[MUSIC PLAYING] ASTRID WEBER: Hello, everyone,
and welcome to our talk, Designing for the
Next Billion Users-- Accessibility UX Insights
from Emerging Markets. I am Astrid Weber,
and I lead UX research for accessibility
engineering at Google. NITHYA SAMBASIVAN:
I'm Nithya Sambasivan, and I am a UX researcher for
emerging markets at Google. ASTRID WEBER: The first
half of today's talk will include an overview about
accessibility, an introduction to the people who live
in the next billion years context of emerging markets,
and finally end with closing-- and finally, we are going to
take a closer look at the NBU markets and those
users that profit the most from
excessive technology. In the second part
of the talk, we are going to introduce you
to our NBU accessibility framework that will help
you, as app developers, to make the most out of the
learnings of today's talk. Before we get started,
I want to ensure you that we do not have any
technical difficulties with our presentation. We simply modified this
screen to give you a glimpse, or merely just an
impression, of what this presentation would
look like for someone with low vision. More than 250 million people in
today's world have low vision, and today is Global
Accessibility Awareness Day, so I'm more happy
than ever I could be to have all of you here
attend this talk with us having that day happening. So let me introduce you
to one of those users, who has actual low vision. His name is Jonah, and he's
living in the South of Jakarta together with his parents
and his three siblings. So Jonah is the
oldest one of those, and he's supporting
his family because they have a neighborhood store. Jonah is helping out. When Jonah was three years
old, he had an eye infection. And even though the
doctors performed surgery, unfortunately Jonah
was left legally blind. What does that mean? That means that
Jonah can only see objects that are very closeby,
or that are extremely enlarged. 20 years ago, Jonah would have
had very limited opportunity to help his parents
run the store. But today, thanks to
assistive technology, Jonah is able to go to
the market, as you see him do here in
the picture, and pick objects for his parents' store. And his phone is
helping him to enlarge, to check what it is,
what the quality is. And Jonah is just one
example of us today that we would like to
take as a starting point to introduce you to how much
technology can help people with disabilities in
order to live their lives and do the things
that matter to them. Worldwide, there is more
than 1 billion people who have a disability. For the US, that's one
out of five people. But actually, that is not
even the full picture yet because many of us experience
so-called temporary disabilities. For example, you may be pregnant
and have limited mobility, or you might have a broken
wrist and are suddenly not able to operate
your phone anymore. Accessibility does
not stop there. With a society that is growing
older than ever before, many people are affected
by hard of hearing, hand tremors, and
limited walking ability. Even children have
accessibility needs. Our environment
often enough is not created for people of
various body sizes. And if you can't read or
write, much information remains inaccessible to you. Even those of you who might
think, I have no accessibility needs whatsoever-- think further. Ever been to a bar where
there was loud music playing and you were trying to have
a conversation with a friend? That's basically the
experience of someone who is hard of hearing. Or maybe you try to follow
the sports commentary on the screen, but you couldn't
because the environment was just too noisy. So, all of us encounter
situations every single day in which we have
accessibility needs. To sum it up, while
developing applications we should never assume
that users constantly have their full vision,
their hands, their hearing, or the full cognitive
abilities available to them. Did you know that some of the
most innovative and most used products were actually
designed because people had accessibility inspirations? The email-- the way we all
know it and use it every single day-- was originally developed
in 1972 by Vint Cerf when he started to program
the first email protocol. He firmly believed
that electronic letters are going to change
our interactions and our communications. And yes, he was right. But what very little people know
is Vint Cerf's wife was deaf. And for him, it was the only
way to communicate with her while he was at work. Just in recent
years, Joshua Silver, a professor and physicist
from the United Kingdom, created a new form
of liquid filled corrective lens that can easily
be adjusted for the patient. This low cost approach works
for over 90% of the vision corrections in the world. The glasses are particularly
useful in the context of emerging markets
where, often enough, you don't have access to
a trained optometrist. And with, that I hand
it over to Nithya. NITHYA SAMBASIVAN: Thank you. It's easy to see how much
technological innovation is being inspired by accessibility
and the next billion users. Out of all the people in this
world that have disabilities, 80% of them live in the global
south in emerging markets. So designing for the
next billion users and designing for
accessibility is a natural fit. If you want the next billion
users to use your product, it will be even more important
that your technology considers their lives, their values, their
use cases, and their desires and needs. In this millennium, the vast
majority of mobile phone growth has happened south
of the equator. While industrialized
nations are plateauing in their internet and
mobile phone growth, growth in emerging markets is 10
times that of Western nations. In the next few years,
a billion new people are expected to come online for
the first time from emerging markets. And here are some examples of
how developing products that work for use cases
for emerging markets can deliver a globally
superior experience. Absent content that render
directions when one does not have connectivity are useful
in the everyday context of a small town in Nairobi-- near Nairobi-- or when you're
out of reach of cell signal on the way to Yosemite. Other innovations that
have originated or gained traction in emerging
markets that have traveled sideways or scaled
up in many different parts of the world are mobile
money, QR code services, peer to peer sharing, or cash
on delivery, just to name a few. So, what we argue for is
that designing for inclusion is designing for everybody. When we think inclusively
beyond our immediate context and the people that
we know, our products become far more
meaningful and useful to those who may
try to use them. So until now, we see
that accessibility is a relevant topic
for us and especially for those living in
emerging markets. Let's take a closer look
at who these next billion users are, and learn more about
their behaviors and contexts. Mobiles are often the
first and only device to which many people come
online in emerging markets. Unlike the desktop
trajectory of AOL to search to email
to social media, many people in
emerging markets get introduced to the internet
through social media, and on a mobile phone, without
any preconceived notions through mobile phone
based app registration. So the mobile, then, is not
just an on the go device but is the primary device. Phones in emerging
markets tend to live for much longer due to
circulation as gifts from urban to rural, second hand devices,
and to avoid wastefulness in general. Due to longer lifespans,
older operating systems tend to persist. | of these phones have low
RAM, storage, battery life, small screens or
multiple SIM cards in order to fit into
the $40 to $100 bracket. Many devices have broken
screens or damaged phone covers, not the pristine
conditions that we imagine when we're designing for them. A primary driver for this
democratization of the internet is prepaid access. 96% of mobile users in India,
and 95% in South Africa, are on prepaid. So, prepaid requires
lower financial commitment on the part of the user
compared to post-paid, where one has to
pay a steep amount at the end of each month. In pre-paid, a user can
decide when and how much they want to top up
for and which network they want to top up on. And users have to do a
complex recalculation of size, validity, type of
network, and carrier, and they're usually assisted
by somebody at the mobile shop. It's easy to get
access to scratchcards in emerging markets at grocery
stores or traffic lights, and nowadays even online. Sometimes, users run
out of data and wait until there are better
finances, or buy small packs. So this is in
contrast to the model around which most
apps are developed, which is 24/7 connectivity. 50% of the world is
now online in 2017, but the internet is slow,
expensive, and intermittent in emerging markets, creating
a more constrained experience. The average speed in the
United States is 16 MBPS. In Egypt, it is around 3 MBPS. Internet can also
be intermittent. 3G is limited. Cellular networks switch
between 3G to 4G to offline. Internet can be expensive too. To buy 1 GB of data
in sub-Saharan Africa, it costs 18% of the average
person's monthly income. And the comparable figure
in the US is less than 1%. Even when Wi-Fi is available,
it is almost always capped. Truly uncapped Wi-Fi
is very expensive. So what this translates
to is that network is top of mind for
many, rather than just focusing on the app experience
that we're designing for. When one goes online, one of
the first few things they learn is how to manage a network,
and strategies and workarounds for data management. These are completely un-obvious
and learned from top-up shops or friends and family. Mobile data gets turned
off from Android settings in order to control costs. We have met users who have
broadband but regularly unplug their routers at night. App updates are usually ignored
because they cost money. Peer to peer sharing of APK's,
not applications, and media is used for rich content. Media are often
downloaded for consumption when there is a lack
of connectivity. So the network is never a given. When it comes to using devices,
diverse literacies, languages, and technology
capabilities are at play. 55% of the content
online is in English, but less than one third of
Indians can speak English. Fluency in English
is proportionate to socioeconomic status. And despite low fluency,
interestingly, many people prefer to use English because
it is the aspirational language of upward mobility. While there are many
phone UI options, many users prefer the
fluidity across languages and transliterate as needed. Multilingualism is common. Literacy levels vary with
about 781 million adults being non-literate,
most of whom are women. New vibrant social setup
exists in emerging markets. Information is more
trustworthy when it comes from people rather
than applications or software. New internet users
introduced to technology through friends or
agents or family, resources-- including
technologies-- are often shared. And sharing overcomes a number
of literacy and usability issues and builds upon trust. This is evidenced in borrowing
sugar from neighbors, babysitting friends'
kids, or helping a friend get a new
application and teaching them how to use it. Apps are installed
through friends because they recommend
them and transfer them, and not through the play store. Onboarding through
screens does not work. It is often so people
that one learns how to use an application. Women and minorities
are often marginalized when it comes to access. Throughout the
emerging markets, women are less likely to own a phone
or go online compared to men. In addition to gender, the
social order, religions, identity norms, and politics
all enable or deter access to technology. For example, one may put away
phones on Fridays or Saturdays, depending on their religion. Taking phones out
in public places may not be acceptable,
depending on the safety norms. Content may be
considered offensive in a different cultural context. ASTRID WEBER: Thank you, Nithya. Let's take a moment to recap
what we learned so far. People who live in emerging
markets are mobile natives. They use low cost devices
and are more concerned about data consumption and
the costs that come with it. And often, they have
different cultural norms. Recall that 80% of
people with disabilities live in emerging markets. That should be
reason enough for us to take a closer look
at the intersection of temporary, situational, and
permanent accessibility needs among those next
1 billion users. The perceived value of
people with disabilities in many societies in
emerging markets is low. In rural areas, people
with disabilities face resentment,
as people believe that they are kind of
second class citizens that bring shame
to their families. Sadly, a consequence of that is
that children of those families often don't go to school, and
some members of the village even consider them to be cursed. While this image
is luckily updated a lot in the urban areas,
people with disabilities are still massively
underestimated by society. Due to that, the
people themselves also don't believe that
they can contribute in the same way towards
their social environment and their families. I'd like to illustrate
that with a quote from one of our
blind participants. Mohammed said, "People think
disabilities are a curse... like the parents at something
wrong so they give birth to a child like that." People with disabilities also
struggle with an inaccessible environment around them. Most infrastructure
was not designed for those who are blind,
rely on a wheelchair, or can't follow the general
speed of mobility around them. For example, even getting on
a crowded bus or a motorcycle taxi can be really challenging. Generally, the
quality of education in most emerging
markets is lower than in the Western countries. People with disabilities are
less likely to attend school, and also to finish it. If students have special
needs, oftentimes the parents are expected to
attend the classes and to help their
children, or to pay someone to do that on their behalf-- which obviously,
not every family is financially able to support. While support options
through the local health care system, international NGO's,
and local community centers sometimes exist,
people often don't know about those,
and as a result, don't take full advantage. Also, asking for
help is unfortunately often frowned upon. While laws on inclusiveness
and disability exist in most of the
countries, too often they are not being reinforced. Forina, who is a deaf
graphic designer that we met, showed us how she had applied
for a total of 438 jobs, but was not accepted
to one of them. And lastly, people
with disabilities struggle on a very
personal level with their own
limitations when it comes to social
activities, which obviously becomes more and more
important the more you grow up. For example, a
deaf student often will find themselves locked
out from conversations among their peers. Later on in life, when people
become married and start families, those
with disabilities are again at a disadvantage
because they're considered less attractive
as romantic partners, and people do not believe that
they can lead and to support a family in the same way. By now, we've gained
a better understanding about the disabilities
and the struggles that come along for those
people who have them in the emerging markets. In the offline
world, users who are deaf, blind, mobility
or cognitively impaired struggle
with gaining access to education, employment,
and social integration. But luckily, many of them
have technology devices that can make all the
difference for them. People with disabilities
are starting to use mobile technologies to
grow personal independence. For example, you will see
usage of mobility apps to organize their
own transportation and to take advantage
of delivery options. Services that mean
convenience to some people offer a new form of
freedom and independence to those who were previously
depending on their family and friends to do things
on behalf of them. With traditional transactions,
users who are blind often have to trust that
they don't get cheated. Those who are deaf were not
able to negotiate a price. And those who can't
walk often enough didn't even make it
to the physical store. With mobile payments
and online purchase, people gain control and
receive more equal treatment. And for those with
reduced mobility, it is essential to keep in
touch with friends and family. Social networks and
instant messaging services enable them to participate,
contribute, and stay in touch. This is equally
true, by the way, for education and work, which is
really the foundation for them. Thanks to assistive
technologies and their ability to enlarge, announce, and
react to spoken commands, impaired students are
getting to the point to be socially, productively,
and collaboratively just on the same
level as their peers. And while workplaces have
become more accessible thanks to assistive
technologies, also the amount of general
business opportunities is increasing through software. The majority of people
in the emerging markets work in the informal sector,
and they might operate a little micro-business. People with disabilities can
now start their own business at home, just like one
of our deaf users did. She plans to sell
her new clothing line through the internet. We're really excited how
much technology has already driven change to those
with accessibility needs in the emerging markets. At the same time, the future
potential is even bigger. Let's do a quick recap. So far, we looked at the
themes of accessibility and the next billion users. And within the field
of accessibility, we touched on cognition,
mobility, vision, and hearing. Within the field of
the next billion users, we learned about infrastructure,
affordability, literacy, languages, and culture. And at the intersection
of those two, we identified four
themes that unite them and that we can address
through global accessibility guidelines. Those four themes are awareness,
access, relevance, and design. So let's take a look
at these guidelines, and how you as an app
developer or designer can make your applications
accessible for the next billion users. The first category
of our guidelines is dedicated to awareness. Being aware of your users'
needs and the potential impact that you can have
on their lives is the foundation for any
universally accessible application. And so it comes as no
surprise that we recommend that you get to
know all your users, especially those who are
very different from yourself. Now, how can you get to know
your users, you're asking. First of all, we
recommend that you take advantage of the
wealth of information that is provided
on the internet. Check out YouTube for some
very inspirational TED Talks on the topic. Secondly, we recommend that
you make time to attend talks. You're here today at our talk,
and with that, you actually already started. Conferences and local events
often host researchers from emerging countries. Go. Learn from their expertise. And lastly, you can use research
tools like the Mobile Vaani to gather feedback from the
users directly themselves. Tools like the
Mobile Vaani get you to collect the app's
feedback from those users who live in the most remote
places in the world. Secondly, we recommend that
you represent inclusively. How can you represent
inclusively? I'll just show you some tips and
tricks with a concrete example of the warm welcome. First of all, check how
diverse your burst your imagery is, by race, clothing, physical
ability, and social class. And secondly, the
details matter. Take a look at
these pictures here. Are they inclusive? Yes. The hands represent
different skin colors. But I would argue-- do you see left handers? Fingers missing? Painted nails? Bangles? Diversity does not
mean putting the person with a physical impairment into
a solo job or into a corner. And lastly, universal
design in your warm welcome means that everyone,
independent of their abilities, can access and complete it. On here, we see an example
of two warm welcomes that I'd like to
point out to you. The first example is our
Android onboarding experience, which contains vision settings
since the Android N release. That way, users can set
their preferences in regard to large text, magnification
gestures, displaced size, and talk back at
the very beginning. And so, also their
onboarding is accessible. In regard to your
own app, doublecheck. Does it actually respect
the accessibility settings from the operating system? Secondly, Google
Wallet designers were mindful when designing
that one welcome screen by picking a person with color
within the illustrations. And with that, I hand
it over to Nithya, who is going to tell you more
about the category of access. NITHYA SAMBASIVAN:
Thanks, Astrid. Can users install
your application? Is it easy to use once
they get access to it? Will your users be able
to use your software without incurring a
major financial cost or a social cost? Can your design be responsive
and work seamlessly over slow and
intermittent networks and a lack of connectivity? So, connectivity issues
without accessibility support break the whole user experience. Just imagine waiting for a page
to load that doesn't tell you what is happening, or
filling out a very long form and then the system
loses the connection. Enabling state transitions
between slow, offline, and intermittent connectivity
through progress indicators, smart auto defaults, or
local caching of input can be helpful. Render content progressively
instead of a batch update so that your application
provides the perception of being responsive. Pre-cache frequently used
content, especially when there's a Wi-Fi connection. Design for offline as a steady
state and not as an edge case. Create a meaningful
offline state with help resources
or onboarding screens, with cached contents or
placeholder UI's instead of showing a blank screen. For example, YouTube's
adaptive bitrate streaming allows video resolution
to automatically respond to the bandwidth
conditions of the user. So, in order to ensure that your
app really works for everybody, we highly recommend
you test your app with accessibility services. So, how do we do that? It's a straightforward process. Treat your
accessibility settings as a critical user experience
and not a checklist. Simulate the most important
use cases and user journeys with accessibility
settings enabled. And lastly, you should test your
application with real users. Only if you test
it with those who know what it means to be
blind or deaf will you get a complete picture
of accessibility in your application. We recommend you try the Google
Accessibility Scanner, which is available on the Play Store,
to debug your application. Next can you design render
and operate meaningfully on low specification devices
and older operating systems. Research shows that using
applications on low end devices is much harder for
those with disabilities in dealing with clogged up
memory, slow phones, and lack of indicators of
resource depletion like when battery runs out. Test your app layout on 480 by
800 pixels and less than 4 inch screen sizes, which are
the most common screen sizes in the world. Provide controls and visibility
into your application size and application data as
well within settings, and alert users when they
reach high levels of app data, and provide the ability to
move your app to SD cards. Minimize battery usage
for your application. Remember, electricity
is not uniformly available throughout this world. Many people have to pay
to charge their phones, and there may be load sharing
or complete blackouts. Build backwards compatibility
for all the operating systems, for example Google Translate
takes less than 10 MB and allows offline
downloads of languages. Does your application
respect your users' budget and financial conditions? Reduce the size of your app. In our research,
we repeatedly hear from users throughout
emerging markets that they want to
install apps that are more than 5 MB or 10 MB. Limit high bandwidth consumption
such as videos, rich images, or feed models. Create transparency
into the data heavy portions of
your application, and request user
permission before engaging in high bandwidth activities. For example, are you downloading
tiles for some offline usage? Mention the size and
get user permission. Since application
updates get ignored by users in emerging markets,
limit the size and frequency of your app updates. Consider adding in-app
cards for new updates. Explain the value
of the update you're providing and humanize it. For example, YouTube Go, which
was built from the ground up for emerging markets, allows
users to choose video downloads by stating the storage size
in addition to resolution. And for a user,
storage size is a proxy for the data cost
that they will incur, which allows them to
make an informed choice. A third category
is about relevance. Your app needs to be
relevant and meaningful in the context of users' daily
lives and specific needs. Does your application
feel local and speak the language of your users? Simple, clear, global English
makes it easy for anybody to understand your product. Avoid slang terms
like dude and got it. Use a combination of
words and graphical cues so that it can provide value
to both low-literate and high-literate users. Minimize hierarchy
in your design, like menus and tree
structures, and layout content for browsing. This is much more accessible
for people with disabilities and low-literate users. Reduce text input or
simplify text input with tap versus type,
autocompleted text, or curated content lists. For example, Google Search has
a clever language selector. Instead of hiding language
under the settings at the bottom of
the page, Search presents both English
and Hindi options. So, Hindi language users can
easily identify the Hindi text and choose it. Does your application
respect social-cultural norms in the content and
user interface? Understand the local context
of use of your application. And this includes gender,
religion, politics, social structures,
and public safety. People with
disabilities are very likely to get regular
support from people that they know or hire-- people to help them-- in going to the city
or daily activities or navigating applications. Consider how you can leverage
this social infrastructure. In our research--
as an example-- on public Wi-Fi in India,
we heard some concerns about entering phone
numbers in the login screen due to harassment fears. Indian law requires
public Wi-Fi users to enter their phone
numbers in order to provide a code to
access public Wi-Fi. So as a design response, before
a person enters a number, we explicitly state your
number is safe with us and link to FAQ, which comes from the
questions that were raised in user research sessions. Back to Astrid. ASTRID WEBER: Thank you, Nithya. The last category of
our design guidelines-- [INAUDIBLE] design. The design choices you make
while developing your app will ultimately decide if
people will be able to use your application or not. We have picked two
design guidelines for today that are easy for
you to apply and make all the difference for your users. You can find more
design recommendations if you look into the
accessibility section of Material Design Online. We recommend that you define
a color palette for your app that takes contrast
as an important factor in consideration. So, how do we get to
sufficient contrast. Life and work is often
happening outdoors. In rural areas, mostly
in direct sunlight. Sufficient contrast
can be the difference between usable and unusable. For users who have low
vision, it is essential. Remember Jonah
from the beginning? He can only use
applications on his phone that have really good contrast. Sufficient contrast is defined
as a contrast ratio at 4.5 to 1 for normal text. If you have a large
text that ratio is 3:1. And large text is being
defined 18 points or larger. Also, just a tip
as a side, there are various hacks color
testing tools online that make it very easy
to find out what's the contrast ratio between
the colors that you're using. All these tools are for free. Next, our last guideline
is actually around, color alone is never enough. And what does that mean? Colors mean very
different things in different parts of the world. On low resolution
devices, it is much harder to actually tell colors apart. In addition to that, people
will definitely perceive colors. We call that also
color blindness. Within the result of
two people looking at two different
colors, you might be surprised how different
they might perceive them. In order to be
accessible, we recommend that you never rely on color
alone within your app design. What else can you
do, you ask me. Well, including design
elements in addition to color to ensure that everyone
receives the same information. That can be in the
form of visual cues that help you to communicate the
stage in which your design is at the moment. Utilizing elements
such as strokes, indicators, patterns,
textures, a text to describe the actions
and the content, help you use this a lot. And again, there's also free
colorblind simulation filters on the internet that can
help you to actually check what your application
looks like through the eyes of various users. And with that, we've
reached the end of our talk. We will leave you
with an overview of our global
accessibility framework. We hope that you will
continue to challenge your own assumptions, and
also build up your awareness after you leave this talk-- that you will build
options for all your users and all their
devices, and that you will succeed in offering
a relevant app that will make design choices that
will make your app robust and work for really everyone. We mentioned these
throughout the talk. Here they are again. Those are our last resources. And with that, I say thank
you for your attention. And if you have
any questions, feel free to come up to
the microphones. [MUSIC PLAYING]
