Digital Pond: EP#8 Yahye Siyad — Everyday Design Meets Digital Inclusion
In this episode, we’re being joined by Cyber-Duck’s very own Diversity and Accessibility Lead Yahye Siyad.
Yahye Siyad has an extraordinary life traveling across the world from a very young age, building a wealth of experience and lots of different cultures and achieving some incredible life goals along the way.
He was born with a visual impairment and dedicated himself to advocating for social change and digital inclusion. During the chat, we discussed the value that improving digital accessibility can provide for organisations, why hybrid working as a future and if the principles in Donald Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things” still hold up 30 years since its first publication.
You can listen to the podcast in full on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
You can find the full transcript for the podcast below.
Transcript
Danny Bluestone
welcome, Yahye it’s fantastic, I know that some people call you ‘Yah Yah’. We’re going to pronounce it today as a Yahye, So, it’s great to have you on our digital pond podcasts in fact you’re one of the guests that I was most looking forward to talking to. It’s great to have you at Cyber-Duck it’s the digital inclusion lead. I think you’re doing some fantastic work already. It’s an honor and privilege to have you in the team and just help to make us Cyber-Duck far more cognizant of the challenges and opportunities that people have on a day to day basis and therefore make products much user centric and accessible, really.
Yahye Siyad
Thank you very much for that and thanks for your trust as well on me and it’s a pleasure to be with you.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, absolutely. So, we’ve got roughly half an hour and it would be great to… before we start just hear a bit more about how’s your month been, really? And where have you been? What have you been doing?
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, it’s been a good month. I’ve been working mostly from home. I’ve been working on different initiatives online. I’ve recently also came back from Abu Dhabi for a conference so it’s been quite good I’m looking forward to a few more as well, activities and speaking opportunities and different assignments with accessibility inclusion. So yeah, it’s been quite good and fruitful. Thank you so much.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, and obviously, like working from home again, I’m assuming is the pandemic, sort of quite way behind us now, but I’m assuming that was that sort of better for you generally to work from home more, get out there less? Or is it pretty much a non-point for you?
Yahye Siyad
No, I think again, just like most of people would say the hybrid kind of model is the perfect one. I mean, it’s great. Like today I’m enjoying has been home and recording this with you but then other times, you just want to collaborate more with the team members I’ve also had the opportunities to visit our office from time to time. So, I think for me I love the hybrid model.
Danny Bluestone
Oh! amazing and how was Abu Dhabi? So, you went to… can you just remind us like what was that conference about? And what were the main kind of highlights for you?
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, so it’s about the early childhood development. So, I was invited as a guest speaker to talk about the impact of COVID on children with disability from a development point of view, it was great, It was all interesting and we looked at different things. We actually looked at, even at the role of technology in enhancing the development or hindering the development so, it was good, it was really interesting and it opened my eyes, not only from a inclusion point of view, but also as a father as well of two children.
Danny Bluestone
That’s amazing, and that’s a great segue way into sort of childhood because that’s clearly what’s going to be one of my first points in the conversation, when you were growing up, obviously, you grew up in multiple countries and moved around a bit. So, it’d be great to hear about that but also, when did you notice that you are interacting with the world in a slightly different way to let’s say other kids, what time or point in your childhood did you really realize that?
Yahye Siyad
I think I’ve realised that very early at the age of seven when my dad boarded me a plane by myself, from Somalia in East Africa to Bahrain in the Middle East and before I realised that it was more than 10 years I lived in that place, haven’t seen my family. So as soon as I stepped out of Somalia on that plane, I’ve realised I live in a different world than what I’m accustomed to, being in a different environment and plunged into a whole new experience where I’m going through the experience of separation from my family, not able to speak one word of Arabic having to learn that and living with visual impairment in a completely foreign land to where I was born, so I had to learn everything from scratch, starting with the Braille then started moving to typewriting etc. So, I think from the early age of seven I’ve realised that my world is different and you will continue to evolve and so it turned out to be.
Danny Bluestone
Wow, that must have built up a lot of resilience in you because I understand also that you got into sport quite early as well. Tell us a bit more about that.
Yahye Siyad
Yeah. So, I’d like to think, then at the age of 18 moved to England and started the whole adventure again from beginning with the same different challenges, but this time was just few years under my belt of experience of this issue, so I started playing sports called gold ball, it’s a Paralympian sports, like a big ball with a bell inside it, then you have to be blindfolded and you have three play each side and zip the ball across the floor, and I’ve established my own club, playing the sports locally in London, I compete also for GB squad and I’ve retired 10 years ago but then I came back now playing recreationally, in fact, this weekend I’m going to Birmingham to take part of a tournament of the same sport.
Danny Bluestone
Oh wow. So, you definitely busy, and is it fair to say that you became quite entrepreneurial? And what would you sort of attribute that to, that sort of entrepreneurial spirit and ambition that you have?
Yahye Siyad
I think a lot of it has to do with being raised without parents, a lot of it has to do with the intuition of seeing opportunity, and it always came from this notion of I’m experiencing difficulties and problems at all time of different challenges, accessibility, whether it’s physical, digital, etc. and it allowed me to see the opportunities. So, It’s the notion of this need there and I was like, what if I can be part of the solution because often what happen is when you are experiencing a disability, or certain challenges of all different kinds of challenges, where you realise that you start to… I don’t want to say the word suffer but endure hardship and then you have two choices, either you complain about it or you become part of the solution, and I wanted to be part of the solution and hence why I got into establishing different… being different parts of charity and social advocacies in solving these problems.
Danny Bluestone
They’re fascinating stuff because many people will succumb to the problem and then almost indulge in their pain and their hardships.
Sometimes they can even end up … sort of turn to the dark side and whereas what you’ve chosen to do is clearly to be a leader, an agent of change, as well as a role model. So…
Yahye Siyad
I’d like to think so especially when it comes to disability. I think the challenge is a bit because it’s one of the largest minorities that normally spoke on their behalf and I wasn’t happy to put up with that notion. I wanted to be part of the solution, rather than on behalf of somebody to represent me on my behalf. We need allies for sure but we need to be part of the solution, and that’s why I thought, having different ways of looking at problems and solving it from a different point of view.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, absolutely. Technically speaking, it sounds like you had to learn braille, you mentioned typewriters. I know when I listened to you talk of one of our client events, you were talking about discovering the internet and so that sounds really interesting, I’ve listened to you, met you quite a few times, I would classify you as a very tech savvy person or user. You always seem to be at the very forefront of digital and obviously digital for you is slightly different than let’s say the average user. So, tell me a bit more about the journey of you becoming tech savvy and then what that’s entailed.
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, so the first time I’ve encountered using computer and internet was in the 90s and when I moved to the UK, I wanted to first focus on learning English and going to university and what I was told in one of those eye openers moment that digital is the what is the way forward for you, to learn English to become entrepreneur, to go to university and so on. So, it turned out to be, so I started using computer with the regular windows computer but with a screen reader, one is called JAWS and other one’s called NVDA. Whereby I’m able to… it’s a screen reader that I’m able to read what’s on the screen with Outlook, with internet beat Microsoft packages with different packages by using the keyboard shortcuts and navigating that way just through the keyboard and it really opened tons of opportunities for me that I’m so grateful for.
Danny Bluestone
Absolutely yeah, the internet obviously has changed hundreds of millions or billions of people’s lives by now. I think for yourself it’s also been an incredible tool, I think you mentioned that you use that for everything, like from dating to loads of other things. Tell us a bit more about how you’ve benefited from it.
Yahye Siyad
I did Yeah, absolutely. So, because I want to move to the UK, I moved by myself, so I had to make friends, I used it first and foremost to read and write and to meet different people from different places, I used it to do my shopping because the idea of going shopping with visual impairment in supermarkets can be a pain. So, I’ve done online shopping, it allowed me to travel the world extensively because I’m a travel addict, so I’ve been to so many different countries by myself so, it was an opportunity to meet people before I took the flight. So yeah, it’s been revelation in every sense of the word. It really has, it allowed me to study independently accessing eBooks, since I cannot read physical books. It’s just been really interesting across the whole spectrum.
Danny Bluestone
Wow. Like even things like e-commerce in shopping, it sounds like it’s pretty much revolutionised your life. So, it’s great to hear.
Clearly there’s always room for improvement in your experiences. I imagine that every day, when you interact with things in inverted commas, you feel some certain frustrations and I think we’ve discussed Donald Norman before and his book ‘Design of Everyday Things’. It’s probably one of the first books that were written about user-centred design, human-centred design and one of my favourite quotes from the book is around standardisation and how when you standardise things, you simplify lives. From your experience, how do you feel that things are going?
Do you think that product design, and that’s obviously physical products not just digital products, do you think that they’re improving? And do you think that designers and product engineers are really being very kind of inclusive in their thinking when they create new products services and be it digital or physical?
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, this is such a really powerful, big question because it’s like ‘where to start from’ So, I love that book. As you recommended, I’ve read it and I think one of the best… you’ve shared your favourite quotes I’m sharing my favourite quote as well, is that it says that “there is knowledge in the heads of the designers and then there’s the knowledge of the of the worlds out there” and sometimes the mismatch is happening between technologies and this really captures every challenge of accessibility that people like myself facing either the physical or in the digital world, where basically, the needs of different people including myself are not taken into account, not deliberately but out of lack of understanding and out of assumption that we won’t be using it.
So, it’s designed for your average, mainstream, fully abled person, if that makes sense and even with that understanding, it’s still not tailored enough towards how people are using it, we talk about in the early 90s, it was this understanding that something called social model of disability, that the disability is not understood in the lens of the model disability, which is basically, you’re not able to see, not able to hear and this was where disability is, disability is from your environment, and I think what the technology did at early stage enabled us and embedded that social model of disability, that yes actually, we no longer feel disabled because we are able to use the digital world effectively and our opportunities are improving as a result, and then what happens is that the design of the technology continued at a rapid pace without taking the need of people like us on board, and it started to create a product that is just counterproductive, if that makes sense.
You talking about screens, touch screens in the left, and he talking about screen, other screen on the air conditions and entertainment system in the airplane that I’m not able to use, coffee machines at the office etc. So, is designing with people’s in mind, rather than to design because it’s a cool feature. So that the idea of the functional versus control. I think this is quite relevant for us as well.
Danny Bluestone
I remember when you came to our office, and I think you asked someone where the water machine was and then when you went there, eventually you managed but I remember you coming back and saying like Danny, the water machine has a touchscreen. I almost burnt myself with a boiling water, right?
Yahye Siyad
Absolutely.
And I see this across everywhere, right? I flew with airlines, major airlines, the same issue with the entertainment system, I’m not able to use it because it’s a touchscreen and that’s because whoever designed these products did not think of how about somebody who is visually impaired able to use it. So, the alternatives is not there, we’re not asking for the world to go back on touchscreen, I think is the way forward just like how Apple had showed us, but it’s about what can you embed in the touchscreen as a good alternative for people, even with the dexterity challenges.
I always use as Apple not because I’m advocating for Apple but Apple design their iPhone, the iPad, the Mac with accessibility in mind because it’s built in so, there’s an option for you to activate voice over, activating the voice over the touchscreen, completely sorted, be different, whereby you touch once it tells you what you’re touching, double tap, it allows you to select what you’re touching. So, imagine if we have this kind of equivalent of voice over just as an example of my particular need activated in water machines or entertainment system or lift elevators or etc. So, it’s about having an alternative to every product that you design.
Danny Bluestone
Absolutely, and I think one of the things that Donald Norman also speaks about in again, the book “The Design of Everyday Things” is standardization. So, once you’ve got a tried and tested mechanism for doing something and when I say tried and tested, it’s testing it with not necessarily even just with people with disabilities, but children, elderly people with motor mobility issues. Once you’ve really got something tried and tested and it’s been proven and standardised and obviously there’s various organisations that then…like BSI for example, British Standards International will provide a kind of standard, that this product actually reaches the standards. why? It’s because it’s been tested with different ages, people with different disabilities, different impairments and I think that’s a fantastic way for designers to then take that design and then build upon it whilst understanding the principles of how and why it works. I think another example is toilets, right? Like, so I don’t have any impairments but even I struggle sometimes when I go into bathrooms to figure out, how do you use the toilet? How do you use the button or the lever? Can be in different places where sometimes you don’t even see it so, I can imagine that for yourself. It’s even more complex.
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, and I think here is where the idea of… in the designing stage is like five different stages and I think one of them is empathy, right? And then prototyping and I think what tends to happen is that these things get skipped and these things get rushed, if that makes sense and they didn’t take into account the average users’ needs because as I said, the standardisation, the consistency of layout and designing something that makes sense, designing something that with minimal effort, like whatever I’m supposed to use, whether it be a physical product or a digital product, is supposed to enhance my experience and make it more convenient, rather than become a hassle of trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do.
So, it should become like a second nature, like it’s visible not necessarily visually but visible with different ways, so that is a problem where you try to design something, you design something that looks cool or you feel is cool or becomes what’s the word? A trend, rather than something that really makes sense.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, so what you were discussing earlier, again from Donald Norman’s book, so there’s something that he defines almost like the design model or designing a model and then the users model and then typically what will happen is the designer will design something and some designers won’t consult with the users or they may consult with some users, but they won’t have a depth and breadth in terms of… they won’t have people from different kind of ages or different people that have let’s say, impairments or disabilities, so then what they actually create is a system that is essentially faulty to many users.
Whereas the latest data I looked at is one in five people in the UK and one in four people in the US have some form of impairment that impacts their ability to use the worldwide web correctly and they will have some sort of situational impairment at one point in their lives, where that, for example, they’ll be using one hand because they’ll be carrying a child or as they get older, their eyesight deteriorates and their hearing gets worse or they hurt their limb and therefore, products should be designed with those types of situational and permanent impairments in mind and I think you’re right, the problem that we have, it’s not just the internet and apps and websites, it’s even like, homes, right?
I mean, how often do you sort of walk around your home and wish that things were better designed?
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, absolutely right.
It’s something that makes sense and something that is logical enough, whether it’s be it simple things that are used in a database and what I really liked about delving into the subject more is that how small things I was taking for granted, now I start to look at things from a design point of view, does that make sense? Why these things doesn’t make sense, why these things is designed in a way that is not taking the needs, I think the problem that with a lot of things happening in life in general, but when it comes to design, especially that the initial things with design not necessarily because there’s a strong need for it, but it was designed because we just need to do something that is commercially viable and I think this is where also some part of the problem as well happened.
That, yes, commercial viability is important, but it should come as a consequence of taking the needs of people into account first and I think the more we assume that disability is not limited to people who are registered disabled, the more we understand that we need to design something that is inclusive, across all as you said, something that just makes sense.
Yeah, absolutely because when you’re designing for children, there’s safety considerations, like you don’t want them to… God forbid, swallow part of the product and there’s so many considerations with product design. So that’s really interesting. I think when you’re talking about commercial, clearly, obviously, a private organisation will have various kind of prerogatives, including making sure that they’re profitable, that the products… It can be a website or physical product, it looks cool, it’s sexy, it’s slick and then sometimes a big chunk of the population with impairments will get missed out because they’re essentially just trying to look cool and make a profit, right?
Yahye Siyad
Yeah, absolutely and I think again, this is where we need to understand that profit can always be made profit, commercial viability, it can be reached but it should not be what drives design. Does it make sense? What drives design is the core essence of design which is the empathy, which is convenience, which is alternatives, which is all the things that we all look for, whether we have a disability or we don’t.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, absolutely. Some of the best products out there were…It’s almost like by accident, right? Like, if you think about something like Alexa, it wasn’t originally designed to be kind of a tool that was used for people with visual impairment, I don’t think that’s the primary reason why it was created but as a byproduct, it’s become almost indispensable to at least from the people that I speak to. People that are visually impaired use it all the time.
Yahye Siyad
I use it all the time. I bought it first as a bit of a toy, if I’m honest with you and now I realize I cannot live without any right? This is a great example and I think this is another who designed it, but maybe whoever designed it may be considered that and then realize, oh, this actually isn’t very convenient for many people is going to be commercially viable. But also, it’s good to tick all different boxes, for example, an example of a technologist, our head technologist initially was when that was created or the idea of texting was actually designed for people who are deaf and then it became worldwide mainstream thing. So, it shows that it can be combined, a product being scalable but also being inclusive. So that’s a really good example.
Danny Bluestone
Yeah, so texting was originally…. You’re absolutely right, SMS predictive text messaging was originally designed for people with disabilities but then became a mainstream product. It’s like the opposite of what Alexa originally set out to do, when they were trying to conquer the market. It was more Amazon from a e-commerce perspective, they were trying to get people to order more products using Alexa but actually, it turned into something that I don’t think they originally expected it would be. So, it’s it works in both ways, right? That’s technology for you. So how do you think the things are going? Do you think that products and services…I know it’s a very broad topic, right? So, you have everything from self-driving cars, to ordering products online to reading books, how do you think…Is the world becoming a friendlier place? And the society kind of embracing people with impairments more or do you think that we’re still kind of in the 1990s?
Yahye Siyad
I think combination of few different factors, but mainly includes two things in my opinion, are driving a positive change and would continue to drive positive change forward. A is that we start to live longer so we have an ageing population with different temporary situational disabilities, people are taking more risk in their lives and as a result they end up with more…not necessarily injuries but challenges of different sorts and they realise that they still need to continue working, and then the other one is the pandemic, which really have made us bit more empathetic and made us to understand, you know what things can change, things can move into rabbit base, which is for example, working from home, then having more services available online, etc.
So, I think now there’s more conversation about accessibility, inclusivity than ever before. There are more companies now hiring people with this profession, and it’s becoming a thing that cannot be ignored in the past few years ago, you could ignore it because it was nice to help but now is a must have. I give example.
There’s an e-commerce website, giant, I’m not going to name it but their website was very inaccessible and I took it on myself, I’ve emailed them, I’ve harassed them, emails after email saying that your products are not usable, that’s not good enough, you’re a big company and now I’m actually helping them to make their website more accessible. So, it’s something that now understood by product owners, but also something that is demanded by society.
Danny Bluestone
Wow. Those are profound words and I think as we’re sort of wrapping up, I know that we’ve discussed this before, things like ordering a passport, dealing kind of with governments generally, with official kind of matters, it was great. I think, when we first met you were explaining, how you view PDFs, what your perspective is on PDFs, which are traditionally viewed as something not accessible.
But you, from memory said that you sometimes prefer to create a PDF because a PDF is something that’s immutable and kind of almost indestructible. But the point is the government is… at least the UK Government is the leading, almost the world on standards of how citizens access public services, right? What are your views on let’s say, the government services online today?
Yahye Siyad
Again, it’s a hit and miss and it really depends of your own particular experience but I had a mixture of experience, I remember I was applying for a freedom pass in in London, and from the government and then I was told the application is not available online and you have to fill up the form, I was like, why is that?
There’s is a mandate now from the government to be the case so I had to fight my corner to fill it in an alternative way.
But then also, I had experience where I was able to apply for my daughter’s passport online without picking up a call to speak to anybody, everything from uploading the certificate filling up the form making the payment and the passport arriving to my house without having to lift more than a finger. So, I think there is room for improvement, I think the more regulations we have when it comes to government and accountability, the better will be.
We have the forthcoming European Accessibility Act, which is going to mandate not only the digital websites to be accessible on applications but also every single interactive technology, be it ticket machines, be it ATMs, be it etc. So, I think we need a combination of strong regulations accountability, but also understanding opportunity of innovation and efficiency.
Danny Bluestone
Wow, so clearly like designers, and when I say the word designers, I’m also referring to like engineers, product and project managers, as well as of course designers, like UX designers, UI designers, that they have a really important role because ultimately, they’re the people that are given the power to influence a design and make it accessible.
Is there anything that you’ve let say, read or know What sort of tips would you give them? And is there any kind of further reading that you can point them to, obviously besides Donald Norman’s book but I’m sure there are other kinds of tips that you have.
Yahye Siyad
It’s going to be a lot of them but I’ll say it in two words and I think if these two words are taken into account, the rest should be logical and straightforward. One is need. Are we designing based on need? Or are we designing based on trend, being trendy and commercial been divided by viability? Second is empathy. When we’re talking about empathy is about… not just like, Oh, I know what you go through, oh I understand. No, it’s about actually living the experience, It’s about saying, I’m designing something based on need, first and foremost, but then the empathy says that I need to experience that, I need to live that, I need to observe that, I need to put myself in their shoes and I think if those two are taken care of, everything else from standardisation, consistency, guidelines, will be followed easily.
Danny Bluestone
Wow, that’s so insightful and I hope that all the designers and product managers and engineers in the Digital pond community have listened to this, will definitely take some extracts from your wisdom here. It’s been great having you on the show and I’d love to have lunch with you soon and meet you again. So, we can continue the conversation but for now, a huge thank you for joining us today at the Digital pond podcast.
Yahye Siyad
Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity, and as I said, I hope people just feel free to engage, communicate and more importantly also learn from mistakes as well.
Danny Bluestone
Thanks so much for listening. You can find Yahye Siyad speaking more about digital inclusion and accessibility on their own website, simply go to the resources section, and make sure you follow Cyber-Duck on Twitter to find out more about all the great work that we’re doing around accessibility and inclusivity, where @ cyberduck_uk on Twitter.
Our next guests on the digital pond will be Anders Reeves from CovertSwarm, where we talking about info security and all the things that are happening in that world. See you there.
