good morning ladies and gentlemen we're about to get started ladies and gentlemen we're about to get started thank you that's better hi how is everyone I hope you're doing well Welcome to our session I honestly don't remember the precise name of of what we're here to talk about terms of what's in the program but we are the the the core of what we're here to discuss is the work that we're doing together trying to understand the opportunity of mobile devices for people with disabilities and noring
markets this this came from a conversation that Pascal and I had a couple years ago now when we were talking about the differences between social and medical models of accessibility and disability inclusion and we realized that mobile devices are are underutilized as assist of Technology because of many concerns everything from redirection or selling or how useful will they be so we decided to do something about it and and and try to build some research so so bascal Kathy and I and and Maxwell
we we are here to share some early results of the of this work the work has be just begun in the last handful of months and I'm really excited what we get to learn as a quick introduction for myself my name is Christopher I lead accessibility and disability with Google Pascal is the CEO of at scale Kathy is the managing director of GDI Hub and Maxwell with CM bti i k my dyslexia is breaking it KBT thank you so at a high level and then and I'll I'll pass it off very quickly what's possible when y
ou have a device that does many things is important if you give if you spend 50s $50 for a magnifier you get to magnify something but but if you get a telephone you can go to school you can start a hustle you can you can watch YouTube and and and enjoy life what we want to do is is understand what opportunities there exist for mobile devices in terms of changing people's lives in emerging markets and so with that i' like pass Pascal to talk about what we actually doing thank you Chris uh it's gr
eat to be here on on on the stage with with Maxwell Chris and Kathy um and and thank you for for participating today um so my name is Pascal I head up at scale the global partnership for assistive technology uh just a few words about who we are and then and then I'll get to the actual um project that we're doing together um at scale is um as I said a partnership that brings together a lot of relevant stakeholders um that care about making assisted technology ranging from you know eyeglasses to h
earing aids to wheelchairs to Prosthetics to digital devices like smartphones more accessible in low and middle- inome countries we're hosted by unops based in Geneva and we really act as a fund trying to pull resources that can then be uh strategically um applied um in uh one of three ways we uh partner with countries in uh low middle- inome countries um to help strengthen their system to to enable uh better access to assistive technology we work on global public goods to um have a broader effe
ct um on all countries um to fill gaps in evidence or in normative guidance or um trying to uh make um access deals with uh the private sector to get um assistive technology uh at lower cost um and thirdly we uh work to raise awareness and advocate for more resources uh towards assistive technology and this particular project I think takes all the boxes of in terms of what we're interested in in what we're trying to do um today um sadly smartphones are not you know considered as assist of Techno
logy by most uh countries governments systems uh uh that are in place uh to support uh people with disabilities but not only also elderly populations and and so forth um um and and principally because right they're seen as something that most people already have um and and and they were consumer good um but that's not really the case right especially in in lower inome countries where there still is a big digital um divide um yet we know that um because smartphones are you know sort of have a Uni
versal Design they um reduce stigma uh for example and they also reduce cost of providing assisted technology smartphones can replace bespoke um assistive uh devices digital ones in particular um and of course there's a lot of positive externalities um with having a smartphone um so we really want to try and this was the discussion that that that Chris and I had um a while back try to influence policy to uh get smartphones to be um um included um as a resistive technology um because most many pe
ople cannot afford them um and it's not just the phone right it's also the data plans um that come with it and it's also the ability to use them so the digital literacy that is required um to make use of of smartphones what we need are accessible devices what we need are you know accessible operating systems accessible software and apps accessible content and the digital skills so through this study what we're hoping to to show um and we'll hear more about it in a in a bit is uh we're trying to
understand really how persons in particular here who have a visual or hearing impairment um actually use uh the mobile phones uh we're trying to understand what resources are needed to enable um uh effective use um we're also trying to understand what at is replaced by uh smartphones um and last but not least we're also trying to then think about how can we use the outcome of this study to promote uh uh uh sustainability of of access um and influence policy and financing options um that could be
put in place to allow this to happen um so very excited to hear the first kind of initial results the project just started not long ago right so so these are just initial findings but you'll hear more from um colleagues thank you so so next so next we'd like to show a rooll the video and this will sort of help set the frame in terms of what um what's going on and how the how the results are coming [Music] in I am [Music] felista I teach at Via Primary School for the Blind I am AIS teacher my na
me is John wangi I have been a student at Kena University pursuing a bachelor's degree in education special education specialization French and history when I I want to send a message and I'm feeling it is taking long I used to depend on people and it was a big hetic to go looking some for somebody to assist me sending because sometimes I used to write maybe in the process if it's a long message I make a mistake I I delete then I go looking for assistant but now sending a voice message or inquir
ing something from Google through talking it has made me more independent the most helpful aspects of the training that I underwent um last year was some things like uh how to navigate using an certain application known as Google lookout whereby I was taught how to navigate in my house with it um knowing what is on top of the table and also discovering the currencies Google lookout it has been so it has been so helpful to me because I don't need to ask someone to uh read the currency for me to a
ssist me in identifying how much um how much money is this I can use the Google lookout and try to discover the amount of money that I am holding and also the color of the clothes that that I am holding for instance I can uh put camera in front like this and then Google lookout it will detect a white shirs or also black uh black um coats some of the changes that I have experienced is going to the Google inquiring something by talking that one has assisted me like when I'm in class and I want to
Google a pronunciation of a word like when I'm teaching English cuz I teach K but I still teach other subjects there is the pronunciation of different words especially words with E and A now instead of going to search and to it takes time we just find the word in the Google and it tells us the right pronunciation that is one of them another thing I have said about accessing my email maybe when I want to read my pay slip it has brought up conf confidentiality because I don't have to engage somebo
dy in reading my fa a mobile assistive technology uh it's so good I think it's something that should be encouraged to and especially to those people who are like me who are visually impaired you can make phone calls you can communicate easily with people you can text and like um computers like the laptops they're not that portable so but mobile phone can be portable like now I can travel from here up to Countryside without any sighted guide because I can call a rider take me to the vehicle publi
c transport or an Uber go where I want then come back that is where we are we are now very independent with technology where we are it is very safe it is very nice that somebody who is visually impaired can operate their own phone you can do your transactions without inv involving anybody you can read your WhatsApp messages you can join different WhatsApp groups because you are not tiring anybody to read or answer respond to any messages and and for the record Google did not pay them to say thes
e nice things about our products I can confirm that Google had no editorial ability over that video and and actually just the other day you'll be pleased to know that there's lots of Google stuff being used but also Microsoft Office being used so there it's a it's an open access to to many things I'll just pull up the presentation if it's okay please um so I'm Kathy holay um I'm the academic director of the global disability Innovation Hub I'm not sure I'm the managing director but I'll happily
take the promotion if if people want to give it to me um I am a a professor at University College London and I like to investigate uh the development of new technologies and how Technologies are adopted in into markets and mobile as assist of technology is something I've been um I've been following for a number of years before Christopher and and um and Pascal came and approached us about this project we had done a very small study which I'll just quickly um I'll quickly mention because there wa
s a guy called Muhammad and Muhammad was a young visually impaired person who lives in cabara which is an informal settlement and I was it 2018 and GDI hubba just started and we had this massive program called assist of Technology 2 30 it was our big first big massive program and we're doing a small bit of research and this young Muslim guy said to me before we started the research it was all about five people we interviewed it was with kbta um asking people how they use their mobile phone or wh
at what they use their mobile phone for before we started the research he just looked at me and said may I ask you a question please and I said of course you can yeah he said what makes you different from everybody else I said what do you mean and he said well all of you you come and you ask us questions and you write reports and you go away and what changes and to this day Muhammad sort of stays with me um I would love to see the guy again but I often think well on any research project that com
es across our desk what is the point right like really will it will it impact uh any change and so when this came along we thought well this is actually a chance to make that significant impact because somebody like Muhammad at the time was using a button foam and we had no way to give him anything better than a bottom phone he made peanut butter um and he was desperate to get onto Facebook and tell people about his peanut butter but he couldn't tell anyone about his peanut butter so he had thre
e or four customers and that was it and you can imagine now he gets to be in touch with whomever he likes and also do many things so when we first started this research um there was a question mark over would people use the phones so as Pascal correctly says we knew that they wouldn't use the phones unless people were properly trained on all the accessibility features of phones and so we spent uh time developing with Google a curriculum and uh with kbta adapting that curriculum to the local cont
ext and that was rolled out and it has worked very well so just and literally people have had the phones a few weeks and we're already seeing millions of of usages lots of times that is social media um and I know that policy makers sometimes might think well why are people on social media but as we all know social media is many things um and so we have a series of qualitative uh research happening uh with our colleagues at kbta but also with our colleagues in um India and our colleagues in Brazi
l so we will have nearly a thousand participants when the study finishes 50% of whom will be hearing impaired and 50% of whom will be blind or partially cited we will have interviews with about 300 of those people and about 50 to 60 people will be followed over a year there our expectation that people will change how they use a phone as they learn to use more things but also hope hopefully as their life opportunities increase um by using the phone so we've still got a long way to go so even in t
he initial interviews I mean you heard some wonderful stories there from our participants but we also realized that most speech to language models are based on English most of that model of data has been collected in the United States for America Canada Europe and so there's there's accents problems people maybe don't pick up um a Kenyan speaking English accurately for example we also have problems we've discovered a lot of problems um about Acoustics uh in in the environment and in these real l
ife environments which are very loud which are you know which cause cause problems and obviously people in Kenya don't particularly want to speak English so we have a problem with language and trying to get Regional languages on boarded and and adapt to colloquial um speech but we've had um some great feedback so I'll quickly share some feedback from the participants in India and then I'm going to hand over over to my good friend and colleague Max um from kilan blind trust to talk a little bit m
ore in depth about what we're finding in Kenya I think in India there's been a massive uh sort of desire to explain how it's made people feel more equal it's allowed people to feel like they can access things for themselves and I think that came through uh in the video as well um and we're finding because we've interacted in India with a number of people who are already uh training as groups um in college es to to become teachers that we're noticing how they're training each other and the WhatsA
pp tracks are immense I'm learning stuff on this WhatsApp chat of accessibility features that I I didn't realize so we're also sort of crowdsourcing uh that data we're trying also to use a bit of those academics in the room a more of an action research frame across the year so that as we learn things we adapt maybe intervene with different interventions of digital skills to help people go that little bit further and with that I shall hand over to Max so he can tell you about the user training in
Kenya thank you um thanks Kath um um my name is Maxwell joa I'm the programs manager at Kilimanjaro Brest Africa uh it's an honor to be here to also share our insights um from Kenya based on our experience having um been involved in this uh research right from the beginning um um and it really aligns uh with our accomodate in trying to bridge The Divide in terms of access to assistive devices for uh persons with disabilities in Africa um of course as my colleague Kathy has said we uh we targeti
ng both the research was targeting both uh um persons with visual impairment and those with hearing impairment at 50 50% uh each and um uh and some of the uh um actually that we were able to get from the participants of course um and even before I get to that is that we provided trainings to these individuals on how to use their access accessibility features uh in these devices yes so um uh uh we we we provided training to these participants on how they can be able to use accessibility features
in these devices and then uh we are able now to um of course observe over time and see how they're able to employ these accessibility features and um as you all know well you may not know but um Mobile payment for instance in Kenya is a big thing um you want to buard the public transport you pay uh through mobile um phone you want to uh um send money to a loved one it's always through mobile phone literally one can spend um an entire week without interacting with cash so then uh as persons with
visual impairment and and those with head impairment were involved in the study were Keen to see how they can be how um um they can employ mobile phones as a as a syst uh uh technology to unlock um uh uh uh some of the barriers that they have had for a very long time especially when it comes to uh um uh issues around privacy when they making mobile payments and um this is something that even from the video that Pascal showed us you can already hear um feedback from the part a participant saying
that now they feel they have some level of confidentiality um then also um uh we also looking at uh uh um for instance communication um how best can we then use mobile as an assistive technology to uh enable communication between different domains of disability uh for instance those with hearing impairment and um and uh and and and those with uh uh visual impairment and uh this also came in handy um uh uh because then they were able to use caption calls to communicate to each other uh then also
um uh one thing that this research did is that we tried to ensure that we have um participants across different um uh uh domains for instance uh we had participants who are in business we had participants who are in who are students we had teachers you had a teacher giving feedback on how they are able to employ these assist these accessibility features in in in in teaching um they those who are now employing those features in business and they also um uh uh uh participants for example who are u
m um more like content creators and they're already giving feedback on how they can be able to employ these accessibility features to create content and um again we live in a world where now advocacy is actually um moving from you know carrying placards and you know and all that and for instance now there's power in in in in uh in having advocacy uh mostly uh being done online and in Kenya um there's what we call the Kenyans on Twitter well it's it's right now it's uh it's X and um through that
actually we've been able to um through the power of kenyons on Twitter we've been able to makes advocate for changes in in policies and now um we came toward to see how best we can ensure that even those with disability can be involved in advocacy uh through social media uh by employing accessibility features that are available in U in Mobile phones uh um but then also looking at widely at policy level how best we can be able to of course after the research use this research to push for the gove
rnment to ensure that even um now uh uh uh because of course in Kenya we import fonts um uh there's conversation to start assembling fonts locally in Kenya uh with the current regime but then even as that is coming we hope that by the time that starts uh this report will be out then now we can ensure that the government even as they have conversation to start local assembling of fonts they're able to employ these standards to ensure that person with disabilities are also able to benefit from uh
um uh these initiatives yeah thank you thank you Max well one of the interesting things that we we've learned throughout the process is you don't know where the problems are going to exist naively I assumed since most of these smartphones are using Android which is a highly accessible platform that you could just pick any Android off the street and and and use it but what we found literally the day we were doing our training is that sometimes they break it so I'm not going to name any names no n
o naming and shaming but this this this this manufacturer that we had originally chosen had added a skin on top top of the phone and we got the phones the day before the training I checked to make sure the features I I knew were were working but it wasn't until the that morning when we turned on TalkBack which is the screen reader for Android did we realize that this skin that this manufacturer had added to the phone broke the phone broke the camera broke the contacts so I went into this with a
set of assumptions Google thought if it's Android you're fine we learned it's not so so by having these conversations by doing this research we identify where the problems are and this gives us an opportunity to try to to push for solutions that really help everybody so we're we've already learned really interesting things even before getting started that could really have a profound impact and for me that's the exciting thing about this kind of collaboration where we have private and public par
tnership coming together with experts in in in education identifying where the problems are so we can solve them holistically because just having a phone with no training is isn't going to do you any good having a Fone that isn't accessible because someone accidentally broke it isn't going to do any good only by bringing all of these things together can we have a solution that really meets the needs of of zero barriers for anyone um Pascal do you want to talk about or that was what I wanted to s
ay but given that we've sort of had four sets of talks I want to give us a chance to talk amongst ourselves and you get to participate so Pascal want to say something it was just again about some of these learnings or things that we kind of suspected but are now becoming much more apparent but it's also this issue of the language um and and the fact that there are not that many languages available uh with many of these of these apps and so one of the things that we're also now doing is trying to
um make sure that we have more of these uh uh languages um so for example this year we worked with UNICEF to um add kazak uh um for text to speech functionality and we're going to be working with on South Vietnamese and and sisana which is a language spoken in southern Africa um so I think you know there's a lot of different pieces here that that need to come together um and and we need to find ways to accelerate that I mean uh we haven't spoken today about AI yet but um um I do think that that
is also a huge opportunity in terms of you know the ability to adapt also to Accents and and and things like that Kathy just to come in on on the idea of product and training so I think anybody who works in the more formal setting of assistive technology would agree with the who's definition that an assist of technology is not just a product but you must it it's all the services that go into getting the product to people right so if I'm a wheelchair user I need to learn how to use my wheelchair
safely transfer out that wheelchair you know pressure relief on on my wheelchair um know how to get that prepared know when I need an upgrade to my wheelchair or a downgrade depending on on which way my condition might be going um and yet sometimes you know I'm a professor in computer science and I have so many people developing so many apps I can't tell you how many people email me apps new apps and and I speak to even just colleagues friends of mine who are speech and language therapists sayi
ng there's there's 900 apps so which which one do they help people with right there's there's 900 of them and and most of those were just in English um so it's almost you know easier if you don't speak English and maybe speak Spanish or Portuguese you'll have potentially fewer to choose from but when we were designing the training it was really important to us that people get the phone they get to learn how to use the phone at their own pace as well because in different geographies so for exampl
e between Kenya and India and Brazil people have had different educational experiences because of the maybe the stigma within uh Societies or potentially because of the geographies we're working in within within those uh communities and so some people might be able to absorb a lot of information uh in one day and other people might only be able to absorb one hour of that information in one day and what they need is then some remote assistance that works you know at their level so that they're ab
le to then absorb and learn at their own pace but so we've got this interesting challenge if you like so on the one hand we're develop as um Christopher said we're we're finding initially that was a hilarious Dash across Nairobi to a mall to buy some new phones that day when we were kicking off the project with like press there and you know the usual things and we definitely tested the phones beforehand and it was all definitely going to work and then we got there and it was just like button but
ton button button this is not not going to work so you know we've learned something about the hardware how do we get how do we get the phone manufacturers to to do a better job of of not stripping out the accessibility features that were there in the first place um how do how do we make sure we get the training such that it's right for the person and it's right for the context and then also if I'm really honest how do we get the data so some of the data we've installed an application on the mobi
le phone that will track your usage now I don't know about you but if I said you I'm going to install something on your phone and I'm going to track what you use your phone for I mean your immediate response would be not sure really not sure about that so also just trying to explain to people who've never had a mobile never had a smartphone before what we're installing what data we're collecting where that data is securely being stored and we're not we don't know who they phone or what they watc
h on YouTube or what we just know is the sort of aggregate youve spent you know two hours on productivity apps You' spent three hours on educational apps you've used these accessibility features 50 100 times and and then we have the the interviews to go you know alongside making sense of that so I think it's been an interesting case to try and explain that you know get get that not only in a way that it works for participants but also works for ethics committees and things like that so um and an
d it's and it's I think it's worked it's working very well as a partnership and I I hope that by the end of it we will have insights not just on manufacturers and handsets not only for policy makers um but also for designers because a lot of the people who are designing the next generation of Technology maybe don't realize that it's the onboarding process and the training process and the awareness I mean just because you have a phone doesn't mean you're aware of an appliation and then if you're
aware of an application doesn't mean you can afford the application and then if you can afford the application it doesn't mean you can afford to do the training or and learn how to use it and so all of those bits of the jigsaw have to be put into what was a mainstream bit of tech which is different to when it was an you know an augmented and assisted piece of communication device where some clinician helped me spend weeks learning to use it so and and that awareness issue is is real it's not jus
t an issue within Emerging Markets so many people I work with on a regular basis don't know about the applications that could help them today that exist on their phones or how to use the tools that they already have in their pocket or their purse so awareness is a problem around the world solving it for this context is is is even more difficult um we have about 10 minutes until we wanted to stop so I wanted to open up the floor to questions for people in the room or officer please um I I I just
wanted to add that um because um one of the observation that we also made was actually that um we tried to um diversify um our data and try to have some participants from a few participants from the rural setup and we realized that um those from the rural St majority of them actually did not have access to smartphones and neither did they know about accessibility features um and agree with Chris that um because um uh those from the urban setup especially Nairobi some of them had access to smartp
hones but never knew about the accessibility features that are available in these phones so I think um also um uh there's need to be increased awareness especially uh even with the manufacturers um so that as they sell the product the buyers are able to know some of the features that they can be able to benefit from uh uh to facilitate their um uh accessibility when they're using uh these devices thank you and another interesting thing to think of is as you get to know a tool like us like a smar
tphone this novelty it's it's new and exciting and you're going to you're going to use it in in a certain way have certain expectations but six to nine months later the profile is going to be different your expectations are different so what's really exciting for me is that this isn't a a one- month study or two-month study we're following these people for six to nine months so we really get to see the evolution of their expectations and their skills changing and we really get to have a better c
hance to see are we actually helping their lives be become better so this is one of the things I'm frankly most proud of I've worked done on my entire career so thank you all for for for dealing with me any any other questions before we move to the audience so questions for the audience please um gentlemen the back with a nice long beard sorry couldn't figured out the mic um I am K show from bench Chris amazing panel and all the work you have done and all of you are doing um at Ben Tech we have
a similar project we ran in India in which we got 600 phones out to schools for the Blind and seen tremendous impact and my question from our work uh that I wanted to ask is one around you know it's really amazing that you all are getting phones out and learning and how you can improve the phones to make it more applicable for uh those with disabilities but particularly when it comes to education settings content is really really important and there are lots of failed experiments in the past of
getting technology into hands of students who didn't work so I wanted to talk about here how you are dealing with the content particularly local content problem and then the second thing for you know I think maybe Pascal is uh you know we did we were able to get 600 devices donated but the program's scaling and now we're looking for tens and thousands of devices and how do you um um you know how do you actually help create the environment so that uh those who actually cannot afford these devices
that actually provide opportunities for them to get devices at bigger scale Kathy do you have any thoughts on on on content yeah I would say that we we're not doing any content so that's the short answer our research is just to look at what what people will do when given the device that that's it's a very basic uh First Step um and a hand over to Pascal for the scale of devices but you know sure be more policy side but one one piece of work that we were doing before with uh gsma was looking at
impacting the mobile network operators and and demonstrating the the ability just like with gender when a lot of women didn't own mobile phones in Emerging Markets the the disability Market once people have phones they've often become power users especially the deaf Community you know they're often consuming a lot of data because they do a lot of video calls right so they actually there's a there's a market case and that that doesn't answer your question which is for the people who are who can't
afford them which is where I will hand over to Pascal so that's a great great question it's one that we are also asking ourselves um you know the phones that are being used in this study I think the cheapest ones we could find that had the minimum features were about $150 or so um which of course is Out Of Reach for many people in the in the countries we we work with um and so the question obviously is if we go to scale how do we how do we change that um how do we incentivize uh phone companies
manufacturers to um you know try to develop lower cost phones but that yet still meet the minimum uh accessibility um criteria and so there's more work to be done on on on really trying to set these out um to help the ma the the manufacturers um understand this better because they may not know exactly what what those are um we're also looking at um and we're actually going to do um a piece of work on this this year and we'd love to talk to you about it as well separately um uh looking at differ
ent models that exist out there financing models um because there are countries that are today covering smartphones um as part of the benefit package for people with disabilities um you know I think in Israel for example U 50% of the cost is covered um Georgia I think has just added uh smartphones to their essential list of uh assisted products and are covering that as part of the benefit for people with a disability card um so so there are examples out there and we're trying to get gather those
and and see what might make most sense I think there's also micr financing maybe or micr credit opportunities um to explore to make to make phones uh those phones more accessible but what we mustn't also forget is that it's not just the device it's then also the data plan um that recurring monthly costs and here we're also speaking to uh the service providers the Safari coms of the world um to try and see what might be done um from that perspective for people with with with disabilities so more
work to do yeah I I was just um looking at the Innovative financing models and I'm thinking for instance in the context of Kenya where we have um tax exemption for um assistive devices but you see mobile phones have never been considered as U assisted devices so they're subjected to tax whether they're being used by uh persons disabilities or not so I think um through this research then now um once the report is out now we have a role um as um as csos to now um uh talk to the government to star
t considering mobile phones as assisted devices for especially for person's disabilities so that they Exempted from tax to bring the cost down but also at a time when we when the government is having conversational conversations around having low cost production by local assembly so I think that also uh just to ensure that um they access their standards um uh uh accessib standards that must be met uh when this is done to to also uh um uh make these phones more more affordable for person with dis
abilities thank you mael it it seems to me that what we've covered is is a really interesting chain of multiplication by zero if you need to have a phone that is Affordable if it's not it doesn't work you need to have a device that is has accessibility features that are understood if that doesn't happen it doesn't work you need to have a data plan plan that is Affordable if that doesn't happen it doesn't work you need to have content that is accessible if that doesn't happen it doesn't work so w
hat we're doing we're stitching together this story and this opportunity to identify how do you make this a reality and this is an exciting opportunity we're still very early but it it feels like we're on the right track thank you very [Applause] much
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