How Microsoft Uses Technology to Help Companies be More Accessible | Episode 7
Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work.
This week's episode is a special one! Just in time for International Day of People with Disabilities on December 3rd, we wanted to shed some light on how one of the world's foremost tech companies is putting accessibility first when it comes to product design. This week we chat with the Accessibility Lead at Microsoft Canada, Ricardo Wagner.
Listen or read below for the edited transcript.
Stefan: To kick it off, can you share a bit about yourself and what you do?
Ricardo: I think I have the best job at Microsoft - I help organizations to create, modern, accessible, and inclusive workplaces. My goal is to demonstrate how to acknowledge and empower HR leaders and decision makers on how to create a more inclusive environment using the latest and greatest technology.
Stefan: What’s been your biggest learning in the role?
Ricardo: I’d say the number one learning is the mindset that people have about persons with disabilities. Let me give you an example. We should have this conversation from an environment and technology perspective. Environments and technology make people disabled.
If you bring it from an environmental perspective, you realize that this is a solvable design challenge that drives innovation. And it’s not about the person, it’s about the environment. When you start to think this way, you realize, for example, that stairs make the building inaccessible, not the wheelchair.
Many people still have the mindset of putting people in clusters, like people with abilities and people with disabilities - that’s something I try to mitigate.
Stefan: What’s a mistake you made early in your career?
Ricardo: Approaching this dialogue just thinking about persons with permanent disabilities. When you approach universal design or inclusive design in new building environments, we build solutions or products that are inclusive for a person with a permanent disability. This solution is going to work for people with temporary and situational disabilities.
For example, if you create a solution for someone without an arm, it will work for someone who broke their arm or, in Canada, is holding a double-double from Tim Hortons. If you have automatic doors, it will help someone in a wheelchair or someone with both hands full.
I think it’s a mistake when people just think about inclusion and accessibility as about people with permanent disabilities. Accessibility for few becomes usability for many.
Stefan: What do you love most about your role?
Ricardo: The possibility of empowering people, especially people with disabilities, which is really aligned with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
When we see a technology empowering students with learning disabilities with dyslexia, for instance, to consume a book or learn to read and write, technology is unlocking your potential. Or when you see things like seeing AI, which is a technology designed to empower people with sight loss to navigate the world.
Stefan: I love it. Can you tell me about a couple accessibility initiatives you have going on right now?
Ricardo: We launched a technology called Soundscape. This technology is designed to empower people with low vision and the blind to navigate independently - to help them commute. This technology uses your phone and the GPS, then describes it in 3-D.
The technology is going to describe all the different points of interest, but you hear the sound in 3-D. If it’s on your right, you’re going to hear from your right. And you receive information about the location and distance. So for people with sight loss and who are blind, this is really crucial because they can get directions and places to go. They can use other assistive devices like a guide dog or a cane and go to the specific place.
We have a few other examples from technologies like Xbox adaptive controller to empower gamers with disabilities to play. One of the mistakes we were all doing in the industry was assuming that everyone could interact with a traditional controller. And we started getting insights from more and more gamers. They were sharing their challenges. So we launched the Xbox adaptive controller.
Stefan: What process does your team go through to pick and choose where you focus time and efforts?
Ricardo: Internally, we approach accessibility from a 360 degree perspective to make sure it’s aligned with our engineers, in how we design it, how we build the roadmap, to how we create products and solutions. It’s also aligned with our HR team, ensuring that everything we do internally is inclusive and accessible for persons with disabilities.
For example, when our leaders give presentations, they use inclusive language. It also goes for our partners, how we bring awareness to our ecosystem and ensure they build solutions that are inclusive. Technology can be a tool or a weapon, depending on how you design it.
For example, elevators in cities. You touch the floor you want to go to. But a blind person cannot experience touching the screen in the same way or use touch screen technology in the same way. There is an option with a braille button to let you get information in read aloud mode, but the main problem is once you pick your floor, the system will say “Go to elevator B” but it doesn’t tell you if elevator B is on your right, left, or behind you.
Stefan: Amazing. What recommendations you’d share to companies who want to build more inclusive products or businesses.
Ricardo: The very first and most important tip I have is to hire persons with different abilities and disabilities. It’s something we hear from the community all the time: nothing about us without us. Bring them to be part of the fabric of your organization. There are 1.3 billion people with disabilities in the world. In Canada alone there are 6.2 million people with disabilities.
The other suggestion I have is to embrace artificial intelligence and technology that can help organizations create the right environment to unlock potential from many different talents.
Stefan: What are some of the things you have planned next?
Ricardo: I think we’re going to see an evolution in innovation and products, especially from artificial intelligence technology. It’s all about scoping and empowering people in many other scenarios.
For example, it’s called Code Jumper. It was designed by a Microsoft engineer who has a daughter who is blind. She was wondering how she could enable her daughter to learn how to code - something that’s not accessible for people with low vision or blindness. So she came up with Code Jumper. It connects different devices, creating loops or a system where you can compose music, poetry, and learn the basics of coding. It’s designed for kids 7-12 years old who have low vision and blindness. But everyone can play and learn how to code with this technology.
When you bring in technology to empower people with disabilities, you end up empowering everyone.
Stefan: Is there a community you go to for learning and support?
Ricardo: We have a portal on Microsoft Accessibility that connects you to many different resources, not only in terms of technology but also best practices that we are applying at Microsoft.
There’s also a very interesting resource called Accessible Employers, by a group in a community from the President’s Club in British Columbia. They built a beautiful portal with free resources to empower organizations to create inclusion in the workplace.
There are plenty of great communities on LinkedIn and Facebook that people can join, too.
Stefan: What training do people at Microsoft get around accessibility?
Ricardo: We have internal training that’s part of the mandatory training employees need to go through.
We also have another, separate training where employees are invited to win a certification around accessibility and inclusivity. There we take them through all the different topics that we all need to be mindful of, not only in ways that we interact with other employees, but especially people with disabilities.
We have different channels where people can get access to the team around accessibility, and we have one dedicated team inside Microsoft just leading the accessibility dialogue.
There are also employee resource groups, and we have one for people with disabilities. We invite this group to share their perspectives on the best way to approach issues and we invite them into the discussion to help us understand how to address a business opportunity or concern.
Stefan: Moving into the lightning round - what’s your favourite quote?
Ricardo: “The most beautiful things cannot be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart” by Hellen Keller.
Stefan: What motivates you in life?
Ricardo: The ability to do something meaningful that can empower people - and helping companies to build a culture that embraces accessibility and inclusion and changes the perception around disabilities.
Stefan: Is there a book or movie that changed the way you perceive the world?
Ricardo: Factfulness by Hans Rosling.
Stefan: What’s your favourite tech product?
Ricardo: The Xbox adaptive controller.
Stefan: Amazing. Where can people connect with you or learn about opportunities at Microsoft?
Ricardo: I’m very active on my LinkedIn and Twitter. I’m more than happy to share best practices from our side and learn from all the customers or friends on how we can do better.
Stefan: Wonderful. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast!
Ricardo: Thank you.
That wraps up this episode of our podcast, if you want to listen to audio version click below.
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