When you work with a wide range of people, you learn “savoir-vivre” and a number of best practices. For example, when it comes to phone conferences, you announce yourself when you speak (needed for a scribe or an interpreter to be able to tell who’s speaking); you describe what you’re showing on your screen (needed for low vision and blindness), and a few other good ideas like these.

These are valuable habits, and since we’re living in a moment where most of us must play the“work from home” game, they become useful to everyone. As we often say in the accessibility gig: needed for some, useful to all!

There are six main principles to follow:

• One speaker at a time
• Say who you are before speaking
• Open a chat window on the side for clarifications
• Project your voice
• Turn your microphone off when you are done speaking
• Describe your screen

Let’s tackle them from both an UX and accessibility point of view.

One speaker at a time

If more than one person speaks at once, chaos ensues: it makes it nearly impossible for your audience to understand what’s being said, and meetings become hard to follow.  It’s already a challenge when in physical meetings, but on the phone it’s something of a feat.

When I started to extrapolate a bit, I ended up realizing that user experience relies on similar principles:

• Pay attention to the succession of elements presented the user,
• Make sure the tone of voice is consistent across interfaces.

Say who you are before speaking

On the phone, voices can sound very similar. It’s often difficult, even if you’re not deaf, to pinpoint who’s speaking. Announcing yourself reminds everybody who you are, simplifies going from one speaker to the next, and can even cool down the discussion, thus reducing the risk of people speaking all at the same time.

What can we draw from it for our user experience?

• One must always be able to know who’s speaking whatever the context – this is achieved through our Orange logo and our styleguides,
• I must be elegant enough not to assert myself at the turn of each sentence – in our interfaces, this means limiting the use of the orange colour to highlights or calls to action.

Open a chat window on the side for clarifications

When I’m having a hard time understanding and I need explanations, I can use a chat window on the side without interrupting the person talking (for instance: “Who is she talking about? What was that word?”).

An accessible approach to speaking:

• Write your text in the most easily understandable way (see for instance Readability guidelines: Plain English),
• Give our visitors alternative ways to understand our offers and our contents, by providing additional detailed FAQs, chatbots and the help of service support.

Project your voice

Teachers, performers well know that they have to project their voice when adressing the public or a group of people. Projecting one’s voice means pushing it a few meters forward. Instead of talking to yourself, think of your audience as if they were two or three meters away from you. You don’t have to yell, just push your voice a bit louder and further. On the phone you’ll avoid mumbling, which happens frequently because you can hear yourself without imagining, for one second, that people on the other side can’t.

From a graphical point of view, what comes to mind is:

• Provide a fitting typography: simple, readable, with a proper size
• Avoid resorting to small letters using low-contrast colours

Turn your microphone off when you are not speaking

Small noises from all around are just that: noise. The more noise there is, the less signal. And the less signal, the more exhausting the experience.

What about our web and mobile interface? It’s not vocal but visual, so how can we reduce the cognitive load?

• No animation should start automatically without an action from the user
• Always give the user a way to start/pause an animation, a carousel, or an ad

Describe your screen

If I can’t see your screen, it’s not only because of low vision or of blindness: these days the network is on heavy duty, you can’t be sure that I am able to follow your frantic mouse. Tell me what’s happening.

A few accessibility gifts?

• Don’t insert an image without describing it (alternative text if possible, otherwise contents must be present somewhere else on the page),
• Don’t describe an element according only to its location (“in the top right” – hello, this is responsive, it’s now “below”) or to its colour (let’s remember that 10% of men and 0.5% of women are colour-blind, so not only must you outline errors in red, but also provide them with a pictogram and explicit message)

In the end, come to think of it…

It’s often a good thing to remember that accessibility is not useful only to people with a disability, even though it’s critical for them. Accessibility is a genuine part of usability and user experience. A bit of accessibility in phone conferences goes a long way!