Notes from Web4All 2017 Day 1

 

Web4All 2017 Day 1 Notes

The Australian Human Rights Commission has begun a study on employment discrimination for the older workers and those with a disability.

While about a quarter of the population is older, they make up just 16 per cent of the workforce. Australians with a disability make up 15 per cent of the working age population, but only 10 per cent of them have jobs.

The inquiry will seek to identify the barriers that prevent people from working, and in consultation with employers, affected individuals and other stakeholders establish strategies to overcome these barriers.

Willing to Work

The Australian government has historically had a higher unemployment rate for PWD than other countries.

Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy was influenced by the work done in European countries. Unfortunately, the tools were not accessible when it launched. So people with disabilities had trouble accessing the participation forms.

Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy PDF version

Crowd Sourcing

• Not always for the better
• low-skill work
• characterized by low pay
• Work is changing
• flexible work schedules
• on-demand hours

Future of Crowd Work CHI 2013 paper.

Current crowd labor platforms do not offer opportunities of growth

Audio Transcription

26% of micro tasks are audio transcriptions

Audio transcription

• latency : days
• skill: medium
• price paid $5/hour or less

How do you give transcribers an opportunity to move from audio transcription to stenographer

stenographer

• latency: seconds
• skill: high
• price paid: $100/hour or more

Not useful until you are an expert

Scopist

Enable workers to learn stenographer

Open Steno Project provides a virtual steno tool that doesn’t require expensive equipment. This is useful for learning to become a stenographer.

Disambiguating steno from qwerty is critical, as the text entry allows for both inputs.

A-L could be “alas” or could be a chord for “something”.

Evaluating the accessibility of the job search and interview process for people who are blind and visually impaired.

• PEAT study in 2014
• e-recruiting difficult to impossible
• Working from home for people with a disability

Working from Home with Rosemary Smart from WordTrack

Stanford study of working from home in China, great increase in productivity

Some people returned to office after working at home.

Management roadblocks

• lack of trust
• communication difficulties
• overlook achievements.

The challenge of continually
increasing our value to
customers and communities
requires creativity and insights
that only a diverse workforce
can deliver.
EMEIA Diversity and Inclusiveness report

Able to read my mail: communication paper nominee

Kolumba email program for people with intellectual disabilities:

• text simplification and text to pictograph
•  integrates with gmail accounts. provides accessibility layer to convert to simple text or pictograms.

steps

• text analysis
• complex words detection
• word sense disambiguation
• synonyms ranking
• language realization

“Your automobile has been repaired”
is converted to:
Your car has been fixed”.

Eva, whose son was born in 2010, lives in France, becomes:

• Eva lives in France
• The son of Eva was born in 2010

text to speech uses HTML5 based client speech synthesizer

Crowd work accessibility problem – communication paper nominee

Increasing popularity of crowd work, how can we make sure all people can do the jobs.

What is the accessibility for these platforms.

Platforms for the Gig economy, freelance economy, etc…

• amazon MT
• leadGenius
• taskRabbit
• up work
• clickworker

PWD may benefit

• flexible work
• work when you want
• laws are making this easier (disability income + job income)
• find work matching your skills

There was a higher rate of people with autism using these platforms than other disabilities

Considerations for implementing a holistic organizational approach to accessibility

Accessibility usability and UX

technical

• guideline conformance
• assistive technology compatibility

operational

• efficient
• low error rate
• error recovery

psychological

• learnable
• useful
• appropriate
• satisfying

effective product use and positive UX

Accessibility Maturity

1. Unrecognized
   • UX is not important
   • Product
2. Interested
   • UX is important but receives little funding
   • Workstreams
3. Invested
   • UX is very important and formalized programs emerge
   • Projects
4. Committed
   • UX is critical and executives are actively involved
5. Engaged
   • CSR programs
   • CAO
6. Embedded
   • Business strategy

Technical accessibility

legislative requirements to launch

Operational accessibility

how can customers use the product effectively and efficiently?

Psychological accessibility

what do our competitors do? what will customers expect?