Interview | During the COVID-19, this social enterprise reached out to 17 million people

Author:CASVI

Amongst the COVID19 outbreak, one core need surfaced: the need to obtain information fast, and accurate. It is both an act of comfort and an instinct, as people try their best to grasp the seemingly uncertain situation.

A plethora of social media platforms, apps, programs surfaced, working at full capacity to bring the latest (but not necessarily accurate) information to people. Interactive maps with real-time update on the number of diagnosed and suspected cases, and daily updated lists of clinics and pharmacies that have masks and sanitizers in stock are just some of the ways people are using to navigate around. You may think that with a wide coverage of the internet and high usage of mobile phones, such efforts in disseminating critical information would be able to cover almost anyone with access to the internet. However, there is a group of people who remains clueless, not because they don’t have Wi-Fi, but because they are unable to effectively process those information.

There are about 17 million visually impaired persons in China. The number includes both complete blindness and varying degrees of visual impairment. In this era where the dissemination and presentation of information is often visual-oriented, it is even harder for them to obtain the right information and seek help in times of emergency. This is where the Shenzhen Information Accessibility Research Association comes in. The team is made up mostly with programmers who are persons with disabilities, committed towards promoting accessibility of information through technology.

The team have launched a WeChat mini program dedicated to improving accessibility of information. Since its initial launch on February 10th, it has been used by 13,000 people and has gone viral in the community.

Two of the staff working on this project, Xiao longdan and Liquan Wu are also visually impaired persons. Liquan is responsible for writing requirements documents. He said that "all functional designs are based on my needs and the needs of the users that I’ve learned", that's why they "understand the users".

Chin@ator contacted Xiao Longdan, Liquan, and the "Product Manager" Hema on the second day of its launch and to talk about how the program came about and its development process. In the face of such a raging epidemic, how did they exert their advantages to provide value to the people they serve in a timely manner? What does this product mean for themselves, the industry and even the entire barrier-free environment? Find out from our conversation with them below.

Screenshot of the Wechat Mini Program

Q: How did you decide on launching such a program?

A: In the face of this epidemic, the country and responsible enterprises have done a lot to help people get through this difficult time. But in this process, whether it is information display or functional interaction, these contents lack consideration for the disabled persons. So after resuming work remotely on Feb 3rd, we first worked with other media platforms to start an initiative, calling people to pay attention to the accessibility of product information.

However, during the outbreak, people might not know what accessibility means or how it can be applied. From our end, we definitely would like to provide such support, and we thought that if we could come up with something as a demonstration first it would be easier for people to understand. To be able to contribute in a time of need is also very much in line with our social enterprise.

Once we had the idea, the decision-making that followed was quick. After discussing it in our team group chat, there was unamimous agreeemnt and our colleagues voluntarily volunteered to be on this temporary project, which wrapped up in an amazing speed. I was really surprised about that too.

Q: How many people signed up? How was the development process like?

A: Almost everyone on the team signed up, but the project didn't need that many, so we selected a dozen colleages to work on development, functional design, interface design, etc., all of which are going on simultaneously.

Most of our work were providing information accessibility services for other products, and this is actually the first time for our team to actually build a product from scratch. So of course, the entire process was more like learning-by-doing, and things went in the other direction a couple times. But the overall timeline was still quite short, because everyone were working on it almost at all times. We only decided to do this on Feb 6th, it was tested online on the 9th, and offcially launched it on the 10th. The actual development only took about 3 days.

Usually, to complete a mini program takes about 10 to 15 days including functional design, interface design, UI design, interaction design, accessibility compliance, stability testing and compatibility testing. In terms of the project itself, I think it was completed really fast, especially for social enterprises like us who never had such experience before. We spent a lot of time to explore.

Al the participated colleagues basically took this project as their first priority. Because we had a really simple idea—the sooner it is applied to this group, the more valuable it is. I hope that from now on as long as they need any help, they will be able to get information and support through this mini program immediately.

In terms of the testing process of accessibility, since information accessibility itself is our core service, so we have to make our products absolutely accessible. For example, the size of controls, containers, icons, fonts, color contrast, and the compatibility of screen-reading software, its jumps, interactivity and all related content.

The colleague for design made a lot of efforts. Every time he came up with a new design, we were quite critical about it and then we would do it all over again. Hundreds of opinions were picked in the first design, which made him very exhausted. (Laughs)

Q: What exactly can be considered as accessibility compliant?

A: For example, people with amblyopia, including the elderly, have a problem when using various mobile apps, because the contrast between the font and the background is not sufficient. For them, the text displayed above is not clear enough, which is often too bright or too dark. So we designed our interface based on this perspective.

In this industry, many developers still didn’t realize that blind people can also use internet as well as these programs, therefore their design to development process is often not friendly enough. Screen readers are unreadable. So even they can open this program, there’s still no information for them to read at all.

For example, in terms of data queries of cases, we made a lot of adjustments in the focus of logic. Currently, under optimal conditions, screen readers can clearly obtain these information from different blocks and layers.

Other programs for cases inquiry can provide even more comprehensive information. For example, relevant information can be graphically displayed through an option called “display the nearby map”. Ordinary people may understand this picture at a glance. But for people with low vision, it is quite difficult. They don’t understand what is displayed in that picture.

Our interface is intuitive and straightforward, which tell you directly about the number in total and increased number compared with yesterday, such a clear reminder. In addition, in the peer inquiry, there’s a lot of interaction about the details of screen reading.

If you we don’t optimize the screen reading, these users will have to piece together the information obtained from a very confusing page into a complete and orderly state.

There is also psychological counseling. We worked with several professional counseling teams for the disabled. They provided us their phone numbers for further assistance. Normally, ordinary people can just keep the phone number and dial. But for the visually impaired, they need to add a dial button next to the phone number. After clicking this button, they can directly ask the system for dialing.

Accessibility standard is something that matters an industry. Some international standard organizations and domestic relevant units have their own standards. For us, whether we make our own accessibility products or promote accessibility for our cooperative partners, we have always followed the relevant standards and based on users’ needs.

We provide our cooperative partners with accessibility solutions, which is a complete system. It includes design, development and use of the product; ways to achieve accessibility through code based on their original functions; the confirmation of compliance; even the promotion of some accessible groups, etc. All of these information are included in accessibility solutions.

Q: Are there any plans for iterations?

A: We will take several steps do to this. At first, we need to solve the most urgent problems for users so as to ensure that all these information can be obtained through the mini program during the epidemic.

We believe that the epidemic will definitely end. Till then its function may be changed, but it will always relate to the disabled group.

It may be used to release some news information related to disability and accessibility, which is similar to an information distribution platform. Or it may help to collect some feedback, such as the suggestions of various products used by the disabled, comments and other related content. This will be faster and more concentrated than collect from various channels.

Any interested companies, organizations, individuals are welcomed to discuss with us. As a public welfare organization and a social enterprise, we need more people to join us and promote it together.

Q: What significance does this project have for you?

A: I believe it has positive effects in the future. More people will know about information accessibility and its relevant softwares which they may knew nothing about it before. They will realize that during special times, information accessibility will be more helpful for the disabled, especially for the visually impaired.

For our industry, in the long run, this is very iconic. In our proposal, we called upon all public special emergencies like this to not forget the large number of disabled groups.

But no one knows what to do. This is also an attempt for us. Since the beginning of development, we incorporated the accessibility technology, which is a guide for the development of future mini programs, software, and websites. So the best time do accessibility is from the beginning of its design, rather than adding it afterwards.

Q: What do you think of doing this under the difficult situation of social enterprises during the epidemic?

A: We have a vision from the beginning, "Enable everyone to enjoy modern civilization through technology."

In order to make internet products more user-friendly for disabled groups, we built China’s first and only engineer team consisting of disabled groups, to perform product testing, development and maintenance, etc.

Both as a user and a developer, they are responsible and understand the needs of all disabled groups. In addition, these engineers must undergo training related to information accessibility, in order to ensure that they are professional and able to interface with internet companies with equal technical capabilities as other engineers.

The epidemic is coming. Since disabled groups are very vulnerable and confused in terms of information acquisition and identification, we have the responsibility and obligation to build this platform.

We didn’t think a lot. Of course the core foundation of it was driven by values. In our society, under this circumstance, we just had one idea. Since disabled people need this thing, there must be a team to consider for them.

When such an epidemic occurs, without accessibility infrastructure, disabled people have to face various obstacles caused by physiology. In the case of such a shortage of resources, restrictions on movements and unaccompanied situation, panic and helplessness will occur. We have disabled partners in our team, so we totally understand their urgent needs.

In our internal communication, we said that no matter what happens in the future, we are willing to pay for it and go for it. We didn’t think too much. We just thought that they need it, so we did it.

From the perspective of a social enterprise, this is not just about social responsibility, but also our original intention. Since the establishment of information accessibility research association to the transformation of the social enterprise LianDi in the later stage, we want to leverage the effective resources of business, solve social problems more efficiently and to promote the development of information accessibility. These two goals are not in conflict and need to be balanced, and we also need to firmly keep our original intention as a social enterprise.

From the perspective of information accessibility, just like the initiative we’ve launched, everyone has a need for information accessibility. Because everyone will encounter some uncommon situations and everyone will grow old, so information accessibility is meaningful to everyone.

We also hope that more companies will consider information accessibility in the course of development and in their own products. Doing some optimization or promotion, to consider the needs of disabled groups. That will be an additional force for them to achieve their business goals.