[Dennis] I'm going to present United Airlines Accessibility Journey. The agenda tonight will be just a little bit of introduction of why we even visited accessibility, some background as well as sort of the plan that we took, and how we executed on that plan. If there's time I will do a demonstration and then sort of a communicate you know what our plans are for the future and then there'll hopefully be a little bit of time for some Q&A.
Many of you may or may not know this but United Airlines was created by William Boeing, who started out in the airplane business in 1916. His company, the Boeing Airplane Company as it was called then, achieved the first international postal delivery in 1919. He went on to establish the United Aircraft Corporation in 1928
It's one of ... United Airlines is one of the fastest ... sorry largest airline ... definitely not fastest ... what was I saying there ... in the world, with over 87,000 employees and more than 700 mainline aircraft. In 2016, we flew approximately 143 million passengers serving more than 330 destinations in 54 countries with more than 4,500 daily departures.
Tech for All is the agency ... the consultancy that we used to help us out with our accessibility endeavor. They have been around since 2001. Their mission is to serve clients with a commitment to make their products, services and websites accessible to all people, including those living with disabilities. They provided end-to-end accessibility solutions for a wide range of digital products, applications and websites and also for producers of digital content.
35 00:02:32,020 --> 00:02:37,220 When we were going through the agencies to figure out which one to go with,
36 00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:44,680 they had some airline experience, but they were very heavy in the higher education field.
37 00:02:45,260 --> 00:02:50,780 But some of their work that they did in that field we found interesting
38 00:02:50,780 --> 00:02:55,060 and sort of, you know, caused us to look at them a little bit closer.
39 00:02:55,060 --> 00:02:58,460 TFA's services include training, planning, designing,
40 00:02:58,460 --> 00:03:01,800 development, support, evaluation, testing, remediation,
41 00:03:02,220 --> 00:03:04,060 implementation and monitoring.
42 00:03:04,060 --> 00:03:11,500 Support for United Airline since March of 2015 for accessibility of its website,
43 00:03:11,500 --> 00:03:16,740 airport kiosk, mobile apps and in-flight Wi-Fi portal.
44 00:03:17,360 --> 00:03:20,980 So, the reason why we involve them was due to
45 00:03:20,980 --> 00:03:23,520 the Air Carriers Access Act.
46 00:03:23,520 --> 00:03:25,960 How many people here have actually heard of that?
47 00:03:27,340 --> 00:03:31,060 Okay about a third to almost a half.
48 00:03:32,260 --> 00:03:36,800 You know, air travel for the longest period of time
49 00:03:36,800 --> 00:03:38,800 has been viewed as a luxury.
50 00:03:40,080 --> 00:03:43,920 But nowadays it is the main form of moving
51 00:03:43,920 --> 00:03:45,220 from point A to point B
52 00:03:45,220 --> 00:03:50,340 especially since people travel not only from town to town
53 00:03:50,340 --> 00:03:53,400 but actually from state to state and country to country.
54 00:03:53,400 --> 00:03:58,500 So the Air Carrier Access Act actually prohibits
55 00:03:58,500 --> 00:04:01,980 discrimination on the basis of disability in air travel
56 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:05,220 and requires air carriers to accommodate the needs
57 00:04:05,220 --> 00:04:07,220 of passengers with disabilities.
58 00:04:07,220 --> 00:04:12,140 It's not just for the web, it's actually, you know,
59 00:04:12,140 --> 00:04:14,140 when you have someone with a disability,
60 00:04:14,140 --> 00:04:19,480 he boards an aircraft, getting them to the aircraft, getting them off the aircraft.
61 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:25,400 As you may know, we have been in the news in the past for some issues with that.
62 00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:32,920 So the Air Carrier's Access Act actually covers not only digital but actually in the real world.
63 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:42,240 So in 2013, there was an amendment to this rule
64 00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:45,300 requiring both US and foreign air carriers
65 00:04:45,300 --> 00:04:48,560 to make their websites that market air transportation
66 00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:51,280 to the general public in the United States
67 00:04:51,280 --> 00:04:53,780 accessible to individuals with disabilities,
68 00:04:53,780 --> 00:04:59,560 in addition to kiosks at least twenty five percent by 2022.
69 00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:04,580 So what does this mean for United Airlines?
70 00:05:04,580 --> 00:05:09,540 Back in 2013 ... this came out in November 2013,
71 00:05:09,540 --> 00:05:16,080 we knew nothing about accessibility or what it meant to be accessible
72 00:05:16,580 --> 00:05:20,940 So we really had to start from scratch, you know,
73 00:05:20,940 --> 00:05:25,400 people with disabilities have to be able to use the website;
74 00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:29,820 perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the website.
75 00:05:29,820 --> 00:05:33,440 The WCAG 2, what I just mentioned a little while ago,
76 00:05:33,920 --> 00:05:37,140 those accessibility guidelines provide some direction
77 00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:41,540 techniques and success criteria that can be used to
78 00:05:41,540 --> 00:05:45,820 ensure website accessibility to address various disabilities.
79 00:05:46,900 --> 00:05:49,160 So the question was, how are we going to do this?
80 00:05:50,420 --> 00:05:53,040 We had to review our flight plan.
81 00:05:53,920 --> 00:05:59,040 So first steps we need to review the needs, outline plans,
82 00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:03,060 get up to speed with the guidelines and you know
83 00:06:03,060 --> 00:06:05,060 the guidelines, as you'll find out next month
84 00:06:05,660 --> 00:06:11,140 it's over a thousand pages of information that you need to digest,
85 00:06:11,140 --> 00:06:18,160 so it's really not something that is just you know cliff notes, read it, ok I'm ready to go.
86 00:06:18,540 --> 00:06:21,440 We went through a process of selecting
87 00:06:21,440 --> 00:06:27,400 an accessibility consulting firm to try to audit
88 00:06:27,400 --> 00:06:30,080 the website, provide recommendations
89 00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:32,320 and sort of the next steps of
90 00:06:32,320 --> 00:06:34,620 how we were going to remediate the website.
91 00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:40,940 Internally we do not have a formal team.
92 00:06:40,940 --> 00:06:45,040 Basically was people with various focuses
93 00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:49,740 and disciplines that ... and a part-time basis
94 00:06:49,740 --> 00:06:54,260 worked with our agency to remediate the website.
95 00:06:54,260 --> 00:06:58,260 It involved user experience, front-end web development,
96 00:06:59,060 --> 00:07:02,780 user acceptance testing, requirements writing,
97 00:07:02,780 --> 00:07:05,840 digital production and editorial disciplines.
98 00:07:06,140 --> 00:07:11,820 We also own joined an organization called
99 00:07:11,820 --> 00:07:17,660 Airlines for America. They're not accessibility specific.
100 00:07:18,040 --> 00:07:23,820 They work as a liaison between the airlines and the DOT
101 00:07:23,820 --> 00:07:27,060 to ensure that we are following the rules.
102 00:07:28,580 --> 00:07:29,880 So...
103 00:07:31,300 --> 00:07:33,500 to get to the implementation plan,
104 00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:36,000 we went through various phases.
105 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:38,000 So Phase One was evaluation.
106 00:07:38,460 --> 00:07:41,400 We performed web site audits of
107 00:07:42,140 --> 00:07:45,140 not only of united.com but mobile apps.
108 00:07:45,780 --> 00:07:47,780 Content migration audit.
109 00:07:48,520 --> 00:07:55,480 We were actually in the midst of a CMS migration
110 00:07:55,480 --> 00:07:59,060 from one to another which actually we stopped doing midstream.
111 00:07:59,060 --> 00:08:01,760 So there was quite a bit of double work.
112 00:08:02,620 --> 00:08:05,320 We reviewed the 2.0 designs.
113 00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:08,140 So what when I say 1.0 and 2.0 ...
114 00:08:08,140 --> 00:08:14,260 what you see today, on the homepage and on the booking path,
115 00:08:14,260 --> 00:08:16,640 that is considered 2.0.
116 00:08:16,640 --> 00:08:20,140 1.0 is the old look.
117 00:08:20,140 --> 00:08:22,480 So when I'm referring to these different versions,
118 00:08:22,480 --> 00:08:24,480 you'll know what I'm referring to.
119 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:27,000 And then our vendor also created
120 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,680 an accessibility discovery and roadmap.
121 00:08:30,580 --> 00:08:33,000 Phase two was the actual remediation.
122 00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:36,640 So we received training by TFA,
123 00:08:37,580 --> 00:08:40,080 both the designers and developers
124 00:08:40,080 --> 00:08:42,740 on how to make things accessible.
125 00:08:44,420 --> 00:08:47,880 We receive guidance and expertise by TFA
126 00:08:47,880 --> 00:08:51,340 for the various remediation teams.
127 00:08:51,340 --> 00:08:56,040 We ... because of the amount of work to be performed,
128 00:08:56,040 --> 00:09:01,380 we had to break up into, sort of into agile pods
129 00:09:01,820 --> 00:09:04,820 to audit all the various parts
130 00:09:04,820 --> 00:09:10,080 and mind you one thing that's unique to airline websites,
131 00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:14,540 especially ones that have merged and not replatformed
132 00:09:14,540 --> 00:09:17,560 is that you have a lot of old code.
133 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:20,660 I mean I cannot tell you how many times I saw
134 00:09:21,120 --> 00:09:22,600 font tag out there.
135 00:09:23,160 --> 00:09:28,140 So after we perform the remediation,
136 00:09:28,140 --> 00:09:32,240 TFA would perform additional reviews
137 00:09:32,240 --> 00:09:35,540 through various working sessions we held.
138 00:09:35,960 --> 00:09:39,000 And they also coordinated usability testing
139 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:47,740 with disability groups ... December of 2014, sorry 2015.
140 00:09:47,740 --> 00:09:52,940 We we partnered with ... trying to think of the name ...
141 00:09:53,940 --> 00:09:58,020 ah shoot, shoot shoot shoot, it's a disability group that
142 00:09:58,020 --> 00:10:04,460 helps individuals with vision impairments in particular,
143 00:10:04,460 --> 00:10:08,000 but they also helped us with various other disabilities
144 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:09,340 come in for testing.
145 00:10:09,340 --> 00:10:14,520 I have to say it was probably one the most rewarding days in accessibility
146 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:21,860 was actually watching someone succeed and fail in using the website.
147 00:10:21,860 --> 00:10:27,140 One of the revelations that I encountered was someone who ...
148 00:10:27,980 --> 00:10:33,940 the WCAG guidelines say that you have to be able to zoom the website up to two hundred percent.
149 00:10:33,940 --> 00:10:39,020 Well I watched people zooming the website up to five hundred percent.
150 00:10:39,440 --> 00:10:45,460 And as you can imagine there's a lot of moving around to actually be able to to digest the content.
151 00:10:48,580 --> 00:10:51,840 And then Phase 3 was the actual implementation.
152 00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:56,400 So as far as executing on this plan we had
153 00:10:56,440 --> 00:10:59,460 three different teams of experts; web, kiosk,
154 00:11:00,060 --> 00:11:03,140 and the team working on the accessible road map.
155 00:11:03,480 --> 00:11:07,340 So Phase one was three parallel tracks to complete
156 00:11:07,340 --> 00:11:09,340 web audits in five weeks.
157 00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:15,800 When you see the number of things we had to audit
158 00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:18,860 and review, five weeks is amazing.
159 00:11:18,860 --> 00:11:20,860 I still don't know how it was done.
160 00:11:22,340 --> 00:11:25,720 Phase 2, the web team supported remediation
161 00:11:25,720 --> 00:11:28,980 and evaluated the results of that remediation.
162 00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:32,380 And then Phase 3 was the actual implementation.
163 00:11:32,680 --> 00:11:34,680 We had a web team working on
164 00:11:36,780 --> 00:11:42,200 the actual implementation of the 2015 and 2016 deadlines.
165 00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:47,160 The DOT mandated accessibility in two phases.
166 00:11:47,160 --> 00:11:52,260 The first phase, which was 2015, was for the seven core functions;
167 00:11:52,260 --> 00:11:56,920 that's primarily your booking, your loyalty, check-in,
168 00:11:57,260 --> 00:12:01,860 flight status, those sort of task-based functions
169 00:12:01,860 --> 00:12:03,860 of a airline website.
170 00:12:03,980 --> 00:12:06,700 2016 was everything else.
171 00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:09,740 We had a separate kiosk team,
172 00:12:09,740 --> 00:12:15,880 who worked to make the kiosk compliant with the DOT regulations.
173 00:12:15,880 --> 00:12:18,240 and that was at the end of 2016.
174 00:12:18,520 --> 00:12:23,820 TFA, our agency, then addressed the continuing compliance.
175 00:12:26,600 --> 00:12:34,580 So before we started this implementation, the disability community really struggled with our website
176 00:12:35,940 --> 00:12:38,380 due to various barriers.
177 00:12:39,020 --> 00:12:45,300 Not a person with disability but in the early stages when I was trying to create awareness,
178 00:12:45,580 --> 00:12:49,740 I got one of our managing directors in a conference room
179 00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:56,040 and so this way he would understand the gravity of accessibility problems,
180 00:12:56,380 --> 00:13:00,720 I set him up with a laptop, I set him up with a mouse,
181 00:13:01,920 --> 00:13:06,360 and I said okay, go ahead and book a flight from the homepage.
182 00:13:07,200 --> 00:13:12,080 As he went over to reach the mouse, I quickly unplugged it
183 00:13:13,420 --> 00:13:15,420 So he thought it was rather rude.
184 00:13:16,660 --> 00:13:21,720 So then his hands went to the trackpad and I place cardboard over it.
185 00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:26,860 And I told him ok now book and be glad I didn't turn off the screen.
186 00:13:27,560 --> 00:13:34,540 So he, just using the keyboard, attempted to book a flight and he never got off the homepage.
187 00:13:35,860 --> 00:13:39,560 At that point he was blown away ... I think he uttered an expletive.
188 00:13:39,560 --> 00:13:45,480 And our internal movement really took off after that.
189 00:13:46,460 --> 00:13:50,320 So before the remediation, blind customers ...
190 00:13:50,500 --> 00:13:55,140 multiple WCAG 2.0 and some usability issues
191 00:13:55,140 --> 00:13:58,820 created major barriers for users with a screen reader
192 00:13:58,820 --> 00:14:02,020 rendering most of our new website booking path
193 00:14:02,020 --> 00:14:04,280 interface inaccessible.
194 00:14:04,540 --> 00:14:06,540 One of the problems was that ...
195 00:14:07,320 --> 00:14:12,560 the new website had gone through so much development and we were so far along,
196 00:14:13,100 --> 00:14:15,760 that it wasn't like we could change the design,
197 00:14:16,660 --> 00:14:23,240 which is another reason why you really want to bake in accessibility up front at the design stage,
198 00:14:23,240 --> 00:14:26,220 even in the planning for design stage.
199 00:14:26,220 --> 00:14:30,400 Low vision customers found issues with
200 00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:33,700 insufficient color contrast for text and sometimes
201 00:14:33,700 --> 00:14:35,700 even using color as a reference.
202 00:14:36,340 --> 00:14:42,000 We had portions of our website where we would say click the green button.
203 00:14:43,880 --> 00:14:52,100 If you've ever viewed a web page or website with an extension on the browser
204 00:14:52,100 --> 00:14:58,780 that can change it based on different color blindness deficiencies, you'll soon realize that
205 00:15:00,100 --> 00:15:02,100 you don't know what button to click.
206 00:15:03,100 --> 00:15:05,540 For mobility impaired customers,
207 00:15:05,540 --> 00:15:08,240 many of our user interface elements
208 00:15:08,240 --> 00:15:11,220 could not be operated using only the keyboard.
209 00:15:11,220 --> 00:15:17,640 I kid you not, as I was coming over here I was telling some folks who arrived here early
210 00:15:19,340 --> 00:15:23,140 a new section of the website that is getting ready to be launched,
211 00:15:23,140 --> 00:15:29,080 come to find out that certain things weren't looked at for accessibility.
212 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:34,920 So they reached out to me, and they said okay so when we get here,
213 00:15:34,920 --> 00:15:39,880 when we click on, when we tab through, we can't get to that button over there.
214 00:15:40,900 --> 00:15:45,120 Now the funny thing is I had to be logged in and I was having difficulty logging in
215 00:15:45,120 --> 00:15:47,120 and so they sent me a screenshot,
216 00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:52,840 which doesn't really make it easy to review the code if they're not providing the code panel.
217 00:15:53,300 --> 00:15:55,300 So I said "explain to me what happens?"
218 00:15:55,300 --> 00:15:59,740 They said, well we tab, we hit this, hit this, and then we hit this which is right after the button.
219 00:15:59,740 --> 00:16:06,420 I said I can probably guess that that's not a button or an input.
220 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:12,160 that's probably a div that's wrapped around text that says continue
221 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,560 and there's no tabindex there's nothing saying that the button.
222 00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:18,880 So you don't know how to interact with it.
223 00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:24,720 And then they the person on the call this morning they look at that yeah how did you know?
224 00:16:24,720 --> 00:16:28,880 It's like because I've seen it 350 other times from the last couple years.
225 00:16:29,400 --> 00:16:32,060 So at least I could tell them how to fix that.
226 00:16:34,200 --> 00:16:38,480 Another thing that we encountered during this journey
227 00:16:38,480 --> 00:16:41,720 of ours is the disability community
228 00:16:41,720 --> 00:16:45,260 really communicated their displeasure with our website.
229 00:16:46,620 --> 00:16:50,280 These are three tweets before we implemented
230 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:52,280 the first phase of implementation.
231 00:16:52,280 --> 00:16:55,800 For those that can't see, this is a little bit small,
232 00:16:56,180 --> 00:16:57,820 but this was actually during a conference
233 00:16:57,820 --> 00:17:00,180 where they used our website as an example,
234 00:17:02,940 --> 00:17:05,460 a bad example ... before remediation.
235 00:17:05,940 --> 00:17:08,500 And it says here "united website doesn't allow
236 00:17:08,500 --> 00:17:11,160 blind people to buy flights online yikes"
237 00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:17,800 and then the hashtags #accessibility and #usertestplease
238 00:17:19,080 --> 00:17:20,080 Over here we have
239 00:17:20,080 --> 00:17:23,140 "united i have us have had a similar problem
240 00:17:23,480 --> 00:17:26,840 general website & accessibility on chrome for the mac
241 00:17:27,400 --> 00:17:30,600 fine on firefox tweeted on thursday got nothing."
242 00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:34,620 And then lastly, "united i use minimum font size
243 00:17:34,620 --> 00:17:38,080 in my browser for accessibility but now the new website
244 00:17:38,080 --> 00:17:40,900 won't let me search for flights pages broken."
245 00:17:41,720 --> 00:17:48,200 As you can imagine, that's an issue. We're basically blocking people from performing a task
246 00:17:48,200 --> 00:17:55,280 that other people using a mouse or other input devices are able to do.
247 00:18:02,100 --> 00:18:07,640 Additionally, we receive feedback this is an early version
248 00:18:07,640 --> 00:18:11,820 in development of the website.
249 00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:15,100 If you notice, we have a lot of issues.
250 00:18:15,360 --> 00:18:17,280 This is, once again, a little bit small,
251 00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:20,140 but you can see that there's plenty of color contrast
252 00:18:20,140 --> 00:18:24,240 issues; you know text / photographic imagery
253 00:18:24,240 --> 00:18:27,560 where you can't read it, small font sizes,
254 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:30,500 What is ...okay personal tangent ...
255 00:18:30,820 --> 00:18:32,880 what is up with the small font sizes?
256 00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:42,480 I mean I'm over a half a century old and anytime I have to get within the foot of the monitor read it,
257 00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:43,660 it's too small.
258 00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:49,900 So yeah please ... please increase those font sizes.
259 00:18:50,080 --> 00:18:54,120 Trust me it's going to be a trend, it's going to be sexy someday, just enlarge it.
260 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:58,980 Yeah being able to use a website is sexy ... there you go.
261 00:18:59,180 --> 00:19:03,560 And also consistently poor feedback and ratings
262 00:19:03,560 --> 00:19:06,120 from customers ... that that will actually do it
263 00:19:06,120 --> 00:19:07,600 each and every time.
264 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:10,880 So a safety check ... key challenges ...
265 00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:15,180 we had to educate everyone involved
266 00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:17,840 in both general understanding as well as
267 00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:21,640 specific role-based learning and training on accessibility
268 00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:24,280 both in-house and offshore resources.
269 00:19:26,120 --> 00:19:36,400 At the time, we had, for 2.0, we had onshore resources remediating and for 1.0, we had offshore.
270 00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:43,880 The problem there is, we had to use a completely different methodology in writing up requirements.
271 00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:52,160 For onshore, we were told not to tell how to remediate just what to remediate.
272 00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:57,280 For offshore, we were told not only how to remediate but,
273 00:19:57,280 --> 00:20:02,260 I mean what to remediate but explicitly how to remediate it.
274 00:20:02,440 --> 00:20:08,360 So you found that so many times asking, ok, who's doing, who's remediating this okay
275 00:20:08,360 --> 00:20:12,140 and then we had the right to requirements appropriately.
276 00:20:13,520 --> 00:20:15,780 Buy-in of internal stakeholders.
277 00:20:15,780 --> 00:20:17,800 Educating them on the scope
278 00:20:17,800 --> 00:20:19,800 and ramifications of the project
279 00:20:19,800 --> 00:20:22,560 and then the placement of the business priorities.
280 00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:28,720 As you can imagine, releasing a new website design, especially one that has been delayed
281 00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:35,320 for quite some time, and now everyone wants their portion of the website to look brand-new
282 00:20:35,320 --> 00:20:42,040 and we say we can't do that where we're actually making it accessible and there may not be any visible changes
283 00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:45,720 that's very difficult to sell to a business stakeholder.
284 00:20:47,400 --> 00:20:49,600 And then also as far as resources,
285 00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:52,760 the part time team with multiple responsibilities.
286 00:20:52,920 --> 00:21:01,240 So for myself, I was helping set remediation requirements for the various parts of
287 00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:08,480 the 2.0 website for the first phase.
288 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:14,400 Last year, I was divided amongst the rest of the site in helping with the remediation,
289 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:17,840 but also remediating the rest of the site for content.
290 00:21:17,840 --> 00:21:20,400 So last year was a very busy year.
291 00:21:22,160 --> 00:21:25,200 Design and development of a new website
292 00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:28,240 already in progress requiring remediation
293 00:21:28,240 --> 00:21:31,000 rather than design. Very costly.
294 00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:35,840 Remediation is always more costly than baking it in
295 00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:37,840 upfront at the beginning.
296 00:21:38,440 --> 00:21:40,960 Time to completion in scope.
297 00:21:41,360 --> 00:21:43,360 You know you would think that
298 00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:47,400 we had a total for the entire website of three years
299 00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:49,120 to make it accessible.
300 00:21:49,120 --> 00:21:51,840 You don't realize how much time you really need.
301 00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:56,160 We literally finished about a week before.
302 00:21:56,880 --> 00:21:59,760 So it was very stressful.
303 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:02,760 The scope of the mandates required us
304 00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:04,760 to divide and conquer.
305 00:22:04,760 --> 00:22:07,080 Address kiosk software and hardware,
306 00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:09,320 split the website into core pages,
307 00:22:09,320 --> 00:22:10,880 content-driven pages
308 00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:14,760 and third-party vendor responsibilities.
309 00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:17,760 We have a lot of subdomains that are actually managed
310 00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:21,360 by third parties and then trying to get them up to speed.
311 00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:23,880 What we wanted to do is say
312 00:22:23,880 --> 00:22:27,760 "here's WCAG, learn it, fix the website."
313 00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:31,560 They still came to us asking us questions all the time,
314 00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:33,960 so that really did not work.
315 00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:36,960 Partnerships.
316 00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:39,560 Integration of accessibility partner
317 00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:41,560 to implementation activities
318 00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:44,200 We brought TFA, our partner,
319 00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:47,040 and appropriate touch points from audit
320 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:48,920 to recommendations to training.
321 00:22:49,240 --> 00:22:53,720 We did again usability testing by people with disabilities
322 00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:57,360 and we also started developing relationships
323 00:22:57,360 --> 00:23:00,520 with various groups, most recently
324 00:23:00,520 --> 00:23:02,840 we created a relationship with the
325 00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:05,080 American Federation of the Blind and
326 00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,080 the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind.
327 00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:11,080 And then of course the logistical challenges in terms of
328 00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:15,400 equipment, devices, tools, online versus in person.
329 00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:18,880 We could only do testing in person.
330 00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,720 You know for other user testing that we do we do a mix,
331 00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:30,040 but with individuals with disabilities, that's very difficult.
332 00:23:30,040 --> 00:23:37,880 It's not possible because the methods in doing remote testing are themselves not accessible.
333 00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:41,560 And then ongoing training.
334 00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:44,400 Continuing to spread the word to others.
335 00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,280 We're training and education becomes important.
336 00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:49,720 I'm still doing that today.
337 00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:55,240 One of the things that we found is as soon as you train people, people leave
338 00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:56,880 and now you have to train new people.
339 00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:03,480 The groups themselves don't keep the information.
340 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,480 They don't create a knowledge base within their groups,
341 00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:11,120 they depend on us to retrain and recreate awareness.
342 00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:14,840 Different disciplines and practices that have
343 00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:17,240 different roles learning how to do their part and
344 00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:19,040 how they fit together.
345 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:28,440 One of the things I will say on the positive is, we had some tremendous advocates in the business.
346 00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,480 ... because then she probably kick me in the shins tomorrow,
347 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:40,440 but she's on the advertising side, so you think okay so what's the big deal.
348 00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:47,960 Ads themselves also have to be accessible and would not think that this would be so difficult.
349 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:54,200 But when you're dealing with third-party ads using API's that hit a distribution system
350 00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:59,640 which are hitting a source system that can be very difficult and
351 00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:08,760 this particular individual really hung in there, wanted to learn, embraced it and really made my life much easier.
352 00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:17,120 ... yeah, like ad banners and and for these particular ones these were a third party ads.
353 00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:23,120 So Take off.
354 00:25:23,120 --> 00:25:27,600 So in 2015 and 2016, here's where we round up some numbers.
355 00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:31,680 There were 1421 application pages
356 00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:33,480 that needed to be remediated.
357 00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:40,520 and again, you know, seeing the same problems over and ... that's actually a blessing.
358 00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:46,440 When you establish a pattern where, this table is coded just like this table and they're all bad
359 00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:52,480 you could sort of just write the requirements for each one of these the same way so that actually did help us.
360 00:25:52,480 --> 00:26:04,360 But ... font tags. Come on ... I actually had the figure out what are the attributes for font tags.
361 00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:08,800 600 content pages.
362 00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:11,760 26 videos.
363 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,040 You may think okay what's the big deal?
364 00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:25,800 Well 26 videos that did not have custom captions, they had YouTube's auto captions.
365 00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:27,360 Well we all know what that's like.
366 00:26:27,360 --> 00:26:37,440 When we first started, I watched in-flight safety video, and I watched the auto captions.
367 00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:41,120 I mean talk about damaging to the brand.
368 00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:48,360 I mean, yeah, some of those words should not be used in anything that's on video for United Airlines.
369 00:26:48,360 --> 00:26:51,160 But besides that not only the captions
370 00:26:51,160 --> 00:26:54,760 but how we are delivering them you know just embedding the YouTube player,
371 00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:58,360 the YouTube player is not up to WCAG 2 AA.
372 00:26:59,360 --> 00:27:05,360 So we had to find a player that would handle YouTube videos and then of course we found all the issues
373 00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:12,160 with regards to that you might think okay fine that's perfect and you're done.
374 00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:22,320 Not when you realize that there's information embedded in the video that's not being passed across audibly.
375 00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:30,800 For instance for our in-flight entertainment they would embed the name of the film,
376 00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:35,720 but it's never being communicated. Well isn't at the point of the video?
377 00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:41,600 To know what videos are going to be displayed you know are to be presented in flight for a given month?
378 00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:46,160 And then 108 PDFs.
379 00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:49,800 Gawd ... PDFs.
380 00:27:52,360 --> 00:27:54,360 What can I say.
381 00:27:54,360 --> 00:27:58,360 Funny, we had two days of training on how to remediate PDFs.
382 00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:05,560 And then about a month later we said yeah that's not going to work so then we just started hitting the Delete key.
383 00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:16,640 Let's touch upon here, we begin with over 1600 PDFs, the left it with 108.
384 00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:21,400 Many of those believe it or not we're back from 2001.
385 00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:29,080 How relevant were those? Our web servers in some areas are basically storage servers.
386 00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:35,040 You know mergers and acquisitions.
387 00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:37,960 Challenges includes video player, closed captioning,
388 00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:39,960 route map.
389 00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:48,280 Ok, so our old route map, we had two of them, one domestic one international, and they were PDFs.
390 00:28:49,440 --> 00:29:03,400 I think each PDF had about 1200 curved lines going from various hubs and I would tell that the design group
391 00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:10,480 who would actually update these on a monthly basis, it's like you do realize that I can't get nothing out of this.
392 00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:16,120 Oh yes you can. I said so what route did you add? I added this route. I go, where's the line?
393 00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:18,120 Um...
394 00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:28,160 Our current route map uses the Google Maps API. It provides the information textually,
395 00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:34,320 but also allows for the graphical lines that you would expect. So it's actually pretty cool.
396 00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,600 Friendly skies. That's what we want, right?
397 00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,800 After our remediation
398 00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:46,360 we immediately started getting positive feedback.
399 00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:50,000 This is a tweet here "nice job United on the new website.
400 00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,680 Thanks for moving the web forward
401 00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,440 with your attention paid to accessibility."
402 00:29:55,440 --> 00:30:00,400 This is an email that we actually received the key here is
403 00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,680 "noticed improvements in the ability to select a fare
404 00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,440 and seat from the seat map. Great stuff!"
405 00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:17,840 I can't tell you how valuable, how impactful it is to make a seat map accessible to individuals with disabilities.
406 00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:25,440 The key here in making things accessible is providing independence for everyone.
407 00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:31,040 We take it for granted because we've been doing it forever. It's not until you don't have it
408 00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:41,320 and especially if you once had it and now you don't. You have something to compare to and that's when it becomes very impactful.
409 00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:45,200 We actually made Marcy Sutton's blog.
410 00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:49,840 She runs a blog called Accessibility Wins,
411 00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:54,280 where basically she points out accessibility wins,
412 00:30:54,280 --> 00:30:57,560 typically they are portions of a website.
413 00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,520 In this case she just targeted the entire website
414 00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:02,800 and said great job.
415 00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:05,240 So you might want to check that out.
416 00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:07,240 Read the entire article on that.
417 00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:10,800 Another thing we noticed is that
418 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,560 we have Opinion Labs hooked up to the website.
419 00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:18,640 You'll note that little green tab, which by the way now is accessible,
420 00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,680 It's pretty bad when you make the website accessible
421 00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:25,200 but yet if someone wants to provide feedback
422 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:26,440 they can't get to it.
423 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,440 We had to make that accessible.
424 00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:33,600 Right after the implementation of our accessibility,
425 00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:41,200 you'll notice that we went from this many complaints down to practically none.
426 00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,800 Now it's not to say that we're perfect.
427 00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:47,320 In fact if you think of it a website is constantly changing.
428 00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:50,480 We won an award.
429 00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,040 The American Federation of the Blind awarded
430 00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:58,560 United Airlines they're Blind Access Award.
431 00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,640 The access award honors individuals and corporations
432 00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,040 that eliminate or substantially reduce inequity
433 00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,400 faced by people with vision loss.
434 00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:11,320 We actually received this award last Friday.
435 00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:14,960 Representatives from our team that did much of the
436 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,120 remediation attended the ceremony last Friday.
437 00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:21,320 So the project really was to remediate the website.
438 00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:25,160 But you have to think about okay what about the future?
439 00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,520 I mean how you going to keep the website accessible?
440 00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:33,760 So we are looking at applying universal design
441 00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:34,800 principles.
442 00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:37,960 We have recently started moving to agile.
443 00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:39,960 Yeah I know. It's taken a while.
444 00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,160 But it's one of the challenges is with that is
445 00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:47,560 to make sure each pod is at the same level
446 00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:52,200 of universal design and incorporating accessibility
447 00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,200 that's something that we're having to deal with
448 00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:55,640 at this current time.
449 00:32:56,920 --> 00:32:59,440 Automated testing tools.
450 00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,720 A little bit over a year ago we met with
451 00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,920 at least eight vendors of automated testing tools
452 00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:15,000 things like Tenon and the SSB Bart product AMP
453 00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:18,120 We met with various vendors.
454 00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:21,600 They demonstrated their tools, some of them are free
455 00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:23,840 some of them are very pricey.
456 00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:28,440 It basically is based on how much of a dashboard they provide
457 00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:35,800 Today we still do not have an automated tool implemented.
458 00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:37,800 Now there's actually two types of tools.
459 00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:45,000 So there's your manual tool like WebAim's Wave tool that can test page by page,
460 00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:53,320 And then there's tools like Tenon and other things that will actually scan a group of pages if not the entire website.
461 00:33:55,120 --> 00:34:00,400 We don't have that yet, but with either tool whether it be a page based or site based,
462 00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:09,680 automated tools are only good up to about thirty percent so they're going to catch your low hanging fruit.
463 00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:14,960 They're going to catch whether you're missing an alt attribute, you know code base pattern.
464 00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:20,600 So they're going to catch if you don't have a label tag associated with an input field.
465 00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:30,560 But they're not going to catch if you know, you have the word file name in as the alt text for an ad.
466 00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:35,320 So they're not going to check on the more qualitative things.
467 00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:38,440 Documenting.
468 00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,320 I don't think ... to this day we have spotty documentation
469 00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,640 here and there but we don't have an actual global set
470 00:34:46,640 --> 00:34:51,240 of documentation and I know that we are working on that.
471 00:34:51,240 --> 00:34:57,400 We need to continue our usability testing with customers with disabilities
472 00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:06,960 Again, someone like me who doesn't ... I don't have a disability per se
473 00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:09,840 I mean I'm wearing glasses, this is my assistive technology.
474 00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:14,000 But I don't have a disability per se so that's very different
475 00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:17,320 for me testing as compared with an actual user
476 00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,640 who depends on things who will have a very different experience
477 00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:27,880 And then with regards to the kiosk we've completed and launch them but that's an ongoing thing
478 00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:34,360 we're constantly replacing kiosks and those are you know the software's complete the hardware
479 00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,400 is being rolled out as the airport's update their kiosks.
480 00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:43,400 And then of course continuing in person education.
481 00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:50,400 Also, changing the culture that's been another quite difficult thing in the company like ours
482 00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:55,240 to create a culture where we do include everyone.
483 00:35:55,240 --> 00:36:00,840 I have had a designer come to me and say but blind people don't come to our website.
484 00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:09,320 Like have you been to the airport lately? Have you seen people with guide dogs and canes boarding planes?
485 00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:14,640 How do you think they got there? Not all of them used someone to book your flight.
486 00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:16,640 Many of them actually booked their own flight.
487 00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:24,560 Okay and we're also looking at the in-flight Wi-Fi and entertainment, because we know that's coming down.
488 00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:28,120 The mobile app. Our mobile app fluctuates
489 00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:31,160 in accessibility. Sometimes it's better,
490 00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,160 then someone will make a change and now
491 00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:38,560 it's a little bit worse but actually it's fairly accessible.
492 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:42,600 mweb, which is to be our mobile web that we roll out
493 00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:43,960 later on this year
494 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:47,080 as well as the internal flight attendants app
495 00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,960 So you know it's been for me it's been the three plus year journey
496 00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:58,280 from grassroots to very structured remediation
497 00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:01,840 and then program building which is where we are today
498 00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:09,760 and it's all sort of to make the skies more friendly or the friendly skies.