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Accessibility Insights with Sarah Herrlinger of AppleTranscript 16 February 2021Annie Mannion: So hello everyone and welcome to theeighth session now in our accessibilityinsights serieswhere Abilitynet's head of inclusionRobin Christopherson hosts a monthlyonline chatwith individuals who are each working toimprove digital accessibility anddigital inclusionand this month he's chatting to SarahHerrlinger who issenior director of global accessibilitypolicy and initiatives at applei'm annie mannion and i'm DigitalCommunications Manager at Abilitynet andi'll berunning you through today's session sojust to go through a few bits ofhousekeepingand we've got slides available andyou can also find them on our website .uk/insights-apple and if you have any technical issuesand you need to leave earlydon't worry you'll receive an email in acouple of days timewith the recording the transcript andthe slidesand depending on how you joined thewebinar you'll find a qa window to ask questions andif you want to ask sarah or robin anyquestions please do drop those into theq and a area and they will answer those aftertoday's session in a follow-up blogon our website and that will be at/insights-apple as well and then and finally wealso have a feedback page you'll bedirected to at the endum which invites you to tell us aboutany future topics you'd likeus to cover in our webinar um series soplease dolet us know so now over to robin andsarahRobin: Brilliant thank you Annie thank you somuch so yes a hugewelcome to Sarah for taking some timeout of what is i'm sure a hugely busyschedule to talk to us about appleand everything that's going on man it'sbeen a busy time but before we get intothatwe always start off these sessions byasking youwhat beverage you've got what drink youhave to help you get through this ordealso i've got a cup of teaand i've got a horrible feeling this isa mug with the union jack onwhich i don't know why i picked thatone because i'm super depressed aboutbrexit but anywayso have you got a beverage to helpyou get throughSarah: I do, I will admit coffee is my viceI came to it late in life but once i did i did so with a vengeance soI’m quite the coffee drinker Robin: Brilliantgreat so thank you very much indeedforjoining us. So as i alluded to a momentago it has been a very very busy timefor apple 2020 andin particular you know the last quartermaybe of 2020 but the whole of the yearreally has been massively busyfor apple do you want to give us some uhyou know get the ball rolling by givingus somesome personal highlights or what youthink uh you knowthe particular things that um have beenexciting in recent monthsat Apple sure yeah 2020 was quite a year for us we had alot that went onand i think it starts off with justsome amazinghardware that was delivered over thecourse of the yearyou know i think amongst those thatare beloved byall of the many communities is theiphone andthis year with the iphone 12 lineupquite a great mix ofproducts um you know starting with theminias a new you know the iphone 12 mini isasmaller device along the same lines asthe seso really good for fitting in smallerhandsi know within the blind community uhthey often don't need the larger realestate of some of the bigger devices soone that is really nice and compact andeasy to usealso last year with thethe the iphone se the secondgeneration that came outand um with that one it gives the optionin that samesort of basic size of one with touchidand one with face id so depending onwhat yourneeds are or what your preferences arean option for bothbut then also the iphone12 and then getting into the prolineupof the iphone 12 pro and iphone 12 promax um also twoamazing uh devices umi think that one of the keys there iswith the addition of lidarin those two devices it adds somereally interesting functionality theni'll talk about a little bitmore later because i wanted to focus onhardware at this pointbut also you know we had somegreat additions to the mac lineupnow with the new generation ofthe latest macbook air the 13-inchmacbook proand the mac mini all powered by them1 chip which is our our ownproprietary you know breakthrough systemon a chip designed specifically for themacthis just gives better performance umbetter speed just a lot of great thingsthat make these m1 maxjust a fabulous addition for 2020.um also you know we delivered the newhomepod minium which is just uh an awesomenew way to create a personalized anddeeply integrated experience forthose who have iphone and and those withiphone and apple watchit's also got the great new intercomfeaturewhich is just a fabulous way to be ableto connect and communicate withothers throughout your household or eventhose whoare not in the same building that havegone outin the world which you know for thosewho just want to communicate with anyone intheir vicinity and make sure thateveryone knows everyone is safe and goodand needs are metum great way to have that intercom onthere also airpods maxthose were were brought out just at thevery endof 2020 and i think that's a greataddition to the airpods family for thosewhoprefer that kind of over earheadphone experiencethe quality the sound qualityand just thethe performance of them is reallyfantastic soit has been a lot going on withhardwareand i should actually also mention um wedid aa huge update to the accessibilitywebsiteuh at the end of 2020 as well so foranyone who wants to find out more aboutour products and our accessibilityfeatureswe did this really just to make iteasier for all of our users to discoverand learn more about the accessibilitybenefits that are available in all ofour productsand so i think this gives a just a quicksimple easy way to know what featuresare there what products they'reavailable onand then also drop you into some umgreat kind of how-to's and and uh thingsto just sort of get you started andlearn how to use them and then to divedeeper on themso we doesn't we stay creative videoson in the accessibility center reallyreally good yeahthank you yeah thank you very much youmentioned the m1 i mean i'm talking toyou here on a 16-inch macbooki my daily driver is a mac mini and i'mreally really excited to get my hands onan m1 some apple silicon that willhappen sooner or later i'm twistingarms as we speak and you mentioned theyou know the integration with the applewatch when it comes to the homepod minithe thing that i'm particularlyexcited about is apple fitness plusand the integration with the apple watchbecause i think a lot of people aregoing to beyou know focusing on fitness with thenew yearthat's kind of a perennial new year'sresolution isn't it so i think that'sbrilliantwith the really good descriptions ofyou know the yoga positions or whateverthe particular workout exerciseis so that's that's brilliant newsfor people that don't necessarily wantto go out andyou know go to gyms and have one-to-onefitness instructionso yeah apple fitness plus as well it'sbeen really busy here hasn't ityep no rest for the weary we got a lotgoing onso let's broaden it out a bit andi want to sort of take your mind back toeven say the last decadebecause so much has happened i mean youknow you've just mentioned what the lastfew monthshave u you know the changes that we'veseen there particularly in hardware butalsoin services and updates to software etcwe're gonna look ahead soon but youknow looking backover the decade you know what what sortofbig changes do you see either withinappleor within the kind of inclusion arenamore broadly what's your kind of bigtakeawaysfrom the last decade yeah well i thinkthe biggest thing i would say that ii feel like i'vei've seen or really appreciatedis being able to take accessibility outof the fringesand normalize it into consumer productswhich has really beenthe core of what we've tried to do youknow at applewe've included accessibility inbasically everything that we've doneacross the line whatever products wemake we really try and think about howanyone who would want to use them hasthe opportunity to do soand so you know i think for us we try toshow that focusing on accessibledesign ucould enable some of the mostpopular consumer products ever to alsoserve asreally powerful assistive technologyyou know i think when you look back atyou know i guess really over the lastdecade and a year so2009 when we came out with voice over onios it was the first timethat someone had made a touchscreenconsumer productaccessible for the blind communityand then since theneverything we've done in terms ofsupporting physical motorand you know just really building in allof theseassistive technologies so that right outof the boxit's available for you for whateveryou want to doyou know it's it's that kind ofcustomizationthat goes beyond just a couple ofof you know here's an accessibilityfeature and that's it it's how do wemake sure thatevery person who wants to use the devicethe way that they want tohas the opportunity to do so and i thinkthatreally did pull accessibility from beingsingle-use devices additionalthings both in terms of purchases andjust extrastuff that you had to carry or useinto just making people see basicconsumer products assomething that level the playing fieldsomething that you know mitigatessocial stigma that everyone can usethat you know your tech support couldjust as easily be a family memberwho was a member of the blind communityor someone who's a quadriplegic orsomeone in the deaf community or itdoesn't matter because they're all usingthe same device and whoever is the onewho's best at itcan just be the person who you knowhelps the family or whatever it might beit just it becomes easyabsolutely the mainstreaming ofinclusionas you say you know has been massive theproducts that i use on a daily basis arecompletely differentfrom 10 years ago i don't think there'sany specialist ones at alli don't own any specialist productsanymore andthe prioritization that apple havealways given to inclusionmeans that i've always been confidentthat when the next big thing came outyou know every single hardwareannouncement not just last year but youknowin the last decade i've always beenconfident that we're going to beable to you know keep with thewith the latest and greatest and youknow be part of that kind of ongoingparty of tech so it's been absolutelybrilliant so the next question is about how withinapple or maybe more broadly as well youknow that kind ofagenda has been pushed forward i just want to mention about howbrilliant it was in ios 13 i think itwas bringing accessibility out fromundergeneral because that just said volumesyou know everybody's different nobodyshould really settle for avanilla out of the box experience youknow we all are different shapes andsizeswe slide up and down the impairmentscale on an hourly basis as we use ourphones in different extreme environmentsand somebody in a recent webinar that iwas listening to said thatif you do a mind map or you know spiderdiagram of all thesettings within the settings app in iosaccessibility will actually be more thanhalfof the whole settings you know appso all the options within accessibilityare hugely powerful so people ignorethoseat their peril but yeah so how have youseen that change within apple and howhas that kind of continued to beprioritized over the recent yearsyeah well i think one of thethe core things for us that has helpedus to be able to achieve that is thefact thatwe have always seen accessibilityas one of our core corporate values andi thinkyou know rather than having that just beitelement of you know corporate socialresponsibilityit truly is a value that's reflectedin all of our fundamental designyou know for everyone at apple whethertheir title has accessibility in it ornotwe strive to ensure that anyonein any role at apple understands thataccessibility is important to usand treating customers with disabilitieswith dignity and respectis pivotal to who we are as peopleand so you know the more that we havebeen able to to push that within our ownwalls to you know educate our ownemployees on what we're building what'sin there and what they can be usingregardless of whether they self-identifyas having a disability or not you knowto your point there are so many amazingfeatureswithin the accessibility settings thatcan besuper helpful to you throughout your dayeven if that'syou know your use of that isproductivity orcommunication and collaboration ratherthan a specificyou know you may not be a part of thecommunity for which it was intendedit can still be a really powerful toolfor you sowe always work to educate our ownemployeesand make them proud of the work thatwe're doing but then alsointernalize that into everything thatthey doand i think then what comes out of thatis a lot of the innovation around whatwe're doing because by getting everyemployeeto think about it i think one of thethings that sets us apart isthat because we build all of our ownhardware software and operating systemswe can really not just infuseaccessibility across all of them buthave these amazing teams with theirexpertisebe coming to us to say we have a greatidea we have a really cool thing we'reworking onhow do you think that might benefit thecommunity and i thinkas a great example of this umwhen you think about lidar which imentioned was in thenew iphone 12 pro and iphone 12 pro maxthe the inclusion of the lidar scannerin the sort of camera element of thedevice means that now we can do a lotmore for individuals who are blind inlow visionnow as a part of magnifier a couple ofthings have been improvedone of which is that you can nowhave better awareness of what's in frontof you the through magnifier the iphone willdescribe to youyou know people objects and otherenvironmental elementsas they appear in the magnifier'sviewfinder and that's workingdynamically so for example as you'rewalking down the street being able togive you information even as thethe elements around you change butanother really great one we did was addin a feature called people detectionwhich as it sort ofas the name suggests it uh detectsany person in close proximity toyou as you once again move through spaceand notifies the user bothor through a number of different wayswith you know a a over sound outof what it is where they are alsogiving you a tone that it says ifsomeone enters your thresholdarea vibrations and thena visual readout of where someoneis in proximity to you so thatyou know you can have a betterunderstanding as you move through spaceas to where others arearound you and i think thisyou know certainly has greatapplicabilitytoday as we are currently livingin a an unprecedented time whereobviously knowing where people arearound you and making sure that you'reable toproperly social distance isincredibly importantbut really this is a feature that westarted working onlong before 2020 became 2020and we did it really tojust help with even some of the moremundane things in lifelike you know shopping or commutingwhere we had u some of ourteammates some of our employees who areblind who came in and saidyou know one of the things i stillstruggle with isfor example if i'm standing in a lineit'si don't know whether the person in frontof me has moved forward so how can ibetter have anunderstanding of just where i am inrelation to other peopleand then when all of 2020 happened wewe worked to make sure that we got thisout in a timely manner so that we coulduse it not just for those reasons butfor some of the ones that have come upthis year as ahuge priority yeah absolutely andyou know the the kind of um go-to way ofof seeking assistance pre-covered was toborrow somebody's elbowto take you from the ticket barrier tothe traincarriage or to help you advance in aqueuebut i don't know about over there buthere in the uk that's the elbow thatpeople are told to cough intoif they haven't got a tissue so that'snot goodso something like this was hugelytimelyso yeah absolutely and intelligently youknow the people detection one locks ontothe kind of the nearest person so it'lljump from one person to another in aquite a you know changing crowd you knowor situation where people are coming andgoing and passing you by in differentdirections and stuff so it's reallyreally useful so what about um covid andthe pandemicmore broadly what has it um brought tothe fore orchanged focus on within apple or is itjustthe fact that because you were alreadyon that pageprioritizing inclusion that you werejust really wellpositioned to be able to give peoplewhat they neededand you know you're already thinkingabout what inclusion was likeand helping people in really diversesituations soanything to say on how covid kind ofchanged how things wereprioritized or done within appleyeah well i think um you know thankfullyiam verywell i guess i would say i'm verythankful at the fact thatwe have always prioritized this so incoming into a year like thisi think we were we were wellpositioned with a lot of featuresthat are beneficial but i thinkeven with that being said givenno one could have known you know theworld we live in right nowi think it still made us realize evenmorehow much technology is important toenabling independenceyou know it's really beenthe key to well to both independence butalso to connectionyou know to the fact that we are all inone form or another isolated whetherthat bein bubbles or alone and um i think weare relyingon technology so much more than weever havein order to be able to exist through thecourse of thisexperience and so making surefor you know from our perspective thatwe build technology thatsupports that across the board i thinkis really just been incrediblyimportantand interesting for us to even note whatyou know the stories that we hear ofpeoplehow they're using our technology andwhat it's donei think one of the other things i findinterestingand really you know good is i think morepeople are starting to realizethat in a world like thisand when you are working from home andyou are relying on technology when thattechnology is made to be accessible itreallydoes level the playing field for peopleso i am hopeful thatin terms of things like employmentand connection that people will learnfrom this and um begin to give moreopportunityabsolutely because a lot of people whohad support around themeither in the workplace or you know afriends or family support networkare having to have had to go it alonefor much of 2020so to have devices that are trulyinclusiveand uh you know giving you that extrabit of help perhaps to bridge the gapwhere maybe the the applications or theapps thatyou need to use solo that you might havehad some support with otherwisehave been made more inclusive soyou know in and ios 14 recognition youknow screen recognitionthings that are built in that willcleverly you knowin a smart way interpret what's going onon an app that might not be 100accessible gives people thatindependence so yeah you guys have beenbusyin recent years during coveragecertainly and yes voice over recognitionthat's another great one to bring upthank youyeah that's been one i thinkparticularly the screen recognition partthat has great applicability as you saidyou know our goal is always that wewant developers to make their appsaccessible because clearly even withscreen recognitionthey're going to do a better job than wecould because they know exactly whatthey want each element to beexp or how they want it experienced bysomeonebut we also you know believethat everyone should have access to appsand as much as we can helpwith bringing more of that informationforwardwe want to do it so that was anotherbig and wonderful project that we tookon over the course of 2020and leading up to it certainly to reallyuse machine learning and aias a way to build out justsome massive models ofscreen elements so that we can do amuch better jobof just through machine learning ondeviceso not going up to the cloud but juston your device itself being able tobetter understand you know what's abutton what's a sliderwhat's uh any of the elements that mightbe in an app so that it justreally makes a lot of apps that wereotherwise largely inaccessible something that canbe very usableby the community now yeah and this iswhere developers for whatever reasondidn'tkind of do the the accessibilityadjustments thatthey are guided to do when developingapps there are apps out there that havealways been problematic but nowin large part you know that that extralevel of intelligence has made themreally really usable and so you know itcan make all the difference when youknow in a business critical situation tobe able to use a particular applicationsaybut it also adds a lot of delight so forthe very first time i'm gettingall people's user profile images uhdescribed to me in social media apps forexampleor messaging apps so i now know whateverybody looks like which is reallyreally coolso very quickly because we're runningout of time just looking aheaddo you think ai is where it's going tobe at in the next decade or have you gotother ideas about what the big change iscoming upmight be yeah you know we don't oh we don't reallytalk aboutwhat we're working on next but i thinkyou know whether it be ai uhor other areas i think the big thingthat i see is justby having added accessibility in andleveling that playing fieldit means that we're notfocusing we don't need to focus as muchon building out the fundamentalassistive technologyand we can focus on usingall of the cool things that the generalpopulation is usingor is excited about over this next 10years and figuring out how tonot just make those things accessiblebut to use them to our advantageand so whether it's ai whether it'syou know other forms of machine learningor or any of these thingslidar you know hardware benefitswhatever they might beour goal is to figure out how to makethemjust better for our communitiesthemselvesand these new hardware you knowdevelopments like lidar et ceterathe beautiful thing is that they tend toget leveraged for the disabled communityright from the early days of theirintroduction which is really really goodyou know we don't have totwiddle our thumbs thinking well whatare they going to do with this new thingso yeah that's really good i think i'mreally excitedabout ai and machine learning umyou know to take us to that next leveland you know describing what's around usgive us more access to things that havebeen problematicup till now so yeah brilliant um we'regoing to finish off thenwith i've loved this conversation by theway thank you very muchso every month we speak toa fantastic person like yourself lastmonth it was AlejandroMoledo he's policy coordinator at theeuropeandisability foundation and he had wealways asked them for a comment orquestionto ask the next guest so he saidwhat is the most positive aspect thataccessibility legislationhas had on apple's work he's very big onpolicyas it suggests in his title say umhave you got a response to Alejandroyeah i i know Alejandro well so um iam i'm not surprised it's a greatquestion umyou know it's an interesting one becausei think legislation has beenan essential part of the journey towardsimproving access and equalityfor people with disabilities all overthe world i mean certainly it isincredibly important but i would alsoargue that from apple's perspectivebecause weconsider accessibility to be one of ourcore valueswe've really always tried not to thinkabout it as a compliance issueor one that's really about checking aset of boxes i meanwhen you think about accessibility atapple wewe actually uh started our first officeof disability in 1985 which wasfive years before the americans withdisabilities act came to beand i think that kind of helpsto illustrate that our our efforts to dothisare really you know firmlyset in doing the right thing notnecessarily doing just what has beenyou know deemed as a piece oflegislationso for usi think the the elements that comeup throughlegislation are great baseline elementsbut i think we always strive tonot just do more but to do the thingsthat arebest suited on our devicesto make accessibility once again just aseamlesspart of the experience absolutely andyou can certainly tell thataccessibility isn't a complianceissue within apple it's not a boxticking exercisefar from it so yeah brilliant Caroline Casey we're hoping will be nextmonth's guestso she's the you know valuable 500creator founder they're doing abrilliant jobgetting you know global brandsto prioritize accessibility welldisabilityin the boardroom and you know thetrustee levelanything that you'd like to pass oneither a comment or a questionto caroline next monthi guess my question for caroline wouldbe what is the technologythat you relied upon most duringthe year of 2020 with all that wasbrought onby covid brilliant questionit might not be apple products but itmight bebut either way yeah i'm sure there'llbe many apple products in there but yeahthat's a brilliant questionreally good because disability obviouslyis something thatapple does so well in in cateringfor people's needs so it may wellfeature largefantastic thank you very much indeedSarahhave a brilliant rest of 2021 let's see where we go thank you verymuchsame to you yeah brilliant always greatto talk to you robinlikewise thank you so much and we'llpass back to Annieto just do a closing bit of housekeepingthank youAnnie:yeah thank you so much Sarah and Robinand there are loads of questions that wehope to answeronline in the next few days and soyou'll receive an email with the linkand so just to go through a bit moreinformation that might be of interest toyouwe also run online training sessions ondigital accessibility and you can findout moreat dot uk forward slashtrainingand you can use an exclusive 10 offdiscount code available towebinar registrants which is abilitynetwebinar 10 which is 1-0and some of the training courses areavailable for roles includingcontent creators and editors designersdeveloperstesters project managers and leadershipand also we have some new um courses forhigher and further educationprofessionalsin 2021 and then andjust to finish up we've also got ournewsletter which you canhear about the latest announcements indigital accessibilitywe've got our youtube channel and ourpodcastand then we have a suite ofaccessibility services to suit yourorganizationand then don't forget about our nextwebinars at forward slashwebinars and that's all from me sothanks againsarah and robin and everyone that'sjoined us today andwe'll be in touch with you soon byeeveryone ................
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