In a blog post published in mid-October, Google’s senior director of products for all Eve Andersson shared news of new accessibility features designed to “have even more accessible features across our products that are built with and for people with disabilities.” The recently-announced features include the ability to find disabled-owned businesses in Google Maps and Search, finding accessible walking routes in Maps, finding wheelchair accessible information in more public places, and more.
In an interview ahead of the announcement, Google’s head of strategy and programs for accessibility and disability inclusion, Laura Allen, spoke to me via videoconference about her role at the company, as well as some of the aforementioned new features. A 13-year Googler, as employees are colloquially known, Allen has spent the last decade working on accessibility; she told me it’s been exciting to be part of what she described as “the huge growth when it comes to accessibility at Google, which has been so exciting.” In her current position, Allen works on accessibility-oriented initiatives happening both inside and outside the company. Her team focuses on internal partnerships, which involves education about disability and accessibility within the organization.
Allen is part of a broader “products for all” team, led by Andersson, that Allen likened to operating by a hub-and-spoke model. There’s a central group, of which Allen is a part, that works horizontally across Google to provide support and teaching on matters regarding accessibility and disability inclusion. According to Allen, members of her team embed with the Chrome team, the Android team, and other groups in an effort to help ensure their work is as accessible and inclusive as possible.
“We found this is the best way to release scale and gain the right momentum; they have to be part of those design discussions and launch processes. I’m really embedded in the team to make the culture work with accessibility,” Allen said of Google’s institutional philosophy on accessibility. “We do a lot of work from our central team [in] helping to try to create alignment across all of these teams. We are all marching towards that same mission, but we are doing it from different corners of Google [and] creating the right alignment is really important. We do things like consulting with the different product managers [and] helping with different accessibility testing across product areas. We figure out how we better scale or different internal standards and guidelines around how to conduct accessibility audits at Google, lots of different things like that. We also have a subset of our team that’s focused on external engagement when it comes to how we show up at events and scale our content and make sure that our communities are aware of of the different features and the progress we’re making, whether that’s through video creation or through social strategy and things like that.”
Although it’s Allen’s responsibility to evangelize accessibility throughout Google, her role truly is focused on strategy and partnerships. She added there are others whose work on accessibility is concretely centered on components like the user experience in terms of design and engineering.
The work she does at Google is a deeply personal endeavor to Allen. She is a disabled person herself, telling me she has “a very rare condition” that significantly impacts her central vision. As such, Allen uses a variety of accessibility software such as color inversion, text-to-speech, magnification, and more. In terms of activism, Allen said she’s heavily involved—one of the global leaders, no less—in Google’s employee resource group, or ERG, for disabled workers called Disability Alliance.
“I’ve been involved for many years because it’s so critical to have a true bridge between our employee resource group of Googlers with disabilities, as well as parents and caregivers of people with disabilities, with the teams building the accessibility features,” Allen said of her involvement with Disability Alliance. “We need to make sure we’re really pulling in our own internal community in addition to external users through user research and things Like conferences and partnerships with other organizations. That’s been a big focus of mine: continuing to help make sure we have a smooth line of communication between the accessibility teams across Google as well as the Disability Alliance org.”
As to the actual meat of the announcements made by Google, my conversation with Allen coincided with October being national Disability Employment Awareness Month. In our discussion, Allen was particularly excited to talk to me about the ability to locate disabled-owned businesses in Google Maps and Search. The feature, Allen explained, is launching first in the United States, and is continuation on the theme of highlighting minority-owned businesses such as Black-owned businesses, LGBTQ-owned businesses, Asian-owned businesses, and others. Allen told me the “we’re thrilled those of us in the disability community” are being represented and included in this way, especially in context of National Disability Employment Awareness Month.
“The way it works is the business owner, or anybody who’s authorized to make updates to the business profile, is the only person who can go in and opt into this. It’s fully optional. It’s opt-in,” Allen said. “We do hope many business owners take the time to identify as disabled-owned if that does apply to them. “We really think it’s so meaningful and so powerful for the community to keep adding this important information and helping to celebrate diversity of these different businesses.”
She continued: “I feel like it’s a great time to celebrate the awareness of businesses that are owned by disabled people. It’s wonderful.”
Elsewhere, Allen told me about how the wheelchair accessibility tool is important because, as she said, it’s crucial to help disabled people “not necessarily [drive] all the way to a place and then find out it’s inaccessible.” Users can find out of a place has accessible restrooms, as well as stair-free entrances and exists. This feature is available both on Android phones as well on Android Auto in cars. Similarly, the walkable directions feature achieves the same broader goals but Allen said has a “curb cut effect.” The features, however foremost designed for the disabled population, has the potential to benefit literally everyone.
“If somebody, for example, is pushing a stroller, or if somebody has a lot of luggage with them, or if somebody broke a leg and has a temporary disability and is using crutches, this is where that functionality becomes widely applicable and useful for a lot of people,” Allen said.
When asked about the feedback on the new software, Allen said everyone is “definitely excited” and that feedback has been “very positive” thus far. Allen told me Google genuinely thinks about how they make lives better, in ways big and small. She pointed to the Guided Frame feature that allows Blind and low vision people take better pictures like selfies as one example. Disabled people, whether inside Google or not, have provided the company invaluable feedback on what the company has put out, especially as it relates to improvement. For her part, Allen said she’s excited about the navigational features because it not only brings more representation, but it raises more awareness about accessibility in the physical world. Likewise with the disabled-owned businesses. All told, “these are all good signals” for accessibility and the community.
“I think, generally, [there has been] positive sentiment internally about this,” Allen said of the response to Google’s ongoing efforts in furthering accessibility and disability inclusion. “We’re continuing to be heads down and continuing to keep working. We know there’s more to do—of course, there’s always work to do. But it is nice to sort of reflect and be able to celebrate these great accomplishments across the teams.”
Looking towards the future, Allen jokingly told me she could’ve spent forever discussing where she wants accessibility at Google—and societally writ large—to go going forward. In the spirit of conciseness, she reduced her hopes and dreams to, at least in terms of as far as Google is concerned, it isn’t only people who officially have the word accessibility in their job titles who should be thinking about it. Owing to her role, Allen said she and her team will continue pushing on normalizing accessibility company-wide. The challenge lies in the fact Google is such a sprawling, dynamic organization. To that end, Allen told me of an internal event, now in its tenth year, called Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Week, that happens every October. The event consists of “over 100 different sessions going on, about so many different things” related to accessibility and disability; they include technical talks, guest speakers, and more. (As a point of comparison, Google’s peer and South Bay neighbor in Adobe does something similar with its Adobe For All Days.) Allen called the whole thing “really exciting event” that exists to educate and enlighten and build excitement and momentum around accessibility and disability inclusion vis-a-vis technology.
The week is so popular, Google turned into an all-month affair.
Anyone working in accessibility, like Allen, knows the work is evergreen.
“I definitely want to see more education and tools [around accessibility] out there,” she said. “There’s so much possibility out there.”
Read the full article here
