Breaking Down Unintended Barriers in the Workplace

@quinnkeastwww.sli.do – #ixdaberlin
Breaking Down Unintended
Barriers in Your Workplace
For More Inclusive Teams

Think of a question during the talk?
Please share on www.sli.do with  
event code #ixdaberlin.

Quinn Keast (@quinnkeast)
Senior UX / UI Designer 
Marley Spoon

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Graphic Designer
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UX Specialist
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UX Consultant & Co-Founder
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Senior UX / UI Designer

Breaking down unintended barriers
to inclusion in the workplace.

Profound hearing loss.

“Deaf as a post.”

Volume !== Clarity.

Clarity.

Phones. 
Skype calls. 
Talking at a whiteboard.
Spoken questions at the end of talks.

Having hearing like mine  
results in a lot of small things  
going poorly.

Winnipeg Transit “Peggo.”

http://momsiecle.com/2016/08/i-got-peggo-in-my-pocket/

Having hearing like mine  
usually results in a lot of  
big things going poorly.

40% of Canadians
with profound
hearing loss are
unemployed.
“Employment and Employability.” Canadian Association of the
Deaf - Association Des Sourds Du Canada,  
cad.ca/issues-positions/employment-and-employability.

Another 40% are
underemployed.
“Employment and Employability.” Canadian Association of the
Deaf - Association Des Sourds Du Canada,  

Only 20% of Canadians
with profound hearing
loss have full-time
employment.
“Employment and Employability.” Canadian Association  
of the Deaf - Association Des Sourds Du Canada,  

1 in 8 people in Canada & Germany
live with a disability.
“7.8 million severely disabled people living in Germany.” - Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis),  
destatis.de/EN/PressServices/Press/pr/2018/06/PE18_228_227.html.

Growing awareness and action
around accessibility and inclusion in
products and services.

But…

We often overlook our own
workplaces.

Barrier-free workplaces: more than
the physical spaces.

Barrier-free workplaces: in the
processes and routines in our  
day-to-day work.

Most barriers are unintentional.

✘

Unintentional barriers in the
workplace have a huge impact on our
ability to build and maintain diverse
and inclusive teams.

Our discipline gives us tools to find
and break down unintended barriers.

Unintended Barrier:  
One Path for Everyone

Show of hands: does your company
carry out job interviews using video
call tools like Skype?

I would like to invite you to the first
step of the process: a Skype phone
call with one of our team members.

Our products serve many types of
users with different needs, goals, and
pain points.

We use many tools and methods that
visualize these unique user journeys.

Common theme: there’s a destination,
and different users may get there in
different ways.

Many workplace processes only
provide a single path for everyone.

Breaking it down:

Consider what “user paths” you have
in your internal processes and
workflows.

Consider whether your processes are
focused on channels & tools, or
outcomes.

Focusing on channels & tools often
creates barriers, while focusing on
outcomes opens up alternate paths.

We can’t anticipate all the alternate
paths, because they’re unique to
everyone.

I would like to invite you to the first
step of the process: a conversation
with one of our team members. We
typically use Skype, but let me know
if you’d like to use another method.

Unintended Barrier:
Mistaking Artificial
Constraints for Hard
Constraints

The rise of the internet has been life-
changing for people living with
disabilities.

Finally: the means to communicate on
my own terms.

Hearing loss doesn’t exist on the
internet.

Hearing loss doesn’t exist on the
internet… until we decide it does.

Remote work would be impossible
with a hearing problem, because
we use video calls for everything.
Person, 9:30

Why is it impossible?

What can we change or evolve?

Almost everything we do in our
workplace is something we decided
to do.

The ways we work are flexible and
constantly changing—unless we lose
sight of that fact.

How Might We?

Breaking down barriers tends to
benefit everyone.

Have you forgotten, misunderstood,
or missed something said in a
meeting because you were tired,
busy, or distracted, or because the
speaker mumbled or misspoke?

Would you benefit from having
shared meeting notes or transcripts?

Ask “How Might We?” when
presented with a new challenge
related to accessibility in the
workplace.

I can’t do phone interviews with
users; that’s okay. I have a team.

Consider whether your workflows
today may present barriers for
anyone on your team.

Recognize that it’s usually worth the
effort to change: it’s likely that many
others will also benefit.

Unintended Barrier:
Incorrect Mental Models &
Unchallenged Cognitive Bias

These come from real conversations
I’ve had with people:

Person, 9:30
I have a concern: how did it work
until now with the hearing problem?
We need to ask this, as we have
many meetings and stand ups.

Person, 9:31
Are you using sign language?

Person, 9:32
We need to make sure that we are
allowed to hire you.

Knowing that I had a hearing problem
changed how I was perceived.

My experience.
My work.
My goals, values, achievements.
My hearing.

This is a challenge shared by many.

Incorrect mental models and
unchallenged cognitive biases
change how people think about, and
interact with each other.

“Disclosing an autism diagnosis
at work can hinder
advancement. People’s low
expectations of me were
noticeable.” 
Sara Luterman (@slooterman)
“Disclosure of Autism at Work Holds Risks and Benefits.” Spectrum | Autism Research News, 17 Sept.
2018, www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/disclosure-autism-work-holds-risks-benefits/.

Not just how we perceive each other:
also how we perceive roles and
responsibilities in the workplace.

Mental models around roles and
responsibilities in the workplace tend
to be exclusive, not inclusive.

“… it’s not usual for someone
with your hearing to make it into
leadership.”

Ongoing challenge of discrimination
and stereotyping in the workplace.

Challenge your own mental models
and be aware of cognitive bias.

Ambiguity effect • Anchoring or focalism • Anthropocentric thinking • Anthropomorphism or
personification • Attentional bias • Automation bias • Availability heuristic • Availability
cascade • Backfire effect • Bandwagon effect • Base rate fallacy or Base rate neglect • Belief
bias • Ben Franklin effect • Berkson's paradox • Bias blind spot • Bystander effect • Choice-
supportive bias • Clustering illusion • Confirmation bias • Congruence bias • Conjunction
fallacy • Conservatism (belief revision) • Continued influence effect • Contrast effect •
Courtesy bias • Curse of knowledge • Declinism • Decoy effect • Default effect • Denomination
effect • Disposition effect • Distinction bias • Dunning–Kruger effect • Duration neglect •
Empathy gap • Endowment effect • Exaggerated expectation • Experimenter's or expectation
bias • Focusing effect • Forer effect or Barnum effect • Form function attribution bias •
Framing effect • Frequency illusion • Functional fixedness • Gambler's fallacy • Hard–easy
effect • Hindsight bias • Hostile attribution bias • Hot-hand fallacy • Hyperbolic discounting •
Identifiable victim effect • IKEA effect • Illicit transference • Illusion of control • Illusion of
validity • Illusory correlation • Illusory truth effect • Impact bias • Information bias •
Insensitivity to sample size • Irrational escalation • Law of the instrument • Less-is-better
effect • Look-elsewhere effect • Loss aversion • Mere exposure effect • Money illusion • Moral
credential effect • Negativity bias or Negativity effect • Neglect of probability • Normalcy bias
• Not invented here • Observer-expectancy effect • Omission bias • Optimism bias • Ostrich

Pay particular attention to
confirmation bias.

If you expect something to be the
case, you’ll find or interpret evidence
to support it while discounting or
ignoring evidence that contradicts it.

You may create barriers for others
without meaning to.

Challenge your team to challenge
their own mental models and learn
about cognitive bias.

If you’re someone living with a
disability, consider the pros and cons
of self-disclosure.

Self-disclosure is a very
personal decision.

quinnkeast.com/readme
User guide to me and how I work.

quinnkeast.com/readme
— Guiding values.
— How I work as a human.
— Help you and I work together.

Wrapping Up

All of these stories involved
unintended barriers to inclusion.

All of those barriers lead to less
diverse, less inclusive product teams.

What other barriers exist in your
workplace?

You have the methods and the
mindsets you need to find barriers
that exist in your own workplace.

Removing barriers for your team
members and candidates creates an
immediate feedback loop.

You’ll see how it helps someone that
you work with. Every day.

Doing what you do every day—
building empathy, telling stories,
driving change—can create a  
culture of inclusion.

A culture of inclusion makes it easier
to fight for diversity and inclusion in
our products and services.

A culture of inclusion makes for
stronger, better, and more desirable
workplaces.

Find an unintended barrier.  
Break it down.  
Tell us about it.

Thank you.

Questions?
www.sli.do 
Event code #ixdaberlin

Breaking Down Unintended Barriers in the Workplace

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