Good inclusive design in delivering public services - Katy Arnold [Camp Digital 2018]

Editor's Notes

• #2 Thanks for inviting me to speak – it’s been a brilliant day so far - and really excited to be part of such a great event. I work in digital government and we’ve been going through a lot of change recently. I’d like to tell you a bit about how we are using good inclusive design to change pubic service delivery. It’s also a story of personal enlightenment which I’d like to share.
• #3 But first, what do you think is going on here? Yes, it’s a life hack. On a microwave which clearly doesn’t work so well for someone. Life hacks - a way of life for many, especially for those with a disability.
• #4 People with disabilities continuously adapting to fit the world around them Because the world has not been designed for them.
• #5 Designers sometimes support - but too often it is an afterthought. This is the ticket counter in Kings Cross Railway Station, in London – only revamped in the last 5 years, but they didn’t consider people in wheelchairs.
• #6 This lack of consideration is reflected right across the building. Also in the way people in wheelchairs are treated She was ignored by 5 or 6 staff when trying to board a train – I ended up lifting her on. Many of our fellow humans are locked out of the digital and real-life experiences due to barriers they cannot overcome.
• #7 That becomes even more important when you think about the services that government provide. Such as this one – register to vote. Put barriers up here and you are denying people their democratic rights. Governments, have a duty of care to their citizens to make websites as accessible as possible so as wide a range as possible of citizens can use them.
• #8 It accessibility is a civil right – equality act If you are a designer that wants to make a difference, you have an opportunity to remove those barriers and give people their independence. Very powerful. Marcy Sutton curates the A11y wins blog.
• #9 We should be building interfaces which humans can use. People with disabilities and the elderly, recognizing your users have diverse needs.
• #11 … adapt themselves to fit
• #12 It will be better for everyone else. Getting the basics of accessibility right means better usability for all
• #13 And the real bonus? Taking this approach makes you a better designer.
• #14 So hopefully you are now thinking how can I do this? How do I set up my team?
• #15 I’m going to share my experiences of doing just that – set up our team to research and design inclusively – at one of the biggest departments in the UK government. If we can do this at the Home Office, then so can you.
• #16 This is absolutely pivotal. I wish I could say I done this entirely on purpose. But like some of the best things, it started with a bit of an accident. I tell you that because I want you to know that it’s ok to get things wrong as you go on this journey. I made mistakes and we learned, and now when it becomes apparent that people in the team have a disability we adapt and treat it as an opportunity. Work hard to create a comfortable environment where people feel confident to talk about their mental health or their access needs.
• #17 Why is this important? Because it helps your team to consider the full range of people they are designing for. Reduce bias, prejudice and raise awareness.
• #18 So I got this role in 2014. Spent a lot of time recruiting – bringing researchers designers into government to build public services. For those that don’t know, the team I was building was in the middle of a revolution! Martha Lane Fox report in 2010 led to the creation of the Government Digital Service.
• #19 They made an awarding website which put users needs first. Revolutionary stuff.
• #20 Developed a set of design principles and a Digital Service Standard - which all government services had to pass to go live. 1. Start with user needs And that means ALL users needs.
• #21 I have hired a lot of amazing people. 2 in 2014, now over 70 It’s worth adding here that this was an extremely busy period for me – 70+ hires in 3 years is intense. In September 2015 a new member of staff arrived. He had a visual impairment. At the end of his first week I asked him how it had been.
• #22 I felt so ashamed. Saw my ignorance. Saw accessibility in real life, for a real person. I had built ‘accessible’ websites for clients for years. But a real human being, failing to do basic tasks.I saw for myself the impact of poor design. Some things were outside my control – badly joined up recruitment and HR. I had no idea until 2 weeks before he joined that he had a visual impairment – no time to get anything in place. I used this experience as motivation to take action on the things I could control – we were building digital services for the public and staff and we had to become more inclusive.
• #23 You can’t build momentum for change unless you allow people the time and space to make it happen. I created a small team who focused on to access needs research. Set them goals and create the ethos for them to operate it. At first I didn’t have the budget for this. We did this on top of our day jobs.
• #24 They started by sharing our approach at UK government conferences. I encouraged the team to go out and start talking about it – we’re leading a change in approach.
• #25 Wanted to embed knowledge in the team - ’access specialists’ – learn more about an access need, teach those around them.
• #26 Training people – the biggest barrier is how to do this. research techniques, awareness
• #27 then opened it up across government.
• #28 Awareness training for staff in digital delivery teams. Building skills, knowledge and confidence Simulators can be a good way to build empathy – but don’t replicate what it is really like. We’ve found them useful – only as part of a combination of activities It doesn’t tell you what it’s like to walk around the street or walk into a room and not know who is in the room.
• #29 Other key thing they started: networking with charities and organsiations that could help us to find participants for user research
• #30 Last year we secured funding for our first dedicated resource and hired accessibility testers to carry out reviews, audits and most importantly – to build skills and expertise in the teams building services.
• #31 In the browser Mostly things we build in the dept.
• #32 And they are seriously in demand!
• #33 Work to build skills continues. Over 100 trained And we even trained the trainers from GDS
• #34 And producing more resources to help user researchers know how to do this.
• #35 Once we were confident people had the skills, we set a very high standard.
• #36 Flushes out problems early – extreme usability testing. most importantly - people designing services see what it is really like Ambitious and loosely held – at first – don’t hold people too tightly before they can achieve it. Statement of intent – even if you don’t manage this most of the time – you have a very clear sense of what is expected.
• #37 Led us to re-think how we approach research. Labs are not great for people with assistive tech. Which means we have been carrying out more home visits. This blind lady uses a one-handed keyboard and voiceover on Mac
• #38 And we’ve started to observe the full range of ways people use our services. And this exposed lots of things that needed fixing – we wouldn’t other wise have seen. A blind person uses iPad VoiceOver and gestures to make a Visa appointment.
• #39 Partially sighted user - ZoomText magnification software with speech in a Visa form. Means we have had to consider everything more carefully. A more complex research environment in which more things can go wrong Allow more time, greater incentives, perhaps involving the carer/PA Have to think about the safety of participants and researchers (be clear that this is about home visits) More sensitive data to collect
• #40 So Ethics and consent – and how you collect this We became members of MRS and tightened up our approach to informed consent and how you collect this form people with different abilities. We now training all our researchers in ethics and data protection. They are obliged to sign our data protection policy. We even have our own ethics board
• #41 Qualitative contextual research = learning more about the interaction Exposes you to the context
• #42 To encourage change and innovation - create the right environment for that to happen. Get that right, and those around you will build the momentum you need
• #43 Access specialists – for all the different types all of them – autism, ADHD, mental health, hearing, visual.. and they often have complex needs. One for autism. learnt a bit about it - wanted to make a resource to help others design well for people with autism. Being a designer, she wanted something visual - some core principles. So a poster. People with autism struggle to understand figures of speech – such as “raining cats and dogs”
• #44 Which became this early idea for the first poster – figures of speech.
• #45 Then she worked with the rest of the access specialists to make more.
• #46 Because we work in the open, she put them on Github. Creative commons licence. https://github.com/UKHomeOffice/posters
• #47 What is lovely about posters? People put them on walls. Then other people see them. People all over UK government, and beyond. Tweeting and blogging about them too.
• #48 We appeared in several blogs – such as ‘Accessibility Wins’. UX Design Top 10 articles to read in September 2016? – 2nd out of 1,800 that month.
• #49 Then the head of civil service tweeted about us.
• #50 Incidentally, at about this time we started bringing the agenda to a more senior level in the HO. Sarah – she had heard of the posters – came up on her LinkedIn feed. My work was already done.
• #51 Meanwhile this was like having a hit single! Overall, there's been 32,924 views, 5, 517 unique visitors to Github pages
• #52 Now translated into 14 different languages: German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, Brazilian and European Portuguese (most recently Welsh, Hungarian and Russian) This was all by other designers collaborating across the globe using Github. None of it was co-ordinated or planned - entirely organic.
• #53 Attention continues online – this is response to a tweet from a couple of weeks ago. Great to see the conversations that these continue to provoke.
• #54 Used the same format North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCCADV) and Aquent's Design for Good Grant. http://www.melissaegg.com/blog/trauma-informed-website-resources
• #55 Now making accessible PDFs so they can be read correctly by screen readers. tested with real people who use screenreaders. Testing helped us decide the best way of ordering elements – the reading order needs to match the visual order.
• #56 HTML versions: http://ukhomeoffice.github.io/posters/accessibility/dos-donts/html-posters/index.html Mobile first - a good way to think about how best to display in a limited space How best to represent this visually and cognitively: format left-aligned or centrally? One column or two? Fixed height or flexible depending on content length? Incorporate Dos first then Don’ts or have them side by side? Keeping the Do heading fixed while scrolling through the column
• #57 All of which is why I believe it makes you a better designer. Putting work out there takes confidence. Working in the open, collaborating around the world, responding to feedback and iterating makes better designs. But as we’ve also seen, good designs are accessible, an inclusive design process makes things better for everyone. As designers we can uphold people’s civil rights to access the web - let’s use it to make the world a better place.
• #58 Leadership is important.
• #59 James summarises it really nicely here. In this context think this means…
• #60 Providing cover so it can happen, being really clear about what is expected, reinforcing it where ever I can – accessibility is referenced in job descriptions, it’s in RRA, it’s asked about at interviews, Putting in place the things we identify people need help with – practical help with labs, participant recruitment, training and resources.
• #61 We’ve shown that it is possible to have many leaders.
• #62 James is providing leadership as well. Formally with his accessibility team, and across govt networks.
• #63 Also informally. He made more posters. To influence how others are approaching this.
• #64 Yesterday I attended a day of training in Mental Health First Aid provided by Rethink, Certification from MHFA England but this was organised by one of our access specialists who is leading for mental health within the community I honestly don’t think it’s possible to make this much progress in so short a time without having many leaders. Let’s just start doing something – not worry about doing it perfectly
• #65 I’ve been involved in some more formal leadership too - last year, Alistair Duggan set up a leadership network for senior civil servants who should have Digital Accessibility Lead as a substantive part of their role. I’m standing in for this – with James’ support.
• #66 Talking of leaders. This is a big deal in govt – the most senior civil servant in the department.
• #67 We’ve been pretty lucky on that one… And he takes it seriously
• #68 Well, most of the time. We are working with the perm sec to look at how we can improve the experience of working at the Home Office for people with access needs.
• #69 And he is genuinely serious about it. In terms of setting expectations, reinforcing the agenda, providing cover – he’s absolutely doing that for all of us in the Home Office. I’m incredibly grateful.
• #70 He’s getting the right people around the table to get the different aspects working better – hardware, software, the tools, devices, assistive tech that is provided as well as things like HR and recruitment And James’s team have been instrumental in reviewing tools that will be rolled out to the while civil service – and are sending suppliers away to do their homework There’s a really pleasing symmetry in that. The very tools which James struggled with on his first day – he’s now getting the chance to review their replacements. And senior people are getting very angry with suppliers who say their products are accessible when they are not!