The Politics, Demographics and Economics of Usability
In pressing for usability disabled people face the dilemma of integrating their concerns or retaining them in a strand. The disability sector has tended to keep itself differentiated from the rest of the population. This distorts the demographics of usability. Five sets of factors are considered in order to define an optimal usability strategy.
Date: 01/09/2001
Article
For the last two years I have been deeply involved, some people may even say implicated, in a depressing sequence of political failure. It began when the European Union (EU) launched its e-Europe initiative to gear Europe technologically to challenge the USA. As the EU has always been primarily an economic entity, the fact that the social aspects of the new economy were something of an afterthought was not a surprise. The original e-Europe document had a separate Chapter on access to the new economy by disabled people. While the really important people were discussing the main outlines of the document at a Ministerial Meeting in Lisbon there was a little, special strand to discuss disability.
There were about forty regular participants over the two days, amongst whom were three disabled people, a wheelchair user from the United States, a blind man from Italy and me. The majority of the others were academics concentrating on education and employment in spite of the fact that the majority of disabled people are elderly. There was a great deal of talk about milestones, benchmarks, good practice and the like. In English we have an expression that you can tell a man by the company he keeps; my adaptation of this is that you can tell a person by the nouns he uses and I am not very fond of these bureaucratic nouns. I urged the meeting to think about banking, shopping, dating, watching television and accessing libraries. Each time I made these observations the rapporteur would smile and continue to enter reports which must have been written before the meeting began. Far from being welcomed, reality was resented.
The strongest representation I made, and in this lies my failure, was that disability should not be given a separate strand in the document but that accessibility should be a cross-grained theme in every aspect of the document. This was a terrible mistake. By the time that the Heads of Government of the EU had finished with the document, every single concrete proposal on disability had been thrown out. The only way to be noticed is to be encamped in squalor outside the city walls. As soon as you are included, you disappear.
The conclusion I draw from this may be somewhat surprising. I do not blame the EU bureaucrats and politicians for what happened, I blame the disability sector, the activists, the academics and the public relations machines.
First the activists. Of course it is not pleasant to be disabled but to be afflicted is not to be a victim. The dogma of the 'social' model of disability is profoundly alienating to the public but, what is more, like the Lutheran doctrine, inherited from St. Augustine, of "Justification by faith", it spares the sufferer any obligation. The essence of victim-hood is that it externalises the condition. In doing so it draws a firm line between the victim and the oppressor. There are no part victims and part oppressors; there are people who are classified or who classify themselves, as disabled and there is the rest of society. As we shall see, this is a piece of demographic and functional nonsense.
Then there are the academics who almost as fiercely stick to this demographic chasm. It suits their quasi-philanthropic inclination, it places a premium on their expertise and, worst of all, it allows them to work in an environment almost entirely divorced from the rest of research and design. If you want any evidence for this you need go no further than the disability-related applications to the EU Framework V research programme.
Of course, whether you are talking about the socially disadvantaged or those who set out to help them, it is always good for public relations if you can paint a stark, a bleak, and unrelenting picture of tragedy. Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas. In the world of visual impairment, in spite of the demographics, it is almost impossible to wrench budget away from braille production towards modified print and the same ghetto mentality, holding on to the budget, applies in other sectors.
I do not want to spend very long on the demographics but we do need to remind ourselves in the context of the word "Assistive" who needs assistance. Well, to put it bluntly, very few of us don't. If you take the very approximate syndrome clusters of cognition, motion, hearing and vision, very few of us can say that our functionality in all four is perfect. Even in the best educated countries in Europe there is an illiteracy rate of more than 10% and in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America it is, according to the OECD approaching 25%. There are some exceptions but in almost all cases the incidence of a functionally disabling syndrome increases as it grows milder. By 2020 between 1/4 and 1/3 of us will at some point be classified as disabled in the terms that are accepted now. For the time being, for example, in my own field of information technology, functional limitation in respect of currently constructed digital information systems hovers around the 50% mark. Most of this concerns the way the information is designed, not the hardware - and this is an indication of where future research should be focused - but it is a staggering figure.
If you think about what I have said for only a few seconds you will recognise its implications for designers of all kinds. There really is no point in dividing artefacts between "us" and "them". There may well be a case for niche technologies meeting the needs that general, inclusive design cannot cope with but there is a strong market case for inclusion. You cannot, however, make a strong market case if the perceived paradigm of disability is that it is severe or traumatic, permanent, paediatric and enclaved. The situation is further distorted when the self-imposed exiles say that their number is one in ten or perhaps one in eight. Taken at their word, the observer looks at their serious condition, multiplies it by ten and gives up. This is why both the commercial sector and the public sector are more or less ignorant. They know that there is something profoundly odd about what they see but they are not sure what it is.
Having spent the early pages of my presentation on a rather negative analysis, I want to spend the rest of it, much more than half, on what we ought to be doing, and how.
I want to look at five key pairs of ideas which should propel the assistive technology sector into the 21st century; these are:
- Demographics and Market Research
- Optimal Inclusivity and Niches
- Autonomy and Socialisation
- Carriers and Intermediaries
- Law and Markets.
Demographics and Market Research
Just because you know how many people are going to be what age in any given year between now and 2020 does not mean that you know enough about their design requirements. You may know, for instance, that the average lawn mower has been optimally designed for a male between the ages of 20 and 35 and you may know that in England very few of that group ever uses a lawn mower but in design it is the optimal that counts, the cost/benefit ratio between manufacture and sales. Currently, most manufacturing industries are hopeless at this exercise. They are bound by tradition, aesthetics and ignorance. What I might call demographics research may simply be a rather more sophisticated form of market research. It isn't just mechanical devices, like lawn mowers, which seem to appear without any proper research, just think of the number of people who can't handle a wood and wire simple corkscrew or a one-piece can opener. Think of the number of people who cannot read the default size and font on a computer screen. Marketing people may be very good at finding out who will buy a product but clearly they are fairly poor at finding out why.
From the user's point of view this is terribly frustrating because your demographic classification usually ends up being epidemiological rather than functional. Instead of being a complex figure you are either in a marketing segment or out of it. This is not only a product of a crude social analysis, it is also economic. Despite the growing percentage of disabled people with occupational pensions, the economic paradigm is the pauper. Such people are not worth the bother. As disabled people we all may have different kinds of functional limitation but we are all lumped together. If, as a blind person, I arrive at an airport I am invariably classified as needing a wheelchair or a buggy; when I arrive at a hotel I am invited to take a room on the ground floor, usually next to the elevator or the kitchen, rather than being offered a nice, airy room with a balcony on the fifth floor. In this sense, I am not a user at all, I am simply a neo-Platonic archetype.
This may well explain why millions of people with quite severe functional limitations will refuse to be classified or to classify themselves as disabled. I have seen severely visually impaired children crawling on the floor amid pieces of 48-point print rather than classifying themselves as visually impaired, running the risk of being forced to learn braille. Viewed from an impartial position, threatened with entrapment in a ghetto and ignored by the standard, commercial sector, it is hardly surprising that there is a massive, hinterland of functional limitation which is hardly ever denominated. Just as many people with mild cognitive problems would not dream of classifying themselves as illiterate, so there are millions of people with mild physical conditions who could use a little extra help but have to make the choice between under performance in the 'normal' world or imprisonment in the disability world.
Optimal Inclusivity and Niches
Such a dilemma goes a long way to explaining serious miscalculations about what is optimal in design. In the world of visual impairment, where I am on most familiar ground, the rift between braille on the one hand and standard print on the other is hardly bridged. 95% of the population which is classified as visually impaired may use some print, but neither the sector which exists to serve these people nor the general designer do much about it. If the research were more effective you could define optimal print sizes and fonts and design information systems on that basis. There is, for example, in signage, a set of criteria concerning the size of a sign and the aesthetic of it but there is surely a balance between these and the number of people who can read the sign. This is a very simple example of working out what is optimal. Here I am not asking for huge expenditure, simply a hard-headed calculation in the initial design of a product of how far its market share will be affected by the way in which it is designed. The benefit of this approach is that it takes some disabled people, who knows, perhaps most of them, out of the niche market into the general market. This then frees up resources for the niche market so that the per capita spending on extreme cases can rise. This is why those with the severest limitations should be enthusiastic supporters of inclusive design; it may not benefit them directly but if it meets the needs of people with milder conditions, currently using up part of the disability budget, it will ultimately leave more for these serious cases. On this basis, the commercial search for profit, the public sector imperative of spending money where it will be most useful and the wish of most people to adapt general products rather than classify themselves as disabled in a niche market are all met.
Again, from the user perspective, this flexibility of access to goods and services, sometimes exercised in the general market, sometimes in a niche market, breaks down the tendency for a crude classification in one or other segment.
I want to say one more thing about the niche market. Where it is used to supply the needs of disabled people it is usually under resourced and fragile. I recall the clash I had with Microsoft when I asked why it would not design even greater inclusivity into its products. The reply was that it did not wish to endanger the special access sector. I have to say that this is an extremely dubious argument. If there is a legal as well as a market imperative for inclusion, I do not want to have to depend on a poorly resourced niche solution which never keeps pace with the market.
Autonomy and Socialisation
On the basis of many visits to the United States I have formulated Carey's Law of neighbourliness: "anybody in society is permitted to seek assistance from a neighbour except a disabled person who must always act in a completely autonomous manner".
Part of the definition of what is optimal depends upon the degree of autonomy which needs to be built into a system. I may find it irritating that I cannot do everything I want to in a totally autonomous fashion but, as a creature in a market, I recognise that to meet this need may be wholly uneconomic and may force me back into the talons of the keepers of the ghetto. Let me give you an example. There is a call for a website of a major retailer to be totally autonomously accessible by totally blind people. Such sites already exist; they are beacons of good practice and a credit to their designers, even if their use is somewhat time consuming. Personally, rather than the autonomous struggle on such a website I would prefer to pick up the telephone and put a long order into an answer-phone or, even better, discuss my order with an operative.
Looked at from another point of view, it may be ideologically correct to think of museum visiting by disabled people as an autonomous activity but for most people it is a social activity and the point of the design of the experience should be to facilitate a degree of autonomy within a social experience. As a blind person I want a braille guide book but I don't want the stress of finding my way round a major museum alone, paying attention to the intricate detail of navigation required in a strange building; I came to concentrate on the artefacts not the autonomous access. This is a case where it is all too easy for the ideology of autonomy to get in the way of designing an optimal system.
Carriers and Intermediaries
These considerations naturally lead on to thoughts about carriers and intermediaries. In every sphere of disability there is too much division between the niche and the rest, between the victim and the perpetrator, between the afflicted and the whole, between altruism and commerce. On the one hand you have disabled people, carers, academic and commercial niches, on the other you have all the rest. It is not, on this basis, possible to conduct a well informed and mature dialogue about what is possible, what is affordable, what necessary and what desirable. We need much better carriers of messages, much better intermediary devices and institutions and, as I said earlier, we need these in a rather flexible way. As a disabled person I may want much more assistance with transportation than with my telecommunications.
There is, of course, another aspect of the intermediary or carrier and that is, as referred to above, the facility to function in a social, as opposed to an autonomous, fashion. I suspect that the drive for autonomy is partly ideological but also it is a reaction to being patronised. In spite of knowing how we should behave, society still finds it difficult to handle ideas like diversity and difference.
Law and Markets
That very difficulty has led to a political pressure for law to operate where markets have been imperfect. If the major industries cannot see the market case for inclusion then politicians will have to ensure that a degree of inclusion is guaranteed. This is, in my view, a necessary evil. I would prefer to change minds by persuasion but I cannot wait that long for my accessibility to goods and services to improve; I can't be a disability ambassador until I die; I have better things to do than to be a perpetual lobbyist; I want to do some of my living now. I am not so unselfish that I want to use all my life to campaign for the benefit of people twenty years from now.
This will no doubt lead to a backlash, simply because the demographic case has not been made. Industry will think it is being asked to make what it thinks are major concessions for the sake of a tiny minority of people who are, apparently, somewhat aggressive and never satisfied. This is yet another reason for getting the demographics right but, right or wrong, legislation is being brought forward at precisely the time when design is being de-regulated. This begs the not very difficult question of how the juggernaut of de-regulation will handle the bicycle of disability rights; the answer, of course, is that the bicycle will be squashed which is why it is a fatal mistake for disability organisations to put any faith in institutions of social reform; they need instead to become involved in arguments about minimum design standards based on market research.
There, then are five pairs of concepts but I want to turn in conclusion to some other simple ideas which were at least implied at the beginning of this presentation.
First of all, the notion of inclusive design at the initial stage is being most powerfully assisted by the way in which our society builds products, and even buildings, to be of use for a very limited period. As environmentalists we may resent this but as supporters of usability its benefits are obvious.
Secondly, the breakdown of mass production and the move towards customisation will be helpful; we simply need to establish the tolerance limits of a design system in order to optimise the customisation. To revert to the Microsoft example, its limit to x 3 magnification may not be adequate but if its gearing went any higher there would be problems with its metadata architecture.
Thirdly, the combination of obsolescence and customisation should allow us much more flexibility in the way standard products can be made more usable.
In conclusion just a few words about our language and our orientation. I think I have been reasonably clear on both of these, that we need to see what we do as operating on a fairly extensive part of a functional spectrum instead of thinking ourselves into the ghetto; and we need to stand with functionally limited people looking out at society instead of looking in at the ghetto with our back to society. In this way we may escape the language of disability, of ideology and combativeness. I am interested in shopping and banking, libraries and leisure, culture and trivia, socialising and privacy. These issues are not exclusive to disability; the extent to which we are involved in these things may be inclination but it is partly design; and design is rarely ideological. It might be plain impractical, narrow, obtuse or it may simply put more emphasis on style than usability but this is not a dialogue of biblical starkness or Shakespearian drama. To think of this area as a battlefield is to misunderstand, it is to take the wrong tool from the toolkit.
From the user point of view I want a civilised, mutually respecting dialogue with designers; I do not want a sterile argument about whose fault it might have been in the past; and I also want this to occupy a tiny piece of my life so that, for the rest, I can get on with living.