Accessible Design in the Third World: Are We Doing it Right?
My 57 year old uncle sits on the sofa in front of me, fidgeting desperately with his small handheld android phone, trying to navigate his way through YouTube and watch clips of one of his favourite movies, “1984” based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name. After a while, he gives up and exclaims his frustrations to me, telling me how difficult it is for people from his generation to accomplish seemingly simple tasks on their smartphones, like sending text messages or checking their email. The slightly somber realisation here? He’s not alone. There are millions of “late-stage” mobile users who feel the same way. In a world where we’re constantly finding ways to incorporate as much of reality as we can into digital experiences on mobile phones and computers, we run the risk of leaving many people behind.
As a Product Designer, an important part of my job is to help bridge the gap between the expectations all sorts of users have from technology and the actual experience that is presented to them. So as I ponder over whether we, as designers, are doing justice to the idea of making digital experiences as inclusive as we possibly can, I cannot conclusively say that our work unilaterally translates into tangible benefit for a certain percentage of our users.
Certain design initiatives focusing on accessibility as their central theme have garnered praise and repute in the past, the most popular of them being Google’s a11y initiative and more recently, their “Next Billion Users” initiative
The Next Billion Users concept pitches ideas like inclusivity for people who come from underprivileged areas, primarily in the third world. The tagline refers to the next billion users that will likely get access to digital devices and internet connections and will join the world’s largest digital interfaces as users for the first time ever. The initiative plans to make apps, websites, and other digital platforms simple and accessible for people who come from, let’s say, a town in India, or a gaon in Pakistan. People who either generally don’t have traditional or broad access to devices and the internet, or are slowly transitioning into the digital realm and face far more difficulties than the average American (or any average first-world individual) in doing so. These issues at the ground look like not being able to afford the most modern smartphones, thereby having to experience the digital realm with lesser bandwidth or seamlessness than the rest of us. Or a lack of educational facilities, meaning that it is more difficult for them to integrate into a digital ecosystem designed largely for those of us that can read and write, or at the very least, are somewhat familiar with the way modern UX works; buttons, images, keyboards, and other seemingly “common” controls that come almost naturally to us may not be as recognisable for the average Pakistani farmer who faces the problems (and more) that I’ve outlined so far.
The primary issue with the sorts of initiatives that monolithic companies try to run as “third world initiatives” is the lack of depth that these initiatives carry in terms of understanding the exact ways people at the bottom of the “digital ecosystem” interact with modern smartphones and computers. Admittedly so, it isn’t easy to holistically map out every single motivation these people have when using smartphones and the internet, especially when you have to partly assume things like user needs, pain points, and friction when you’re not directly interacting with these stakeholders. Lots of people in very privileged design teams may make the mistake of thinking they’re being “empathetic” when their empathy isn’t channeled the right way and ends up being of little use to people who aren’t very familiar with the way our devices and applications work. We may think we understand the sorts of issues that the next billion users face, but there’s no substitute for ground-level research and aggressive hypothesis-testing.
There’s a large disconnect between the way these people use technology and the lens most first world design experts view it through.
Cultural differences, lifestyle variances, different belief systems, different priorities in life, and several other factors play a role in widening the gap. Sometimes, first world designers just don’t holistically understand the sorts of needs and requirements people from the lower echelons of third world societies have, and that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s someone to blame. It just means that we have a long way to go in truly understanding the sorts of people we may be designing for in the near future. Better inclusivity in design teams, teams built on socioeconomic diversity, and even more balanced data gathering initiatives can go a long way in mitigating harmful biases, stereotypes, and deadlocks that keep us from truly creating accessible experiences from stakeholders that are increasingly growing more and more important to the digital realm.
The importance of making design accessible for people that are just entering the digital ecosystem is pivotal to shaping the role design will play for generations to come. An important part of the digital future is in our hands to shape as we see fit. The least we can do it to shape it responsibly.
