interview
Sarah Herrlinger
“We don’t want to exclude 16 percent of people”: Apple manager reveals how to make the iPhone usable for everyone
Sarah Herrlinger is Director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives at Apple
© Wolfgang Wolak/ / Picture Alliance
Sarah Herrlinger is convinced that everyone should be able to use technology. At Apple she is supposed to make sure that it really works. A conversation about challenges, opportunities – and why you can make money with a good cause.
For people with disabilities such as hearing loss or blindness, technology can suddenly open completely new doors. Or become an insurmountable hurdle. Sarah Herrlinger is with Apple is responsible for removing the hurdles and exploiting the potential. The star was able to talk to her about why this is often a challenge. And why all other users also benefit from it.
Woman Herrlinger, At Apple you are responsible for ensuring that the millions of Apple products sold can also be used by people with disabilities. We were just able to see you talking to developers at the Apple Academy in Naples. They emphasized there that you can’t bake a good blueberry muffin if you want to add the blueberries in the last step. How early is your team brought in when building a new iPhone, for example?
Accessibility is something our teams think about very early on. What different use cases are there, what different ways will people interact with this product. We also ensure that voices from the diverse communities of people with disabilities are heard from day one.
How does this work for a company like Apple? Finally, the extreme secrecy is over iPhone and Co. legendary.
It starts with hiring employees in all areas of the company who will use our assistive technologies themselves. In keeping with the motto “Nothing about us without us,” we want to ensure that the perspectives of everyday users are included throughout the entire process. We work specifically with organizations and individuals who are members of the affected communities to further expand our work. Every product is different, but the process of thinking about accessibility from the start is similar.
Can you share examples where concepts or ideas needed to be revised following comments from your team?
It’s less about revising and more about being willing to continually incorporate things. When Face ID was still being developed, our accessibility team was brought in and talked about atypical use cases, such as atypical facial structures, eye prostheses or people who cannot open their eyes. If you have already created the algorithm, it is difficult to adjust the course afterwards. That’s why you should think about such aspects right from the start.
It’s not just people with disabilities who benefit from the results. Are there technologies that were primarily thought about in terms of accessibility but were later adopted into the mainstream?
We integrate the view of different usage scenarios in a very natural way. Take, for example, Siri for people who rely on voice control due to a disability and, on the other hand, drivers who operate their radio via voice control and CarPlay.
Are you sometimes surprised when features you have developed are used in other ways?
In 17 years of working in the field of accessibility, you have learned that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. What is meant to help one person may be a disadvantage, or at least not helpful, to another. That’s why we attach so much importance to making everything as personalized as possible. There are tons of perspectives, each of us is unique and uses technology differently. Customizability is therefore always an advantage.
At the Apple Developer Academy in Naples, Sarah Herrlinger spoke to software developers about accessibility and introduced Apple features such as live captions for presentations. In addition to her, there were also speakers from companies on stage who have particular experience in this area.
“Accessibility is not a problem that has to be solved in isolation. It is a culture that you build,” explained Lina Diaz from Wetransfer. It’s about keeping the special needs of users in mind with every new feature and every update.
But this can also be financially worthwhile, reports Jonathan Chacon from the Spanish company Cabify. The taxi service offers numerous options for people with disabilities and allows you to be specifically addressed by the taxi driver if you are unable to see the car arrive. Customers are enthusiastic about this: “We were able to win more than 100,000 customers through our accessibility features.”
© Apple / PR
“Everyone is different.”
A blind conversation partner once complained to me that he hated voice messages. Like many sighted people, he complained that he would rather scan the news with his Braille monitor than laboriously listen to it. I never expected that. Do you experience this often in your conversations with affected communities?
One should never assume that members of these communities all want the same thing. I have a blind friend who loves voicemail. Others reject them. There is no right or wrong. Everyone is different. Accessibility is primarily personalization. There is no single lever or big hammer that can solve everything. It’s about the tiny tweaks that make technology better for you personally.
5 pictures
But you don’t deny that Apple also makes money from it. You just emphasized to the developers that the numbers also speak for commitment in this area – if you don’t want to lose a huge group of customers.
People with disabilities are the largest minority in the world and part of all of our lives. So excluding 16 percent of the world’s population as customers isn’t exactly a good idea. We want products for everyone. So why shouldn’t we incorporate these things? But I appreciate that we are not measured by reaching a number. We see accessibility as a human right and believe that everyone can benefit from it. And because we believe that, it’s a natural extension of the way we design products.