Speaker 1: Microsoft employees are our first and best customers, testing features and enabling product groups to refine experiences before going to market. To ensure that we're creating truly inclusive experiences for customers, we work with employees with a range of disabilities to test out our applications and tools.

Speaker 2: It's all about building the future of our technology, ensuring that all of our employees across the globe can use our products to do their jobs well, to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

Speaker 3: We're trying to innovate and we're trying to provide our employees with the best user experience so that we enable them to innovate and provide the best tools for our customers.

Speaker 1: Welcome to InsideTrack, where we tell the story of Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company. Hope works with teams in Microsoft Digital to ensure that the tools and services they work on meet accessibility requirements.

Speaker 2: Their specific guideline, you know, industry standard, the different features or the text and legibility, contrast or different icons. The biggest difference really is usability and that the people that you're building for, they've actually used the application and have given you feedback that is contextual.

Speaker 1: Some of the findings were the need to clarify technical jargon and acronyms, add a user guide video with the sign language interpreter, and ensure that the webpages had sufficient contrast so it'd be usable by someone with low vision or working in a bright environment. These changes ended up creating a more intuitive experience for everyone.

Speaker 2: When your functionality of your application is just easy to understand, then you really start to solve a lot of those usability issues that come up in these studies, regardless of the participant, regardless of their lived experience or disability.

Speaker 1: It's worth acknowledging that getting feedback can be difficult for the engineers who put time, energy, and passion into their work. However, we know that adopting a growth mindset is critical for creating a better product that's usable by everyone.

Speaker 3: A lot of the things where it made sense and we just overlooked it or we made an assumption, we're always trying to learn, unlearn, and relearn things every day. So it made it easier for us to go through a process like this.

Speaker 1: It's important for all product makers to prioritize accessibility from the very beginning.

Speaker 3: It should be part of the initial launch of a product. It's like a house. If you have a stronger foundation, it's gonna be a better house.

Speaker 1: Take it from these two, making the commitment to invest in research is always worth it in the end.

Speaker 3: The team really put a lot of effort into this process and seeing it and knowing that we made someone's day better because we took this time to do it.

Speaker 2: For me as a researcher, seeing my work and my contributions, but also just like my conversations with these people and being able to actually tell their story, I think that is always the most rewarding part of doing research.

Speaker 1: Now we wanna hear from you. How is your team or company prioritizing accessibility and inclusion? Let us know in the comments below. To learn more about how Microsoft is prioritizing inclusive user research and accessibility, check out aka.ms slash InsideTrack. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on how Microsoft Digital is transforming the company.