Digital Outcasts: Moving Technology Forward without Leaving People Behind

2012

Preface

What this Book is About

First, let me explain what this book is not. It is not a primer on writing standards-friendly HTML, an explanation about coding accessible software, nor a guide to conducting accessibility tests within a user-centered design framework. There are plenty of good books on the market that cover these topics in full, many of which are written by excellent authors whom I value as colleagues and friends. This book is different.

The concept of this book began in 2009 while I was conducting a series of interviews with people who use virtual reality as a form of community building. I was particularly touched by my conversations with a group of users who had autism; these people felt strongly that the relationships they formed in the virtual space better acclimated them to real-world interaction. It occurred to me that I was witnessing the start of a trend that few people even knew existed. The future of inclusive design was being defined, right in front of me, even while mainstream adoption of electronic accessibility remained an uphill struggle.

When I started my explorations in web accessibility in 2000, there was little knowledge or understanding of how people with disabilities interacted with technology. My subsequent attempts to advocate accessibility as a corporate practice produced mixed results—although things are better, many gaps still exist. I’ve also seen an increasing proliferation of innovation think tanks among corporate organizations, constructed with the ambitious intention of incubating the next technological game-changer.

The purpose of this book, then, is threefold. I first wanted to explore the gaps that still exist with regard to inclusive design and electronic media. Second, I wanted to consciously investigate examples of innovation among people with disabilities. My belief is that understanding the role innovation plays in accessibility (and vice versa) will clarify the process of developing forward-thinking inclusive products. Finally, I wanted to expand readers’ appreciation for how accessibility can be positioned as a strategic methodology; to not only accommodate users with disabilities, but also to help design professionals drive innovation within their team environments.

Who Should Read this Book?

The primary audience for this book is anyone working within the field generally called user experience. This includes professionals in the areas of research, usability, information design, human–computer interaction, and other related disciplines. For these readers, this book will make you more aware of emerging trends in accessible product design. My ultimate goal is that you will take these insights and apply them to your daily endeavors.

I have constructed the book to be readable and approachable for multiple audiences beyond the fields of design and research. These may include the following, in no particular order of emphasis:

Technology professionals can gain an understanding of how people with varying abilities are using the products they create.

Digital consumers may be interested in how the use of games and mobile devices is having a profound impact on the health of their families.

Disability advocates will be interested in the next wave of accessible computing, drawing inspiration from the examples in this book to empower their constituents.

Team leaders in the areas of design, technology, or marketing may uncover new insights on how to implement accessibility into their production cycles.

Finally, those working in the areas of health care, rehabilitation, or social service may discover new ways to engage and inform the people they serve every day.

How to Read this Book

The first portion of the book examines the social and legal rationales for delivering accessible electronic media. It provides a cogent primer on understanding the impact of disability on a person’s experience, with deep investigation on how people with various disabilities use devices and systems. Readers who are new to the concept of inclusive design may find these chapters of most benefit, especially for technologists just beginning to acquaint themselves with the technical aspects of accessibility.

Chapters later in the book address more specific areas of interest. For example, I’ve devoted an entire chapter to the definition of innovation as a framework for selling up inclusive design within the corporate enterprise. My rationale here is that understanding the role innovation plays in product design helps us to recognize examples of innovation happening daily around us. With this in mind, I’ve interspersed a number of relevant case studies spanning such disciplines as health care, social science, nutrition, and entertainment. Each case study represents some cultural or computing modality discussed earlier in the respective chapter.

Occasionally I drop in a story or tidbit that appears to have nothing to do with the theme of the book. I did this because these parts were fun to write and are, I think, interesting to read. I also believe that examples of accessibility and innovation are all around us, even within such unusual contexts as 1970s soul music, chess grandmasters, astronauts, and baseball. Stories like these may read as a break in the narrative, but I find inspiration in these tales and I hope you do as well.

A friend once told me that accessibility is more than how someone interacts with a piece of technology—it’s about fulfilling our most basic needs as human beings. One of those needs is the feeling that we have each contributed something of benefit to the world around us. I hope that you find inspiration within these pages to accomplish wonderful things, helping to improve tomorrow’s user experiences for people of all abilities and backgrounds.

Chapter 1

Who are Digital Outcasts?

Chapter Outline

Introduction

What is the Question?

What We Think Accessibility Means

Designing for the Lowest Common Denominator

Ramps, Stairs, and Technology

A Prototype of the Future

A Growing Demographic

Internet Usage among the Aging and Disabled

Economic and Social Habits of Older Users

Our Attitude Toward Disability

The Gaps Where People Get Lost

Searching for a Standard

The Myth of Compliance

Etiquette, Identity, and Vernacular

How We Create Outcasts

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, and Digital Outcasts

Defining the Digital Outcast

Walking on the Moon: A Lesson in Self-Preservation

Introduction

When Iris Connolly was 2 years old, she fell ill on a family holiday and had to be rushed to a hospital in the United Kingdom. The diagnosis came as a shock to parents Sean and Debra of Essex, he a civil worker and she a veterinary surgeon. Their daughter Iris had been struck by a brain tumor and was to undergo 48 weeks of radiotherapy following surgery.

Iris survived the operation and began her long road to recovery. Bed-bound and temporarily paralyzed, she was unable to attend school and experienced severe impairment of her brain’s executive function—the part of the brain that controls memory, attention, mental flexibility, and other cognitive activities.

Hoping to keep his daughter occupied while in the hospital, Mr. Connolly bought Iris an iPad and noticed that she immediately took to the device. She loved coloring in letters and pictures of animals, so Mr. Connolly searched the iTunes store for apps she could use. He was particularly interested in anything that could help his daughter reacclimate herself to the process of memorizing and cultivating her dormant language skills.

Mr. Connolly had been disappointed by the lack of available offerings and was frustrated that Iris couldn’t seem to write unless she used the iPad. I’d write it on paper but she loved the iPad and everything could be done magically on there, he told the Daily Mail. It was then that I came up with my own idea for an app which allows youngsters to trace letters and shapes, write words, and then share them with loved ones.

To design and produce his idea, Mr. Connolly researched how to become an app developer, but he lacked the necessary skillset at the time. Hiring a development team was too expensive. With his daughter undergoing a year of treatment and nothing in the App Store to meet her needs, Mr. Connolly connected with a U.K. organization called FundedApps that solicits ideas for apps from everyday people. Mr. Connolly submitted his concept for an app called Share My ABC’s, which FundedApps accepted with an initial investment of ≤30,000.

The app is very simple—it shows pictures of animals to represent upper- and lowercase letters, which Iris traces in her own hand. She is able to select any color she wants, and she can save each word or sentence in order for her parents to review her progress. She is even able to share a handwritten message with her loved ones, using the built-in features of the iPad (Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Sean Connolly created the Share My ABC’s app to help his daughter Iris learn written language skills following a brain tumor.

Today, Share My ABC’s is in market and has been downloaded in multiple countries. For his part, Mr. Connolly receives 25% of all profits on sales of the app, which is being introduced as part of educational curricula around the world. I was over the moon when my app was chosen, says Mr. Connolly today. Especially as all I wanted to do was help Iris’ educational development after all she’d been through.

From the simple tracing of a finger, an innovative new product now occupies its own unique space in the commercial landscape. The interaction model of the iPad is similar to that of finger-painting, which provided an appropriate platform for young Iris to relearn written language skills. Paper would have done the trick, but it may have taken a longer time and not been nearly as engaging to Iris as the iPad proved to be.

But this isn’t a story about technology: this is a story about industrious, enterprising people who are sometimes locked out of the innovation curve—a story about people who are highly experimental in nature, often by necessity. A story about customizing solutions at a minimal cost investment, attempting a variety of options until the best option presents itself. A story about how a product developed for a small market—in this case, literally a segment of one—can ultimately benefit a wider audience.

Most technology and design professionals are at least peripherally aware of developments involving people with disabilities, long-term injury, or illness. They may even be well versed in the legal and technical aspects of web accessibility. In recent years, a growing number of designers and developers have embraced Internet standards for the creation of accessible content. And yet, there is still a distance to be traveled when it comes to full digital accommodation across all barriers to access.

What is most interesting, and perhaps comes as a surprise to most people without disabilities, is how much technological innovation is being spawned from the disability sector. Whether it’s a product created on behalf of or by a disabled person, today’s digital landscape is becoming fertile, almost evergreen territory for solutions providing ambient value to all audiences.

People with disabilities are developing their own ways of interacting with computing devices and environments, and they’re using nearly every available part of their bodies in order to sustain and improve their existence. In the process, they are teaching all of us a lesson on self-sufficiency while bringing their amazing product visions to life. This is their story.

What is the Question?

It wasn’t looking good. For years the celebrated authoress Ms. Gertrude Stein had been suffering from stomach cancer, a brutal disease that in 1946 did not leave many options for treatment. During what would prove to be her final minutes, Ms. Stein was gently wheeled into the operating room in a Neuilly-sur-Seine hospital, near Paris, accompanied by her long-term partner, Alice B. Toklas. During a quiet moment, Ms. Toklas took the opportunity to lean over Ms. Stein and ask, Gertrude, what is the answer? At that point —according to legend—Ms. Stein opened her eyes and said, Well … what is the question?

What We Think Accessibility Means

The human mind is astonishing in its ability to manage multiple streams of data, from recalling important dates to recognizing a classic pop song. The brain’s cognitive power is so vast that educators spend years studying the impact that different learning styles have on our behavior. We are capable of collecting, memorizing, filtering, ideating, extrapolating, interpreting, instantiating, estimating, conflating, and pontificating. Yet we as human beings still occasionally need to distill complex problems into a single node or idea, mostly because it’s easier for us to think in binary terms.

The risk in this thinking is the temptation to streamline a vast subject into a digestible sound bite. We might define accessibility as the practice of accommodating people who are either permanently or temporarily disabled, making our services easier for more types of people to use in more situations. How we actually endorse and implement accessibility can be highly nuanced. It might involve a discussion of how content is created for low-literacy populations. It may dictate how material is delivered via the Internet or how someone uses a computer in the workplace. Accessibility can affect how the entryway of a building is designed or how a blind person registers to vote. Accessibility is a concept that can also be applied to any condition—physical, mental, or cognitive—that prevents equivalent use of a product or service.

Accessibility is the practice of accommodating multiple abilities, by making products and services easier to use for more people in more situations.

It’s easy to distill complex subjects into smaller ideas that are easier to grasp, even if they don’t quite reveal the whole story. In order to strengthen the argument and maximize people’s attention spans, we divert to the quick sound bite: Accessible websites prevent lawsuits! Web accessibility is good business sense! Web standards improve Section 508 compliance! Accessibility brings better results in search engines! This approach may or may not help corporate organizations recognize digital accessibility as a social responsibility, but there’s a difference between making things simple and being simplistic.

Designing for the Lowest Common Denominator

A number of years ago, I was working with a small internal team on the architecture and concept of a software product. Our goal was to create a workplace solution that improved upon the inadequacies and burdens of common e-room applications, promoting better collaboration and improved efficiency. During discussions around the visual design of the application, someone on the team raised the point of accessibility for users with disabilities. Should we make the font a little bigger? Do we know how many employees are color blind? If the screen refreshes too quickly, will someone who is prone to seizures be affected?

This went on for several minutes until a colleague, with all good intentions, suggested that we should not design for the lowest common denominator. In fact, he used those very words: lowest common denominator. He insisted that such features are only of benefit to a small minority of users. Furthermore, the task of accessibility would add countless hours of unbilled work, wreaking havoc on our budget and compromising our capacity to deliver. In short, it wasn’t worth the effort.

There are two reasons why this sort of debate happens within design and business teams. One, accessibility is still largely considered a niche market for a comparatively small segment of the population—consider how many people equate the term disabled with someone other than me. This is a very natural reaction for those who do not have a disability—taking into account any disenfranchised person temporarily puts us into that experience, which can be unpleasant for some people to envision. To design for users who are unlike us, we need to better understand their world—but doing so requires a temporary disconnect from our own