How to deliver great accessible ServiceNow experiences for ALL people

So, let's see, today we're gonna be talking about how to deliver great accessible ServiceNow experiences for all people. Oh, did you wanna take a picture? There we go. No problem. It's a more intimate setting, so we could do whatever we want. All right. Look, we have Eileen there, she's actually one of our product managers for accessibility. (laughing) All right, so since it's Wednesday, you have probably seen this slide many times already, but if not, it basically states that anything we share with you today should not be shared or used for purchasing decisions. So thank you for joining me. I am Jamie, I'm a platform UX research manager here at ServiceNow, leading research in various focus areas, including accessibility. Today we're gonna learn and cover three major topics. You're gonna learn about the six reasons why making accessible applications is a good business decision. We're gonna talk about four considerations when getting started to making accessible applications, and also eight best practices when running an interview. So really quick, just so I can get to know you guys a little bit more, how long have you guys done accessibility? Is it a long time? No, just getting started. Yeah. Have you heard about accessibility at all? Do you know? Kind of. Okay, great. So it looks like we got a a good audience here. All right. All right. So let's baseline. So what is accessibility? How do we define it? Because I know everybody kinda defines it a little slightly differently. So accessibility means that websites, tools, applications, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use, perceive, understand, navigate, interact with, and contribute directly. And when we talk about people with disabilities, we focus on five major disability categories, and we got visual, auditory speech, cognitive and physical. And yes, this includes neuro diversity within five major disability categories. There's a total of 17 functional limitation groups, which has been grouped together according to user differences and impact within a digital experience. Not only do we care about permanent disabilities, we deeply care and drive home that disabilities also include temporary and situational disabilities. We believe that a person's disability does not who they are, but it's a variable of their being and their experience. So to answer the big question earlier, why is making products accessible good for business? You know, why should we even care? So we're gonna go over six unique value propositions besides the obvious, which is ethically, it's the right thing to do. So number one, creating accessible software allows for an expanded market reach. What that means is that allows businesses to reach broader audiences. Since designing for accessibility also benefits all meaning that when people with disabilities are able to access and use your products and services, others will reap the benefits from improved designs. And have a more positive experience overall. For instance, closed captioning. Have you guys used closed captioning before? Everyone's familiar with it. Yeah. So it's originally designed for people with disabilities, individuals specifically with hearing impairments, and yet we all use it. Accessible software also increases over satisfaction and loyalty. Optimizing software for accessibility can improve the overall user experience for all users, leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. The third benefit is compliance and regulations. So many countries have laws, regulations, and standards requiring digital accessibility such as section 508, 504, the European Accessibility Act. This also ensures that you comply with the global web standards like WCAG. So if you're not familiar with WCAG, it stands for a Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. There are basically a set of guidelines and international standards that help you make your products accessible across different disabilities. And the compliance with these regulations help businesses avoid legal risk and penalties. The next benefit for accessible software is reputation and brand image. Companies that demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and accessibility often enhance their reputation and brand image, attracting positive attention from customers, investors, and the public. It also fosters innovation and creativity, meaning that designing for accessibility often fosters a need to create innovative and creative solutions leading to the development of more innovative and user-friendly products and services. And the last reason why creating accessible software is a huge benefit to businesses is that many will need this accessible services at some. So as I mentioned previously, accessibility covers permanent, temporary And due to this, any of us can experience a disability at any point of time, and this definitely means as we age. So again, here are the six value propositions, all providing huge benefits for businesses by eliminating unseen barriers. So you might be asking yourself, this is great, where can I start? I don't really have a research team myself. Maybe I don't even have a full accessibility team, and that's okay. What we're gonna go over is actually four considerations when getting started. So briefly, really quickly, we're gonna go over what's in my toolbox? Where do I find people with disabilities? Who should I actually include in my studies and how do I best engage with them? So first off, what's in my toolbox? Well, there's actually common types of accessibility tests that you might actually be familiar with or not, In the grand scheme of things there's actually two buckets within the toolbox. There's automated tools, there's manual testing. Automated tools are fast, but they don't catch all of the issues. Manual testing is more time consuming and detailed and assesses accessibility at different levels. So it is recommended that you actually use a mixture of all of these things in order to receive a accurate assessment of what's actually going on. But what I'm gonna go over these is I'm just gonna briefly cover the ones that you're seeing right now. So within automated tools, this requires you to use a checker with a click of a button, things like X wave, any color contrast checkers. These tools check for general accessibility errors against WCAG standards. Then there's manual testing with assisted technologies, which means you are running your product through things like screen readers or alternative keyboards by yourself. And then we have expert audits, which means accessibility experts or SMEs are evaluating a product and pointing out issues against WCAG. And then we have expert usability evaluations, which again, you have accessibility experts or SMEs also evaluating a product, but from an added usability point of view. There's another type that actually you might be less familiar with, and this is called end user research. And the next couple of slides we're gonna go in and focus about going beyond and engaging directly with the actual end users with your customers who have disabilities. Thanks for joining. All right, within end user or end user research, there's actually many different types of research methodologies. Very few of them are listed here. So there's the qualitative side, which focuses on observed behaviors, things like usability testing, diary studies, concept testing, things like that. Then there's also the quantitative side, which focuses on statistics and numbers and me using methods like unmoderated testing, surveys, usage analytics. And then there's also mixed methods, which actually leverages both sides of the coins together. So what methods should you actually choose? Especially if you don't have a research team or a researcher even close by you? I recommend starting simple. So what that means is that starting off, just talking to your current customer with disabilities, your end user who have disabilities, just have a conversation, get to know them. So when you first start off, I would definitely stay clear from going into more of the quantitative side, which is the number side, but both quale and quant sides has very different considerations and limitations. So when it comes to like engaging in setup and even the type of data that you get back, it's very different. Quantitative side's a little bit more challenging in that aspect in terms of being more creative in augmenting that method. All right, so basically at the end of the story is just talking to one of your customers with one or more disabilities is a huge win. So, but where do we find these people? It's like we wanna talk to them, we know about them, we know the standards and the tools and the methodologies, but how do we find them? There's actually two ways. I'm gonna give you a bunch of ideas. So you can actually look internally within your company or you can look externally for help. So looking internally with your company, you can leverage existing analytics. You may have existing CRM systems, marketing platform, bi or analytics tools. And all of this can store a lot of your customer's data, which houses like contact information, preferences, interactions. You can collaborate with your customer support agents, and even your sales and marketing teams. They can provide valuable insights in what they're hearing from your external customers in regards to existing pain points, challenges, preferences, opportunities for engagement. They can also help identify who you can get in contact with and through what channels, and they can even help with communication materials and collateral through printouts and social media channels. Your employee network is also a wealth of feedback. So sorry, I'm getting over a sickness. Okay. Your employee network is also a wealth of feedback, so they are an easy way to start to gain feedback with your customers or even a first layer of feedback, or even act as a connector to your external customers. Lastly, you can actually build your own panel. So meaning that you can build a panel from a group of people that already have pre-agreed to participate in future research studies after being pre-screened, pre-qualified, and giving clear expectations of what types of research that they're going to get to be involved. Looking externally, you can connect with local advocacy, nonprofit or support groups, so things like disability advocacy organizations, community outreach and partnerships, community centers and disability service partners and providers. These organizations and groups may be willing to help connect you with different members. And there's also vendor support. So vendors like Level Access and fable. There's many more different types of vendors, but these are just a few to highlight. And there's also vendors who specialize in accessibility that can help reach out to individuals with disabilities. And then there's also online communities, forums, providers, research institutions, professional networks, and events, where you can network and where you can help advise and advertise your study and help recruit for your initiative. All right, so who should I include in my studies is a common question I get. A common place to start is actually using screen readers and alternative keyboards. We also recommend including a variety across all disabilities that you see listed here. Highly recommend to prioritize against your business and business needs. All right, we talked about why we should be accessible. We talked about first starting off with talking to your customers, how to find them, who you should include in your studies. So now you're ready to talk to them, but how do you best engage with individuals with disabilities? So there's eight best practices You wanna definitely allow enough time, you don't wanna rush the process. If anything, if you think you're gonna take 30 minutes, add another 20 minutes to it. You wanna make sure that everybody is comfortable in this conversation. You wanna familiarize to yourself with assistive technologies, assistive technologies, especially the participants, what assistive technologies that they're using. So assistive technologies in general, like screen readers, sip and puff magnifiers, alternative keyboards, switch devices. You kind of wanna understand how it works and functions. Then access as combinations for different assistive technologies, meaning that if you have an individual who's using a screen reader and self-identifies with being legally blind, and then you wanna showcase a design that is not coded and they can't really visualize it and can't see it, you'll have to make appropriate modifications to the study itself to make sure that they have equal access in what they're testing on. You also wanna be very respectful, obviously. You wanna use clear, respectful language, avoid jargons and acronyms, be flexible with the individual's needs and preferences. They may wanna take a break in between, and that's okay. And then encourage dialogue and feedback. All right, so I just wanted to highlight two examples here, just how ServiceNow has engaged with our customers with disabilities. So this is an example of a qualitative study in which we leveraged one-on-one in-depth interview method with 18 participants, and half of them were identified with one or more disabilities and used various different types of assistive technologies. We were asking questions around how we should optimize the agent experience across WCAG 2.1. AA reflow, you guys aren't familiar with reflow it means that everyone is zooming in at 400%, 320 pixels with no horizontal scrolling. So because we talked to our customers, we had some major learnings which impacted our product designs and roadmaps, along with understanding that not only do people with disabilities benefited from reflow, but also those who don't self-identify with disabilities as well. This is another example that we conducted, but focus in on a quantitative method, meaning the number side and engaging with 477 participants worldwide. This was a survey approach. And we'd had additional considerations for proper setup and understandability for access. The goal here was really to understand our customer satisfaction against all of our accessibility capabilities and to truly understand our strategic effectiveness and performance. And as a result, we reiterated ServiceNow's long-term commitment to accessibility, ensured usability is prioritized in parallel with conformance, and also continue to ensure accessibility is embedded in all phases of our product development lifecycle. I wanted to showcase this to you, so you can kind of get a gauge of understanding what the difference is. All right, so again, there are three key takeaways for today, which is the six reasons why making accessible is a good product design, the business decision. Four, considerations when getting started in making accessible applications. Eight best practices when running an interview. If you learned anything from today, is that you should engage with at least one person with a disability and learn from them and how to better your product. And that will make a huge difference. And just as a little freebie for you guys, since you guys have came today, I do have accessibility cards for you if you're interested. And this is our 15 persona card packet, looks like this. And this is basically the same ones that we use internally in ServiceNow to basically help us design and engineer and develop new products as well. This highlights major differences, challenges, and solutions that each persona kind of feels and goes through. So please pick one up if you want one. So thank you again for coming.