By Mike Shebanek, Yahoo Senior Director of Accessibility
You may have heard that we just launched our new Yahoo Mail desktop experience that makes it even easier to access and organize all of the important information in your Inbox. The new version of desktop Mail has been completely redesigned from the ground up, sits on our latest tech stack, and is fast, reliable, and intuitive to use. It however also takes a huge leap forward for accessibility, with many user interface and assistive technology compatibility improvements.
Yahoo’s Accessibility team and the Yahoo Mail team have been closely working together from the beginning of this project to identify and address previous barriers to accessibility and efficiency, and the teams have poured themselves into this new release.
With the new Yahoo Mail experience, NVDA and VoiceOver screen reader users have access to the full desktop Yahoo Mail experience including threaded message viewing, stationery, animated gifs, emoji, and more. The Inbox is also now presented as a table which makes it faster and easier to use and allows you to control what information you hear about each message. For example, screen reader users can find or mark messages as read or unread, delete or star them, and know how many messages are in a thread all from the Inbox without first having to open the message.
In addition to a new beautiful design that reduces visual clutter and improves responsiveness, we’ve also updated the set of visual themes including a new “dark” theme that provides high contrast using a dark background with bright text. This is helpful for light-sensitive and low-vision users. There’s also a new Inbox spacing option that reduces the need to pan around the screen when using high magnification. Of course, Yahoo Mail is also fully navigable using a keyboard alone (i.e. “tab key navigation”).
The images below show the default (black on white) Yahoo Mail theme and the new dark high-contrast theme.
Engaging users, actively observing, and then incorporating feedback into product design is central to Yahoo’s product development work. In addition to routinely performing small group or one-on-one user research that includes people with disabilities, a method of engaging users and gathering feedback unique to the Yahoo User Experience Research and Accessibility (UXRA) team is something we call User Nights.
Image caption: Dozens of Yahoo engineers wearing themed T-shirts sitting side by side with volunteers, observing them using Yahoo mobile apps on their smartphones
User Nights pair a user-volunteer one-on-one with a Yahoo engineer who observes how they complete a set of familiar tasks. It’s unusual for companies to have user researchers at all (it’s a function that’s often outsourced to consultants) but for those that do, it’s not so unusual to conduct observational research and report findings to a product team. Yahoo does this routinely. But our User Nights are unique in that we also arrange for the engineers who are actively engaged in building a product to sit side-by-side for over an hour observing how people are using it—with no coaching. They’re able to experience first-hand what’s working, what’s not, and the creative and unexpected ways people are using their products. Feedback and lessons learned from these experiences find their way directly back into the next release.
As Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Image caption: The cover of the new 2nd edition of the textbook, “Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction.” It features a hand-drawn group of users sitting behind a computer including a user who is blind holding a cane.
If you are interesting in learning more about Yahoo User Nights, I’m delighted to let you know that they’re now featured as a case study in the newly published 2nd edition of the textbook Research Methods in HCI by Prof. Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Feng, and Harry Hochheiser published by Morgan Kaufmann. (Yahoo receives no financial compensation related to this book). The first edition was published in 2009 and is used in many universities around the world, including Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, the University of Washington, the University of Toronto, HiOA (Norway), KTH (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel) and others.
Mike Shebanek, Yahoo Senior Director of Accessibility
I’m very pleased to share that last night, Teach Access, an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in the curricula of computer scientists, designers and researchers in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, was awarded an Honorable Mention Chairman’s Award for Advancement in Accessibility (Chairman’s AAA) by the Federal Communications Commission.
The Chairman’s AAA is an FCC program recognizing products, services, standards and other innovative developments that improve the experience of people with disabilities in telecommunications and technology. Yahoo is a founding partner of Teach Access, which was awarded this honor for its ambitious mission of incorporating fundamental concepts about accessible design and development across undergraduate design, computer science, UX and related curricula.
Image: Teach Access logo
Teach Access was created by a coalition of tech companies, universities and advocates for people with disabilities. Its mission is to expand awareness and knowledge of accessible technology development in higher education through approaches such as faculty bootcamps, guest lectures, internships, challenge grants for research and curriculum development and industry partnerships. Teach Access also builds open source online learning tools that reflect and teach accessibility best practices.
Image: Chairman’s award for advancement in accessibility certificate
Congrats to the entire Teach Access team! To learn more about Teach Access and all the wonderful things we’re doing, please visit our site.
Tumblr just launched the Android version of Cabana, Tumblr’s cool new video sharing app, and it is just as fun and addicting as the iOS version we launched last month. As Yahoo’s Senior Director of Accessibility Mike Shebanek mentioned in his blog about the iOS version, the concept of Cabana is simple but really powerful. You find a funny or interesting video, you invite your friends, and you all watch the video together on your phones, while you watch each other at the same time. I’ve had a blast using Cabana, and I love getting my brother to watch videos with me while I mock his naïve political biases ;-)
Image: Cabana by Tumblr logo
Pausing to reflect on my poor choice for the setting of my testing, I realized that as a blind guy, Cabana could be a virtual assistance tool, connecting me to friends or family in case I need to “borrow eyes” to find or identify something. I’ve been thinking of many ways this could be useful in my daily life. It is not what we designed the app to do; it is just another reason to love Cabana. And by the way, although she initially expressed her annoyance at the interruption, my wife was still watching videos and chatting with me nearly an hour later!
Even if you or a friend have a disability, we want you to enjoy Cabana and invite your friends to watch videos together too. As with the iOS version, the Android version of Cabana has also been optimized in several ways to make it accessible:
Cabana incorporates live video conferencing so you can use sign language
The color scheme has been tweaked to make it higher contrast for improved readability
You can control Cabana using a physical keyboard or alternate input device in addition to gestures
The app has been optimized for TalkBack users so if you’re a screen reader user, you can invite your friends, answer an invitation, and choose and control the video. Even the welcome and setup screens, including the camera feature used to capture your avatar photo, have been optimized.
Virtual Assistant
I discovered another powerful way to use Cabana. While my wife Paula was reading a book in bed, I set up my iPhone on her nightstand with Cabana showing a Saturday Night Live video clip. My Android phone was connected to the same video, and I took it into my kitchen and began chatting with Paula. After grumbling her annoyance at the interruption, she graciously informed me that she could see a nice pile of dishes that could use my attention.
Image: Cabana Image. Text reads Watch Videos Together
Image: Cabana image. Text reads Hang out, watch stuff.
Cabana is free, and available today on the Play Store for your Android phone. Check it out and invite your friends.
Mike Shebanek, Yahoo Senior Director of Accessibility
I’m very excited to share that Teach Access, an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in the curricula of computer scientists, designers and researchers in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, has won the Knowbility, Inc. award for Educational Achievement! Yahoo is a founding member of the project.
Teach Access was created by a coalition of tech companies, universities and advocates for people with disabilities. Its mission is to expand awareness and knowledge of accessible technology development in higher education through approaches such as faculty bootcamps, guest lectures, internships, challenge grants for research and curriculum development and industry partnerships. Teach Access also builds open source online learning tools that reflect and teach accessibility best practices. The tools are widely available to individuals, companies and organizations. In addition, Teach Access has developed job descriptions that include preference for accessibility knowledge to support recruitment activities and to extend the post-secondary foundation through “on the job training” in product and service development.
Image: Knowbility Award. Inscription reads Knowbility is pleased to recognize Teach Access for Educational Achievement for creating and promoting an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in college and university curricula. 2017 Community Heroes of Accessibility Awards.
This is an extremely proud moment for Teach Access and its members and supporters as we continue our pursuit to bring accessible design and development skills into college classrooms.
This week, Tumblr released a cool new iOS app called Cabana. The idea behind it is simple but really powerful. When you find a funny or interesting video you can’t wait to share with your friends, fire up Cabana, tap their names and invite them to join you. You’ll all see each other, and the video, together live. Share a good cry, make jokes, shout at the video, or just make crazy faces. It’s up to you what you say or do. The only caveat is to be careful—it’s totally addicting!
If you or a friend have a disability, you might be wondering if Cabana is something you can do too. Of course! We want everyone to be part of this new experience and invite their friends so we’ve optimized Cabana in a bunch of ways to make it accessible:
Cabana incorporates live video conferencing so you can use sign language
The color scheme has been tweaked to make it higher contrast for improved readability
You can drive Cabana using a physical keyboard or alternate input device
The app has been optimized for VoiceOver users (iOS) so if you’re a screen reader user, you can invite your friends, answer an invitation, and choose and control the video. Even the welcome and setup screens, including the camera feature used to capture your avatar photo, have been optimized.
Image: The Cabana app running on an iPhone showing six friends watching a video. The caption next to the phone reads “Watch videos together.”
Image: The Cabana app running on an iPhone showing the Friends list. The heading on the Cabana app reads “Hang Out, watch stuff.”
Cabana is free, and available today on the App Store for your iPhone. Check it out and invite your friends.
By Andrew Schulte, Chief of Staff to the CEO, Yahoo
A few weeks ago, we received nearly two dozen handwritten letters from 7th grade students at Chaboya Middle School in San Jose, all addressed to Marissa Mayer. These incredibly thoughtful and inquisitive letters penned questions about leadership, STEM, being a female CEO, the future of tech and general advice on working for a company like Yahoo. These letters touched and inspired Marissa and the team here, so what better way to answer their questions than a field trip to Yahoo headquarters!
We kicked off the day with an assembly that included an engaging Q&A discussion with Marissa addressing all the students’ top questions. Afterwards, we took them on an all access behind-the-scenes tour of what it’s like to work in Silicon Valley, including what it takes to launch some of our latest mobile products.
The first stop on their tour was our User Experience (UX) Lab where students had a chance to learn first hand about the importance of user feedback in consumer product development. Students met our UX and product teams, and learned how real world testing is critical to innovating and improving on products.
Next up, was a tour of Yahoo Studios, where students got the inside scoop on production, and how we put together a lot of our original video content. A few students even showed great promise as future on-air talent!
Then it was off to the Accessibility Lab, where they learned about the importance of building products that serve all our users, regardless of their physical capabilities. The students had an opportunity for hands-on problem solving to help individuals with hearing or visual impairment, or limited mobility use of our products.
We finished off the tour with a stop by our Publisher Products team, which works on some of Yahoo’s most popular products, like Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance. Here, they got an inside look at a day in the life of an engineer – from coding the personalized homepage stream, to the data and analytics team that helps us make data-driven decisions, to the release engineers that manage quality control for final publishing.
We had just as much fun as the students, and we’d like to send our deepest thanks to Chaboya Middle School, Mr. Joe Ennes, and the 7th grade class for bringing their best and brightest energy to Yahoo. We had an amazing time hosting you, and have tremendous optimism for the great things you’ll achieve in the future!
The men’s college basketball tournament, aka The Big Dance, is a truly massive event across America. 68 of the top colleges in the nation take part, and offices and sports bars everywhere are abuzz with excitement over their brackets. I’ve been filling out mine since I was a college student back in the 1980’s, and that didn’t stop after I lost my sight in the 1990’s. I always played, but it just wasn’t the same when a friend or colleague filled out the brackets for me. It was kind of like someone was looking over my shoulder, and it affected how I made my picks.
All that changes today. I’m excited to announce that for the first time, you can use your favorite screen reader to complete your bracket using Yahoo Fantasy Sports Tourney Pick'em on your iOS device. Why such a big deal? Because now you’ll be able to join the millions of other college basketball fans on Yahoo Sports. Even if you have a disability like I do, you can independently join or create your own group, make your picks and track your progress against your friends through the entire championship tournament.
It all starts on Sunday when the brackets go live. Choose a winner for each of the games in every round and then root for your teams as you track your predictions throughout the six rounds of the tournament. For the iOS app, we’ve implemented Apple’s “magic-tap,” a single two-finger double-tap gesture that let’s you quickly find and follow your favorite team from round to round. So, if you like Kansas to win it all, you just find Kansas in the first round, do the magic-tap, and you are immediately taken to the Kansas game in the second round without any additional taps or swipes. Magic-tap again, and you are on the Kansas game in the third round. It’s a super easy way to follow your favorite team.
Check out Tourney Pick’em on Yahoo Fantasy Sports or download the latest version of the Yahoo Fantasy app on your iOS device. The Brackets are revealed at 5:30 pm EDT Sunday March 12, and you’ll have until tipoff of the first game on Thursday to join a group and make your picks.
By Mike Shebanek, Senior Director of Accessibility
Starting today, you’ll notice some significant changes to our blog, both in design and in content, that better reflect who we are and what we do. I’d like to to tell you why we’re making these changes and what you can look forward to as you follow our blog.
One of the things that makes Yahoo’s approach to accessibility unique is that its Accessibility Team and its User Experience Research Team are integrated. That may sound like an obvious approach, but it hasn’t always been this way at Yahoo and we’ve come to find out it’s pretty unusual in the tech industry. In the all-too-rare organizations that actually have a dedicated Accessibility Team, they often report to the chief legal counsel, or are part of an administrative or compliance group. Other times they’re siloed in one division, which prevents them from being able to impact product development or customer support in another. Having a dedicated Accessibility Team and where that team is placed in an organization says a lot about a company’s values, and this is especially true of Yahoo.
In our case, we’re part of a team called User Research and Accessibility or UXRA for short. Our team supports the entire company – every division, every VP, every employee – and it is tasked with representing our users’ unique needs, requirements and points of view in every activity we undertake. We are not just “closely aligned” with our user research team – we are the same team! We share user study labs, training, techniques, findings and the same mission: to accurately represent all users. We work to ensure that users come first in whatever we do, and that this includes people with disabilities, of all ages, of all genders and of all abilities. So, whenever we perform a user study, take a survey, gather product feedback or identify requirements, people with disabilities are included along with everyone else. We can’t imagine any other way.
To better reflect this mission and to give you deeper insight into how we go about understanding and representing our users, you’ll be hearing more from our User Researchers in addition to our Accessibility Team members on this blog. We have a lot of exciting things to share, and we hope it is informative and inspiring to you and our industry peers as we all continue to reach for greater inclusion.
