Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Jenny-Lee Fleury, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft. It's Microsoft's mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and that includes people with disabilities. We delivered this introductory training to our employees. It had an impact on how they understand disability and accessibility and now we're sharing it with you. There are one billion people around the world who live with disability, and any of us at any time can experience a temporary disability. We can break a hand and have difficulty using a keyboard, or we can be trying to watch a video in a noisy place without headphones. Here's another example. I got a friend with a wheelchair and she goes to a business meeting and is faced with staircases and no ramps. An elevator, a ramp can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities, and it offers an accessible way to get in and around the building. In addition to accessibility of physical spaces, we can also make our interactions more inclusive. Instead of identifying a person by their disability, like that blind person, switch it around, the person who's blind. If you remember to put the person first, the rest will fall into place. Just avoid outdated terms, and I hate to say these words, but words like retard, hearing impaired, mute, or wheelchair bound. When you're communicating with a person who is deaf and working with a sign language interpreter as I do, don't face and speak to the interpreter, speak directly to the person who is deaf, and do the same thing when you're talking to someone who's blind. If you're in a meeting and a person who's blind asks a question, look at them directly when you answer, and not the sighted person in the meeting, they will know. If you pass someone in the room or in a corridor, someone who's low vision or has blindness or using a cane, just let them know that you're there. A simple phrase like, hey Joe, it's Jenny, I'm on your right, works great. You might see people with service dogs, and even if you're a dog lover, check with the owner before you approach. Service dogs are working dogs and shouldn't be distracted. The same way a person may use a service animal to navigate the physical world, a person with a disability may also use assistive technology, or AT, to access the electronic world. ATs, such as screen readers or voice recognition, offer alternate ways of interacting with technology. You can make sure that your electronic files, like documents or slide decks, are accessible. If you use Microsoft Office, you can use the accessibility checker in Office 365. We can help. So now you have some background info, let's go on an adventure and learn what accessibility can be like in the workplace. These next few minutes will follow fictional characters working at Microsoft. Their stories illustrate how people experience disability and accessibility in their daily lives. Ready? Let's go.
Speaker 2: Laura is passionate about acting. She's even a repeat lead in her community theatre group. But getting into character isn't her only challenge. Laura developed a stutter as a child, which made her very self-conscious. But Laura's early involvement in theatre really helped her grow her confidence and enabled her to better deliver prepared presentations. When she's not acting, Laura works as a project manager for Microsoft IT's external websites in Hyderabad. Her team is participating in an inclusive design sprint hosted by the Microsoft design team. Their goal for the sprint is to create more accessible websites using the Microsoft accessibility standards. These design sprints mean Laura will be interacting with a lot of people, which can be challenging for her, given her speech disability. To help her prepare, she reached out to a few employee resource groups designed to support people with disabilities. They helped her learn good tactics and strategies for building confidence so she could better engage in group conversations. Because of the information she learned during the design sprint, Laura has been strategizing about how her other projects could also engage people of all abilities. The biggest change was to her scorecards, which used to rely heavily on just color to convey the status of a project. Laura now understands that making her files more accessible is not as difficult as she once thought.
Speaker 3: Charlie was born and raised in Chicago as the youngest of three. After graduating from the University of Illinois, Charlie experienced a long period of unemployment, but eventually secured a position in Dallas as an Azure developer through the autism hiring program at Microsoft. Charlie is autistic. He has difficulties with social communication and interaction, but when given clear direction, his technical skills really shine. As participants of the Inclusive Hiring Initiative at Microsoft, Charlie's manager and team are trained to focus on Charlie's strengths, mitigate his weaknesses, and embrace him as an invaluable member of their group who can have great impact. As part of this effort, Charlie was asked what methods of communication and collaboration work best for him. Charlie shared that he prefers to use email as much as possible, and OneNote for collaboration. In this way, both Charlie and his team can work together to achieve their goals.
Speaker 2: May is an acclaimed sculptor who sold her artwork to help her pay for law school. After passing the bar, she got a job as an attorney in Microsoft's CELA organization. May lost her hearing at 20 years old. Now, when attending meetings, she uses a sign language interpreter to facilitate the conversation. And when on conference calls, she sometimes uses the Skype translator tool to see a visual transcript of what is said. Most recently, May has been offering legal advice to a product team who is developing a new app. The team created a video showing the capabilities of the product to help figure out what legal checks are needed prior to release. They send the video to May to help her triage what the next steps would be. The only problem is the product team hadn't added closed captions to the video. May asks them to add captions so she can further assist, which is very frustrating. The team is embarrassed at their oversight as they didn't realize May was deaf, but they quickly work on the addition. Once the captions are added, May will be able to give her expert advice, allowing the product to go to market risk-free. This is Julie, a mother of two living in Seattle. Julie loves her iPhone and uses it daily to check her email with our office apps. The iPhone has a setting that magnifies the screen, making content easier to see, which is great since Julie has low vision. In addition to being a mom, Julie is also a manager on the Skype for Business team. She received an email today from a member of the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk, or EDAD, team. A customer has reported a problem with the accessibility of the latest release of Skype for Business. The customer uses a third-party screen reader, and when they join a Skype for Business meeting, the screen-reading software stops working. Julie understands that this isn't just a bug. It's also a roadblock to her client's personal success. The loss of this accessible functionality could cost this customer his job. Julie engages her engineers and the EDAD team to make sure this issue is resolved quickly. Hopefully, Julie's quick actions will prevent any further frustrations for her customer or any other customers using screen-reading software. Claire is a serious gamer with multiple gaming competition awards under her belt. She has limited function in her hands and primarily uses just her left hand or her voice for most tasks. Claire is also a Microsoft account manager who specializes in Office 365. One of her prospective clients wants to know if Office 365 is compliant with Section 508. Open Skype for Business. Opening Skype for Business. Claire wants to make sure she follows Microsoft's commitments to be transparent, accountable, and inclusive with her response. So she engages CELA and the Office team to collect the appropriate information. Her search leads her to the appropriate Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates, or VPATs, and the Microsoft Accessibility Portal. Now well-prepared, Claire sets up a meeting to share her findings with the client in person. I love you guys. Thanks.
Speaker 3: This is Amin. An avid soccer fan, he and his twin brother play together in a local men's league in Sao Paulo. Amin is rather competitive and took a hard fall at his last game, fracturing his right forearm and wrist. Being right-handed, that limitation has really impacted his ability to function in the way he's used to. In between on-site marketing meetings, Amin often catches up on his email using his phone. But now that he is unable to use his dominant hand, Amin chooses to interface with his laptop using his voice. Tools like Cortana or full-featured speech-to-text programs allow him to dictate his emails much more efficiently than trying to type with just one hand. This situational experience has made Amin more aware of the importance accessibility plays in people's daily lives. As a result, he has leveraged company resources to find guides that will help him make his presentations and notes more accessible to everyone.
Speaker 1: We hope you picked up on some new ideas. Be sure to visit microsoft.com forward slash accessibility and click on pages on the site. Learn anything from inclusive hiring to design products and more. We are excited to continue this journey with you and see what you do next to make your community, your work environment and your product and content more accessible and usable for everyone. Game on.
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