Transcript: Accessibility Culture Day welcome
Introduction
This is my part of the welcome call. A colleague opened the call before me, and closed it after.
On screen: a title slide reading “Accessibility”, with the giffgaff logo.
Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Gosh, round of applause, didn’t expect that.
Hello. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m Abi. Day to day, I’m a software engineer. However, I’m here in front of you today as Accessibility and Neurodiversity Affinity Group lead.
So, just to give you all a little introduction to myself (that was dramatic), my pronouns are she/her, and a physical description for anyone who needs it is that I am an average-height woman with shoulder-length brown hair, and I’m wearing a purple T-shirt today that says “accessibility” all over it, and I also wear glasses.
So, let’s see if the clicker works for me. Oh, it did. Amazing.
Types of disabilities
On screen: “Types of disabilities. Permanent”, with a list: blindness, cognitive impairment, colour vision deficiency, quadriplegia, deafness and motor skills impairments. Illustrations show people with permanent disabilities: someone with one arm, someone who is blind, someone who is deaf, someone who is non-verbal, and someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
So, I’d like us just to investigate some different kinds of disabilities, and, yeah, get you guys to learn a little bit more about those, because some are often overlooked.
So first we have permanent disabilities. These are conditions that stay with somebody throughout their entire lifetime. These can be things like blindness, deafness or quadriplegia.
On screen: “Types of disabilities. Temporary”, with a list: broken limb, migraine, broken mouse, broken glasses and slow internet. Illustrations show people with temporary disabilities: an arm injury, a cataract, an ear infection, laryngitis, and fatigue or depression.
The next one up, we have temporary disabilities. These will stay with a person for a set period of time, but not their entire life. For instance, a broken limb will be with you until it finishes healing.
On screen: “Types of disabilities. Situational”, with a list: holding a child, loud situations (concerts, coffee shops), sun glare on a screen, cat on keyboard, and under the influence. Illustrations show situational disabilities: carrying a baby or a computer, sun on a screen, noisy surroundings, a heavy accent, and an open office.
Finally, we have the most overlooked of all disabilities: situational. This is so many things that you don’t consider to be a disability. Whether you’re holding your child in one arm and trying to write an email, whether you’re in a coffee shop and you’re trying to hear your meeting over the loud noises behind you, whether you’ve got a cat on your keyboard, which is my life right now. All of those are situational disabilities.
Who benefits
On screen: “Who benefits from good accessibility? Everyone!”, with an illustration of a pair of thick-framed glasses.
So, who benefits from good accessibility? Short answer is everyone.
We don’t want to miss out anybody who doesn’t have a diagnosed disability, just because that’s who we focus on.
For instance, I wear glasses. However (and now I’m going to juggle some stuff), if I take these off, you’re all blurry. You’re all very brightly coloured blobs.
Without them, I would not be able to drive. I wouldn’t be able to work the way that I do. I wouldn’t be able to read books, which is one of the main things that I love. These glasses allow me to interact with the world the way that anyone else does. And yet, we don’t really consider needing glasses to be a form of a disability.
Everyday things
On screen: a slide full of labelled illustrations: voice recognition (a voice assistant, like Alexa), kerb cuts (a kerb cut with a disability icon), bendy straws, ramps (a ramp with a handrail), potato peelers, electric toothbrushes, computer keyboards, audiobooks (a book), lifts (two people in a lift) and a television (TV) remote.
So let’s take a little bit more of a look into the things that are normal everyday life, that were originally introduced for those with disabilities.
Now, I know this is a bit of a chaotic slide. I’m not going to read all of them out for you, I just want to make certain points.
So, those of you in the office who drove here today and parked downstairs? Good, decent number of hands. How many of you use the lift? Pretty much all of them. Lifts were introduced for people who couldn’t use the stairs, and yet we use it just to come up from the car park.
Bendy straws (this is a favourite of mine) was invented originally because the inventor’s daughter was too short to drink her milkshake from a straight straw. So he invented a bendy straw. And from that, they’re now used in hospitals and pretty widely across the globe.
We have potato peelers. This was invented because the inventor’s wife kept cutting her fingers when she was trying to peel potatoes with a knife. And now they’re in pretty much every kitchen.
Computer keyboards is the last one that I’m really going to touch into. Originally invented as typewriters. This was an invention because the inventor’s blind friend couldn’t see to write with a pen and paper. So the inventor created a typewriter. That typewriter has now evolved and become the computer keyboards that we use today.
Finally, it is very important to remember that everyone can use ramps, but not everyone can use the stairs.
The Purple Pound
On screen: “Purple Pound. What is the Purple Pound?”, with a purple circle with a pound sign in it. The text reads: “The Purple Pound refers to the spending power of disabled households. A disabled household is one in which at least one of the members has a disability.” Below that is a list: 1 in 5 working-age adults in the UK have a disability; 75% of people with a disability have walked away from an online purchase; in 2020, this was worth an estimated £274 billion per year; in the telecommunications and broadband industries, it’s worth an estimated £49 million per month; and this value increases each year with inflation.
Right, let’s look at the financial side of accessibility. I know, I know, I’m sorry. We’ll, we’ll go through it.
So, the Purple Pound refers to the spending power of a disabled household. A disabled household is one in which at least one of the members has a disability.
To give you a bit of information about that, 1 in 5 working-age adults has a disability. And, important to remember, this is officially diagnosed disabilities. It doesn’t include things like colour blindness.
Now, of those people, 75% of them have walked away from an online purchase because of bad accessibility on a website, or poor customer service when dealing with accessible issues.
In 2020, when the latest Purple Pound study was done, this was worth an estimated £274 billion per year. That’s roughly a market the size of China. It’s, it’s a lot of money we’re talking about.
In telecoms and broadband, it’s worth an estimated £49 million a month. I won’t make you do the maths: that is £588 million per year in our industry. This value increases every single year with inflation.
Cool, finance is done, I promise.
The Equality Act
On screen: “Equality Act 2010. The protected characteristics”, with a list: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Below it: “Discrimination is where you are treated unfairly and are put at a disadvantage when compared with people without these characteristics. Under the Equality Act, service providers and employers have to make reasonable adjustments to help people with these characteristics.”
Onto the legal side of things in the Equality Act 2010. This protects people with disabilities against being unfairly treated or discriminated against.
We, as a service provider providing mobile service to our members, and as employers, we have to make reasonable adjustments to help people with the characteristics that are protected under the Equality Act of 2010.
OK, legal bit done. More fun stuff now, I promise.
Accessibility whack-a-mole
On screen: “Let’s not play Accessibility Whack-A-Mole”, with an image of a cat playing whack-a-mole.
So, let’s not play accessibility whack-a-mole. We don’t want to be fixing the issues as they pop up and being surprised by them. We want to make sure that we’re putting things in place to make sure that we are fixing those issues before they even arise.
Being proactive is always better than being reactive.
Progress over perfection
On screen: the quote “Progress over perfection”, by Meryl Evans. A photo shows Meryl Evans wearing a red T-shirt that says “Progress Over Perfection”. The “O” in “Over” is the symbol for accessibility.
Now, if you haven’t heard of Meryl Evans, she is amazing. I highly recommend you go check out some of her speeches. She is an accessibility advocate, deaf since birth, and she’s done TEDx talks. She’s a professional consultant, and she also presents at quite a few conferences around the world.
One of the things that she always talks about is how accessibility is progress over perfection. That’s to say, we’re aiming for step by step. We’re not saying that, “Right, tomorrow we have to be perfect, we have to be fully accessible,” because that’s not realistic.
Instead, if each of you tomorrow takes one step, one tiny little baby step, that’s the progress we need. We can keep working through, and in time, we’ll get near perfection. Probably won’t get perfect, but that’s accessibility.
What’s on today
On screen: “What’s on today?”, with two times: 12:15pm to 1:45pm, lunch; and 1:45pm to 4:30pm, interactive workshops.
OK, so what’s on today? Next, we have lunch. I know everybody is very excited for lunch. After that, we have the interactive workshops.
On screen: the screen goes black, until “Back to it”.
I don’t know what I have pressed. I pressed a button. I’m so sorry, bear with. How did I press that? OK. Back to it.
Workshops
On screen: “Workshops. Each workshop will be run 3 times, so everyone gets a chance to go to each workshop.” The times are 1:45pm to 2:30pm, 2:45pm to 3:30pm, and 3:45pm to 4:30pm. Below that: “If you’re in the office, bring your laptop and headphones to each of the workshops. If you’re remote, there will be breakout rooms. It’s entirely up to you if you’d like your camera to be on or off.”
So, each of these workshops is going to be run three different times, so that everybody has a chance to go to each workshop, without the workshop hosts being overloaded and all of you getting a much worse experience within each workshop.
The workshops start from 1:45, and they’ll last roughly 45 minutes, with a 15-minute break before the next one.
Important to remember: please bring your laptops and headphones with you, because an entire room full of screen readers talking is utter chaos. So, laptops and headphones, please.
For anybody who’s remote, there’s going to be breakout rooms for each of the workshops, so that you can still take part and not feel like you’re talking to an entire room of people in the office. It is entirely up to you if you’d like to have your camera on or off for these.
On screen: “Workshops”, with details of three workshops. Workshop 1 is People & Personas, in the Park, with using personas, a visual impairment simulation kit, assistive devices and a web disability simulator. Workshop 2 is Spot the Accessibility Issues, in the Fish Bowl, which is a game. Workshop 3 is Using Assistive Technology, in Wellington Street, with screen readers (Mac, Windows, Android and iOS), a head pointer, and keyboard only.
Fantastic. Workshop 1 is going to be People and Personas, which will be held right here in the Park. So anybody who’s got Workshop 1 as your first workshop, head here.
Workshop 2 is going to be Spot the Accessibility Issues, a really fun interactive game. That’s going to take place in the Fish Bowl, which I learned today is all the way up that corridor, much further than I expected. So anybody who’s got Workshop 2, that’s where you want to head.
Anyone with Workshop 3, Using Assistive Technology, that’s Wellington Street. So, not quite as far as the Fish Bowl, but still all the way down that corridor.
Cool.
Important quotes
On screen: “Important quotes…”, with four quotes. “Call people in before calling them out”, by Kai Wong. “If you’re coming from a place of authenticity, no one’s going to be angry at you for asking questions”, by ITB, which is Ian Tomney-Bell. “The only disability is when people cannot see human potential”, by Debra Ruh. “Accessibility is not a problem to be solved. It is a culture to be built”, by Sheri Byrne-Haber.
Finally, I’m going to leave you with some important quotes. Remember, today is a day of learning, being curious and expanding your knowledge.
If you hear somebody say something that you think is wrong, something inaccessible, something non-inclusive, try to call them in before calling them out. Take them to one side, have that chat, rather than in front of everybody being like, “That was a terrible thing you said.” No, we’re all about learning. We’re about friendship and a safe space here.
As the wonderful man next to me said in a call a couple of weeks back, “If you’re coming from a place of authenticity, no one is going to be angry at you for asking questions.”
So I want you all to come into today with the mindset of: if you’re not sure, ask the question. Even if it feels awkward, ask the question.
OK, amazing, I’ve got all the way through, and we are done. I’m going to pass back over to ITB. Thanks all.