1.
jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
Accessibility innovation through gestural and sign-language interfaces
Prof Jonathan Hassell (@jonhassell)
Director, Hassell Inclusion
Visiting Professor, London Metropolitan University
CSUN, San Diego, USA 19th March 2013

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1Accessibility
and innovation

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
Without these innovators
(and more)
the lives of disabled people
would be much impoverished

4.
Jim Thatcher for the first
Screen Reader
Thanks to iheni.com

5.
Ray Kurzweil for the first commercial
speech recognition (& much more)

6.
Bill Kastner, WGBH and the BBC
for the first closed captioning

7.
Gregg Vanderheiden for starting the
accessibility guidelines ball rolling

8.
Tim Berners Lee for “the power of the web is
in its universality…”
(inspired by Mike Paciello)

9.
The legislators behind
Section 508 (USA) and
Disability Discrimination Act Pt III (UK)

10.
Rob Sinclair for making ATs
easier to create with MSAA and UIA

11.
Maguire & SOCOG for giving the world
its first web accessibility test case

12.
The WebAIM crew for getting the word out
and stoking the discussion

13.
Julie Howell and the PAS/78 authors
for making accessibility more strategic

14.
Shawn Lawton Henry for building a bridge
between accessibility & usability

15.
Mick Curran & James Teh for making
screenreaders affordable with NVDA

16.
Steve Jobs for
making
accessibility
built in as
standard in
Apple products

17.
Jennison Asuncion for GAAD

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
And all those who
funded their work,
used what they created,
shared the news…

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
And …

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
As mobile technology enables
more people to be innovators

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Why shouldn’t
your face be here…?

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None of those guys were available… so you’ve got me: Jonathan
Hassell
• >13 years experience in accessibility and inclusion
• lead author of BS 8878 British Accessibility Standards
• former Head of Usability & Accessibility, BBC
• led work to embed accessibility across
BBC web, mobile and IPTV production teams
• won BIMA 2008 & Access-IT@Home awards
for the accessibility features of BBC iPlayer
• Product Manager of innovative products:
• won IMS Global Learning Impact Award 2010
for MyDisplay
• won ‘Best Usability & Accessibility’ BIMA 2006
for My Web, My Way
• 3 x Bafta-nominated for breakthrough rich-media
eLearning projects for disabled children

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2What is innovation?

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“Fresh thinking that creates value”
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9928154

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“The process of translating an idea or
invention into a good or service that
creates value or for which customers
will pay.”
www.businessdictionary.com/definition/innovation.html#ixzz2iko2wNHH

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Great innovations
come from…
User needs
Technology
possibilities
Sustainable
market/fundi
ng
Great
innovations

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3“Where do you get your
ideas from…?”

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
How to source ideas…
From following
market trends
(e.g. everything
goes social…)
From listening
to users’
unmet needs
and finding
ways to meet
them
From
encouraging
your team to
come up with
ideas
From following
technology
possibilities
(Freeview =>
Youview)

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
How inclusion helps ideation…
From following
market trends
(e.g. everything
goes social…)
From listening
to users’
unmet needs
and finding
ways to meet
them
From
encouraging
your team to
come up with
ideas
From following
technology
possibilities
(Freeview =>
Youview)

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
The problem of fixation…

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
How people try to free themselves from it…
‘Draw an alien’ to free yourself from conventional thinking

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
Why not find a challenge closer to home?
Think about how a disabled person would use your product…

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
The beauty of constraints…

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© 2011 Centre for Business Innovation Ltd
- 34 -
Centre for Business Innovation
“Connected Communities, helping you Do more with Less” Engineering Design Centre
The potential of inclusive design: OXO Good Grips
• Well-known pioneer of Inclusive Design in the
USA
• Sam Farber’s wife, a keen cook, suffered from
arthritis
“Why do ordinary kitchen tools hurt your
hands?”
• First 15 products launched in 1990
• Sales growth over 35% per year from 1991 to
2002
• The line has now grown to over 500 products
• Over 100 design awards received
Look where asking the right question can get you…

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
How focusing on users takes you beyond inclusion…
From following
market trends
(e.g. everything
goes social…)
From listening
to users’
unmet needs
and finding
ways to meet
them
From
encouraging
your team to
come up with
ideas
From following
technology
possibilities
(Freeview =>
Youview)

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
Audience research – focus groups, ethnographic studies etc.

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Keep listening through iterative user-testing
Do initial
audience
research
User test to
get better
audience
research
Develop
minimal,
flexible
next version
If more
improvement
justified,
cycle…

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Use a user-centred development process to help you
– BS 8878

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How mainstream products have arisen from
innovative ‘beyond inclusion’ solutions

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jonathanhassell@yahoo.co.uk
4Innovation through
Natural User Interfaces

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Example 1: uKinect Sign Recognition

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Speech recognition is cool

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Speech translation is cooler

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The Funding Vision
• Learners with disabilities may lack independence due to an
inability to communicate by speech or due to lack of motor
control
• If signs and gestures can be easily learned, recognized and
converted to digital data, a whole new world of opportunity
opens up.
TechDis, BIS, TSB SBRI ‘Making Waves’ competition

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The ideal

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The “breakthrough” inspiration
• http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680081/a-
device-to-translate-sign-language-into-
speech and http://www.uh.edu/news-
events/Fulbright/2012/may/0529MyVoice.ph
p

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It takes time… – cf. Siri
Speech recognition was able to
understand digits in the 1950s…
Siri’s intelligence has been
worked on for at least 10 years

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The problem
We had
6 months…

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User-focused approach
User needs
Technology
possibilities
Sustainable
funding/ma
rket
Great
innovations

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Our breakthrough
technology enabler 
The way ahead

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The way ahead
Looked for
people who
could benefit
from each of
our (baby)
steps…

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Why choose Makaton-users
as our target audience?
British Sign Language Makaton
Thousands of signs (> 21,000) Hundreds of signs
Individual sign vocab > 5,000 Individual sign vocab < 200
Long sequences of signs 1 or 2 sign sequences
Sign quality fairly uniform Sign quality very variable, plus
personal (idiosyncratic) signs
Many competing teams
innovating in this field
Very few competing teams
innovating in this field

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User-Centred Approach
Engagement
through a
character and
humour…
Inspiration:
Talking Tom

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Proof of concept solution
Watch the video at: http://vimeo.com/32022176

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Phase Two

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Users and contexts of use
Signing
e-Learning game
Users with comms difficulties
through LDs, Autism, stroke
Education Employment
Independent
Living
Supporters of these users:
colleagues, teachers, carers, parents

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Product launching May-14

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Hints of a new opportunity
“Boris was so engaging
that blind students were
also asking to use it to
learn to sign…”

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Example 2: The Nepalese Necklace
A Movement Game for Blind and VI Children

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The Nepalese Necklace Original concept
• The idea:
• using audio-games & Microsoft Kinect’s
gesture recognition to encourage blind and
partially-sighted children to engage more
readily with their mobility training
• The project:
• an inexpensive, 3 month Proof of Concept
to investigate the idea’s potential in a
concrete, testable way

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The Nepalese Necklace UCD Approach
• Initial user-research
• found experts in the learning, and
representatives of the learners
• created a way of giving both an initial
idea of what we were talking about, to
get their attention and buy-in
• asked questions to “get into their world”
• then created what they needed/wanted
• Iterative user-testing
• we did this every couple of weeks
• there’s no substitute for it

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The Nepalese Necklace Validation
• Did final research to prove value
• in all contexts of use
(in homes as well as as schools)
• over longer periods of testing, without
expert presence (over at least a week,
without you propping the PoC up)
• observed and interviewed users &
experts to understand how they
behave and feel about the PoC
• Got the results on video
• nothing else quite proves your case

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Partner of the Year
Gamelab UK

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If you
remember
one thing…

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Listening to your diverse audiences needs…
identifies challenges…
but innovation often follows a challenge

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So why shouldn’t
this be you?

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• the full guide on how to transform your organisation
to achieve the consistent creation of web sites and
apps that are usable and accessible to all your
customers, at the most efficient cost
• with practical case-studies from leading
accessibility experts worldwide, including:
• Jennison Asuncion (Canada),
• Debra Ruh & Jeff Kline (USA),
• Andrew Arch (Australia)
• David Banes (Qatar)
• Axel Leblois (UN)
for information on the book,
free access to video case-
studies, and a chance of winning
the book for free
Click here for
chance to
win book
There’s more on accessibility
innovation in my book

68.
Training &
support for
BS8878
Standards
Innovation
www.hassellinclusion.com
Strategy &
research

69.
More Hassell Inclusion at CSUN-14:
Web Accessibility Myths for the mobile generation
• Do disabled people really
use ATs?
• Is the most important
accessibility issue for
images alt-text?
• Does inclusive design really
benefit everyone?
• Are the most important
people in accessibility
developers?
• challenging some of the
accepted views we hold that
may no longer be true…

70.
More Hassell Inclusion at CSUN-14:
7 Signs of maturing in accessibility and inclusion
• The accessibility industry is
aging and growing…
• But is it maturing…?
• how do you measure
maturity in accessibility
- in organisations,
and as an industry?
• from Tim Cook’s latest
shareholder comments
to the IAAP – here are 7
signs that we’re maturing
as we grow…

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Get in touch…
e: jonathan@hassellinclusion.com
t: @jonhassell
w: www.hassellinclusion.com