!) via email or Intercom only.
Careem
Recognized as one of the widely aggressive player in ride-share market, not only they quickly iterated their product designs but included numerous ease points (which later became pain points).
At first, they gave options for users to contact for support via email and phone call only while chat was disabled. Then they introduced chat as an option for in-ride support. Unfriendly captain or harassment case, one could request for live support on a Careem ride.
UX Design in Pakistan
A haven for Senior and Junior designers and product developers/designers. Lots of room to share and receive criticism, share feedback on existing products or websites. The biggest opportunity was the art of learning to give and listen to feedback ‘critically & constructively’ without degrading an upcoming designer or a veteran while nudging them towards accessibility.
As an attempt to improve my own feedback process, I stumbled upon a sought-after designer whose aesthetics looked appealing. To build up the exercise, I went through his portfolio and indulged in visual treats. However, I felt some pages could benefit from improved color contrast, so the process to voluntarily engage the designer towards these pain points led to a desire to improve his website design.
Color contrast is a common pain point for a customer who struggles with visual balance. Common sense would have tell us to keep dark texts on light background, and vice versa. A good design sense would be to minimize and play around with color contrast. While we have lots of choices to play around here, we could put up designs for feedback sprints across many different platforms, try a product made on iTune app on an Android, a mobile responsive design vs desktop window browser, etc.
In a nutshell, if accessibility is subjective, we need to challenge our own notions of access.
We need to challenge the status quo, be more curious and be more courageous enough to disrupt. What has been a standard process for so long should be challenged, disrupted, innovated because as humans, we should respect the price of being a human being — with our own eccentricities, differences and uniqueness. More power to us!
This article is the second part of series tied to accessibility and digital designs. First part here! Stay tuned for more! Feedback is welcome!
The author is grateful to product development and technical teams at Mauqa Online, Careem and UX Design in Pakistan, and finally, Head and peers in Business team at Telenor!
