NetHui 2020: An Accessible Internet for All (Humphrey Hanley)

• Kia ora folks! I am Humphrey Hanley, and I am honoured to have your attention for the next five minutes because I really wanna know if you’ve considered how difficult your life might be, if you didn’t have the internet right now. Wherever you are in the world, what would you have done during lockdown if you couldn’t use Zoom to communicate with friends and family, if you couldn’t scroll your social media feed to keep up with the latest info or your Netflix show came without picture or sound coming through? Now imagine you need to be able to use the internet, because during COVID-19 level four lockdown here in New Zealand, the only way to get to see many rural health care professionals was via an online portal. And you need to be able to get your prescriptions. But there’s no way to type that into your GP’s health app of choice. Sorry to be dramatic. These are hypothetical but potentially very, very serious scenarios for some of the one in four Kiwis that have a disability that may limit their ability to interact with technology the way many of you out there with good eyes, hearing, and 10 fingers can.

01:22 - And why we need to make sure that as leaders in the online world and digital spaces we create, that we make sure they are accessible and open to all. I was fortunate that growing up, I was one of the first disabled kids I knew to truly benefit from the help of technology. It provided me with not just a pathway to education, being able to write using a computer programme on a floppy disc. When I was in High School it also gave me a way to fit in and be who I felt I was, not what the world judged me to be because of how I looked or how fragile my skin was. The invention of the internet allowed me to talk with people all around the world using IRC or ICQ and make friends like the other kids.

02:17 - It’s a little bit ironic now, given my brand and existence on social media, revolves around fighting for a more accessible world for people with disabilities, and being the handless gaming hero that the world neither asked for nor really needs. That my love of the internet started because it gave me a way to escape from my life of being disabled and to be free of those judgements. Now the possibilities are virtually limitless when it comes to the internet being a tool that connects people and gives them that sense of community and human connection if they otherwise can’t get out and about to socialise with people. But the internet isn’t always fair and it isn’t always without barriers. Approximately 180,000 people in New Zealand are considered to be blind or have low vision, but out of interest, how many of you watching included an alt-text in the last image you tweeted of your pets, your children, or that sourdough you made during lockdown? I know it’s not because of ill-intent that your tweet excluded those people from knowing more about that moment, but if we don’t deliberately set out to remove barriers in our work and our worlds, we’ll almost always include them by default.

03:47 - I frequently find myself struggling to use apps or touch screen programmes that require multi-touch gestures to control them. Just another one of those things that not everyone designing technology understands when they have the amazing idea that pinch-zooming is the ideal way forward for the future. My request to you today is, along with a thank you for listening to my talk, is that you go away from here and think about how you can be more inclusive in what you do. How can your work, your digital content, your company or your upcoming events be more accessible to other disabled people out there, and how can you actively challenge the barriers that you may not have even realise are out there? This was one of the briefest talks I have ever given on accessibility and the importance of designing with inclusion in mind, so I have by no means covered everything. In fact, I’m sure there are thousands of things that I have left out that would have been great to talk about.

04:50 - But if you feel that this has sparked a desire to know more, or simply to make the world a more accessible place, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Thank you and have a great NetHui 2020 folks. .