UX Lead at Accenture
This interview is with Dhaval Jani, a UX Lead at Accenture. He grew up with polio which continues to impact him physically, he uses a leg brace and a forearm crutch. He also injured his left hand resulting in a partially disabled index finger and thumb.
I think any disabled person doesn't want to be treated as a disabled person
Dhaval has been designing for over 15 years and is obsessed with helping users accomplish desired tasks quickly and easily by designing kickass products that are unique, adaptable, and interesting to use. He takes pride in designing and optimizing applications to better the User Experience that helps businesses Acquire, Retain and Engage users on Web, Mobile, Displays, and Wearables.
Contect with Dhaval:
Key Points
Consider creating a user persona for that includes a disability
Give users flexibility to do certain things in multiple ways
Allow for user customization
Give flexibility to scale your designs really small
Don't treat disabled employees differently, but allow them flexibility to work in a way that's best suited for them
Consider transcribing presentations to allow for inclusion
Create a checklist of accessibility considerations to be more mindful and start to make it a habit
Interview with Dhaval (he/his)
DJ Dhaval Jani
Hi, I'm Dhaval Jani, user experience lead working with Accenture. I've worked in design for about, I want to say, 15 to 18 years. The reason I say 15 to 18 is because part of it I was part time and then back full time. So, while I was not involved full time I was still doing little freelance work on the side, so I've been in this industry for that long.
NK Nikki Kuhn
Great. And then can you tell us about what disability or disabilities you have?
DJ Dhaval
Sure. So I have polio which affects my lower leg extremity, so, my left leg all the way down my waist is smaller than my right leg. So I'm 5’ 6”, now 5’ 5”, so, when I walk I use a full leg brace and I use a crutch and I limp, I have visible limp, quite a bit. And yes, so that's what I initially started out with, a few years back honestly, about six years ago I ended up having a car accident, which ended up in injuring my left index finger and the thumb. My thumb is recovered I was, like, hyper, like, I almost double jointed so I could hyperextend and flex certain joints. So now I've lost that ability in my thumb, so I can’t do funny tricks. But then my index finger doesn’t extend fully and, like, doesn't contract fully, so it's legally classified as a partial disability. But I am so used to like now there's certain things I feel more, like, limitations but it's not as big as my legs.
NK Nikki
Do you want to tell us more about what limitations you experience?
DJ Dhaval
In general? So, it's funny because I got polio when I was about two years old, so, I don't have too much of a memory of my life without polio. I recall, like, vaguely running around and stuff, like any little kid do, but then I don't know what, where, how. So, I don't have any memories. So it has not impacted my life much because I have lived with it for my life. Progressively, it has gotten to the point that I need more assistive devices or, like, I didn't used to use a cane or a crutch until I was 26-27. I'm 38 now. So, I use the crutch. I started having back pain and stuff and so the physiotherapist and the doctors recommended that I started using it so I don't have to put so much pressure on my spine, and luckily, too much on one side, so, to balance stuff. So, for longer distances I started using crutch. So, but yeah, in terms of day to day activities, only thing I, like, as a kid and as I grew up, I feel like can't do or I wish I could do, is ride a bike. But other than that, it has not fully impacted me much, I'm used to it, this is my normal.
NK Nikki
Thank you for sharing all that with me. How has your disability impacted the way that you design, what you think about, your design processes, and anything else in between?
DJ Dhaval
Sure. So it's funny, I guess, when I got started, I didn't pay as much attention. I was mindful about certain things, but not in terms of like accessibility, just general user experience. Because then I'm like, okay, “are users going to like it?” or “are they going to perform certain actions that they want to?” but then I was just thinking of a larger bucket of everyone. And, I guess, I'm a little embarrassed to say, you know, I was completely ignoring accessibility. I was being mindful of color contrast and things like that even before I knew the term accessibility and reason for color contrast. I was just focusing on higher visibility and like it, what do we call it? Just to finish because then I started I started in print and both like sign designs as well. So big boards, when you pass it on a road, the contrast has to be substantial, otherwise, the font sizes have to be substantial, otherwise it's not obvious. That's what I brought into digital and web as well. So yeah, I did a lot of graphic design and that's where I was not paying attention to accessibility at all. Up until later when I was introduced with people who faced other disabilities that are different from mine, because my disability is a mobility disability. It does not impact like things that I do with my hands, until I injured my hand, I don't have any vision or hearing or, like, other disabilities that means, so unless I like, I guess until I put myself in that situation, I would not be mindful. Or if I had immediate family or friends who were going through this situation, I’d not be mindful. So I was not mindful initially, but then I, Like I said, you know I got into contact with other people then I saw how they were struggling or what they were struggling with and then I started thinking more and paying more attention.
NK Nikki
With your finger injury has it ever impacted the way that you interacted with a mobile device?
DJ Dhaval
It, it has, so it's funny, like, because I use a crutch with my right hand my left hand becomes my primary hand to do everything else, so like carrying groceries or opening doors or lifting things or a bunch of things that you typically use both hands for I use my left hand, which is what I ended up injuring in the car accident. So when I'm walking or doing certain things, I will be using my left hand as the primary hand to use my phone and ever since I've hurt it, my thumb is not as flexible as it used to be, it's still flexible, so now I still use my phone with my left hand, I'm back to using it, but then I cannot use it for a long time. I like to go on hikes and things like that, so it's funny like mobile devices and iPhone, I don't use it as much because I used to use that as a trigger for, I like photographs, so I’d use it as a trigger for remote as well. But then I switched to physical triggers with buttons because it's a lot more tactile and it gives better feedback and more sensitive to my finger and touch. So it has affected like how I use certain things, maybe all of the time or maybe just use it for certain things, but not as much, like previously, I could unlock... I don't use both my hands to draw, but like on phones just to scribble things, I would often use my left hand to scribble, now, my motor skills are not where they used to be so I don't scribble with my left.
NK Nikki
Do you think that your limitations with your hand, and what not, do you think that's impacted the way that you've had your designs? Like what do you consider when you're looking at your UI designs?
DJ Dhaval
It has, it has quite a bit. So, what's funny is, prior to my injury I had worked on, like, variable designs, I worked on first watch OS app, when apple first came out with watch. And then, it was very clunky, was just more like, “there's this new cool product” but it was not as usable, you couldn’t do much, like labels and stuff it was kind of like, but what's funny is like I've noticed I use more and more voice assistant devices, so I use chatbots and stuff to do reminders when I'm walking around or doing things. I use variables to do certain things and I use gestures more often than like going through everywhere. Normally on my computer other than paid zoom or swipe, I don't use other gestures, I disabled some of the gestures on certain things. But, on my phone also there are gestures which I typically don't use, but then like in terms of, like, watch if I have to unlock, or if I have to, like, do certain things with my phone, I use the other ways to interact. I've noticed I prominently, like, use voice if there's not too many people around because I don't like to say “out loud” commands when people around me. But otherwise, when I'm walking or hiking or something like that, I definitely use voice more than I did before. I don't know if it's just improving the voice and understanding the commands, or it's just me not having to pull out my phone to do certain things and just being able to talk and have my hands free or one hand free.
NK Nikki
Make sense. You said earlier, it wasn't until you had met other people with disabilities that that kind of opened your eyes to accessibility. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
DJ Dhaval
Sure. There's like two different people that I want to call out. I have a friend. She's a model turned photographer and she has a disability where she can't hear or speak. So, I first met her, probably, I want to say 12-13 years ago. Back then T Mobile sidekick was a big thing. A lot of teenagers were using sidekick to text but I noticed that her and, like, through her I met a bunch of her friends who had the same disability and sidekick was heavily heavily used by all of them, because it was such a good, fast way to let them text compared to old school phones where you had to press, like, you hit numeric keypad and you have to press, like, if you wanted to say “hi” you have to press, like, I want to say, like three times three, two times three to say “H” and then two times... So, it was much more complicated to type until, like, you know, those keyboards arrived. So I noticed that, you know, they were using that, and, if you're using other devices or other, what do you call it, other devices that would detect certain sounds and signals which would not, like, I was not familiar with it. Like, I didn't think of certain things that will be such a big deal for other people, like, as if I was going to stay in a hotel, if there was an alarm flashing, I'll be like, “okay, yeah, there's an emergency I need to get out.” For them, they don't know that, you know certain hotels provide some vibration based devices or some other, like, more stronger flashes or something to take the placement of my visibility in a way that would be covering all corners instead of just the entrance of the door or something. So, up until then I didn't realize, you know, like, what challenges they might be facing. So that's one person I want to call out who introduced me to that world. And what's funny is me coming, again, from India, and sometimes, you know, when I'm watching, like, we all use captions or subtitles for certain foreign movies and stuff, and, but then I saw that, you know, there's a difference between subtitles that we will watch versus if there is, like, closed captioning which is more descriptive over certain things, that sounds that happen in the background and things like that. So that's when I learned more about, like, the importance of being as descriptive about certain things, you know, learn from my contact with them. And I want to call out one more person, that person is by Mom's cousin who passed away recently. But, he was blind and growing up, you know, we will see him for vacations and when we go to vacations and family gatherings and things like that. And, that's when I first saw Braille and how you type using or, like, write using Braille with a pen, like, it's a pointer thing. So, it was very interesting to see that, but then over there, I recall, like, helping him with creating cassette tapes. So, back then, like, they would get, if they wanted to study any advanced subjects they might not get books or notes so people would take notes for them and, like, you know, somebody would read the note to them. Often they would ask to record it on a tape, so, they can do revisions for exams and things like that, so I would help record messages and then, you know, as technology grew, I saw him switch to a mp3 player and then, you know, now being able to, up until recently, he was able to use that phone and, and you know, do certain things with phone. So, like, these two people when I met with them and saw how they use technology and how bad design impacted their life and, then, not being able to use technology is when I started to be more mindful.
NK Nikki
That's great, and again, thank you so much for sharing. So what's the one thing, knowing how bad design can actually be when it comes Accessibility, What is something you wish more designers adopted into their own design practices?
DJ Dhaval
I could go on and on and on. But, including myself, like, not just the other day, sometimes you know, it's hard to be mindful or prioritize based on certain situations, maybe the timeline or the budget or just like, a priority, right, because we don't put ourselves… we don’t know individual users, so, that's where I feel like, you know, we tend to ignore it. But, I feel like one thing all designers could do is, if their product is built, or larger audiences, that's going to, like, if it's like a public website or ecommerce website that's not catered for B2B, it's not business-to-business only where certain limited users that might be drawing staff or anyone else. If they're creating any materials technically used by everyone, don't make the same mistakes. Don't make the same mistakes I did where I say just throw everyone at every state kind of being able to see everything and, like, Accessibility is such a small percentage, but, I would say look into maybe creating a persona. Like, if you have flexibility if you are creating, like, buyers persona for a shopping website, if you are creating persona that also very trendy and ordering on Alexa, maybe you also need to look at a persona that has some sort of disability and then you will be able to, I guess, empathize more with that particular disability and how you can make certain things successful or how it impacts them. You will do a bit better. So I would say, maybe look into creating personas first.
NK Nikki
Anything else that you wish designers would do more?
DJ Dhaval
I'll give an example. So, such a small part, like, I'm not even primarily - I’m right-handed, I'm not even left-handed, but the index finger and thumb, you know, like, the way I would extend and start typing again impacted, you know, how far the keys were for certain shortcuts on different tools I was using. So, now, if I was not able to configure the shortcuts to be something else like Command-C, Command-V or Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, most use shortcut, it's helpful, like, and that was fine, but if I wanted to do something else like Command-T to open a new tab It was, like, forcing me to extend my finger beyond my reach. So, I don't know, for the very first year or so, either getting external touchpad or, like, not touchpad, but more like… let me see if I can remember the actual name of the device, it's almost, like, it’s a keyboard for foot. But not a full keyboard, because it was just like Shift and Command and, like, it has three or four buttons which you can program to use certain shortcuts, certain combinations. I'd start with that. But then again, you know, having one leg which is limited, so, I'll just rely on the other. Then I've seen certain software's that allow you to just customize your shortcuts and, like, set up certain things or I noticed, you know, I will use tabbing and Shift Tab a lot more than I did before, previously. So, I did start learning programming as well, way back when I started designing, so there are times, you know, I'm just being lazy where I'm only using keyboard for some things or I'm using mouse, depending on what is closest to me and what is easier or comfortable, but I guess since I injured myself I feel like I've been paying more attention to certain things and I try to stay within the vicinity of certain shortcuts that are within my reach. So, I would say, give users flexibility to do certain things they want. So, if you, when you think of configurations on designs, right, like, people think of, let's say, if you make a flexible page where you can drag and drop certain things and you can configure the page in a way, so like, this is like old school software development, let me see, where if you had reports or if you had a portal or like a software that was there, you could choose where you want the menu to be, or you can choose how you want certain things to be showing up. So, I feel like, you know, one of those things, you know, give users flexibility to do certain things in multiple ways. Even on a website, like a lot of websites give you keyboard shortcuts, so think about giving keyboard shortcuts to navigate, not just tabbing because tabbing is like, very slow, I guess I would want to say in certain situations, so yeah, I would say give users flexibility to do certain things and give them more customization options then you think you need, but, you know, again, it will vary from user to user, so, you'll have to see. But I would say make things flexible where they could use, so like, to give an answer to your previous question about apps and stuff and how it has affected my phone. So, one thing is Apple users, so one thing I have done for a while now, where I don't know about most phone providers, but I'm used to LG phones and what they will do is they have an option which is “one-handed use” option, so it shrinks the phone screen to a smaller, like, semi percent or something and so then it's within one thumbs reach, because the phones have gotten bigger and bigger, so, like, then I'm not typing but just browsing, I scale it down to that and being able to use the apps that support that is very good. So when I'm typing I need bigger keyboards so I switch it. Well, but a lot of times you know if I'm just doing one-handed, so, like, I desire to be mindful of, like, you know, apps that are also responsive, like, not just scale properly or like websites. When we think of responsiveness, we just think of, like, one screen size but we think of like, you know, beyond that like percentage or design for even smaller phone size like smaller iPhones, and things like that. I think that's still going to be helpful to a decent amount of audiences. So I would say, Give flexibility and scale your designs to make it work on even extreme conditions.
NK Nikki
I wasn't aware of that feature that's actually really cool. I could probably use that myself. So on that same subject, and especially because considering flexibility, is there more that you wish employers did for people with disabilities or would implement within their structure?
DJ Dhaval
That's a very good question. Um Yeah, and I think, I would advocate for it, but I'm not qualified enough to speak for everyone and their needs. I would say needs are very heavily based on employee to employee depending on what type of disability they face, I would say, at least giving them equal opportunity to be able to work in a certain situation. So, to give you an example, when I got injured, when I injured my hand, for a while, I couldn't use my computer for a prolonged period of time. So my thumb would swell up, my finger would swell up when I would work more than two or three hours. And I'm not even a programmer, I'm a designer, so my keyboard usage is not going to be as drastic. Only when you're typing content or doing certain things. But then, a lot of times, you know, you're holding Shift too long to drag certain things or you repetitively do certain activities that are not strenuous to normal users, normal people, so having the flexibility of breaking my day into smaller chunks or extending my day beyond eight hours. Maybe sometimes, I will take like 10 hours and take four half an hour breaks. So, employers could, you know, it's not just always about providing devices or technology, but also just being there and providing employees a way for them to be able to contribute and perform closet to what they would expect from all other employees will be helpful. Also not treating disabled employees differently. I think any disabled person doesn't want to be treated as a disabled person. I appreciate when people are being helpful and holding doors doing certain things for me but, sometimes I also feel awkward about, like, you know, people going out of their way. Yes, everyone is nice, but people going out of their way to to help me. And, I guess for employers, I guess you know, just to check their boxes. I've seen, like, bigger companies fortunately don't do that, smaller companies I’ve seen two extremes, one is, you know, I’ve faced times where I’ll be going for interviews, I'll be working in a certain situation, and companies will pull me back from certain client facing activities. Because they, probably because I have visible disability and they probably care about, like, you know, putting their glamorous image in front of people. It didn't register to me, like, until, you know, a while, where I was not getting certain opportunities. I've been very lucky at Accenture and SAP, bigger companies, you know, they don't care. I’ve been in client calls, client meetings, I've been leading even engagements, like you know, for business development and stuff meeting clients early on before we got the business, so, I’ve had good luck. I’ve seen, like I said, two extremes one or zero. Either, they don't consider them equal, or sometimes they try to highlight the employees so much just to look good, that they are being inclusive and they are being nice, so they try to over publicize their efforts for inclusion and accessibility. So, I would say, employers should look at like individual case by case, and see how they can help. Definitely, you know assistant devices, like I said, giving accessible keyboards and stands to adjust the height and chairs and everything else. That’s definitely, like, one should expect and employers should do regardless of disability, right, like ergonomics, like paying attention to ergonomics is something that employers should do regardless of disability because you want employees to be comfortable when they're working. But, in case of disability, give them more choice and don't just rely on one portal and say “Okay, take any of these keyboards”, maybe give them an option say, if you are disabled, you know, like maybe if you need any other assistive devices, contact, or like you know, sometimes contact is more difficult, but maybe just say if you need a keyboard we are spending up to $200 for normal keyboards, maybe you can back buy a keyboard up to $200 and we reimburse you for certain things. So assistive devices and ergonomics I would say all employers should pay attention to, but I would say, they pay attention to psychological aspects and comfort to. Like, not advertise your disabled employees but at the same time, don't hide them behind, like, this glossy persona of you like, you know, very modern, trendy, and like, fit and healthy, normal company. I would say give everyone equal opportunity that you give to people. This is how employers can be mindful.
NK Nikki
I think those are all really good items to consider. I know in this past year we've all been working from home but considering, you know a time where we were in the office or when we go back to the office was there anything that you wish people were more mindful of in physical spaces?
DJ Dhaval
Yeah, I think most people I've run into are very nice and good. There has not been any issues that I personally face, but I know going back to my deaf friend, even though she can’t hear she would rely a lot on reading lips. So, in certain situations, you know now with COVID the masks and everything, I know it has been publicized, but that's something when I interact, you know, I see, like, previously when we would, what do you call it, interact on a video chat or something, you know that would be something a lot more easier, so, a video chat mask is fine but now going back to the office for certain employees, you know, I'm sure, could be other things that could be looked into. I know Google has been doing a great job in terms of light transcribing phones and things like that. So there might be transcribing things It could be done, even for presentations and stuff in the office that could be for other employees. For myself, I guess you know, I've been lucky, like I said, I have not had any sensory disabilities, so it's it has not been as difficult for me compared to some of the other people who would have other disabilities.
NK Nikki
Thank you so much for this. Is there anything, you know, as we're wrapping this up, anything else that you would like to add In addition, anything that we didn't cover yet?
DJ Dhaval
I think you covered quite a lot, so thank you and thanks for giving an opportunity to talk about certain things. It's funny, like you know, I guess maybe I would like to add that, you know, when I talk about persona, creating a persona, or when I talk about being mindful about certain things, it's easy to talk about, but then we forget. So, I want to probably add, and make it a practice for myself too, is we maybe have a checklist of, like, new projects, because talking to you reminded me of certain things that I myself had stopped paying attention to, so, I need to start thinking of those things as well. So, I guess you know, the more we do it the more we would turn it into a habit and then they come, you know, just part of the normal process. So, I think yeah, you've covered a lot and if there's any questions, feel free to reconnect. But, this is great and I look forward to hearing more and seeing more from other participants as well,
NK Nikki
Me too! Well, you were the first, so, thank you again. I super appreciate that.
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