Accessibility perspective of a person with blindness | #10 Rik Wouters

Transcript of the podcast

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Summary

In this conversation, Rik Wouters, Expert by Experience Digital Inclusion at Bureau EDDI, discusses the importance of digital accessibility for everyone, particularly for individuals with disabilities. He emphasizes the role of assistive technologies, the significance of the WCAG guidelines, and the challenges posed by legacy systems. The discussion also covers the need for user-centric design, the importance of feedback, and the future of inclusive design.

Digital accessibility is essential for everyone. - Rik Wouters

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About Rik Wouters

Rik Wouters is an Expert by Experience in Digital Inclusion at Bureau EDDI. Rik has been actively involved in advocating for the rights of individuals with disabilities, particularly those who are blind or visually impaired. His work focuses on improving digital experiences and ensuring that technology is accessible to everyone.

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The future of inclusive design is promising. - Rik Wouters

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Transcript

TD: Hello and welcome at Focus Trap, a digital accessibility podcast. My name is Tim Dahmen and I'm joined today by Rick Wouters, Ambassador of Digital Inclusion at Bureau EDDI. Welcome Rick.

RW: Hi Tim. Thank you for, yeah, that I'm here. Yeah.

TD: Always, always welcome. Thanks for, yeah, that you take the time to join us live in Amsterdam in a recording studio. For the people that don't know you yet that well, could you give a little bit more of an introduction of yourself?

RW: Yes. Yes. So my name is Rick Wouters. I'm a Belgian guy. I'm living already for nearly 30 years in the Netherlands and I'm blind at this point of time. Yeah. I became blind after, yeah, a long period of time. Let's say after a period of 30 years, I totally became blind. And currently I'm working for my own company and also for other companies with regards to digital inclusion. Yeah. That's in short, I'm 50 plus years old. And it's nice to share my experience here today.

TD: Of course. Yeah. That's what, that's what we are going to do. And so what does digital accessibility mean to you? Yeah.

RW: I expected already this question because I listened to your other episodes. So digital accessibility for me is one of the two conditions so that everybody can participate. If systems are accessible, yeah, then people can use, yeah, all the systems and, and maybe your other question will be what is then the other condition is that the end users need to be able to use their tools. They need to be able to use windows or their smartphones. And then especially for people with disabilities, they need to be able to use their assistive technologies. So if you use, if you're able, in my case, for instance, to use my screen reader, reader goods and my apps are built accessible, then I can just participate like anybody, anybody, yeah, anybody else. Yeah.

TD: And you've equal access to services and information and yeah, be able to participate fully as well. Also in the online world. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, it's just a nice, nice, nice description. And, uh, um, that's what we are going to discuss how to improve this, this connection to the online world for, for everyone. Um, and yeah. How important is it for you that you can participate also online fully?

RW: It is, I think it's very important because you even as, even if you're blind or have another disability, you're still a regular person. You just have a limitation, either you cannot walk or you cannot see, you cannot hear. But you know, I'm just a regular person. There's nothing wrong with me except that I don't use the computer on a regular way. I don't look at the screen, but I do everything with the screen reader. And we're living in a perfect time right now. As a matter of fact, I think, is it not approximately 30 years ago that Microsoft also started with their accessibility stuff with the Windows 95? So right now we're 30 years later and systems, operating systems are accessible. Right now we need to take the next step that also the other apps are accessible so I can just participate. I do not rely on other persons. I can do things independently. I can do shopping. I can book my public, my, yeah, my journey with the public transportation myself. And that's really nice. Yeah.

TD: And so I, yeah, this question, I have this question for a longer time now. Do you think that the now within, with the online world coming available with the internet and with technologies being available widely now, nowadays, is it, is it more, is it, is it more accessible or is it less accessible than without any technology?

RW: I think, I think that the major point here is that there are a lot of opportunities now. Yeah. Especially if you also see AI, accessibility, AI, everything. It's amazing that I can do everything independently. Let me take you back, let's say 30 years ago, then accessibility was so new. And if you had a problem, you call a call center and then they fix it for you and maybe you get the letter at home. But then the letter, imagine I'm blind at that time. I cannot read that letter. We, you know, we did not have smartphones where you can take pictures with and then have it. Yeah. Analyzed. He had a text to it, so it's read all out. You know, nowadays you get your bill electronically, my screen reader can read it immediately. One of the difficulties nowadays is that there's so much digital, everything is digital. So that's the most important. Yeah. That's, I think that's one of the challenges that you need to make everything accessible. Also your, the invoice you sent to a person also, yeah, the call center, the services, the main, let's say in case of a bank, yeah, you're, you're locating the apps, but also the marketing materials. So that, that, that's one of the challenges. And I see that that's not always the case. The domain procedure is accessible, but then the marketing stuff, the, the things around it. Yeah. And there's still a way to go.

TD: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And how, how, how you're, you're familiar with the, with the WCAG as well, the WCAG accessibility guidelines. How important do you think the, the WCAG success criteria are in terms of, do, do you, do you experience a notable difference, for example, websites and apps following the, the WCAG successfully?

RW: I think you can see it immediately, I think. Yeah. When you go to a website, let's say you go to a web shop. You can see it immediately if the designers really took care for the WCAG in comparison to people, they just do something, you know, especially let's, for me, for the screen reader, the headers, if you, if you see on a website, the header level, level three and five or six and everything is, is a mix, then you're like, Oh, they did not really test this. You know, you have also two things. You have the WCAG, the technical norm, but you have also the fact, yeah, did you test with the end users from the beginning and, and most of the time, if, if organizations really take accessibility seriously, then they do both. They look at the technical norm, but they also test with the end users and you can see it immediately.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. So there's, and there's a notable difference in the, yeah, that's, that's good. That's good to know. Yeah. Now that there, the, the thing you mentioned, there's a, there, everything now is online. There's a lot, a lot of applications, a lot of websites and everything needs to be accessible. And there's also, I think the challenge for most organizations, most big organizations, because they're, they have so much systems, so much applications, so, so much to do. And of course, big organizations, they also have legacy systems and these are harder to, to make, to make accessible and stay, stay accessible in the, in the, in the, in the longer run. Yeah. How would, how would you say this, how would you say is a good strategy to do, to do with this?

RW: Oh, that's a nice question. Yeah. Myself, I studied IT in the beginning. Maybe that's also nice. Like 30 years ago, I worked for a CRM company making CRM software. And I remember I was working for the call center and when I was driving here together with my wife here, I was thinking at that time with the incident system, did we have a drop down where one of the options was, this is an accessibility issue? We did not have that. You know, we had performance issues, we had security issues, but accessibility was not in the game to say. And I think that's the main difference with, let's say 25 years ago, the end users, they're more diverse before you call with your telephone, the call center, and that's it. But right now you need to do it yourself. So instead of having a call center with thousand users, you have, for example, in Holland, 18 million possible end users, young, old, male, female, with abilities, without abilities. And if you then see how many people have a disability or that have problems in the digital world, it's one out of four. That's millions of people in the Netherlands that have any kind of a problem, not a challenge, let's say, to your systems. And for organizations, you need to acknowledge that. And you also need to make sure that the one out of those millions of users, they will never all be able to use the system, you always will have people that are not able to use the systems, you will have to look for an alternative. Let's say a deaf person, he would like to use a chat function, but in your chat, you cannot say, oh yeah, please call the call center because a deaf person cannot call the call center. So the challenges, I think, and for the strategies for organizations is to really acknowledge that you will need multiple channels, I think. And of course, you need to try to focus on the cheapest challenge, the cheapest channels, so most of the people can make use of it. But then, if that's not possible, you need to have a second way of achieving your goal. Yeah. An alternative.

TD: Yeah. An alternative.

RW: A text format or something else. Yeah. I think if we can add something to it as well, what I see nowadays is, it's all nice. You know, you have a lot of apps, the two things, what I also want to mention is those apps are getting more sophisticated. You also see with banking apps in the beginning, you can log in, you can see your products, your accounts, your transactions, but now those apps, designers put more and more functionalities in it. You have a pop-up from the marketing, oh, did you know, take care about phishing or did you read your messages? So those apps are getting, yeah, more rich with functionalities, but also more complex. And that's maybe a bit of a trap for the designers, like, oh, there's so many bells and whistles on the car, so you don't see the car anymore. And then people will probably abandon and say, oh yeah, this app is too complex for me. So I think maybe that's the main thing we design mostly, make it simple, so people will keep on using the apps.

TD: Yeah. Yeah.

RW: And what I also see, especially for the government, apps are so scattered. You know, there's so many sites, there's so many apps, try to work together and yeah, for me, my ultimate goal would be that I have one app, my government, and I see all my stuff in there, all my communication with the government, that would be really nice. But at this point of time, yeah, there's so many different sites and every site for me is a learning curve. I need to learn to use it because not all the screens, of course, look the same, functionalities differ. Yeah. If you have less sites or work more together in the kind of standard way of, yeah, having your site, then it's much more easy for the end user.

TD: Yeah. Agreed. I think especially in the Dutch government, it's really, they create a lot of different websites, a lot of different apps. Yeah. I can see that they try to do the best thing, but it's really hard if it's so scattered. Indeed, there's so much different applications, I have to say. Going indeed 30 years back, your experience in IT, you also worked for Oracle, you worked for CRM, a company. How was accessibility dealt with at the time? And do you see a big difference now with today? Yeah.

RW: I think in preparation of this podcast, I was like thinking, when did I start working on something that is user-friendly? And when I was studying, my first thesis was to make a user-friendly system for a laboratory on the University of Ghent, but it was all mainframe-based. So at that time, you did not have a mouse, you had only two colors with your screen. And then you had to build a system that is really user-friendly. That's the first beginning, but that has nothing to do with accessibility, although, yeah, if you only have, yeah, what you see is what you get, it did not exist at that point in time. You know, you only have the terminal and you had to deal with it. So that was my first experience. Then when I was working later on, on the field of CRM, we did not have to deal so much as well with accessibility because people, let's say you have the telecom organization, your local telecom provider, you will call them, you know, the internet, the self-service thing only started, I think a little bit around year 2000, I think 2000, yeah, kind of like that. Yeah. Especially before you had to dial in to, yeah, to get an internet connection. But then you had the ISDN or the, yeah, the other routers that you were always online. Yeah. That makes it much more easy. And I saw then in the field of CRM that instead of the call center apps, you had the self-service apps, the configuration management that you can build your own product. I remember with the CRM, you had a 360 degree view of the customer. I think with the self-service organizations put the mirror in front of the end user. So yeah, let's fix it yourself, you know, go to the website, design your own product. Let's say with a subscription for a telephone, you can say, what phone do I want? How many minutes do I want to call? How many SMS bundles? So the organization said to the customer, do it yourself. But then again, they forgot that those people are not people that are 25 years old, young and can use a modern laptop. No, I mean, yeah. You have also people with old systems, with old laptops. Yeah. Again, the whole diversity of people. At that time in the year 2000, yeah, accessibility was, we were nowhere. And maybe I was also in my bubble as an IT guy, you know, you were happy that things are working. I remember with, we were an American company, they were happy that it works for five users. And then suddenly in Europe, you had 800 users. You were more busy with accessibility, no, not with the performance issues, than with really accessibility. And it's, yeah, I'm wondering when it really started. Yeah, that's a good question. I think, yeah, again, Windows started in 95. Then you had Apple with the touchscreens. Before I had the Nokia, regular Nokia thing, and then I was like, oh man, iPhone, is that something for me? Yeah. How can I use?

TD: No physical buttons. I need to feel.

RW: Yeah, yeah. No physical buttons anymore.

TD: No physical buttons.

RW: I want to feel a keyboard to use it. And then you saw the screen and it was like, hey, but this is funny because I can, even if I don't see the screen, I can move my finger on the screen and it tells me what is under my finger. Yeah. And then, you know, also there, you had to build trust with the end users that it will be okay. You know, Apple made it really nice, the voiceover works fine. It always works good. And then once you have trust, people will invest efforts to learn their assistive technologies and they can really use, yeah, all kinds of apps. And I met a lot of people and when they saw the iPhone, they said, wow, a world opens for me. I can read newspapers, I can call people, I can send text messages, even by talking, you know, doing a dictation, those kinds of things. So that's what happened also with Apple and with all the touchscreen things. Although right now, yeah, it looks like everything needs to be touchscreen and that's okay for me. But in certain cases, let's go back to the banking things, you have your payment terminals in a restaurant. Sometimes there are to be touchscreens and it's like, yeah, but how can I enter my pin code on a touchscreen with voiceover and nobody can hear what is my pin code. And I'm like, yeah, then I feel that they're exaggerating a little bit, like for a device that is specifically made to enter a code in all private ways, you should not use a touchscreen just to the physical buttons. And also there, what I see is that for people that are blind, okay, obviously that's a problem. But for older people, a touchscreen is not so easy. If you need to enter a four digit code and you're shaking, your head is a bit shaking and you're in a restaurant, it's maybe a bit cold outside, very often it goes wrong.

TD: Yeah. Because also the responsiveness of touching the exact numbers is different of course than with real physical buttons. I see, I also noticed that, yeah, touching a screen versus touching a button is something different. And especially after a couple of beers, you know, it's even more worse.

RW: But yeah, I mean, that's a bit of the journey and I think, yeah, as I see before, we had to deal with internationalization issues, performance issues. Right now you need to deal with accessible issues as a designer or as a developer. You have a lot of challenges, but it's really nice. I think it's nice if I meet people, lately I met a girl, a woman who was 92 years old and she said, how do you deal with your banks? How do you pay in the shop? And then she said, yeah, I learned from my daughter, I need to use this phone. She probably didn't know that she was using an iPhone and then press this button and then they look at the screen and then they hold it against the payment terminal and she said, have a look. You know, if people, if we build all accessible apps and people really have the trust, again, it's also the trust that it will work, they take the courage to use their system, then it's really nice to see that you can just participate.

TD: Yeah, definitely. To me, it's what the internet is about. Making lives easier, making lives easier for people around the world and in the Netherlands and also making things more efficient, making things easier and for everyone, yeah, not excluding anyone.

RW: But I think there's still a way to go. I was just looking at some shops, let's say some web shops for fashion and then you see, oh man, it's so complex for us really to order something. Lately, there was a temporary marketing campaign, I think, and there was a banner on the screen saying 20% discount or you still have two hours and 59 minutes. Yeah, yeah. And every two seconds, I kept on hearing with my voiceover message, 20%, so I wasn't able to continue. And I'm like, how come they did not test this? And you're losing a lot of revenue, I think. Yeah, definitely. And I think also, especially for people that are the senior, more senior, elderly people, they have plenty of time. They probably also have plenty of money, more money than us to spend. So make sure your internet, your business is good, accessible, and are really fun. Sometimes people are asking me, what is a good website? And then I'm always referring to my local utility company for the water. They have a fun website because I don't need to spend too much time on it. I just can submit my meter stand and it's easy. And then after one minute or after a few minutes, I know already what I get back for money or what I need to pay. And those are the funny sites and also say banking sites, sites for public transportation. If they're easy to use, you will like them and enjoy them and use them. Where's my train? Is there a delay? How much do I need to pay? And that's a nice point. Websites that are difficult, you will not come back. I think you have the negativity bias. I'm sure you know that. If you have a negative experience, it takes a lot of efforts to gain that customer back. I thought even up to 10 times, if you have one negative experience, you need 10 positive experiences to bring the balance on the same way, to forget the bad experience. And I think even for people with a disability, it's probably more, it's going to be more. But also if you're, in my case, once I found a good shop, I will stick to it. I will say, Hey, this one is an easy shop. I invested my energy in learning this app. I love it. Let's go back. Let's have a look. If I can, yeah, if those companies like Ball or Amazon, yeah, if one of the both would be my favorite, I would always go back to the same one.

TD: Yeah, because also the effort of going somewhere else and the learning curve, then you, you jump into, it's not worth the effort most of the time.

RW: It's not worth the effort for the 50 cent discount you get there.

TD: No. No. Oh, that's, that's, that's good to know. It's, uh, and very logical as well. Yeah, of course. And yeah, this, this trend to more self-service we were talking about. It's, it's a trend that keeps on going, I think as well. And if I look to the, for example, the banking services, uh, uh, in, in need, starting in the, starting with the adoption of the internet, more and more, um, you see, um, for a bank less physical offices in the, in, uh, close to home, um, so less physical offices and more online presence, more online self-service. That is the trend that is, I think, still ongoing and also the vision of most of the banks in the Netherlands, but also around the world, um, um, and yeah, this, this self-service online trends makes it also that the apps need to hold more functionality because, uh, uh, if you want to self-service everything, there are a lot of options involved. And with this more online trends or more self-service trends comes a lot of accessibility, uh, hurdles to take, uh, potentially a lot of barriers are, uh, are set. Um, um, so yeah.

RW: Sure. Yeah. I can also see that, uh, now with the app, with the bank, I mean, it's not only your account, it's also insurance, it's also your mortgage. Um, and what is important for me is that the look and feel is everywhere the same, you know, I'm, I'm, I don't know. It's predictable. That it's predictable. Amounts are always pronounced in the same way. Uh, the way of navigating, uh, is always the same. If you use buttons, then use buttons everywhere for, for certain functionalities. Maybe a better example is those, how do you call that accordion menus? Did you click on a paragraph and then it expands and collapse? Yeah. If you use that, use it everywhere. And then don't use another method, let's say to, to make that pages or those kinds of things. The important is to be consistent, to put the buttons in a, in a, in a, in an app always on the same way. Let's say your go back and continue those kinds of things. Use always also the same terminology. Sometimes they say cancel. Sometimes it's sometimes they say go back. Sometimes they say ready. Yeah. Use the same terms.

TD: Yeah. Yeah. This is also, of course, a success criteria in the WCAG, uh, ability, uh, there are different, uh, uh, success criteria, I think, uh, that, that have guidelines for this. So that's, uh, I think that's, uh, that's good. That's good. So these are really important. That's, that's where you can see also the, the WCAG, uh, um, takes, takes care of this. And if you follow the WCAG, then you have, yeah, you have a nice base layer of accessibility. The other part is of course, also you mentioned this, um, is testing with the end user, um, and the importance of doing this, including them earlier in the, uh, earlier in the development cycle. Uh, but also when the, when the product is online, uh, keep testing with, uh, with the end user. Yep. And also include people with disabilities in this group, uh, I would say.

RW: Um, I think also nice to know is that, uh, yeah, I'm also part of a test in, in the test, um, how do you say the group who can use the beta versions of my banking app. So I, I'm in the test, in the test flight app, I receive all the beta updates and I immediately I can already, um, check. I can just, uh, upgrade my app and then test it on, on the flight to say, but then if you have an emergent issue, I remember maybe five or nine, I don't know how many years ago, let's say five years ago, there wasn't a major issue that all the amounts in the banking app were pronounced with a kind of technical term in front of it. I forgot really what it was, but it was like open brackets and then you hear the amount and then voiceover will say close brackets. So it's like, Oh, what happens here? Maybe there was a system change or a technology change, but it made that all the amounts were pronounced wrongly. And because that I'm using the test flight app, I was able to signal that and say, Hey, you cannot go live because the voiceover does not work at all with those, with those amounts. It's not usable for us. So maybe for a very small group of users, it's a really important book. Maybe for the bank as a whole, they might say, ah, this is just a P3 standard book. No, it's, it's a critical book. If you cannot read the amounts in an app, it's a critical book. So I think that's also maybe one of the, yeah, the advice I can give to the audience is really have a look at how you register your accessibility books and how you prioritize them. And the prioritization for a developer might be totally different than, yeah, the one for an end user. I think another example of what I had was to, to register for a bank account, a commercial bank account, everything went fine except to, to accept the terms and conditions. There was like a checkbox. You had to click with a mouse. Of course, I cannot use the mouse. So I could not complete my, yeah, transaction to say, so accessibility, you need to do it from the beginning to the start, to the end. If, if, if you miss one thing, then your system is unfortunately not, yeah, not, not useful.

Takeaways

• Digital accessibility is essential for everyone to participate.
• Assistive technologies enable blind and disabled individuals to use digital systems.
• The WCAG guidelines are crucial for creating accessible websites and apps.
• Legacy systems pose significant challenges for accessibility.
• Organizations must provide multiple communication channels for users with disabilities.
• Modern apps are becoming more complex, which can hinder accessibility.
• User-centric design is vital for creating effective digital solutions.
• Building trust in assistive technologies is necessary for user adoption.
• Negative experiences can deter users from returning to a service.
• Simplicity in design enhances user experience and accessibility.