UXA2022 Day 1; Natasha Ballantyne - The life-changing potential of digital inclusion

So you’re designing with accessibility guidelines (WCAG), but how are you designing for vulnerability and inclusion? This talk will share some of the vulnerability guidelines we have developed for websites, products and services to ensure we are designing inclusively.

Transcript

1. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. www.captionslive.com.au | captionslive@outlook.com | 0447 904 255 UX Australia UX Australia 2022 – Hybrid Conference Thursday, 25 August 2022 Captioned by: Kasey Allen & Carmel Downes
2. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 103 life who was diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, what that has been like for her, what it is like now, her advocacy for changes to the medical system. It was on ABC. Hopefully it was recorded and is available. I am fairly certain they do publish those talks afterwards. I with encourage you to take a look. It was a powerful speech that she gave. Last talk before the break and following on from that thread, please join me in welcoming Natasha to the stage, thank you very much. (APPLAUSE) NATASHA BALLANTYNE: Hopefully everyone can hear me. A tech test. I don't have dogs in my talk. I will in my next one, I promise. To kick us off, hopefully everyone has done one of these before, but I am a researcher and it is natural that I will get everyone to fill out a poll to kick us off. The question here is how do you define inclusion? Actually, I asked the same question last week and there was silence. I did have a slider when I think two people filled it out. We had a discussion afterwards and we said "Why is this such a hard question to answer?" And a gentleman said "It is because no-one wants to get it wrong". The thing is in this space, none of us are experts. Some of us have lived experience but you might have the lived experience of one as per that statement. It is about making sure we do the best that we can until we can do better. This was particularly important, based on the disability discrimination act and the disability and inclusion act in 1992 and also in 2004. Hi, I am Natasha. To kick us off I will tell you a bit about who I am in culture inclusion and then I will get to what I do. A little bit about me. I am a proud third generation Australian. My grandad came here with the English navy as part of World War II. I live on the Central Coast in NSW, where I grew up. It is where I reside today and it is on the land of the Darkinjung country. I am excited to be here presenting to you in person. I can't believe we are an in person conference and on the land of the Kulin
3. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 104 Nation. I will give a visual description, as I am not sure if anyone on the line is following along just with the audio, or might have a visual impairment, or is choosing to follow the audio for their own reasons? I have pink top on and long blonde hair. I gave a same visual description at an event I did on Tuesday and I forgot to introduce who I was. I was MC for the event for two hours and all everyone knew about me was that I had big furry earrings. I work at PricewaterhouseCoopers and I am a national design director for our product innovation team. I am lucky to dedicate 20% of my time to what I call vulnerability design. I will say we didn't plan between Ted, Fiona and I to all talk about very similar themes but hopefully what I share with you today will emphasise the things they have talked about. It is about us all working together to make sure we are inclusive. The other thing I should mention is I have some lived experience. I only have my own lived experience. I have an invisible disability. This led me to work part-time most of last year. I had five surgeries, I was in and out of hospital and the eight hour wait that Ted talked about in that video, that was common to me in my time last year. This was actually pretty interesting to experience because I turned from being a designer to actually a participant and seeing how decisions that we make as designers, strategists and business people can change lives. This was a post that came up two weeks ago on my LinkedIn feed. I thought it was an interesting post. One of the things that got me stuck was the language "Disabled people". I thought Jessica Lopez is a business student, that is all right, the intent is there, what she is saying is powerful, it is just a bit of language tripping her up. For those that don't work in this space, we normally use people first language, and that means people with a disability rather than disabled people. Some of the things she says that stood out to me, disabled people
4. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 105 innovate technologies to live in a world that is not built for them. They build for themselves and we all benefit. When you innovate to include disabled people you benefit everyone. This is called the curb-cut effect. I am sure all of you crossing the road at some point have seen the indent in the curb that was designed for people in wheelchairs. It is used by everyone today, strollers, bikes, or not wanting to do that step down from the curb. Ultimately, disability and inclusion mean different things to different people. This was the top comment that came up on LinkedIn. What Salsi says is "I don't like to use the term disabled as what is in your post shows opposite of disability". Jessica replied and she said she likes using the term "Disabled" because it is something that has power under the law. What Salsi didn't realise is Jessica is someone with lived experience. She was born with no arms or no legs. In her choice, she chooses to use the term "Disabled". This really shows not everyone with a disability actually has an impairment or something which stops them from accessing the different services that we have. This is why when I talk about disability, I also like to talk about vulnerability. This brings me to the title of my talk: The Life Changing Potential of Digital Inclusion. I will mention that the images that I use today in the interests of anonymity, I have tried to pick the ones that are as representative as possible the personalities and characteristics of different people I have spoken to but they are images for images sake. The other thing I call out is that I noticed a couple of my images have been used on some of the other talks and this presents an interesting conundrum in terms of we are talking about inclusion but we probably all went on Unsplash and Googled "Someone with a disability" but we are getting there. I would like to acknowledgement of country before we continue. I
5. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 106 would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri peoples of the eastern Kulin Nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present and future. I extend that same respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today and the lands that our virtual attendees are dialing in from. The photo that you see here is of Tiddalik the greedy frog. It is a rock at Wollombi. As part of this acknowledgement of country, I would like to encourage everyone to go out and explore their local lands and see some of the stories that make up the lands that they reside in. I would like to say as each of us as an acknowledgement today as speakers has gravitas with some of the political events happening in our nation. We are so close to having a parliamentary voice for codesign, representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The other thing I will say is whilst I don't specifically mention first nations people and their experiences and how we need to be more inclusive in our talk, they should absolutely be front of mind. Labels. Sorry, Fiona. Labels are important because we need to understand those that are systemically underrepresented. If someone identifies as any of these labels, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have additional access needs. I am going to read - I want to make sure we get these right and the other thing I will call out is these were created for us to look at our employee experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers and we did off the back of working with the centre for inclusive design. It is about us applying it to our own practice as well as to our clients. We have the first nations people to kick us off and culturally and linguistically diverse. They are people who can identify themselves as people due to circumstances like their country of birth or country of birth of their parents, what languages they speak and their religious affiliation. We then have gender inclusive and LGBTQIA, specifically ensuring that male and
6. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 107 female stereotypes, gender and sexual orientation don't define our societal roles and expectations. We then have physical disabilities, relating to physical conditions that effect things like a person's mobility, their physical capacity, their stamina or dexterity. Examples could include brain or spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, hearing and visual impairments. We then have neurodiversity and cognitive differences. Specifically understanding the unique differences among people with these conditions and how they could equip them in varying degrees. We then have mental ill health conditions. These effect mood, thinking and behaviour, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia to eating disorders and addictive behaviours. Last but not least, age diverse. Arguably, this is going to be one of the largest categories of vulnerability that we will see in our society. Especially when we look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics which says that the number of people aged 65 and over will go from 3.7 million in 2017 to 8.7 million in 2046. Notably, the other thing I will mention is whilst they are the groups that are vulnerable, we need to think about the circumstances that they experience and when they have those circumstances, with the systemic exclusion, this is when we really need to direct our support. Some of those circumstances can include financial hardship, unemployment, being in social housing, being homeless, low literacy or no education. Recently, I went to Lismore, for those that have been paying attention to what is happening on the news, Lismore had a series of extreme flooding. I know all of us were rocked here in NSW for anyone that is coming from NSW. Lismore was really affected. There was two- storey buildings that were underwater off the back of the huge rain that we had in March this year. The reason why I wanted to bring Lismore up is I was there a few weeks ago and I needed a prescription from a doctor.
7. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 108 I called around to different doctors surgeries and one of the ones I called was a Lismore doctors surgery. I want to read you the message which they had on their answering machine. "Our practice has been significantly effected by the Lismore floods. Our offices are currently closed. Our operating out of temporary locations. Please be patient with us. We only have one phone line compared to our usual four. These are trying times for our community and we will do our best to support you." This is almost five months after the floods. They are still effected. This is why when I think about accessibility, I don't just like to think about disability because not everyone who has a disability is actually vulnerable. When I think about accessibility, I like to think about vulnerability. Vulnerability based on systemic circumstances that someone has experienced as part of being one of those underrepresented voices but also the context of things that they are experiencing in our society today. At a time when people are feeling more isolated than ever during the COVID pandemic, 43% of Australians say digital services are helping them feel more connected. Our PwC Australia 2022 citizen survey found close to half agree that the government's digitisation of services are making them more accessible for all. This holds true across all age groups. I will say whilst these results are extremely positive, when we look at our underrepresented groups, the divide is widening. Here is the photo that has been on two other talks today, I think. According to the 2021 Australian Digital Inclusion Index, the number of Australians who are excluded from digital society still remains at 11% of our Australian population. To put it into perspective, this translates to half the population of Melbourne. What is digital inclusion? It is about removing the barriers that prevent all people, including those with lived experience of a disability or
8. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 109 a vulnerability to equally access our world. Here is a couple of inclusive design guidelines that do exist today. I reviewed about 105 different inclusive design sets of guidelines. That is about 1,050 different principals we viewed in order to understand what this means in our society today. I will say that I reviewed 107 after listening to Fiona and Ted's talk. One of the ones I would recommend is the designing for posters from the UK Home Office. The Microsoft inclusive design personas and principles, the Barclays inclusive design principles and the Australian Digital Inclusion Index as well. When it comes to the digital context however, the leading guidelines are the WCAG guidelines and how appropriate we are talking about them when we are about to launch version three of the guidelines. It will cater for a broader range of disabilities and it will cater for a broader range of assisting technologies. It is timely that we think about vulnerability. There are four WCAG design principles. I won't spend too much time of these because most of you are across these, hopefully. If you want more information, I encourage you to go to the W3C, they have a free course and there is recent training. The principles are perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. We use "usable", the reason why we use that is the way and context that we use our digital platforms are now interactive, they are no longer static content. We need to think about understandability and usability. The guidelines roughly translate to the acronym and depending on the success criteria that sits underneath them, you can get a rating. We are proposing that there is two more principles we need to consider. The first one is inclusive. We need inclusive in there. Inclusive is really about understanding the diversity and uniqueness of our population, so we can create safe accessible and affordable experiences and spaces that everyone can use.
9. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 110 Then we have trustworthy. This is particularly important because without trust people don't engage with digital services and this is really about making sure, no One is left behind through engagement, simplicity and security. Let's start with the principle inclusive. The principle here and then for each of the principles I will have a category and a couple of guidelines that we will walk through. The first category is digital connectivity. The first guideline we have, within it we have create a bridge to digital channels. What this is about is helping those that are systemically vulnerable being able to transition to more digital channels and giving them the option to interact face to face or assisted if needed. There is a lack of confidence, in terms of peoples' understanding of digital and technology which really effects their uptake and 59% of people in a recent survey that PwC conducted actually believe companies have lost their human touch because they are focused too much on technology. This guideline is about no wrong door to support and ensuring people who are vulnerable have priority access to those channels that are more intensive servicing. I will put it into context. I am a consultant so I had to put one model in here. Starting with digital self-service. Something as simple like changing your password, this is probably something that most people can do online in that level one category. If we take something more complicated, such as changing my name, in the instance this is changing my name due to a marriage for example, maybe this is something that can be digital service or digitally assisted if I need to provide an identity check. If I am going through family and domestic violence, I actually need to change my identity and have a digital security and safeguard on my account, I can probably go up to level six and that is not where everyone's situation is the same and we need to understand peoples'
10. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 111 uniqueness and this is a guide that can help us, in terms of how we triage the servicing and help them towards the right channels of interaction. The next guideline that we have, make it accessible to provide equal resources. Our citizen survey in 2022 found one of the largest digital divide we had was geography. If rural and remote areas there is patchy, unreliable or entirely absent Internet connection. In Victoria, there is a recent program connecting Victoria which is looking to improve mobile coverage and it is also looking to increase broadband speeds, particularly in rural locations to enhance emergency communication. This is not the case everywhere. What can we do? Create multiple access points for people to access digital services. These can be things like community hubs through to libraries in the rural and remote situations but it can also be about nudging people when things become available to increase that uptake. The next one is enable offline and cross device experiences. When we talk about homelessness and this is something which is particularly something I am passionate about after some of the work that I have been doing over the last few years, there is a common misconception that people who are homeless don't have access to mobile phones. A recent study at the University of Sydney and VincentCare did was 95% of people who experience homelessness have a mobile phone, a higher percentage than the number of people who have a phone in the adult population compared to that of homelessness. It is 80% of our adult population. The difference for someone in a state of homelessness is their phone may not always be charged, they may not have access to data and we need to enable the offline and cross device experiences. Some of the things we think about is enabling them to download information from a web page, being able to save information for access offline and if we do this, this will help increase the digital inclusion.
11. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 112 I will tell a couple of stories as we go through the principles. I will say if anything is triggering as we go through this, please feel free to exit out of the room and make sure you look after yourself first. This particular individual is someone who I spoke to when I was doing some research in Brisbane and I was looking at the impact of financial hardship on homelessness. What she told me is she applied for five jobs a week as part of her getting Centrelink. She wasn't having luck in getting a job still. The problem was her phone was never charged and she kept missing calls and as a result she didn't call them back because she didn't have credit. This is where digital initiatives, such as the services NSW licence can come in handy. One of the things she mentioned was a lot of people were asking for identification but her wallet kept getting stolen. She was homeless and couldn't provide identification unless she had that digital licence which was starting to roll out now. Going back to her not having credit, things like the initiative that Telstra is doing, in terms of having action test to pay phones and making that free of charge is helping close that divide. This is where we look at cross-channel servicing. In 2020, 11 million calls were made across Australia from Telstra pay phones, including more than 230,000 calls to critical services like 000 and Lifeline. Our next category for inclusive design is digital ability. Underneath digital ability, the first one is recognise diversity and difference. I won't chat too much about this one because we went through it in terms of the underrepresented voices. Making sure we are thinking about everyone that we are designing for. The second one we have is educate and extend digital comfortability. This is about increasing the ability that people have to be able to interact online. The example that you see here of a QR check-in. There was a grandma that went viral because she had over 100 photos of
12. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 113 all these different QR codes on her phone. She didn't realise that it was actually a QR code to link you to a web page where you had to provide your details. This is where basic operational skills is a real gap in some of our generation. Things like downloading and opening files, connecting to the Internet and setting passwords is a gap in what a lot of people can do online. What we need to do is connect private sector and government in our initiatives we are doing around extending digital ability to improve peoples' access and comfortability with digital. The last principle that we have is make it affordable and close the gap. When we talk about making it affordable, it is not just about donating our old devices, it is about testing the digital products that we create. This is about making sure they work on newer and older technologies. There are smaller screen sizes, older software variants and when new technologies evolve, make sure that is not the only way people can access your design. We can optimise development for low data consumption, smaller image sizes and no forced downloads. This brings us to our principle inclusive. The final principle that we have is trustworthy. I thought this was a nice principle, in terms of Fiona and Ted talking about trust and how important digital trust is in the people that we design for. Our first category is digital safety. This is the COVID safety app. I am not sure if anyone downloaded this app. 8 million Australians downloaded this app and it was designed to - if you came into close contact with someone who had COVID it would notify you. As part of downloading this app you had the option to share your data with the government, in terms of your COVID tracking and of the 8 million who downloaded the app, only 800 people gave permission for their data to be stored. That is a huge lack of digital trust. What do we need to do? We need to increase cyber security for all channels to build this
13. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 114 trust. For me personally, I experienced it first hand, in terms of a cyber security risk when the ATO and MyGov worked together to try and make it as accessible as possible for people to download their $10,000 if they were without a job during the COVID period. What happened during this time was someone hacked into my ATO account and were able to set up an identity for me through my Australian Business Number which led to $10,000 being taken from my super. I was one of 150 people that this happened to. The reason that this happened was because we were trying to open up the door for it to be easier for people to were vulnerable to access support. What actually happened was that it created a cyber security risk. We need to think about cyber security in terms of inclusion as well. The next one is self-identification of additional access needs. We know people don't always feel comfortable disclosing their situation to businesses and to other people, it shouldn't be forced. When they do tell us that they are ready to share about their situation, we should make sure we have got the appropriate support in place for them. The example that you see here on the right-hand side is a quick exit button. This is really important when providing information to vulnerable cohorts, particularly in the situation of family and domestic violence, as sometimes accessing this information can put them in a life-threatening situation. This button that you see on the top right of the screen clears your browsing history and takes you to a safe web page. I wanted to share one story which was actually shared at a recent conference, so some of you in Melbourne may have heard this story. It is really important when we talk about trust and safety. I will try and keep it brief. Alex was a 20-year-old who opened an account with Robinhood, an investing app that allows you to buy stocks with no fees and no
14. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 115 experience. Alex took his own life in June 2020 after being fearful of owing $700,000. He was sent an automated email from Robinhood at 3.30 in the morning letting him know his stocks had dropped and he needed to make an urgent payment in three days of $170,000. Alex immediately emailed the company asking if they could look into it but he received an automatic reply saying the responses were delayed. That night he took his own life. The thing that really stuck with me after hearing this story and reading up more about it is that there was a CBS interview with Alex's parents and in that interview, they were asked the question "Do you think if Robinhood had someone manning a phone or email account, Alex would still be here today?" And their response "Absolutely". The lesson here is when customers identify as having additional access needs, make sure we have the appropriate support in place to ensure that we can care for them effectively. The next guideline that we have is around ethical use of personal data and I know we touched on this one a little bit from the other talks. It is about using data for good not for harm. Things like when someone misses a payment on a bill, particularly if they miss two in a row, we should use that to automatically put them on a payment plan, we shouldn't use it to restrict their service. Having a think about how we use data effectively in order to help customers out of that vulnerable situation. Our last category that we have is trustworthy. The first guideline that sits underneath trustworthy is giving users control over what is on record. When we think of control, it is about in the moment control and it is also about reflective control. When I sign up for my profile, I want to know how information is used so that way I can determine how much I want to disclose. Similarly if I have been a member with a product or service for a period of time, encourage me to update my information and
15. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 116 make sure it is accurate and up to date. The other thing that we can talk about here in terms of control is things like a progress stepper or a review screen. Having these digital safeguards in place can make someone feel comfortable that the information they are disclosing, because they have the chance to review it before they continue. The second guideline we have is easy and consistent information break down. The example that you see on the right was something that went viral on LinkedIn of a 17-year-old that designed remotes for her grandad. We think about the consistent information break down, I encourage you to go back to the principles that Ted mentioned in his talk for cognitive disabilities. They aren't the only ones that benefit from easy and consistent information. When people experience vulnerability, they also have trouble with information processing and retaining information. What does the easy and consistent breakdown consist of? Writing things in plain language and unblocking familiarity. Codesign with us, never without us. I thought it was beautiful that the opening key note talked about the same sort of sentiment and this became really popular after the 2004UN disability convention had this as their particular tag line. We think about codesign, it is about understanding all of the different voices that are in the room and it is creating a partnership rather than tokenism. When we talk about particularly service design, UX design and research and triangulation of methods, what we should be doing is triangulation of people to understand the different perspectives that we have. I am almost done. I will wrap up with a little bit of a story and then I will recap on the six principles. This particular gentleman was a PE teacher who I met in Brisbane when I was doing research on the transport experience for people with a disability. This gentleman went in for a routine knee replacement. He wasn't too surprising being a PE teacher. When he had the replacement, three days into his post-surgery
16. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 117 he developed a staph infection. Five days into his post surgery, he had to be amputated above the knees. This particular gentleman is still teaching. He is a PE theory teacher and science teacher but for him in particular, when he decides to get the bus to work every day, he decides to walk up the bus stop, which is on top of a hill from the bottom of his house, on his stumps. He chooses not to take his wheelchair with him. When I asked him why he said "It is not I can't get the wheelchair up there, that is easy it is when I hop on the bus they chain me in because that is a legal and safety requirement that Queensland transport had at the time". He said it is the only time he feels like he his a disability. Ultimately, disability and inclusion mean different things to different people. For those that - and that is the conclusion of trustworthy as a principle. We have the six principles of accessibility and inclusion. For those that didn't get a photo, you can take it now. The acronym and when you think about your designs remember it together so we can be more inclusive. Then to finish, what is one thing you would do differently to be more inclusive? Hopefully that second question will be up there now. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) STEVE BATY: Thank you, Natasha. That concludes that segment. It was a long segment. There was an awful lot to it. I will give you a break before we have our last talk for the day, before you run out, you should have received access your email to give you access to tomorrow's talk. If you going to view them online, so if you are listening in via Zoom, you should have that now. If not, jump on Slack and send a message and we can check it for you. Otherwise, go stretch your legs, go rest your mind, shake it off and then come back for what will be a very interesting closing talk for the afternoon. Thank you all.