ROGER BENZ: Hello.
My name is Roger Benz.
I'm a program manager for G Suite accessibility.
In this role, I work with our product teams
as they make our products much more accessible.
I also work with teams across Google
who are also working on making our products more accessible.
I also work with some internal teams
as they collaborate with us on improving
product accessibility.
And I also do informational sessions externally,
like this, to help people understand and know
about accessibility features and how to use our products.
So today, I want to give a short introduction
on what is accessibility, why is it important,
and I want to spend most of my time talking about the G Suite
accessibility features that we have that empower inclusion.
And then I'm going to wrap up with some more resources
and information for you.
So in the world, the estimate is that 15% of the world
population has a type of a disability.
And this can range from someone who's
say, cognitive impaired, motor impaired,
deaf or hard of hearing, or visually impaired.
And for those 15% of the population
amounts to about one billion people in the world.
So again, it's a huge amount of people who have a disability.
And to give you an idea of the scale of that,
there are actually more people in the world who
are colorblind than those who speak
English as a native language.
And when we talk about it, though again it's
one billion people, but it also is one person at a time.
And in fact, I myself am blind and I use a screen reader
every day at Google as I do my job using
our tools plus their tools.
In fact, I'd had headphones plugged in,
so you weren't hearing the screen reader.
So now, I'm going to unplug the headphones,
and then you'll start hearing, from this point on, the screen
reader.
So you're experiencing what I'm experiencing
as I'm going through the rest of this presentation.
SCREEN READER: Volume slider 84%.
Page change.
Slide six of 26.
Accessibility is more than a screen reader.
ROGER BENZ: So when we do talk about accessibility,
a lot of people think it's a screen
reader for those who are blind.
I guess that is one of the important tools that we have.
But there are also other tools, like magnification
and contrast, which I'll touch on again later
in this presentation.
There are switch devices for people
who are motor impaired, which means instead
of using a full keyboard, and maybe just using essentially
a two button keyboard.
Or they may use an eye gaze to navigate
around a screen and work and interact with a screen.
Or they may even use voice control--
that's one of the features we have on our mobile devices.
Also, for someone who's hard of hearing person,
closed captioning-- it's available, which, in this case,
I'm actually running closed captioning
with this presentation, and I'll talk about that again later on.
But not everybody that is disabled
is using assistive technology.
Sometimes they are just doing things slightly differently,
but the two things do add up to give you a total solution that
allows more inclusion in the community, schools,
and workplaces.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 7 of 26, empower inclusion.
ROGER BENZ: So what does accessibility do?
Well, one of the things it does is
it empowers inclusion, which means
we have a huge impact on people's lives.
For example, if you're a student,
the accessibility may help the student
to be mainstreamed in the classroom with their teammates,
or they may be using the same technology
as their classmates, which means that they're
going to feel more included and be
able to be more comfortable, more productive,
and participate more into the classroom activity.
And that's going continue through grade school,
high school, college, or even after you get out
of college to anyplace that you're doing--
where you need to learn things.
I, myself, constantly need to be learning,
and I do that using the assistive technology and screen
reader.
Also, the accessibility has an impact on somebody's career,
or jobs--
that being able to have the assistive technology
allows somebody to get a job and advance their career.
In fact, if our products didn't work with a screen reader,
I would actually be unemployed.
And I much prefer being employed.
So if-- because if I wasn't, instead
of doing this presentation recorded here from my home,
I would be at home, unemployed.
So again, it's all very important for [INAUDIBLE]
for success.
Also talking about the inclusion aspect,
the better the technology works, the more the person
can be able to participate in the things at his job,
and be able to advance, and be more productive,
and have a much more successful and rewarding career
to help [INAUDIBLE].
And also inclusion-- the accessibility feature also
allows more inclusion in community, in society, and also
with your friends and family, because then you're
able to communicate with them, connect with them,
participate in meetings, and training--
just all kinds of different things
that you can do by being able to use the accessibility
features to be more included.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 9 of 26, G Suite.
ROGER BENZ: So when I talk about G Suite,
this is our communication, collaboration,
and productivity tools, which includes products like Gmail,
Slides, which I'm using here, and also Google Meet, which I'm
also using for this recording.
And then there's also, say, Drive,
and Docs, and Sheet, and Slides, and Classroom,
and a lot of other products that make up
the G Suite suite of products.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 10 of 26, supportive assistive technology.
ROGER BENZ: The main thing we've done with our technology
is we've designed it to work with the tools
and the technology-- or platforms in the technology
that you're using.
For example, Screen Reader, like I'm using here,
could be also the contrast or magnification that will be used
on, say, the products that you're using,
be it a mobile device, an Android,
or an iOS device, a desktop computer, or a laptop computer.
Be it a Windows or a Chromebook, which is what
I'm using here, or even a Mac.
Now, what we designed this for is
that, when you use a technology that you want to use,
our products are designed to work with it.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 11 of 26, automated real time captioning.
ROGER BENZ: So one of the the features
I want to talk about first is the automated real time
captioning, which is what's trending right now in Slides,
where, as I'm speaking, our servers and computers are
taking that, and converting it to text,
and showing it on the screen.
And that continues throughout their representation.
Another form of real time captioning
is what we have in Google Meet, where the client-- the user
can turn on captioning at their own particular device.
And it'll also show you who's been saying what.
The [INAUDIBLE] difference is, when you're using this caption
that I'm using here, it's broadcast to everybody that's
viewing the presentation.
Whereas if you're using the captioning that's
in Google Meet, that is applied to just the individual device
the person is using.
The other thing is, when you record a--
say, a presentation with the slides, then the captioning
is part of the recording.
Whereas in Google Meet, if you do the recording,
the captions is not part of the main content.
It's only again at the individual person.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 12 of 26, closed captions.
ROGER BENZ: But what you can do, then,
is if you do make a recording, you can put it
into Google Drive, and then you can add a caption file to that
so that, when somebody is playing it back,
and they do want the captions, they
can turn that on and have captions,
along with the recording of the audio and the video.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 13 of 26, keyboard.
ROGER BENZ: So another feature that we've done
is we design our products to work with a keyboard, or just
a keyboard.
So you don't have to use a mouse, which
is important to somebody who's, say, like I am,
where I can't see where the mouse is,
but I need to be able to use the keyboard
to navigate, and interact with content, and read information.
Also, that holds true for, say, somebody
who's [INAUDIBLE] like a switch device, where they
need to be able to navigate from where
they're using the keyboard.
The other thing about our keyboard features--
for example, say you're in Gmail.
You can press the letter C to start and compose.
Or if you're in Google Docs, you can best control-alt-2
to apply hidden level 2.
By doing those, we've actually provided keyboard shortcuts
that allows people to be more productive and faster.
So we can actually turn somebody into a power user
by using the keyboard shortcut.
So in many ways, even though I'm a Screen Reader user,
I'm a power user, because I know the shortcuts, which
allows me to be more efficient and more productive
doing my job, which applies to a lot of other people
who are doing--
who are using the keyboard.
So another powerful feature we having in G Suite or Google
Docs is voice typing, editing, formatting.
This is where you can turn on--
using the microphone on your computer,
say, here in this Chromebook that,
when you're in Google Docs, you--
what you say is basically you're dictating the content
into your document.
So you can speak, say, a report, or a memo,
whatever it is that you're wanting to create.
Then you can go back, and you can do formatting.
For example, you can bold information or italicize it.
You can also do editing.
So if you don't like something, you
can go in, and select it, and delete it all with your voice.
And these type of features and whether they're useful has--
allows somebody to be able to get
beyond the point of trying to figure out how to type
and get content created that can get onto the task,
eventually entering the information.
A little bit of a story here is we were at a conference one
time, and we had a woman walk up to us would say,
I want to thank Google.
And we're like, for what?
And she says, I used to struggle at home with our daughter
doing her homework in the evening,
but when we learned about the voice typing feature,
they were able to--
the student was able to focus and do
the work a whole lot easier, which made the family
situation much happier.
The student was much more successful in school
just because they were able to use an accessibility feature,
which allowed for better inclusion
into the home and the school environment.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 15 of 26, magnification.
ROGER BENZ: So another feature we have is
where we are designed to work with magnification
that the user will be using.
For example, on the Chromebooks here, you
can turn on magnification.
And as you do, [INAUDIBLE] move it around.
An in screen, the content is being magnified up
to, say, 2x or even 16x so that somebody
who has lost some of the vision will able to see the content.
For me, I suffer from retinitis pigmentosa,
which is over a couple of decades
I went from having essentially 20/20 vision to the point now
where I have basically no vision at all.
Sometimes I have a little bit of light perception.
And then with magnification, it moves around
so it's basically kind of like having a magnifying
glass that's moved around on screen
that allows me to see it.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 16 of 26, high contrast, dark mode.
ROGER BENZ: So another thing we do
that's also related to somebody with visual impairments is
to increase the contrast, and sometimes this is--
instead of, say, having black letters
on a dark gray background, somebody
may want to have black letters on a white background,
or the other way around where you
have white letters on a black background.
And there's a couple of ways that contrast is done--
is it can be through technology that you're
using on laptop and stuff, or you can go into Gmail
and turn on a high contrast screen.
Or with [INAUDIBLE] products, we now
support dark mode, where you can go in and have essentially
inverted text so that it's easier to see.
And one thing I want to mention is on the magnification
and the high contrast--
is you make it up to go into-- if you're using Docs, Sheets,
and Slides, go into the tools menu,
go under accessibility settings, and enable magnification
support.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 17 of 26.
ROGER BENZ: So another type of assistive technology
we use and support is screen readers Again,
as I'm going from slide to slide,
you're hearing the screen reader verbalize
the title of the slide, which is important to me
so that I can have confidence that I'm on the slide
that I'm talking about, and also get a reminder which slide so I
know what to be talking about.
But the screen readers provided contextual information
relative to what the user is doing.
So if you start navigating around the screen,
it may give you the label of the button,
or other radio buttons or checkboxes--
tell me the information.
Or it's a way to read through the content--
the entire document, paragraph of time, or the time--
character time, depending on what your needs are as a user.
And here we support some of the main screen readers,
like the ones that are built into, say, Android,
which is Talback, or iOS, which is VoiceOver, or Chromebooks,
which is the ChromeVox screen reader, which
we're using here--
or Mac with VoiceOver.
Or if you're in Windows, we support the JAWS
and the NVDA screen readers.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 18 of 26, Braille.
ROGER BENZ: Also related to screen readers
is Braille output.
So I myself us spoken output where it's going through a text
to speech [INAUDIBLE] so I get the information audibly
as I'm using the screen reader.
But some users will use a Braille display, where
the information is basically put onto a Braille cell, which
is six dots, so they end up getting the information
through their fingertips.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 19 of 26, live edits in Docs.
ROGER BENZ: So the things we were just talking about
were really where we're kind of using
a platform in the third party assistive technology.
So the voice editing and formatting,
which is a feature within our product--
we also, within Docs, have what we
call light edits, where it's a sidebar on the side
of the screen, where when multiple people are
in the document concurrently making changes,
we summarize that information, and put it into the sidebar
so that, say, somebody who is a screener, like me,
can go to the sidebar and know what, say, somebody else has
been changing in the document.
Or, say, if you're a low vision, that's
an easy way to do it to it.
Or, say, other disabilities, where it's easier
to understand that because you get
a nice summary of the changes that people
are making in the document.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 20 of 26, content.
ROGER BENZ: So another part of--
so the accessibility I've been talking about
is kind of what the individual does who may
be using assistive technology.
There's another side of this-- is
that everybody who is creating content
needs to make sure that it's going
to be accessible for somebody who's going to be consuming it.
And this includes things like making sure
that there's proper [INAUDIBLE] markup
or that all text has been edited to graphics and stuff,
because that's the best way to provide
structural information and semantic information
to somebody who's using it.
And to make that easier, for example, in our products--
Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites--
we have our templates are designed
that you will get more accessible content by default
for such things, say, as having the right contrast regions
so that there's enough ratio between the foreground
and the background-- or the text in the background.
So I covered a lot of different information here,
and there was just as-- only part
of the accessibility features that we have.
And I didn't get into some of the information
on how to use it.
So if you want to learn more about
our accessibility features, there's
two great places to go to--
Google.com/accessibility, where you'll find information about G
Suite plus our other products from Google.
Also, if you're interested in G Suite health center articles,
you can go to g.cl/gsuiteaccessibility.
And there's other resources for education and other ways
to get help information.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 23 of 26, get in touch.
ROGER BENZ: Also, we have several ways for you
to get in touch with us.
At Google, we have a disability support team,
and you can find out how they reach them by going
to g.co/disabilitysupport.
And also for a few days after this recording
is made available, there will be a Dory available
where you can ask questions, and I will be looking at that,
and being able to provide answers
to the Dory that's a associated with this next presentation.
SCREEN READER: Page Change.
Slide 24 of 26, final thoughts.
Page change.
Slide 25 of 26, inclusion empowers.
ROGER BENZ: So a few final thoughts here.
Why is accessibility important?
Why is inclusion important?
Well, one of the things is we don't
want to leave anything behind.
By making sure that we're taking advantage
of the accessibility features, we're
allowing people to participate in the different activities.
For example, if you're going to be setting up a meeting,
you can set it up in Calendar and send it out to everybody.
You can even add a document to that
so that people have it, which means
they can have it added to the calendar, which will allow them
to keep track of the information,
or when the meetings are.
And then during the meeting, you can use Google Meet,
and turn on captions.
Or say if you're going to be doing a presentation using
slides, you can turn on captions.
Or somebody can turn on Google Meet if you're-- say
you're doing a preparatory meeting,
and they can get those captions, which means they've been able
to participate in real time in this because they're able
to understand and know what other people are saying,
and be able to participate in the meeting.
Also, some other things you can do--
say, if you're using Google Docs,
you can set it up and share it out so that people
can be doing their notes in the document and sharing
information that way, say, instead of using a whiteboard.
Because then somebody, say, who's using a screen reader,
or they're using magnification, or higher contrast
can go into that document and be able to follow along
and contribute into that, because they're
able to access the information.
Also, a Google Document can be useful for, say,
somebody who's nonverbal, because now they're
in something that everybody else is using,
and they're able to ask the questions
and be able to participate.
So again, the accessibility features
kind of empower inclusion.
And then the benefits you get from that
is you'll have access to far more talent,
because, again, 15% of the world population.
There's a lot of people out there with lots of great skills
that you'll be able to attract and retain
because they're able to use the accessibility features.
You also get a happier, more productive workforce
because everybody is able to feel more included.
If there's nothing--
[INAUDIBLE] if you're doing something,
and you share something out.
And say, if I can't see some important information
because it's not accessible, I'm not
going to feel included into the activities.
Same thing for somebody who is deaf and hard of hearing.
If they're not able to understand or know
what somebody else is saying, they're
not going to feel involved with it either.
And that spills over to your colleagues
or, say, for your students.
The other thing is you get better choices
when you're able to have everybody involved.
There their studies out there that show
that the broader participation that you
have for the more diverse and inclusive workforce,
or students, or education, or community,
you're going to get better decisions, because you
get a wider input from a lot of different people.
So you'll end up with better choices.
So again, I do believe-- and I hope you do believe--
that inclusion is super important,
because we want to be able to take advantage
of everybody that's out there and allow
them to be as successful and fully
participate as they can be.
SCREEN READER: Page change.
Slide 26 of 26, thank you.
ROGER BENZ: With that, thank you for watching this,
and I hope you found this presentation useful.