Mobile Disability Gap: access and impact of mobile technology

hello welcome everybody um thank you so much for joining this disability innovation live webinar um today we're going to be looking at the mobile disability gap with a focus on looking at the access and impact of mobile technology um so i can see you're all starting to join us from around the world so thank you so much for taking the time today um to join this disability innovation live session um so today we're going um to be having a discussion between um a panel of experts um who've been working quite closely on this area um and so for the session today we do have closed caption available um and you can turn that on by using a button which is normally located at the bottom of your screen um we also have um the opportunity to ask questions in the q a box um so towards the end of the session we'll be coming some of those questions but we will also be addressing them as we go through the session as well so please do pop any questions in that box um and the session will be recorded um so you will be available able to access it um after we finish so disability innovation live um so these webinar sessions hosted by the global disability innovation hub are a real opportunity for us to share um our knowledge and experiences in disability innovation um and we really like to look at the stories behind the innovations and the people behind the products um so very much it's an opportunity for us to have a quite informal space um to look at ideas and reflections across some of our own work but also lots of the work of our partners and colleagues that are working in these areas right around the world so um the global disability innovation hub um it was uh we were born out of the london 2012 um paralympic legacy and uh we are an academic research center and community interest company driving disability innovation for a feral world um we're operational in 41 countries um and we've got more than 70 partners and we've reached 23 million people since 2016. um we are um the lead for the uk aid funded 80 20 30 program um and that really looks at testing what works um to get a t to those that most need it um on a global scale and we're also and this has just been fairly recently announced um the world first and we're the only um who um collaboration center for assistive technology so i'll now hand across uh to my colleague and academic director and co-founder of the gdi hub i'm kathy hallway thanks louise i hope you can all hear and see me okay uh so i it's just my i'm just setting the scene really to talk about when we talk about mobium mobile disability gap we can also think about what does that mean so what is a mobile phone to you uh for most people around the world that i speak to the main things they seem to use a mobile phone for is whatsapp and phone calls and maybe photos and sharing those photos but it's very much a mode of communication however as an assistive technology mobile can be an assistive technology so it can convert forms of text to speech speech to text so it can allow people with some impairments to consume information in a different mode it can also act as a data collection tool um so we can we can go out and collect whole population health surveys by a mobile phone and also mobiles are used for information gathering so i met a woman once who had competed at a national level in the javelin and wheelchair user and she learned to throw the javelin through youtube videos for example but a lot of time when you meet people globally where they are searching for information is via google via youtube via their mobile phone as a computer science it's quite an interesting computer scientist it's quite an interesting feature really because that means that people first interaction with technology or with computing is often through the mobile phone so there's this huge importance as growing importance of the role of mobile and assistive technology and so we've brought together some of the people we've been lucky enough to work with over the years some internally to gdi hub some half internal gdi health and half elsewhere and some of our colleagues from outside of gdia hub and we'll be talking about how mobile acts as that enabler for digital assistive technologies also talking about the challenges and access and availability networks can be not available especially in rural areas price points can often exclude people with disabilities globally and obviously even when network exists reception can can go away when you most need it as we all know the biggest challenge though normally is price and then what happens when devices are made cheaper so oftentimes accessibility features of software interfaces on mobile phones get stripped out and so people get given a smartphone for example blind people might be given a smartphone thinking this is much better because then they can hear everything and and things can although the text can be converted to audio however the actual design of the interface is so poor that it becomes unusable and actually a lot of the accessibility features has been stripped out whereas a button feature phone worked perfectly well and there was no need to upgrade for prograde handset so we're seeing these types of barriers to using limitations globally both in hardware um as well as software and people having phones but not realizing that they have the features that they wanted i know that julia um and valve and gsma will speak about some of this and that it matters a lot to a lot of people so richard's going to talk a little bit about some of the high-end stuff we're doing uh has been done globally in in trying to get mobile phone um mobile phones um uh make sure that they're able to be a communication tool for people who've maybe decided speech to slurred speech for example and when you have slurred speech you can be interpreted as somebody who's maybe stupid or drunk or or some people can just shy away from you and your the phone then can act as this interpreter for you and that's now happening for people with als or motor neurone disease and that's absolutely fabulous and that's in high income countries we're pushing the boundaries of what this this smartphone can do with artificial intelligence absolutely fabulous but actually mobile phones also unlock huge potential in the global south and obviously the global south is a huge space with multiple different populations within it and so i'll just note that it doesn't have to be smartphone based especially in the global south feature phones have a huge role to play as doesn't just a basic phone and i suppose with that i'll just kick off the conversation so thank you excellent thank you so much for that kathy i'm really just good just to get that overview i guess of of the topic and that focus on um the different types of mobile and and the kind of importance of recognizing the differences between those so i'm now going to hand across to my colleague julia um who's going to look in a little bit more detail about some of the key elements of this area thank you so much louise and thank you kathy for the broad level intro and so as kathy mentioned like mobile phones are invaluable in the everyday lives of people with disabilities and both as an assistive technology as a source of information but also as a communication tool to get in touch with others and and to ask for um help when needed um we we also did like um there there's lots of research around sort of access the mobile phone in low and middle income countries uh that shows that uh the penetration rate of mobile phones it's much much higher up to three times as high as this for things like uh desktop computers or sort of cable based broadbands um but the reality is that we actually do not know an awful lot about how people with disabilities particularly in low resource settings use mobile phones what services they use the barriers they encountered and it's like has been mentioned before one of the major issues is that people with disabilities in the global south they tend to be poor that means that they also struggle to acquire and operate mobile phones independently especially because what they have access to often doesn't have the appropriate features and functionalities that they need um next slide please so we did a little bit of research and particularly in kenya but this book confirmed in other countries as well about how people with disabilities people who were blind people who have different mobility impairments um and people with cognitive and hearing impairments use mobile phones in their everyday life and what we found is that they can have four different types of interactions sometimes for very simple operations people can simply pick up their phone whatever their phone is being sort of a button phone or a smartphone and do the operations by themselves this usually involve calling people that they might know or receive calls and things like that other times they might need a little bit of support and this can be usually given by someone in in the family or people tend to have a someone of reference within their communities that they approach when they have questions related to how to use their mobile phones and this sometimes can help for example a person who is visually impaired to type a message on a phone at the phone lacks accessibility feature um or even finding numbers uh on on the mobile phone uh to call someone but again this tends to be quite simple operation one of the interesting thing that we saw is that for for a lot of operations that involve banking paying mobile money and people have what we call uh dependent interactions which often means that they have to hand their phone to someone else um to to help to get help to complete um a lot of these operations and one of the two of the things that a lot of interactions are instead completely restricted either by buyers of cost barriers of access or sometimes just environmental buyers are things like navigations and things that involve heavy use of data like videos or or internet navigation and next slide when when you look at the um issues that that and the barriers that people with disabilities encounter when trying to use mobile phones there is roughly six um one is the cost and cost can be the cost of the handset but also the cost of data and in a lot of cases the cost of electricity as well because a lot of people don't have necessarily electricity in their house so they need to access it somewhere else sometimes to shop and this costs money um level of digital literacy um so what what you can get out of your phone it really depends on how proficient you are in in using it and and a lot of people as kathy was saying they get given um new phones without any training um being able to use accessibility features properly and and fully take advantage of it is is not trivial if you've never been taught how to do so um it's also the fact that a lot of uh useful features are are really present on only on smartphone and developers really nowadays focus primarily on developing new things for smartphones and this leaves behind a huge chunk of users that instead use feature phones or basic button phones a lot of the use that gets done by people with disabilities in um around phones is actually shared so it's very common for people not to have a phone per individual but they might have a phone for a family or like a phone shared between a couple of um husband and wife and and this means that there are privacy issues around the other people always knowing who you're calling who you're texting and and there is very little ability of people to protect uh their own informations and there is an awful lot of like barriers around service design and in terms of limited connectivities and and access to different types of services um next slide so when we look at the priorities of really what should be addressed it's there should be an ecosystem approach that look at increasing the accessibility the affordabilities the relevance but also the infrastructure around mobile technologies because it's true that mobile technologies need less infrastructure than broadband connectivity and sort of wire devices and but still there there needs to be sufficient coverage um we also need to look at improving digital literacy reducing stigma and also retargeting marketing a lot of people that we spoke with talk that to the particular features of uh mobile phones and even mobile phones themselves were not a tool that could be of particular use or that was targeting people with disabilities and that is because in marketing this is very rarely shown we also to do that we need to increase the industry awareness of both accessibility standards but also like this huge chunk of users that they're effectively leaving outside um services and we're talking about millions of of people in like tens if not hundreds of countries around the world and and ultimately really push for the development of more inclusive products and services at all levels of mobile phones not just smartphones but really um also trying to include different um types of phones like feature zones and mobile phones so um thank you so much and i'll pass the ball to i believe kim yes absolutely so we'll be um moving on to kim now um but just really interesting to pick up a few things that you mentioned there julia i think around um the focus of um some of those kind of underlying factors that maybe wouldn't immediately come to mind on this area so challenges such as costs um and also the privacy elements so i think some of those are some really interesting insights into looking into this area in a little bit more depth as well um so on that note i shall hand across to kim um who's going to give us a little bit more insight um from some of the work that gsma have been doing this area thanks so much um and great to see all your inside studio because i think they they uh correlate well with what we've seen from our research as well so it's good to see um the consistency there and i um so before i get started on just what we've learned through our program perhaps if i can just introduce the gsma so we are the mobile trade association um and we essentially represent um mobile operators worldwide and other industry players and within the gsma there's a division called mobile for development and the teams that i work on so connected women in connected society sit within mobile for development and as the market engagement director i am heading up all our efforts with mobile operators and and innovators and working on the broader topic of digital inclusion which encompasses our work on disability inclusion as well um and so as a program uh one of the key focus or the key areas that we've been working on is generating the insights on the intersect between mobile and disability which was sort of largely under research when we first started about three years ago and we've published a few flagship reports including the mobile disability gap reports so we've had annual reports that we've released i can share a link to our resources in a few moments but essentially the high level insights that we have been able to generate are that there is a disability gap in mobile phone ownership um and this essentially means that across the countries that we've included in our consumer research survey um people with disabilities are consistently less likely to own mobile phones for example in a country like kenya people with disabilities are 11 less likely to own a mobile phone um but when it comes to smartphones in particular this gap ownership gap increases to 72 percent uh and junior alluded to the fact that you know these smartphones present um with embedded accessibility features present far more value in terms of accessing mobile internet and mobile internet enabled services so the inclusive potential of a smartphone is far greater or smart feature phones far greater than a standard mobile phone um so unfortunately that gap is even wider and it's consistent across all the markets so for example in pakistan the mobile ownership gap is 11 and it's as wide as 65 for smartphone ownership amongst persons with disabilities uh we also know that even when persons with disabilities do own a smartphone actually they are much less aware of mobile internet um and they're you know for this reason and several others are much less likely to go on to make use of mobile internet services for example in bangladesh and persons with disabilities are 28 less likely to be aware of mobile internet and 84 less likely to actually go on to use mobile internet so we call this the mobile internet and usage gap and i think we'll discuss the usage gap in more detail later but uh the barriers that we've uh evidenced in our research are uh quite similar to what julia mentioned earlier i would say access um the barrier of access is related to access to phones but also all the enabling environment things such as access to electricity but then also access to accessible services um affordability is a key one so the two barriers that are coming out as the strongest barrier for both ownership to mobile and then usage of mobile internet are affordability and knowledge and skills and this has been consistent across across the servers you've done over the last three years and then relevance of content and services and then lastly safety and security is a particular barrier for persons with disabilities and that's actually specifically linked to services that are inaccessibly designed services and devices that are not accessibly designed which leaves them um more vulnerable than than users without disabilities so just to shape uh to sort of provide context of what we do in response to these insights that we've generated so we work with mobile operators we have an initiative called the principles for driving the digital inclusion of persons with disabilities uh through which we provide strategic guidance and support to mobile operators so we firstly create that awareness that julia mentioned and so that they can understand what mobile disability gap is why we need to do something about it and then we help them to think about strategies for um actually driving inclusive business uh for persons with disabilities um and then we also uh through our innovation fund um uh provides support to our gsma innovation fund for assistive tech we provide support to four startups and that are based in asia and africa um each of whom are delivering innovative mobile enabled products that can once again support persons with disabilities and drive their inclusion we are funded by fcdo so uk and so all the work we've been doing has obviously been in partnership with them and the likes of ddi and so forth um so i think our reserve i'll pause there and we can move on and then in the discussion can elaborate on some of these points as well thank you kim um really interesting just to hear those reflections building on kind of the introduction from kathy and some of the insights that uh julia also shared and i think run area really is just a touch back on and to highlight the um you mentioned that actually some of the work you've been doing has really been focused over the last kind of three years in this area and i think it's it's an area that it's very much um kind of continuing to develop and build and something that really has only become quite spotlight um fairly recently um and that kind of understanding and particularly that knowledge of what the data can show us and and that more global perspective is is still very much in its infant infancy um so it's really interesting to kind of have this session now when we've kind of got i guess those first kind of couple years worth of work on it and and that little bit more of research but actually just that reflection actually this is an area that maybe is something that um it is still in quite the early stages and that actually the impact we know is huge and the number of people impacts globally is absolutely massive um so certainly something will be really interesting to continue this conversation um so we'll now go on to hear from um from richard um so richard um it'd be fantastic if you can introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit about your work um and just some of those key insights around kind of the areas that you've been focusing on in this area yeah and thank you for asking me yeah i'm i'm richard cave i'm a speech and language therapist and i work i work part-time with the mnd association here in the uk uh working with people living with als or mnd and also i work on various projects for google and one of the biggest challenges people living with ls m d wherever they live in the world is that almost all of them are likely to become unable to communicate their daily needs using natural speech and wherever they live in the world they will need to rely on alternative methods or people to support them and this is clearly a very significant problem it's not actually just limited to people living with air losses there are lots of other conditions where this situation also occurs and of course when we talk about speech change and speech loss what we're talking about is our identity and who we are and how people perceive us and so it's very significant and here in the uk the results of speech change and speech laws have very negative implications and uh quite often people living with als mnd find that their only kind of social engagement towards the uh kind of uh towards the as they progress is with their doctor or with their nurse and everything else has just fallen by the wayside so change in speech is very important and um something that uh um is a an another challenge with assistive technology when we talk about speech is that the replacements for speech with assistive technology are either are significantly slower than natural speeches and that has problems all by itself and often particularly here in the uk requires specialist medical devices special devices and of course these devices are not cheap and they need support and they need professional backup and all the rest of it so um at google been working on a project called euphonia project euphonia where the idea is that the model behind automated speech recognition such as in google assistant alexa siri and all the rest of it can be made more inclusive more inclusive for people who have non-standard speech when i talk about non-standard speech i i talk about speech standard speech as defined by the technology companies so for those people whose speech has changed because of their less or indeed because of anything else or have always had what would be defined in this case as non-standard speech automated speech recognition does not work well for them and i measure that in functional use so does not have functional benefit to them with the euphonia project we have recorded thousands of hours of people whose speech has changed for various reasons or have different speech and have been updating the underlying uh machine learning and the speech recognition tools to create a system that works on a phone or a tablet or that whatever you have that can learn how you talk and will do its best to transcribe in real time what you're saying and this is this is very significant um and uh it's it's for the first time certainly in my clinical experience where we have potential for a tool that can transcribe words as they are said and try and that we have the best chance of people just to keep talking for longer and of course this is all on a phone and so we have a much better opportunity here to bypass the clear barriers of expense and supportability and actually have this type of tool available on an android device um that may that there may be a better chance of it being available uh in more in more areas around the world and actually have an opportunity for more people to benefit from this and so kind of make make technology more democratic and you know just like everything else there are digital divides everywhere but this this is one area that if people can if automated speech recognition can understand more people however they speak then it opens up new worlds for them of course this is not to ignore any of the really important points that the previous speakers have talked about about android devices supportability accessibility all of that still applies but here we have a technology that we're working on that may help to one degree but won't solve all the problems i think i'll stop there brilliant thank you so much um richard and i think that's really interesting just to drill down into some of those um i guess additional levels of challenges and barriers and where technology at the moment is providing opportunity to to overcome of some of those and i think from um what you just read there really highlights um some of the areas that currently there is a real challenge with um but actually moving forward and looking forward it's really exciting to hear that the technology is progressing to a state that it will reduce some of those um i guess restrictions to um everybody being able to access and use the technology and mobiles in the same way um and i think that highlight on the kind of the time and moving into a space where actually um this technology can pick up in real time um and with um very different kind of voice voice patterns and and different kind of communication modes is really important um and something that i think just highlights um the i guess different intricacies of what we're talking about when we talk about the mobile disability gap beyond the kind of the the actual just device or the technology on the device but moving through to those kind of underlying um requirements to um maximize the use of that device um so that's the kind of technology within it and and how those systems are working and then also then how they apply to different disabilities and different individual needs as well so um really interesting just to look at a little bit more detail about how this all plays into real life i guess and how people are using their devices every day um so we'll now hear from um rini um who's joining us from the shm foundation um so really i'll hand across to you and it'll be really fantastic just to hear um a little bit about yourself um about the foundation um so please do introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about your work in this area uh thank you so much uh good afternoon everyone i am renee sinha the strategy development lead at the shm foundation and thank you very much gdi hub for giving us this opportunity to share all of our recent findings on this very relevant topic uh so let me start by giving you a bit of a background about what we do at shm foundation uh we come with over uh more than 10 years of experience in both developing and implementing digitally enabled interventions especially focused on isolated individuals and marginalized groups for example we've been working uh for the longest time with hiv positive adolescents in south africa we have a mobile phone based peer to peer support group that uh we create every year um so those are the kinds of populations that we work with and uh people are at the very heart of every stage of our i mean right from the design to the implementation process uh because we strongly believe in the potential of digital but to leverage it fully we feel that it is really important to understand the needs the aspirations and expectations of the communities uh that we're going to be working with and for whom we are developing these uh interventions and we do that by uh building the digital solutions together through participatory uh co-design processes and to get this knowledge uh research forms the backbone of our work and which eventually guides uh the design of these interventions so uh in today's presentation i am going to be sharing the knowledge that we have obtained from a recent research project conducted under the 80 20 30 program in informal settlements of indonesia and sierra leone um last year this is the first time that we worked on disability and we used a mixed methodology approach to try to gain an in-depth uh knowledge of how people with disabilities feel about their mobile phones and what is their relationship on a day-to-day basis and the purpose was to pilot a digital solution that could help enable them to um lead better lives and improve the quality of the lives and understand those aspirations so uh just wanted to set that context before uh sharing my take and our findings in this sector so the first thing that uh the first finding which i think is also a very obvious one was that uh mobile phones we discovered that uh in a sample of 112 participants of people with disabilities uh more than 80 percent of them um use mobile phones for uh for uh different purposes uh it could be uh to manage their disability for income generating activities or as a source of entertainment um it's also interesting that uh not only uh mobile phones were owned by a majority of the population but they were also used collectively a point i think that was also earlier discussed in the session for example uh borrowing and sharing it with others was something that emerged from our findings uh the second thing that i wanted to touch upon was the fact that uh while disability did emerge as a major barrier in terms of usage of mobile phones but it was not only disability but it was combined with other infrastructural factors such as cost or network issues along with demographic factors such as age gender the class status and these combined emerge as as the stronger reason for uh challenges related to mobile uh usage so it was very obvious that there's tremendous potential of mobile phones to act as enablers in overcoming social civic and economic participation uh barriers that people with disabilities uh faced but it also highlighted that one requires a very nuanced research when it comes to developing these interventions and requires more customized and tailored approaches and it's best to not avoid to avoid falling into universalizing interventions and actually understand from people themselves about what their needs are what their aspirations are and then try and develop solutions more suited to their needs uh for example in the phase two of uh this research based on the data that we received from phase one we um came up with these uh character profiles almost who uh represented uh the diverse needs and aspirations of the community uh which we felt would be very useful when it came to uh devising these uh digital solutions and which we ourselves have used when we came to piloting a solution that we worked on um so i think uh i'll pause for now and we can discuss uh i can share a bit more about our findings and and how we uh reviews that in the in the pilot thank you thank you very much for me and um yeah really really interesting just to hear some of those um a little bit more detailed around some of the projects that you you're running and kind of the programs um and some of the processes um in order to look at um kind of overcoming some of these challenges and and how that's working i'm very much on the ground um so we're now going to be moving on to just a few questions um and so um we're going to have um a bit of a panel discussion just to look at some of these areas in a little bit more detail um so um the first question we're going to look at is what mechanisms could increase mobile phone ownership among persons with disabilities globally um so i think we're going to um start off um by coming to kim um so kim it would be really interesting just to hear um a few of your kind of reflections um from some of the work you've done and i guess from kind of from the partners you've worked on on a global basis kind of how how you see some of those um challenges being overcome sure um so i think i'll just i'll i'll sort of um formulate my response on two main points so one the one area that i think we need to be doing a lot more work on um and i have seen some um some progress on this front is around and just a reminder that we work primarily in lmic's so um these barriers these are the ones that i'm specifically referencing for lmics um so the first barrier is knowledge and skills and why this is important with respect to ownership and it was something that came up um consistently in our research as well was this this uh lack of perception of mobile being relevant for for a person with a disability um is is something that through awareness and actually guidance on what value mobile can bring someone in terms of creating the autonomy and giving them access to services that they might not previously been able to get that sort of awareness and education needs to happen more more effectively and not only with persons with disabilities but also with their sort of family and caregivers we tend to refer sometimes to in certain markets to these as gatekeepers because they tend to hold the purse strings and decide whether or not family finances should be spent on a mobile device for a family member with a disability so for them to understand how the value of a mobile can actually support the family as a whole and giving access to to a mobile for a family member with a disability what value can it bring the entire family so that sort of education really needs to happen uh more constructively uh the second point is obviously and we've mentioned a few times now is around affordability um so i would say there are a number of um strategies that we've seen emerging um that are sort of more mass market strategies on affordability and all of these are relevant and will impact phone ownership amongst persons with disabilities um i can share a few of them and i will just now but we also have just published a report um on um handset affordability and and sharing all of these insights in that report i can share the link in the chat just now and whilst these mainstream strategies are really effective and impactful they they need to go hand in hand with bespoke efforts to ensure that these efforts are reaching persons with disabilities and here organizations of persons with disabilities are going to be most um essential to ensure not just awareness and education on the value of mobile but then also even as a distribution network and after sales support for persons with disabilities they're typically trusted members of the community as well so persons with disabilities tend to go to them first some of the schemes that i can just share um that are more mass-market but with the right strategies for persons with disabilities can make an impact here or like device finance and schemes um so um obviously offering devices um at certain flexible repayments in most cases um but then also and it has been mentioned as well availability of lower cost smartphones but not at the cost of what the smartphone can enable so ensuring that accessibility features are still available for persons with disabilities um but essentially the availability of lower cost smartphones and smart feature phones has narrowed the price differential between basic 2d phones and 3g or 4g handsets and then using again with device financing using other sources of data as credit assessments proxies and again i mentioned flexible payment payment terms as well to accommodate for the price sensitivity and and obviously lack of income potentially amongst persons with disabilities with persons with disabilities um and lastly i would say um the most important thing will be partnerships to address um and alleviate some of the pain points so obviously um partnerships with opd's is one um but partnerships of other organizations who can play a role in marketing and distribution often can lower the cost of distribution of handsets on the whole and ensure that they reach a wider audience so i would say partnerships here is going to be key as well i'll pause it so much kim and yeah interesting just to highlight that element of partnerships and kind of i guess that collaboration focus that's something we haven't really touched on so much during the session so far um and obviously um this is such a broad sector and actually a lot of the challenges that we've touched on um are really range from that kind of the actual 80 itself through to the servicing services through to the kind of underlying economic environment um and then and then right through to some of the individual kind of intricacies of people's individuals um situations and environments as well um so i think that's a really interesting um kind of reflection there um to touch on some of those things around that collaboration point um so we're also just going to come i think to julia um so really same question for you julia around those kind of mechanisms to increase that ownership um what are the key priorities a little the i mean kim mentioned uh quite a lot of them um of course one of the key points is somehow increasing affordability of headsets we've been seeing that happening effectively through subsidizations and it's also very interesting that mobile phones and sort of digital assistants have been included in the assisted products priority list by the who in the sense that these mobile phones are now recognized to be a fundamental associate technologies that disabled people need to have access to and the apl argues for um government subsidized provision to people in need for um for like uh effectively allowing for universal health coverage um if we think as mobile phones as an essential ap enabler there is a very strong argument um for subsidized provision through health services um there is also the possibility of and and we've seen some of these initiatives especially with the word bank in relation to provision of mobile headsets through schools and during the corporate 19 pandemic especially in the school closures that have been heavily prolonged in um in a lot of countries countries like nepal had school closures that lasted for i believe almost nine months um so so we're talking about effectively an entire school year um but uh and and other mechanisms to to promote uh mobile phone ownership but also leverage mechanisms for for sure use is for example facilitating the creation of different profiles on on unique phones so um people that are sharing use which we have seen it's something that is extremely common um can still have form of privacy from each other and effectively use the same headset but with different accounts this is possible in some smartphones uh but only usually in those that have more sophisticated operating systems um installed and even there is also a huge um argument for for things that uh enable people to give to to have access to a community shared or even loan schemes uh for uh for mobile phones and sort of um something that that you could borrow why you don't have access to if the mobile phone is effective in sort of um improving one's social standing and you'll be able to acquire one there should be mechanism that allows to sort of return and upgrade different uh models and these could all be different um types not necessarily in conflict with each other but in fact very likely in in partnership with each other to um increase the rate if not just of ownership also of access to mobile phones particularly in area of the global south where um sort of one-to-one access might be still a challenge for um for a significant amount of time thank you julia so we now move on to our second question i'm looking at about usage and how that can be maximized and focusing really around what are the um drivers to support um to basically enable um kind of phone users to get the best use of the technology available um so for that question maybe really interesting um to start with you richard just to hear a little bit more about maybe some of the other areas um of um kind of 80 within the actual kind of technology itself yeah i think i think one of the well there are lots of challenges here and i think the first thing is to recognize all of them that i suppose when we talk about assistive technology particularly around the communication space we're not we're really focused on the person and actually what they want to say and who they want to talk and who wants to talk who wants to communicate with them and that's where we should start and that's why i think technology in this space can be so challenging because it's literally not a one size fits all it's so far removed from that and so in addition to all the points that i've heard uh from the previous speakers who are amazing and you know about accessibility knowledge and skills all of that counts in addition to that there is also about how people what people want to communicate and who they want to communicate with and after all communication is is very rarely a one-person thing so there are lots of people's opinions that matter here and actually here in the uk you know i've lots of times i've worked with people who you know uh say one party quite like the communication device that that they're using but actually the rest of the family or others simply don't think it's not useful for them and so everybody's opinion matters here and i think um there was although also this talk about affordability uh data the cost of apps all that stuff all that stuff matters as well accessibility i mean when we talk about a phone then we have to take into account how people can access that phone because in my world when i work with people with their men's motor currencies or a als it's not just about the change speech it's also about how people can use their hands or use other methods to access something and a phone is not big so we have to consider all sorts of various ways even to get access to a device like that and of course technology around communication i think it's it's it's hoping too much for it to be right all the time and that's certainly the case with the technology that i've been working with at google that actually live transcription of words the truth is that that kind of capturing that kind of right that kind of transcription is not accurate all the time it's really not so actually setting expectations as to what stuff like this can do and what it can't and being super honest about how to use it in the best way give training give support i think that all really really matters to actually allow people to make their own decisions about how they want to use this technology in their lives and what they make decisions in their lives based on how they feel comfortable and you know people with communication difficulties i've often you know i hear this anecdotally all the time internally they make decisions based on how they predict success or communication based on where they are and so with more information with more understanding of how technology really works in their world they can make better assumptions better assessments on how stuff will work in their lives and i suppose even here in the uk we are so blessed with the nhs we have we have a lot of funding even though it feels like we don't but we have a lot of funding and we have a lot of equipment and you know i in previous roles i've been to see many many people giving out lots and lots of equipment and stuff that really works that's supported and all the rest of it and guess what a lot of people just don't use it they don't use it because it doesn't fit in their lives and that is i think it's a really important consideration even with all the other stuff in place it has to work where they are not where i am where they are and and and and i think that is one of the biggest challenges that we have in assisted technology and just to go back to euphonia we have an opportunity here to help people to do stuff that they would most probably like to do and that's to keep talking to keep talking and to be understood and so that is a great starting position but i think i have been being honest and open about all the other challenges that uh the other speakers and i have talked about and recognizing the limits of the technology is a really great place to start to increase use usage thank you richard and i was just living there and i just wrote down um about the one word i wrote down economy capitals was fixed and i think that that's a really critical element in here here in terms of um we all would use um devices and technologies and that's enough in a way that helps support our individual lives and therefore um it very much applies the same within the mobile kind of assistive technology space as well um that actually it's got to be something that it's really a benefit and an asset and something that can actually um be used on on a day-to-day basis um so so it's really fascinating just kind of hearing that reflection there um so we'll also come to really be fantastic just to hear a little bit um from yourselves in terms of um the usage challenge thank you and uh just building on uh what richard was just sharing about uh there's no one-size-fits-all approach when it when it come to this and i'll just be extending that point further and uh giving you an example so from what we found in our research so i mentioned about character profiles that uh that seem to be these common representative figures that were emerging from the research that we did in indonesia and sierra leone so i'd like to uh share with you one of the character profiles for this particular example so this is a young person living with a disability who actually uses mobile phone in a way to uh overcome day-to-day challenges when it comes uh comes to their difficulties right but this is also a person um who is a bit in who's like the mobile phone is very well integrated right from their personal to professional life and and there's clearly an appetite to uh learn more features of the current phone probably have a more advanced phone and just a lot more knowledge and training about how to probably use the more advanced features of the phone so that to improve the quality uh of their lives so in such a case uh it was we discovered that probably things like having a bigger data package at a reasonable cost would be something that could be potentially more useful uh definitely access to advanced tech literacy programs in order to know about uh more more ideas in ways to use the phone better or just access to customized uh disability specific support example tutorials or some kind of a mentorship program these are some of the few things that could potentially be useful uh for such a person on the other hand uh we also had uh an example again of a young person but uh for whom uh uh the disability makes it challenging for them to use the mobile phone there's someone who has a caregiver in order to uh in order to help them uh navigate their day-to-day lives so in this case the requirements become very different and i think a major difference between these two would be that in this case uh there's also a huge need to have workshops sensitization or training sessions also for the caregiver because in this case the mobile phone is being used by by both parties and the caregiver becomes almost like almost like a vessel transferring that knowledge so in this case that that becomes a way uh in which uh in in which uh in which the individual can use the tech in a much in a much better way so um i think i'll pause there and those those were just a few uh insights into into how we feel are some possible ways in which uh in which we can make better use of the tech uh available thank you thank you very much and i was just i'm also looking through some of the questions and answers that have been coming through and i know that um many of the panelists have gone back to them directly just a bit more specifics on some of the of the programs discussed and some of the points um that were raised today and i think a lot of those um questions is just talking a little bit around um the kind of implementation of some of these reflections and what that means um in terms of the delivery or the development of at but also how um kind of i guess um at as a space and as a sector could can really look to understand and reflect on some of these challenges and how they can be kind of implemented um on a global level as well so we're now going to be moving on to the third question um and that is to look at um um in which way the mobile disability gap um echoes the barriers that we've seen um in other 80 products um so i'll come um to kathy here just to kind of discuss that a little more detail um and maybe cafe you can tell us a little bit more around um some of the um work on um the kind of um assisted product specifications um that we've done with the who and where we see some of these challenges um arising um that really kind of emulate across the sector as well uh sure so thank you and uh just just a shout out to thank rebecca for her comments in the chat about making sure that disabled people are represented it's always in critical importance of course in all things that we do um in terms of in what ways to mobile gap the disability gap echo barriers seen in access to 80 products i mean the most obvious way is that most disabled people or persons with disability globally are poor or are more likely to be poor and if you're poor you're more likely to have a disability and that's played out it doesn't matter if it's in the uk or united states of america or in kenya or uganda you see this this link between poverty and disability and so if you if things come through market economies which mobile phones do um then then obviously the gap exists because you can't afford to purchase it and it sounds like i'm just stating the absolute obvious here um and you've heard from gsma uh how there are systematic changes to trying to make sure that people can understand the value of including disabled people in mobile phone ownership and mobile phone usage and that's not just from a human rights point of view and from the societal point of view which of course are absolutely valid from the sustainable development goals point of view but it's also from um market point of view it makes sense so i know the work that was done in gsma um also showed that for example deaf or hard of hearing people use consume a lot more video content therefore they consume a lot more data so they are actually excellent customers and in the same way that we found before that women were excellent customers even though some markets women didn't own mobile phones so in some ways the mobile disability gap is simply a problem of of the economics of the society we live in with it with in terms of assistive technology we see the same problems um we see different problems i think in the rest of assistive technology mobile phones the consumer product whereas some assistive technologies or the products and the services that are provided are very specialized and at that point normally they need to be procured by someone that's not the user so it's not often the case that we you know some products like glasses hearing aids increasingly but 10 years ago hearing aids you couldn't buy yourself wheelchairs prosthetic limbs cochlear implants these things have to be provided by people with quite specialist skills and therefore the people who buy the products and who train the healthcare professionals or the educational specialists or the people that might build the environment to make sure that's inclusive or even the digital environment to make sure that's inclusive those people tend to be governments or large organizations um and so at that point the the difference in the is is how you um communicate to government um in order to help them see where they can strengthen their systems so through 80 2030 we did the um we did some product landscaping market shaping sort of documents where we analyzed the markets of digital but also of hearing aids glasses wheelchairs and prosthetic devices and we did that in partnership with gdi hub and the clinton health access initiative led that piece of work and through those product narratives you can see the clear barriers between the demand side and the supply side and so supply side issues include things like we're not able to get parts into countries or taxes import duties things like that whereas um you know the demand side is people can't afford uh can't afford things and so that's where the overlap with um mobile devices is similar so we've been working with a few countries now where we have done a country capacity assessment when i say we it's a gdi hub has done one but most of them have been done by the clinton health access initiative and the world health organization we look at a country's ability to deliver assistive technologies to their systems their government systems healthcare systems education system welfare systems and then look at where those systems could be strengthened and there was a country capacity fund where countries could bid to get some money to strengthen their funds and for example the work that has been happening in sierra leone um uh has now derived a lot of benefit from that there's now an assistive technology um policy uh on top of there being a policy there's a budget for the first time um and that works aligned now with the procurement standards so we now have procurement standards for products with unicef globally um and 80 2030 has helped fund those um those procurement standards so previously substandard products were being imported into country or being made in country um and they weren't fit for purpose so people would abandon those technologies quite readily because they wouldn't work i've seen wheelchairs where four wheels don't touch the ground for example um and so now there are quality standards by which the countries can procure against so there's these kind of high-level system strengthening things are happening alongside work where for example we're you know working with um entrepreneurs to to co-design their services for new prosthetic devices in sierra leone as well as working with 33 disabled people to to make sure they have assistive technology and then look at how that impacts their lives um so that answers your question reads i'll probably go on for another half an hour having only had a few hours sleep i might do if you don't stop me so thank you so much kathy now that's brilliant i've actually just realized sessions the sessions we're through today so we're coming towards the end now so um we were going to touch on a final question which was just kind of looking at how the wider social environment um impact kind of mobile use and ownership so i think as we're just coming towards the end i might just um come to you kim maybe just for a kind of final um wrap-up just on that question and then we'll look at a couple of reflections i'll keep it very short then i think i had three points i wanted to mention i'll just focus on on the one um so we're finding um through our research that um intersectionality plays a big role in further excluding people with disabilities so for example and we have a more extensive publication on it that you're welcome to access in the resources link that i shared but for example women with disabilities are at even greater risk of digital exclusion and we find that in markets where the gender gap so we we have a connected one program that produce reports on the mobile gender gap so where the gender gap is already large and obviously the cultural norms and cultural contexts um um make it difficult for women to be included on the whole we find there the the mobile and gendered disability gets even larger so i can give an example of two two countries who have done this comparison but in kenya for example um the the uh disability gap uh in in this particular year that we did the research which was 2019 was seven percent i saw the mobile ownership disability gap the gender ownership gap was five percent but the gender and disability was eight percent so only marginally higher than than just the disability ownership gap however in bangladesh the disability phone ownership gap was 47 um in um the gender or uh foreign ownership gap was 29 and the gender and and disability ownership gap was 66 so we just see that these things are amplified when when you get at the intersectionality and then particularly in markets where social norms and social context um make it even more challenging for women to be included um and then i think as a last point just to mention again that literacy and skills um is typically um a social uh barrier that obviously due to social consequences i think this is one that we're going to have to focus on to make sure we're able to drive not just the ownership but also the usage gaps and and in and basically enable greater inclusion of persons with disabilities uh to this last one we have a free resource i'll share the link again it's actually a set of trainer trainer tools we have modules on accessibility features and we have just translated the training trainer guides into sign language and they

2022-08-16 09:51

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