[NJTechDiv] Alexa Trust Boss Beatrice Geoffrin Talks Accessibility At Amazon And How It Is ‘Everyone’s Responsibility’ - Forbes

[Steve Cook]

"amazon accessibility" - Google News - Friday, May 21, 2021 at 4:43 AM


Alexa Trust Boss Beatrice Geoffrin Talks Accessibility At Amazon And How It Is ‘Everyone’s Responsibility’ - Forbes


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Smart home devices, including Amazon's Echo, can make one's more more accessible for disabled ... [+] people. 

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Although people have differing opinions on which smart assistant is objectively smartest, it seems fair to say Apple nor Google nor Microsoft’s respective assistants has the cachet of Amazon’s Alexa. The doyenne of digital assistants, Alexa is to the digital assistant category what Band-Aid is to bandages or Kleenex is to facial tissue—all are synonymous with their brand. Their products’ ubiquity transcends mere utilitarianism and pushes into the broader social consciousness. You needn’t be a nerd or gadget reviewer to know who Alexa is or what she does. The average person just knows Alexa can help you do things simply by asking, from controlling smart home devices to managing a grocery list to even changing the input on your television.

Despite Amazon’s marketing blitzes and Alexa’s name recognition, one aspect of Alexa most consumers may not hear much about is how accessible she is to people with disabilities <https://www.amazon.com/b?node=21101808011> . This is especially true in a smart home context, where Alexa perhaps is most well known and arguably best-suited. Asking Alexa (or other assistant) to turn on and off lights or open the garage, for example, makes those seemingly mundane tasks infinitely more accessible for a person who has motor delays and can’t easily access a light switch or garage door opener. Smart home devices for accessibility are high-tech equivalents of analog assistive tech like handrails in the shower or low countertops in the kitchen; smart home devices are smarter, but both exist to serve the purpose of making a disabled person’s home more homey through accessibility.

The moral here is that, while Amazon and its ilk pitch their digital assistants as tools of convenience, the truth is their impact reverberates much further. The sheer convenience of shouting into the ether and having a genie in a box act on your command or request is but one side of the story. It surely is convenient for one person to ask Alexa to turn on the TV—even futuristically cool in a Jetsons sort of way. For another person, however, asking Alexa to turn on their TV may be the only way they can if they don’t have the fine-motor skills to press the power button on a remote. Put simply, technology that so often is heralded as luxurious amenities can also be life-changing necessities. In a nutshell, that’s what makes accessibility so crucial. 

Amazon, as their other Big Tech peers in Apple, Google, and Microsoft, takes seriously the task of making accessible products for customers with disabilities. “Thanks to the power of voice technology, we’ve heard from many customers about how Alexa is fundamentally improving and simplifying their lives, and we’ve continued to respond to make the service more accessible,” said Beatrice Geoffrin, Director of Alexa Trust at Amazon, in a recent interview with me conducted over email.

Perhaps the core tenet to Amazon’s business is ensuring customers have a positive experience with them. As you’d expect, making its products as accessible as possible to disabled people fits that mantra. But building accessible products is as much a pragmatic endeavor as it is socially responsible. Amazon, Geoffrin told me, wants to build products that delight users in addition to being approachable. A big helper in building accessible products is the fact Amazon employs many disabled people; the insight gleaned from these team members helps make more “holistic” products that are useful to anyone and everyone. Internally, Amazon holds accessibility-themed hackathons, and there is a dedicated group of Amazonians (as employees are colloquially known) with disabilities. “They [disabled Amazon employees] are living the experience we strive to build for, and understand it firsthand,” Geoffrin said.

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She continued: “Designing accessible products starts in the same way as most things at Amazon—by working backwards from the customer. We work to create products that are not just accessible, but that are delightful for customers,” she said. “When initially thinking about a new product or feature, there are two questions we ask specific to accessibility: First, how will we make this accessible? And second, is there anything about this that might be especially important to customers with disabilities?”

Amazon hears often from people who say Alexa and other Amazon products have helped them in their lives. Geoffrin shared an anecdote about a customer named Rosemary. Her husband, Paul, has a rare neurological disease. Alexa’s voice-first nature has allowed him to stay on top of daily routines. In addition, his Kindle has made reading easier. “Customer stories and feedback like this helps us to continue to improve our devices and services, including Alexa, to better support all people with disabilities,” Geoffrin said. “[It] also illustrates that features and capabilities that support these communities help us make everyone’s life a little easier.”

The third Thursday each May is Global Accessibility Awareness Day <https://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/> . Its purpose is to raise awareness for diversity and inclusion vis-a-vis digital access. Several tech companies celebrate the day in various ways. For its part, Amazon commemorates the entire month to promoting this ideal. Accessibility is “everyone’s responsibility” according to Geoffrin, and Amazon makes concerted efforts to spotlight disabled employees for their work, as well as inviting partners to serve as speakers.

As for accessibility’s overall presence in tech at large, Geoffrin told me she’s “excited” assistive technologies are being more of a focal point, especially amidst the steady drumbeat of furthering diversity and inclusion societally. She acknowledges, though, there is always more work to be done. The industry must do better at recognizing that products aren’t a one-size-fits-all game and that companies must “continue to learn how to best support customers with different needs and preferences,” she said.

Accessibility advocates universally agree making accessible products means making better products in general. Not only do they do more functionally, they also cast a net with which to grab the widest possible audience—which ultimately serves to benefit the business as a whole. Geoffrin of course believes this ethos helps Amazon do better, but it obviously helps the industry—and the world—writ large as well.

“Recognizing that this is a journey, and one that requires a lot of listening to customers, experimenting, implementing feedback, and working together, is essential to the development process,” she said. “But it should be a journey that continues to be prioritized. For these communities, it’s not added convenience; having accessible technology can be life-changing.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenaquino/2021/05/19/alexa-trust-boss-beatrice-geoffrin-talks-accessibility-at-amazon-and-how-it-is-everyones-responsibility/

 

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