ILANA BENISH: My name is Ilana Benish, and I am 38 years old.
I was born blind.
I had many surgeries, and they have succeeded
to improve my sight in one eye.
Independency means access.
Many of the technologies that are available today
are not accessible.
And that's why I came to APPlicable.
MICHAL WALTNER: My name is Michal.
I'm the program manager of Campus Tel Aviv, which
is a Google space that is dedicated to entrepreneurs
and startups, meaning helping the local ecosystem
to create amazing startups.
I started thinking, how is it possible that this huge market
is not being addressed?
Because if they knew that, with some easy steps,
they can actually make their app accessible to this huge market,
I was sure that they'd bound to do something about this.
So this is how the idea of this problem of APPlicable started.
ARIEL KEDEM: My name is Ariel Kedem.
I'm a mobile product manager at Fiverr.
Fiverr is a marketplace for creative professionals.
We are helping people productize and make money
from their talent.
Fiverr is trying to change how people work,
and allowing people with disabilities
to work with Fiverr is something big.
MICHAL WALTNER: So we started with visually
impaired and blind people.
Each table had a startup.
Mentors from the design world, from the product world,
and developers sat together with a person
with a visual impairment and a person
who's blind to see how he's actually using his own app.
JONATHAN LEVIN: My name is Jonathan, Android developer
and evangelist in Gett.
Gett is a leading platform from on-demand services,
like Gett Taxi or Gett Pizza, or even Gett Doctor.
I remember at the beginning there was a woman who said, ah,
you're from Gett?
I'm not talking with you.
Like, you make my life awful.
When you make this difference for them, first of all,
you feel proud because you really helped someone.
One of the really small changes that we
did that has huge impact was that, when you open the app,
you have marketing pop-up right straight on the screen.
And it doesn't have any label.
So for the blind people, it was like, oh, we're
showing a regular map with an address and an "Order a Taxi"
button.
And wasn't aware that they actually had that marketing
pop-up, and they can't click on anything or using the TalkBack.
And by just verifying that, if the TalkBack is turned off,
not to show this pop-up is, like, huge difference,
because now these people are able to order the taxi instead
of constantly clicking on the marketing pop-up
and not understanding why you can't order a taxi.
Actually, the impact was that she went out of the building
and she said, oh, now I am able to order the taxi.
ARIEL KEDEM: We actually did some really small change.
We have a page of categories within Fiverr.
It was built, like, [INAUDIBLE] category next to category
in a very long page.
And when we did one of the session,
they just tell me, just build them one in a row, and not one
next to each other.
So we changed it, we put it in the app homepage,
and just changed dramatically how people navigate the app.
Thinking about a simple experience
just made me a better product manager.
JONATHAN LEVIN: With a really small effort, just
to change a little bit bytes of code,
to add the additional stuff, and you
can make really huge difference for them,
for their daily routine.
ARIEL KEDEM: Tagging your components on a specific page.
Giving an image the right ALT tag.
It's really something that, when you change how you think,
it's very simple.
Enable the accessible view on your phone,
try to use the phone as someone, just for example, can't see.
This will affect everything you do dramatically.
- Button 96 unlabeled.
Button 13 unlabeled.
Button 74 unlabeled.
Button.
Button 18 unlabeled.
Button 35 unlabeled.
Button.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- How was it?
- Disaster.
Really a disaster.
MICHAL WALTNER: So after about half a year
that we dealt with visual impairment and blindness,
we went to the second stage of the program
and addressed people with motor disabilities.
So again, we opened testing labs.
We brought the mentors, we brought people
with disabilities, we brought startups.
And we realized that this is definitely
something that is so needed.
OHAD YIFRAH: Take your phone in one hand, and start to run.
Run and try to send message during the running.
You will have a lot of mistakes, and you
need to erase and retype, erase and retype.
And this is my life when I'm using apps.
I am Ohad.
I am 39 years old.
I'm working in Gett as a Senior QA Engineer.
I have cerebral palsy.
And the effect of that, you can see my speech
is very-- I have a difficult speech.
And my right hand is not functional,
and also both two legs are not functional.
And I have only one hand.
And even in that hand, in three fingers I have a spastic.
It's very difficult to touch, to reach all the corners
with one finger.
My wildest dream is that I will have the ability
to put every each button in the place that I want.
I know that the designers and UI and UX wouldn't love that,
but it will make the app park more
accessible for me, and for the many, many other people.
This is my dream.
ILANA BENISH: To meet with them to tell them our needs,
it was very, very important meetings.
JONATHAN LEVIN: My message to all developers
will be, hey, guys, you are there.
You actually are the one that can
have the power to change, for a lot of people,
their entire life.
ARIEL KEDEM: I think about this amazing APPlicable
session in every screen, page, or button
that I am adding to the app.
OHAD YIFRAH: To make the app more accessible, it's a must.
So now, the ball is in your hands.
ILANA BENISH: Accessible apps are changing our lives
every day, and will continue to change
everybody's life, every day.
[MUSIC PLAYING]