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4. BT Yahoo! Internet: features and accessibility

CHRIS AVER - Head of eCommerce BT Openworld

I am Chris Aver and I am the head of Online Services, my responsibility is the consumer online product. I have worked for BT for a number of years now, since 1973 in fact, and in a number of customer-facing roles in marketing and sales, and so it is particularly exciting for me to be involved in such a fast-moving environment where the customer is absolutely centric to all of our activity.

I am going to talk just briefly today about the BT Yahoo! consumer online service, the features of that product and what we are doing towards our accessibility project. Just to position the product, first of all, we have a family of BT Broadband products in our portfolio. It is designed so that we are able to give you exactly what you are looking for, from a basic pipe-only product at the low end right through to a full service ISP with a portal. That is my particular area of interest.

Picture of a BT web page showing details of the BT Yahoo! portfolio.

Fig 4.1 BT Yahoo! portfolio

As you can see, FIG 4.1, the BT Yahoo! portfolio includes all of the extra facilities. There are ten additional e-mail addresses for family members. We have a personalised music station, which I will talk about later. Virus protection and spam e-mail protection is included in the service, as is a pop-up blocker, which we know from our research is very annoying to customers, and actually is also very annoying to visually impaired customers, because it does interrupt your service.

Parental controls, instant messenger. We have online gaming. As the previous speaker mentioned, it is of huge interest to our users, and particularly younger users. I suffer from that because I cannot separate my son from his game product! As we all know, it is 10 or 20 times faster than a dial-up service.

I will give you just a little bit of positioning about the BT Yahoo! partnership. We launched that in September last year and we migrated our broadband and narrowband customers over a period of time. We completed that by March of this year. We have partnered with Yahoo! because we absolutely want to deliver the best service to our customers, so that is using the BT access and customer care, and the products and portfolio that Yahoo! have to offer.

Our order volumes doubled immediately because we have a very feature-rich service. Some of those features are listed here, Fig 4.2. I have grouped them in terms of communication into four categories.

Fig 4.2 BT Yahoo! features

In our entertainment section, we have the personalised music streaming service, which actually is intelligent and recognises what music you are listening to. You can start off with your own choices and then you can skip if you do not want to hear what is on the radio. It actually knows what you like and may present you with something of interest from a whole host or variety of types of music genre. There is country, rock, pop, easy listening. We also have things like the Christmas radio station. This also applies when there is a music festival on, or a classical music event as well, so there is a whole variety there.

Then we have an unlimited photo album service, so you have unlimited storage facility to store your photographs, to share them with your family and friends. There is a wide range of broadband content, as you would expect, which includes movies, sports, games and news.

We also have a host of security aspects to the service, because we are acutely aware of the need for security online, as previous speakers have mentioned. That includes parental controls, which enables you to set your criteria against the age of your children online. It is all integrated so that you have a family account, and you set your parental controls. It is intelligent enough to be able to understand who is online and what access you have allowed them to have.

There is the firewall facility, of course, and anti-virus software, which is absolutely vital to protect your PC against viruses. We have all heard a lot about them in the press. There is a pop-up blocker and spyware. Anti-spyware is an additional secure feature which protects your PC from software that can actually look at what you are doing online on your PC, and some of it is intelligent enough to look at your credit card details. The anti-spyware facility will enable you to stop that happening to your PC. It blocks adverts from looking at your PC and what you are doing online. That is very important. Of course, there are all the secure aspects of a children's site.

In our e-mail service, there is 2Gb storage for e-mails, and each of the sub-accounts in the family accounts has their own additional storage space as well. We also have an Instant Messenger service that has a video application, so you would be able to video instant messages to your friends and family.

We have a BT communicator service, which is actually a voice over IP, which enables you to connect from your PC to your telephone or to other services and actually communicate via your PC. If you are online and you have an accessible product, you will be able to make phones calls as well all through the one terminal.

The last aspect is personalisation of the service, which enables you to put on your home page what you want to see. So, if you want news and weather, or you want stocks and shares, you can populate your home page with what you want. It is about ease of access, making the best of the web available to you as you choose.

This is the screen of what the portal looks like Fig 4.3. Apologies for those in the audience who cannot see this slide, but I will attempt to describe it for you. If you do want to see this, I will certainly get an accessible version available to you.

Picture of BT web page showing personal portal.

Fig 4.3 Personal portal

Across the top, at the very top on the header, is a browser which goes down the left-hand side as well. We have the browser software, which we really encourage people to use because it assists in the integration and the usability. Because it is an integrated service, you are able to personalise these aspects and take them with you as you surf.

At the top, you have some default settings, which would be things like bookmarks, e-mail and parental controls. There is a BT button as well that gives you access to other aspects of BT`s services, like online or mobile features, for example.
The rest of the buttons at the top of the browser are actually customisable. There is an edit button in the right-hand corner which allows you to put exactly what you want in your browser.

The side bar can be open or closed. At the top in the right-hand corner are weather and radio stations, but you could easily have your address book or Instant Messenger list, so there is a list of things that you can customise. There are some default settings and some customisable settings. That is the theme of the whole portal.

Then we have two ad boxes. They are not actually advertisements. There are no advertisements on this service here. They are lower or deeper down in the portal, but not on the home page. It is all about helping you with your online experience and making the most of your mail. There are hints and tips on features that you may not be aware of. Address guard protects your e-mail address. It is about your online experience and getting the best out of the service.

Then we have the Search Box, which is images, directory or new search. It is a comprehensive search facility, and there are some more customisable buttons at the side of that.

Then we have the main body of the text, which is the customisable page. The only thing that is not is the Today module, but you can edit your preferences. That is just about news, so we might bring in to there the fact that there is a virus attack that you need to be aware of and take this action now. It is bringing things that are of interest to customers, or items in the news that we feel you would welcome for us to point out to you.

The What`s New component on the right is again about what is new, what is coming in, any new service. In this particular box now is a competition which has subsequently closed, but you can choose what you want on your home page there. You may have financial information or you may have shopping, it is entirely up to you.

So, just a bit about accessibility now. We have been working since launch on accessibility. As we understand the situation, there are over nine million people who are disabled, which covers a range of disabilities, including visual, hearing, mobility, cognitive and learning disabilities. There are some people with more than one disability, of course.

As I think Tony Shipley mentioned, these are people who have a significant spending power, and people who are of interest to us, not simply because of their spending power because they are already our customers. We have some five million existing disabled customers. It is obviously our complete responsibility to produce a service that is accessible to everybody, so we listened to our customers and we knew that we had some issues with our products.

We pulled together a project to understand how we could best tackle this. We decided to partner with NCAM??. The reasons for that were two-fold. First because we partnered with Yahoo! for our portal service, and the developers are based in the US, we wanted somebody who would be working very closely with them but would easily be at hand to them.

Secondly we chose NCAM because they have really good links with the RNIB and City University in the UK, and also they have worked with Yahoo! in the past and other leading ISPs. We felt they have a 30-year track record and they are somebody we really did want to work with.

Our objectives were absolutely to improve the accessibility of the Internet product because we want to encourage customer advocacy. We want people to be able to say, "This is a really good experience." We are involved with a lot of the user groups and the regular forums that are out there. One of our team is actually visually impaired.

We know that there is a good web chat service going on about what is good and what is not good on the web, and we want to design sites which are accessible to all, independent of who they are and how they access. We are talking about a range of disabilities and a range of different access products, and also devices to assist with the access.

The key thing we wanted to do was to make accessibility part of our development. So, as Tony Shipley mentioned in the introduction, not retrofit, but absolutely fundamental to the development. It is obviously much more expensive to retrofit, and we are going through that now to some extent, but also, because we are at the stage we are, new developments are going to be accessible.

I will not say they will be perfect because, as the audience here will know, there is a whole range of services and devices out there, and there is a whole range of versions of those devices. What we have tried to do is work with NCAM, who have a range of devices, and City University, to test them out with a range of different people and with a range of different devices, and to come up with some priority fixes now and some planned fixes, which means a whole schedule of development.

The first thing we did was to undertake a complete audit, end-to-end, and we looked at all of the customer touchpoints. I am talking about advertisements, ordering, CDs, marketing packs, right the way to the online installation and the actual portal. We tried to encompass everything that anybody would need, and it does not matter whether they are disabled or not. This was absolutely all of our customer touchpoints.

We talked about customer care, the online ordering journey, online help, which is absolutely key, including help desks and agents as well. We talked about the web interface and most visited channels, mail search, applications, browser, the communicator, instant messenger. We talked about marketing materials, which is the pack that you get to help you install. As I said, we used a whole range of devices and a whole range of users to test the service.

NCAM actually presented to us, and we included not just the BT Yahoo! product but the whole of BT. We wanted to share in the learning that came out of this across the board. We pulled together a training schedule, so we do not just want to retrofit. This now needs to be fed into our production schedules and our development. That is absolutely the process now. We are undertaking the whole range of training, as you can understand. It encompasses a whole host of issues and messages that we need to train everybody up on.

We also circulated and developed our SQA guidelines and shared those.

NEW SPEAKER: What is SQA?

CHRIS AVER: I was hoping nobody would ask me that! I am not sure, but it is absolutely our policy on where we stand on issues of disability. It is what our editorial policy is, and what features an accessible product has to have. It includes things like using Alt Tabs and Java script. It is all about the technical aspects as well as the strategy, and then projecting that learning across BT so that we are all singing from the same hymn sheets.

We are now at the stage of implementation. We have circulated a list of priorities where we have said, "These are absolutely fundamental. They must be fixed now." There are also lower-grade issues that, if we had to choose, we would have to categorise as secondary issues, because the main thing we need to do is to get an accessible product so people can actually get online. If people cannot get online, they cannot experience all the benefits that broadband has to offer.

That is the position now. We are implementing our priority fixes, then we have a roll-out schedule for longer term corrections. The anti-spyware tool is one of our first releases of an accessible feature. It is another line of defence that can slow down the performance and inhibits unauthorised access to your computer. This was developed with accessibility in mind. There are a whole host of things that are going to be developed, and one of the key things for us was the browser. It was inaccessible to visually impaired people when we launched it. We have made some fixes to it, but it is far from perfect.

The next release will be early next year, January time. Do not hold me to that exactly, but the reason why it is not now is because, in addition to the fixes, we are enhancing our product all the time, and we have some new features that will be launched in January. It makes absolutely commercial sense - because we are a commercial company too - to launch them together. Obviously we ship thousands of CDs, so we need to do the two things together. The first lot of releases, the major releases, will be released early next year.

NEW SPEAKER: - Was the browser you were talking about a Yahoo! Browser?

CHRIS AVER: Yes. Just to summarise, then, it is a work in progress, but we are absolutely moving in the right direction. We have all of our various departments responsible for all the different areas working on the priority fixes. Some of those have been done and, in the case of the software, will be delivered very shortly, and some of them are slightly longer term.

Accessibility is absolutely part of our DNA now. Nothing is developed without going through our accessibility testing. Also, usability is paramount too. It is not just about making a product that is accessible. It absolutely needs to be usable too. We could all develop something that hits every accessible criteria, but we also need to make it usable and intuitive to use. That is the whole picture of what we are working on.

Discussion

TONY SHIPLEY: A lot of people are worried about the always-on nature of broadband connections, so the various protective measures that you have outlined are going to be crucial to the customers. Are those various protections applied across the whole range of packages, or are they tailored according to whether you are paying for the top-grade package or not?

CHRIS AVER: Those features that you refer to are fundamental to BT Yahoo! products. It is only in the product with the portal, the BT Yahoo! product, that you actually get all of those as part of your package. If you like, it is part of the premium that you will pay for the service.

PATRICK ROE: Patrick Roe, Chairman COST 219. Have you thought at all about how you are going to advertise if your services are going to be accessible and to which groups?

CHRIS AVER: Yes, we have. We actually have a page that is online now, and it is BTYahoo!.com/accessibility, surprisingly enough. You do not need to be on our service to see that. It is quite basic at the moment, but we have a job in the work stack and we are updating that with just exactly what I have talked about today, which is an overview of what we are doing and how we are working towards accessibility.
Obviously we absolutely want people to know about it.

We are involved, also, with the RNIB and various user groups, disabled user groups, and other user groups, and we will be informing those guys too, because they are absolutely fundamental to us. We get valuable insight and feedback from those groups which is absolutely invaluable to us.

When we have made progress and we have launched something, then we will be conducting a sort of education or outreach programme, if you like, and that is yet to be defined. But absolutely, yes. We will be doing that.

JIM KYLE: One of the things that is very interesting about your product is the messaging part of it - video and voice over IP - but there is an issue about how you alert the user that there is an incoming call. Can you just talk us through how Yahoo! Messenger handles an incoming video call and handling an incoming voice call, in terms of alerting a deaf or blind user about an incoming call?

CHRIS AVER: You are right, it is an issue. In the same way that you could get a ping, so if you were a deaf user you may not hear that, if you were blind you may not see it. We know that that area is one area where it leaves a lot to be desired, but we are working on it and we will be having some kind of audio facility, or there will be some other kind of alert. I do not know what the solution is now, but I know that the guys are working on it. I am sorry I cannot be more specific.

DAVID MYERS: I want to know why you put so many features on a website. It causes rather a bit of difficulty, if you want to access something specific on a BT Yahoo! site. If you put a lot on the screen, it takes time to work out which one do I click to use it. Would you feel it is right that we have to suffer the job of trying to work out which one to pick? I find it is one of the worst features. As someone with limited sight, can you explain why you do that?

CHRIS AVER: It looks complicated because, on the picture that I have, you have the browser and the side bar open. You do not absolutely have to have either of those features. You can personalise the home page to be exactly what you want it to be, so you can have less on there if you want to. You don`t have to have it. That was just an example that somebody had personalised to show you, to demonstrate what is possible, but it absolutely is up to you what you have on your home page. You can have it quite simple actually. Does that answer your question?

DAVID MYERS: We have to try and work out how to do it. It is not very clear. When I see a website, it does not say advise how to do it, how to simplify it. I always have to do some research on a website to find out how to control it to suit us. That is the point I had.

CHRIS AVER: I am sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, when you are a new customer, there is a visual and audio tool that is available, so it would take you through that. It takes you through and shows you how to do the basic set-up features. It is an online tutorial.

NEW SPEAKER: Can you say when you will complete this project - in other words, when is BT Yahoo! going to be completely accessible?

CHRIS AVER: In terms of completing the product, I do not think it will ever be completed because it is an ongoing development and is always going to be under review. We never want to take our eye off the ball, so it is an ongoing service.

SAME SPEAKER: Could I put the question in another way? You said that you were nOt satisfied with the accessibility at the moment. When do you expect to be satisfied?

CHRIS AVER: We have a number of priority one fixes which will be completed early next year, and then the others will be rolled out. I could not put a definitive date on that because we have to obviously give credence to production timescales and product roll-outs, so it is difficult to actually put a timescale on that. It is absolutely our priority, and I would like to be able to say it will be summer, but I would not like to stick my neck out that far.

SAME SPEAKER: Can I ask a supplementary question? Will BT Yahoo! be more accessible than Yahoo! Yahoo!?

CHRIS AVER: You mean Yahoo!.com? We are actually working with them together in partnership.

SAME SPEAKER: That is what we are worrying about!

CHRIS AVER: As you know, the front of our portal is fundamentally, absolutely different. The issue I am struggling with here is how far do you go down to say that it is completely accessible, because there is always the potential for links into the service.

So you may have three clicks down accessible, and then there may be a feed from a third party. That is why I was saying it is impossible to say we will be completely accessible in whatever time because, as new content providers come on, the screen will have to be accessible, but they may change the content feed so there is ongoing policing. That is absolutely our intention, as it is Yahoo!`s, I have to say.

NEW SPEAKER: Just to follow on from Jim Kyle's question, also noting the different products that you are selling, different areas, different prices. One thing I noticed was they all had capacity download limits, the cheapest one being £17 a month with a limit of 1Gb. If you are using video for hearing impaired people, you reach that 1Gb very quickly. Are disabled people going to have - they might not use it very often, but they will have reached their limit very quickly. Are they going to be in a situation where they are going to be able to have more capacity at a lower price, because of their prime need that they have to communicate via video, or are they going to be forced to go on to the higher cost in order to get the higher capacity download?

CHRIS AVER: We try to assist in guiding people towards the right product as much as we can. There are some examples online now, on the ordering pages, which show you what it means. You could answer e-mails for two hours a day, for example, for the low end of the market, the low-end product. It also gives some download times, so it gives people an idea of what it means, and what does it mean to an average user. We try to equate that to e-mail time and download time, so we try to assist people. We are looking at how people could perhaps add on chunks if they need to, so, if they wanted to go for a no-frills product, how they would facilitate that. That is absolutely on the road map.

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Last updated: 02.10.2008    © Copyright reserved