VoiceFoundry Launch Agent Desktop for Vision Impaired Contact Centre Agents

VoiceFoundry, a principal provider of cloud-based contact centre solutions with a unique focus on customer experience and automation in Asia Pacific, North America and the United Kingdom recently announced the launch of an Amazon Connect Accessible Agent Desktop for vision impaired contact centre agents at Vision Australia.

Vision Australia required a contact centre solution that would allow blind, low vision and sighted agents to have the same experience, functionality and business tools to service their customers. They choose Amazon Connect cloud contact centre as their core technology as its open interfaces (APIs) provide the flexibility required to easily adapt agent tools to cater for their vision impaired staff.

Matthew Staniforth, National Contact Centre Manager for Vision Australia said “Our aim in the contact centre is to have tools that will enable us to employ the best person for the role. This should be without regard to their ability to be able to commute to one of our sites within Australia or their level of sight. The only way for us to achieve this is to have accessible agent and supervisor work spaces, that can be accessed remotely and securely.”

The Agent Desktop needed to be simple, accessible and available from any location.

Fully integrated to Amazon’s Contact Control Panel, central to the design was the ability to interface with Job Access with Speech (JAWS) screen reading technology. The Agent Desktop includes compatibility to ZoomText Magnifier (screen magnification application), functional shortcodes, interfaces to salesforce.com and Active Directory. Customers details are screen-popped based on their displayed phone number.

VoiceFoundry partnered closely with the Vision Australia team to design, build and test the contact centre, with particular focus on the Accessible Agent Desktop. This included one-on-one interviews with agents who were going to use the desktop to ensure the design was fit for purpose. Working with the vision impaired was a unique experience as all traditional concepts in relation to User Interface design and aesthetics no longer applied.

Steve Stewart, Professional Services Director at VoiceFoundry said “This has been a true partnership with Vision Australia. It was a complex and challenging design and iterative development process that focused on meeting the specific needs of their users. What made it a truly rewarding experience for the development team was knowing that the end design and implementation would have an impact on the day to day lives of those vision impaired agents. Our long term goal is to make this desktop available globally to any vision impaired agent that uses Amazon Connect.

This is the first-time Vision Australia agents with low vision have had access to the same business tools as other staff.

VoiceFoundry continues to gain momentum in the delivery of Amazon Connect deployments, supporting some of the most innovative contact centre implementations leveraging complementary AWS products like Amazon Lex and Polly. Founded in 2016 specifically to support the Amazon Connect ecosystem, VoiceFoundry recently achieved the Advanced Consulting Partner status for delivering design and deployment services in support of Amazon Connect.

About Vision Australia

Vision Australia is a leading national provider of blindness and low vision services, supporting more than 27,500 people throughout Australia. Vision Australia’s mission is to support people who are blind or have low vision live the life they choose. A not-for-profit, they are a major participant in the international blindness community. www.visionaustralia.org