Microsoft organized its thirteenth Capacity Summit earlier this year. The event, featuring speakers such as musician Gaelynn Lea and nonprofit leader Dom Kelly, among other key figures, focused on the tech giant’s commitment to accessibility – as well as the impact of the IT industry. Sessions can be I looked here.
“Accessible technology is a fundamental building block that can unlock opportunities in all areas of society and empower people across the disability spectrum,” Microsoft said. Jenny Lay Flurrie, Accessibility Manager, at the time. “But it’s not just about technology. We are committed to tackling the disability and learning divide through our technology-led strategy built on three additional pillars: people, partnership and policy.
The company has recently been praised for initiatives like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and even beyond the summit’s 13 iterations, this is far from the first time Microsoft has dipped its toe into the accessibility pool. For example, the company announced in 2021 that it had purchased Nuance, the company behind industry-leading dictation software Dragon Naturally Speaking.
Microsoft products and services have been omnipresent in the enterprise, since Microsoft Teams has Windows 11 – and the hope is that one of the largest companies in the world taking accessibility seriously will improve the lives of countless professionals.
Create new accessibility standards
Optimism about the impact IT can have on accessibility in key sessions is also felt within the Microsoft ecosystem. Arunansu Pattanayak, an IT consultant and cloud architect at Microsoft, says he hopes events like the Ability Summit will usher in an era of increased accessibility compatibility.
“It’s a really good cause that a lot of big tech companies love Microsoft, GoogleT-Mobile is committed (to),” he says ITPro. “So I hope this can bring people together and we can finally find a way to create these open standards to make this technology available and work interoperably.”
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But where there are proposed actions, of which the summit was rich, there is also the power of implementation. For his part, Eric Sugar, president of full-service provider ProServe IT, says Microsoft’s continued focus on accessibility offers new opportunities and will continue to pay dividends. To achieve this, from a technical point of view, however, you must be open to what you do not know.
“The difference between organizations that are successful in helping people work or making people feel like they’re contributing is that confidence and that willingness to be uncomfortable…the understanding that I’m going to ask the wrong question, that I’m going to make a mistake and as long as we’re in a trust zone, it’s going to be okay but it’s (also) acceptable.
Integrate accessibility into your workflow
For Darren Stordahl, vice president of sales and marketing at FMT Consultants, creating access translates to business basics, like documenting standard operating procedures.
“What we’re excited about right now is that we plan to ensure our company has technical staff who are familiar with and capable of integrating American Sign Language (ASL) into our products and into the SaaS partnerships we build. »
Meanwhile, Sugar’s starting point is dictation. His company has strong ties to the nonprofit sector, including working with the Canadian Institute for the Blind on IT solutions, and he says Microsoft’s attention to detail is what makes this creation possible. access.
“Microsoft has done a very good job designing its platforms to enable accessibility. We, as integrators, must do the same. For example, our version of this design thinking then is: “Okay, how can we integrate this into your daily life or into mine?” »
Dictation entered Sugar’s life in a significant way when he broke his hand. There’s a saying in some areas of disability activism that everyone on earth is only temporarily able-bodied, an experience the longtime tech worker felt deeply.
“I couldn’t type for eight weeks, and I couldn’t type well for about 12 or 13 weeks. So I started the experiment. I went through an eight-week experience that was incredibly disruptive to me, my life, my family, and the people I care about. Knowing that people live with this all the time makes it important.
Give a hand
The fact that accessibility is considered a helping hand is clearly stated in the name. For Pattanayak, he sees tools within Office 365 and internal company tools as key elements for advancing accessibility in the IT space.
“If you’re creating plugins with an Office tool or developing an Office-related product, the Accessibility Assistant is a great tool for checking accessibility. If you are creating a general purpose application using Java; you create a website using HTML; you are developing your app from scratch, that’s when the accessibility checker is going to come in handy.
Pattanayak says the problem is less about having difficult conversations with people about accessibility and more about advertising that the tools themselves are available. Much of this information is online, including a toolkit focused on inclusive design, the aforementioned Accessibility Assistant, and the long-running Seeing AI app.
Despite progress, we must still be wary
Just like those behind Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)Sugar and her colleagues continue to emphasize that it’s important to go beyond just checking the box when it comes to accessibility in the digital world, regardless of who your customer is.
“If we take the time to treat accessibility like a GPS system, where we will modify the route based on what is happening in front of us and the responses we receive, instead of arriving with a preconceived idea… companies work to help companies enable people to find better answers.
Disability and technology are never an open and shut affair. Something Sugar is committed to highlighting at every opportunity. “This is not a technology conversation. It’s a conversation about trust and vulnerability.
