2021 Diversity Annual Report

A Conversation on Accessibility and Disability Inclusion

KR Liu (Head of Brand Accessibility) and Eve Andersson (Senior Director of Accessibility and Disability Inclusion) lead some of Google’s accessibility efforts.

How does Google approach accessibility and disability inclusion?

Eve: The goals of my team are really threefold. One is to help the rest of Google make all of our products work as well as possible for people with disabilities. And our second goal is to innovate, so building things directly for people with disabilities, using the great strengths that Google has in things like machine learning and our platform of products that we have. And then the third goal of our team is to help make Google the best place to work for people with disabilities.

KR: There’s a great opportunity for us to change perception, to destigmatize what it means to have a disability, to allow people to see all the diverse perspectives of who we are, and to amplify all those different intersections of what that looks like, but also amplify what people with disabilities are looking for. What are some of the barriers that are in the way and how do we help remove those? Or how do we help shift some of the innovation to allow them to do the things that they really want to do? And we are in an incredible position to do that, and I know we take that responsibility very seriously.

What has Google learned?

Eve: I’ve been working on accessibility at Google for eight years. A common misconception is that you can build a product and then try to layer on accessibility on top. That doesn’t work very well. Building in accessibility from the beginning, it makes the product better for everybody. Of course my work, my goal, is to make our products better for people with disabilities, but there are these huge added benefits to thinking about accessibility holistically from the beginning because we all have disabilities. Whether we’re out in bright sunlight and can’t see things with the glare or in a noisy environment. And so if we think about products as something that everybody should be able to use in every situation, we’re going to design much better products that work well for everyone. Another thing that has been really important is to involve everybody in making products accessible. You can’t just have an accessibility team. You have to have people who are embedded in the product in all kinds of roles working on accessibility, whether they are the user experience designers or the engineers or the researchers. You have to be thinking about accessibility in all parts of it.

KR: We recognize that we were not doing a great job of representing people with disabilities using our media and our content or even the experience itself being accessible. And we put things in place to start to be better about that. We put processes in place to make sure that captions are embedded in our campaigns. Make sure that we have audio-described versions of our films. Make sure that we have diverse representation of disability. And what’s also been interesting, Eve, is in this COVID world I’m working from home, right? That’s something that disabled people wanted forever, right, to be able to work from home, to be able to contribute and have the opportunities to work in our industry and at Google. Now we’ve been able to really engage the community and bring in people that we haven’t before because of that situation. So if anything it has opened our eyes and opened our mind a bit more about how can we be inclusive. How can we do a better job of accommodating disabled Googlers so that they can really, truly bring their full selves to work and do great work?

Eve: We try to make sure that the interview process is as equitable as possible by providing accommodations or extra time if necessary. Once people are here, we try to make sure that we’re as inclusive as possible. Another thing that we launched in the last year is disability fundamentals for managers training. Because part of being inclusive is of course the technology and the accommodations, but there’s a huge cultural aspect to it. But we’ve also released this out in the world, ’cause our goal is not only to make Google a better place, but to raise the water for all boats so that the world can be a more inclusive place for people with disabilities.

How do you feel about the future of this work?

KR: We’re learning as we go, but we are learning, and that’s the important part here is we’re trying to move forward and do better. And I’m really excited about that progress that I’ve seen and we’ve seen.

Eve: We have such a unique opportunity here at Google. Our products are used in education, in workplaces, for people to communicate with their loved ones and others. And by making our products more accessible for people with disabilities, we’re enabling people to learn more, to accomplish more in their jobs.

KR: We have to continue to push this forward, continue to keep the momentum going, continue to keep this in the conversation, continue to make this a priority throughout the company. Even with our industry partners – we’re Google, yes, but we can’t do this alone. We need our community partnerships, we need our industry partnerships, to come along with us. And the inspiring part for me is there’s so much there, so much more to be done, and so many more stories to amplify, and I love that we have so much to do.

Eve: Absolutely.