Read: Christopher Patnoe’s Thoughts on the Future of Accessible Technology
In an increasingly digital world, making technology accessible is fundamental to enabling people with deafblindness to participate in life. Sense International’s Global Deafblindness Resource Hub was built to help meet that need, connecting people with deafblindness with the world around them through accessible digital resources.
Innovations like the Hub are only possible when we come together and share experience and expertise. To see more positive change, we need collaboration from leaders across the tech and business worlds – like Christopher Patnoe at Google.
Christopher Patnoe has decades of experience working with some of the giants of the tech industry, but accessibility had never been high on their agenda until he witnessed his product from the perspective of a person with sight impairments and saw the barriers they faced to using technology. Realising just how essential this perspective was, he has gone on to spearhead accessibility at Google, becoming Head of Accessibility for EMEA and building the first Google Accessibility Discovery Centre outside of the USA. Recently, Christopher helped us to launch our Global Deafblindness Resource Hub at the centre.
For Deafblind Awareness Week, we asked him to share what accessibility means to him, how it can break down barriers, and what developments he’s most excited about in accessible technology of the future.
I discovered the need for accessible technology almost totally by accident. Working as a Technical Program Manager at Google, I was shocked to discover that my product, Google Play Music, was functionally inaccessible to people with visual impairments.A Test Engineer joined one of our meetings and turned on VoiceOver – all I heard was the word “button” repeated many times.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That’s the experience of Play Music for someone who’s blind”, Karo responded.
“What? That’s stupid, how do they use it?”
“They don’t, that’s why I’m here!”
I was surprised; truthfully, I’d never thought of how people with different communication needs might experience my products. Even after being at Apple, Sony Ericsson, and Disney, I never personally had to face their inaccessibility. Now that I’d seen it, I couldn’t look away – so within a few months I’d volunteered to take on Accessibility for Google Play, and a few years later had started working on it company wide. It was the best decision of my life. I get to spend my working day (and nights) working to make other people’s lives better through technology – and while I primarily still see our shortcomings, I think we have made great progress in the past 10 years.
To me, accessibility is about empowerment. A product that is made accessible empowers someone to live a life where they have control, in a world that has been too often designed without the needs of people with disabilities in mind. Google Maps’ accessibility features helps someone in a wheelchair know how to get from point A to point G in a step free way – and we can tell them if the destination is step free and even if it has accessible toilets. In the purely digital space, new and exciting innovations like Expressive Captions, where AI can help you understand emotion and context, help people with communication needs to better connect with those around them. Recently we have extended our Gemini integration into TalkBack, so people can ask questions and get responses about their images. That means the next time a friend texts you a photo of their new guitar, you can get a description and ask follow-up questions about the make and colour, or even what else is in the image – another way to bridge the gap for people with sight impairments.
Looking forward, I’m very excited about how AI might be even more impactful in the lives of people with disabilities. Today Gemini Live with camera and screen sharing is free on Android and iOS for everyone, so you can point your phone at anything and have it described to you. This is real time conversation, not having to take a picture and waiting for it to come back with an answer. What really gets me excited is the integration of this kind of AI into a wearable form factor, like what Meta has demonstrated over the past year with great success. I’d love to put on a pair of smart glasses and have it be able to guide me from my work to the British Library, and know me well enough to stop for coffee at that coffeeshop I went to last week (and it will remember the name better than me).
This is where technology is going – it’s early days now but I’m more excited and optimistic now than I have been in many years.
Christopher Patnoe, Head of Accessibility and Disability Inclusion for EMEA at Google