Being successful at this important work hinges on getting feedback from people with disabilities ranging from mobility and cognitive disabilities to temporary disabilities due to an injury or short-term condition.

Joanna Briggs, a senior technical program manager in Microsoft Digital, says that creating inclusive experiences starts with creating products and services for Microsoft employees, who are often the first and best customers at the company.

“We’re trying to innovate and provide our employees and customers with the best user experiences,” says Briggs, who works with partner teams in Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company, to ensure that internal applications and services meet accessibility standards and guidelines. “To do that, we have to take into account the lived experiences of every employee, regardless of ability.”

This was the approach that Briggs, Faris Mango, a software engineering manager in Microsoft Digital, and their teams used to improve the portal that Microsoft guests can use to register their devices and connect to the internet when they visit one of the company’s buildings.

“We didn’t want to just guess what certain employees would want or face,” Mango says. “Instead, we wanted to have our employees use the portal so we could get feedback straight from them.”

This is why Briggs set up inclusive usability studies to get feedback from people with disabilities, where she would observe them going through a series of tasks using the portal. To do this, she worked with employees who volunteered to share their lived experience and test out the portal. Their lived experience and feedback were vital to building out this technology and ensuring that it is usable for employees and customers with a range of lived experiences.

In the research findings, Briggs summarized that some participants wanted more consistency around the semantics of the color palette in the user interface and simpler language that wasn’t specific to software engineers. Others advocated for a version of the user guide video with American Sign Language (ASL).

“All of the feedback made sense to me,” Mango says, explaining Microsoft Digital’s accessibility team made it easy for him to find and hire an ASL interpreter. “We were able to quickly record a version of the video with an ASL interpreter, and that made a huge impact.”

Ensure that you’re getting feedback from customers outside of your own team, discipline, or organization. Bring in a diverse user base from the beginning, and really listen to what they need.

—Joanna Briggs, senior technical program manager, Microsoft Digital

Conducting the inclusive usability studies with people with disabilities has also reinforced the importance of creating intuitive user experiences. What’s more important is that these learnings have shifted the mindset of his team. Mango also worked with Briggs to apply principles of Microsoft’s inclusive design methodology to the technology and tools they’re developing. One of the core principles is “solve for one, extend to many.” In other words, technology created with people with disabilities in mind, like video captions or a push bar on a door, can benefit people in a range of situations and ability levels.

“We’re taking the lessons we learned in the inclusive usability studies, applying them when developing new products and services, and prioritizing accessibility at Microsoft,” Mango says.

For teams that want to take a page out of Mango and Briggs’ book by prioritizing accessibility, it’s important to think about inclusion from the beginning of the product-making process.

“Ensure that you’re getting feedback from customers outside of your own team, discipline, or organization,” Briggs says. “Bring in a diverse user base from the beginning, and really listen to what they need.”

You can even leverage free tools, like a plug-in for accessibility insights that can be added to any webpage, or do your own research.

This conversation is especially important as companies continue to embrace remote and hybrid work, and ensure that every employee is invited to participate regardless of where they’re working or what technology they’re using.

“Put yourself in customers’ shoes and get feedback from them directly about what they need,” Mango says. “This gives you a better sense of what to invest in.”

• Think about inclusion and accessibility from the beginning of the product-making process.
• Get feedback from folks outside of your own team, discipline, or collaborators.
• Run usability tests with people who have a range of disabilities.

• Find out how building inclusive, accessible experiences at Microsoft is a catalyst for digital transformation.
• Read about how Microsoft is enabling remote work with Zero Trust networking, Microsoft Teams meetings, and employee engagement.
• Watch this video about how to design Microsoft products and services with accessibility in mind.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

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The post Prioritizing accessibility at Microsoft with feedback from people with disabilities appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Adopting rigorous design standards is helping Microsoft get better at something very important to the company—getting accessibility right inside its own walls.

Microsoft’s journey to transform its approach to accessibility started when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the helm in 2014, says Tricia Fejfar, partner director of user experience in Microsoft Digital, the organization that powers, protects, and transforms Microsoft. Nadella sharpened the company’s focus on accessibility in 2017, when he penned a moving essay describing his experience raising a child with cerebral palsy.

“That really got us thinking about accessibility internally,” Fejfar says. “Employees are more productive and engaged when they have simple, easy-to-use tools, and accessibility is a very important part of that DNA.”

More than 1 billion people on the planet identify as having some form of a disability, so building experiences that are accessible to all Microsoft employees makes a difference every day.

“Being able to do my job at Microsoft based on my skills and not be blocked by my blindness has made a big difference in my life,” says Manish Agrawal, a senior program manager for the Accessibility team within Microsoft Digital.

Agrawal, who is blind, works to make Microsoft products more accessible to people with disabilities. It’s about creating an inclusive work environment where everyone can succeed.

“For me, it’s not just about making products accessible for Microsoft employees to help them get their work done,” he says. “It’s also about supporting employees with disabilities and ensuring that Microsoft builds a diverse and inclusive workforce across the spectrum of abilities.”

Fejfar adds, “Designing for and building experiences that reflect the diversity of the people who use them makes sure we put our people at the center of our work. Until people recognize that, and honor it in the work they do, they can’t begin to make sure what they build will take care of everyone’s needs.”

It’s about understanding why you build something and who will use it. Microsoft calls it being human-centric and customer obsessed.

“Building accessible experiences is not a compliance effort or a checklist of guidelines,” Fejfar says. “It’s about thinking of the user at all stages of the development process so you build usable, delightful, and cohesive end-to-end experiences.”

Hiring and supporting people with disabilities makes good sense for the company and helps attract top talent.

“Millennials choose employers who reflect their values, and diversity and inclusion are at the top of their list,” Fejfar says. “They make up 75 percent of the global workforce.”

Making a difference in the lives of people like Agrawal is what brings people to the Accessibility team, Fejfar says. “We’re here because we want to make sure the internal products that our employees use every day are accessible,” she says.

[Find out how building inclusive, accessible experiences at Microsoft is a catalyst for digital transformation. Learn how Microsoft enables remote work for its employees.]

Adopting a coherent design system

Nadella sharing his story led to a company-wide pivot toward accessibility and improving employability for people with disabilities at Microsoft. One of the initiatives connected to this goal was creating a set of coherence design standards that teams can use each time they builds new tools and services for employees.

“Using a coherent design language reduces engineering costs while increasing engineering efficiency,” Fejfar says. “That makes what we build predictable to our users, which increases engagement and builds trust.”

Microsoft Digital’s design system is built on top of Fluent, Microsoft’s externally facing design language, which makes it feel more like Microsoft.

“Building coherently means something very specific to us,” Fejfar says. “It means designing and coding accessible and reusable UI components, interaction patterns, brand, and other guidelines to build predictable experiences for our employees.”

These design standards have allowed Microsoft to not only consider accessibility as part of every internal project. They also consider accessibility at every step along the way, from idea, to construction, to release. That makes its products accessible to as wide a range of people as possible, which creates new opportunities and better experiences for everyone who works at Microsoft.

Accessible design benefits everyone

Agrawal cites closed captioning as an example of a widely useful accessibility tool that is now used for far more than helping people with hearing impairments watch TV or follow a presentation. Creative uses of the capability include helping audiences understand someone with a heavy accent, following along on TVs placed in loud environments like airports and bars, or allowing someone to watch TV while their partner sleeps.

In fact, closed captions or subtitles are so popular with the general population that game maker Ubisoft reported that more than 95 percent of the people who play their popular Assassin’s Creed Odyssey game keep subtitles turned on. “When you build for accessibility, you end up building a much more compelling product,” Agrawal says.

Moreover, it’s simply good business sense to ensure that talented people such as Agrawal are empowered to make a significant contribution to companies such as Microsoft.

“We need to make sure all the applications and experiences that we build empower everyone who works here to not only do their work, but to have full, rich experiences while they’re at work,” Fejfar says. “Without accessible tools, people can’t do their best work, and if people can’t do their best work, our company, our culture, and our customers are directly impacted.”

Designing new employee experiences

One telling example of Microsoft Digital’s coherent design approach to accessibility is Microsoft MyHub, a new one-stop shop for employees to get their “at work” stuff done at work, like getting worksite access, taking time off, checking stock rewards, and finding out what holidays are upcoming.

It was also vital to make sure the app experience would be fully accessible, says Bing Zhu, principal design manager in Microsoft Digital’s Studio UX team.

“Before we built the app, our employees had to deal with as many as five to eight different tools almost every day,” Zhu says. “Each experience was different than the last one, and not all of them were as accessible as we needed them to be.”

This fragmented experience was difficult for everyone to navigate and very hard to keep accessible for people with disabilities.

“We used our coherent design system to build a unified, consistent, and accessible experience for our employees,” Zhu says. “Using that as our guide, we were able to design an application that all Microsoft employees can use.”

Not only is Microsoft MyHub compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), but it also received a strong usability grade by employees with a spectrum of vision disabilities.

Crucially, the new app was built with accessibility in mind at every stage of its development cycle, Agrawal says.

“We reviewed the design for every feature for accessibility and beta tested the app’s accessibility every time a new feature was implemented,” he says. “We made sure it was accessible for all of our users at each step in the development process.”

One example of how the team that built Microsoft MyHub was guided by Microsoft Digital’s coherence design system was in how it made every interaction and visual element accessible.

“Our coherence design system—which is an extension of Microsoft’s Fluent design system—alongside the accessibility guidance that we provide, helped the MyHub team start incorporating accessibility into their app from the get-go,” says Anna Zaremba, a senior designer on Microsoft Digital’s Coherence team. “Our coherence design system provides components with built-in accessibility that Microsoft Digital’s product teams, like the team that built MyHub, use to create their experiences.”

Work that makes a difference

It’s striking to hear employees in Microsoft Digital talk about the deep satisfaction they take from making products more accessible.

“The greatest reward is hearing from people who have benefitted from our work,” Zaremba says. “I really like the fact that we are doing work that helps the entire company and drives a greater awareness of accessibility.”

Though Microsoft is among the companies pushing hard to build accessibility into everything it does, there is still much work to do. One in 10 people who identify as having some form of disability don’t have the assistive technology they need to fully participate in work and society.

Going forward, Microsoft Digital will continue designing with accessibility as a top priority, using the developmental model it uses to build solutions like Microsoft MyHub as a template for creating the company’s next generation of employee tools.

“We’re still learning this process ourselves,” Zhu says. “We’re figuring out how to make accessibility and design work with program managers and engineers to create even more opportunities for access. It’s an exciting challenge.”

And one that will open doors for Microsoft employees—and others.

“I really love building software anyway,” Agrawal says. “But it’s great to be part of a team that is working to make Microsoft a more inclusive place to work. It has a real impact on people’s lives.”

• Learn more about creating an accessibility training program for your team.
• Dive into the latest accessibility fundamentals training course on Microsoft Learn.
• October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month 2020—learn more about the 75th anniversary of this event in the US here.
• Read how Microsoft is sharing how many of its employees identify as having some form of disability.
• Read how people with disabilities shape technology people use every day.
• Find out how building inclusive, accessible experiences at Microsoft is a catalyst for digital transformation.
• Learn how Microsoft enables remote work for its employees.

The post Microsoft’s fresh approach to accessibility powered by inclusive design appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Leading our accessibility efforts over the past two years, I’ve seen teams make great progress—not just in those experiences, but also in the culture we’ve created across the organization. It’s energizing when you hear someone share an accessibility tip in a meeting or see the “Accessibility: Good to Go” message in someone’s PowerPoint presentation.

We have continued to evolve the way we incorporate accessibility practices into our employee experiences—from meeting etiquette to the digital experiences that enable our employees to do their best work. And with the recent explosion of generative AI using machine learning to further drive productivity improvements, it’s important we continue to extend these practices to new experiences, so everyone benefits.

We worked with the Accessibility team to create a quick guide of best practices for large, internal meetings like Town Halls that serves as a checklist for administrators, meeting organizers and leaders. It helps us all be consistent on what to do when planning a meeting to help everyone fully participate.

—Michelle Strub, executive communications lead, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Following are three practices our teams have learned and do regularly that can be applied across your own organization. Adopting and championing these can increase productivity and higher engagement.

[Learn how to create inclusive content with the new Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft 365. Take our accessibility fundamentals training. Learn about our responsible AI program. Find out about our pursuit of inclusive AI.]

Practice #1: Regularly communicate and model key behaviors for inclusive meetings

Meetings are critical to getting work done, whether it’s communicating priorities, driving alignment, brainstorming ideas, or making decisions. Features in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 help people customize their experience, but we found many people weren’t aware of the options available. And while our accessible events guide gives lots of useful information, we found it was sometimes hard for people to know what to adopt and when.

“We worked with the Accessibility team to create a quick guide of best practices for large, internal meetings like Town Halls that serves as a checklist for administrators, meeting organizers and leaders,” says Michelle Strub, an executive communications lead in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “It helps us all be consistent on what to do when planning a meeting to help everyone fully participate.”

It really brought to light the customer pain point by having the employee walk through and share their experience with the tool. I tried to put myself in their shoes by closing my eyes and trying to follow along. That’s when I realized how confusing it was.

—Jaimie Larsen, product manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Companies can develop their own checklists to increase awareness of important practices, building up adoption over time. While some of these features were initially designed to support individuals with disabilities, we found the following practical tips encouraged everyone to participate and engage effectively.

• Encourage presenters to watch our inclusive presentation skills.
• Share materials in advance and use the accessibility checker in Microsoft Office.
• Use PowerPoint Live to enable features like real-time captions and translation.
• Record meetings so people can catch up later or review to improve understanding.

Practice #2: Build empathy and understanding through storytelling

Creating connections is central to the human experience. We’ve seen employees across Microsoft share their stories, and the stories of others, to improve understanding about why it’s important to create experiences that consider the needs of everyone. Jaimie Larsen, a product manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, was new to accessibility when she met with engineers across her organization to understand their needs and challenges. She quickly realized that the engineers didn’t always understand the impact a poorly designed tool could have on someone’s daily work. She found inspiration to start a quarterly series that featured employees and how they use different tools.

“It really brought to light the customer pain point by having the employee walk through and share their experience with the tool. I tried to put myself in their shoes by closing my eyes and trying to follow along. That’s when I realized how confusing it was,” Larsen says.

Due to this session, Larsen created a stronger understanding of the importance of the work to the engineering team for the specific tool and others were able to learn from it.

It’s been a multi-year journey as we have shared our expertise at Microsoft and worked with ServiceNow to develop practices and processes that continually improve the experiences for our employees.

—Sherif Mazhar, principal program manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

“It was great because we needed multiple teams to do work to make the experience better,” Larsen says. “This session really helped anchor the goal and impact for everyone.”

Practice #3: Create alignment on accessibility with partners internally and externally

We partner with teams across Microsoft and external organizations to deliver employee experiences globally. Using international accessibility standards including Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), teams have developed strong partnerships and commitment to ensure that accessibility is included as a key requirement and measure of success. One of these partnerships has been with ServiceNow, where Sherif Mazhar, a principal program manager, worked closely with ServiceNow to align accessibility goals and drive improvements together.

“It’s been a multi-year journey as we have shared our expertise at Microsoft and worked with ServiceNow to develop practices and processes that continually improve the experiences for our employees,” Mazhar says.

Leaders at Microsoft and ServiceNow have aligned on accessibility goals and now review progress quarterly against common goals.

It takes time to build up relationships and expertise when the primary job someone is used to doing is not focused on technology. I’ve found it helpful to explain the impact and show what happens, rather than just talking about an issue. It can be easy for people to get lost if you use too much technical jargon.

—Erika Retikis, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital Employee Experience

Our Microsoft Digital Employee Experience team works with our colleagues in Microsoft Human Resources to build internal and external partnerships that are increasing accessibility awareness and knowledge. Erika Retikis, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience, has worked with multiple customer companies over the last few years and sees many unique challenges, especially for those companies or teams that aren’t as tech savvy.

“It takes time to build up relationships and expertise when the primary job someone is used to doing is not focused on technology. I’ve found it helpful to explain the impact and show what happens, rather than just talking about an issue. It can be easy for people to get lost if you use too much technical jargon,” Retikis says.

Looking ahead: Artificial Intelligence needs accessibility from the start

As we and other companies look at how artificial intelligence is embedded into different experiences, it will be critical to think about accessibility from the start to ensure that the data and the experiences include everyone. One area of focus is ensuring data sets include a variety of people and situations. We also regularly include employees with disabilities at various product development stages to benefit from their perspective and create more accessible and inclusive experiences.

So, when you are thinking about building and adopting inclusive experiences, you should try and keep the above tips in mind, as well as other best practices included in some of the resources below, to ensure that your employee experiences are created with everyone at the center.

• Learn more about creating an accessibility training program for your team.
• Dive into the latest accessibility fundamentals training course on Microsoft Learn. 
• Learn how to create inclusive content with the new Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft 365.
• Take our accessibility fundamentals training.
• Learn about our responsible AI program.
• Find out about our pursuit of inclusive AI.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Disability as a strength: Three practices to help you create inclusive experiences at your company appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

“We need to think about accessibility before we start any of our work, before we write any line of code, at every step of our development lifecycle,” says Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director for Microsoft Digital (MSD), the company’s IT organization. “Shifting left means thinking about accessibility at the start of every step we take when we deploy new software or services.”

This enables us to find accessibility bugs early, so at the end, major, disruptive bugs are few and far between. It enables us to ship experiences with accessibility in mind from the start, creating applications that are more inclusive for everyone, including those with disabilities. That’s why shifting left is so powerful—it allows you to avoid fire drills at the end of your projects.

—Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director, Microsoft Digital

This approach is helping us improve how we approach accessibility internally here at Microsoft.

“This enables us to find accessibility bugs early, so at the end, major, disruptive bugs are few and far between,” Pelland says. “It enables us to ship experiences with accessibility in mind from the start, creating applications that are more inclusive for everyone, including those with disabilities. That’s why shifting left is so powerful—it allows you to avoid fire drills at the end of your projects.”

With Accessibility Insights, developers don’t have to be accessibility experts to create accessible products. Now they don’t have to wait until their whole page is complete to check for accessibility.

—Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner, 1ES Accessibility Insights Team

A tool for shifting left

To help teams shift left with accessibility, the 1ES Accessibility Insights Team encourages teams to use Accessibility Insights, an open-source tool developed here at Microsoft.

“With Accessibility Insights, developers don’t have to be accessibility experts to create accessible products,” says Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner on the 1ES Accessibility Insights Team. “Now they don’t have to wait until their whole page is complete to check for accessibility.”

How Accessibility Insights fits into the developer workflow.

Our teams across MSD are using the Accessibility Insights tool to transform how they approach accessibility. We’re providing feedback on what it’s like to use the tool, something that’s part of our role as the company’s Customer Zero.

“Accessibility Insights is embedded into our engineering pipeline,” Chumba Limo, a principal software engineering lead on the MSD’s Infrastructure Engineering Services team. “Any time we integrate a new feature, the tool automatically kicks in and assesses the changes we want to make before they go live.”

If we do find accessibility issues, engineers can address the problem immediately, rather than waiting for the results of a testing cycle later.

We’re able to remediate bugs caught by the automation in less than one hour on average. We’re saving a lot of time.

—Chumba Limo, principal software engineering lead, Infrastructure Engineering Services team, Microsoft Digital

Many of our engineering teams in MSD are using the new shift-left tool from Accessibility Insights.

“Having MSD teams using and deploying Accessibility Insights internally is very powerful,” Gupta says. “By taking active steps to ensure accessibility in the development lifecycle, MSD is sending a very important message: Accessibility is important to us and is a part of our DNA and culture.”

With the work completed by MSD teams so far, we project that our organization will save as many as 2,000 development hours over the next six months. Using Accessibility Insights and talking accessibility early in the process is reducing the amount of accessibility testing we need.

—Jia Ma, senior product manager, Accessibility team, Microsoft Digital

Benefits of shifting left with accessibility

Teams using Accessibility Insights have found several benefits to shifting left with accessibility, including saving time and money by fixing issues in the development phase.

“We’re able to remediate bugs caught by the automation in less than one hour on average,” Limo says. “We’re saving a lot of time.”

The risk of delays in shipping are greatly reduced. If we’re finding fewer issues, we’re releasing the application or product on time. Because we already found those issues in the early phase, there’s no delay, and no risk of having an inaccessible experience for users.

—Ankur Garg, senior technical program manager, Accessibility team, Microsoft Digital

Fixing a bug later, in the post-production phase, can cost 30 times more than it takes to fix it in the development phase.

“With the work completed by MSD teams so far, we project that our organization will save as many as 2,000 development hours over the next six months,” says Jia Ma, a senior product manager on the MSD Accessibility team. “Using Accessibility Insights and talking accessibility early in the process is reducing the amount of accessibility testing we need.”

I’ve heard from my fellow engineers from multiple organizations. They tell me, “By conducting accessibility testing using the tool, it’s teaching me issues I need to avoid and thus, now when I’m writing code, I’m not introducing those issues anymore. Now I just code with accessibility in mind.”

—Nandita Gupta, accessibility product owner, 1ES Accessibility Insights Team

In the end, getting it right at the start helps us from end to end.

“The risk of delays in shipping are greatly reduced,” says Ankur Garg, a senior technical program manager on the MSD Accessibility team. “If we’re finding fewer issues, we’re releasing the application or product on time. Because we already found those issues in the early phase, there’s no delay, and no risk of having an inaccessible experience for users.”

Accessibility Insights supports learning in addition to accessibility testing for developers. “I’ve heard from my fellow engineers from multiple organizations,” Gupta says. “They tell me, ‘By conducting accessibility testing using the tool, it’s teaching me issues I need to avoid and thus, now when I’m writing code, I’m not introducing those issues anymore. Now I just code with accessibility in mind.’”

You can see a change happening across the company. “It’s really great to see the cultural shift as organizations are starting to use this product,” Gupta says.

Tips for shifting left with accessibility

Organizations outside of Microsoft are using Accessibility Insights, too. While developed here at Microsoft, it’s open-source and available for anyone to use.

“It’s used across different industries, including academic and nonprofit,” says Gupta, who says customers love using the product, especially since it’s an open-source product for tackling accessibility testing. “Here’s an open-source product that nonprofits, academia, and others can use to tackle accessibility at no cost.”

For us, it’s been a helpful tool in our journey to improve the way we approach accessibility internally at Microsoft—shifting left is helping us get it right, but we still have a lot of work to do.

If your organization wants to shift left with accessibility, our experts here at Microsoft have some tips to share.

“Just do it,” Gupta says. “Ask yourselves, what is the one thing you can do today?”

Start there and build on that.

For example, one quick, impactful thing you can do is to make sure all your images have alt text. Then make sure you’re using ARIA correctly. Then look for the next thing you can do.

There are more than one billion people in the world who have a disability and they’re not necessarily visible. Anybody investing in shifting left is buying themselves more time to do innovation, and better things for their customers.

—Patrice Pelland, partner software engineering director, Microsoft Digital

“It’s worth the investment,” Limo says. “You’re going to have to go through the process anyway, so you might as well address these bugs sooner than later.”

It’s about making products better for everyone.

“There are more than one billion people in the world who have a disability and they’re not necessarily visible,” Pelland says. “Anybody investing in shifting left is buying themselves more time to do innovation, and better things for their customers.”

Try the open-source Accessibility Insights to progress accessible and inclusive experiences in your business.

• Learn more about creating an accessibility training program for your team.
• Dive into the latest accessibility fundamentals training course on Microsoft Learn.
• Discover Microsoft’s fresh approach to accessibility powered by inclusive design.
• Unpack driving inclusive and effective meetings at Microsoft with Microsoft Teams.
• Learn more about advancing your meetings with the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Shifting left to get accessibility right at Microsoft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Thinking about the impact of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, teams across Microsoft are inspired and humbled to be part of a company that places such high value on these principles, every day of the year. Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And at the heart of that mission is every one of the company’s employees, who depend on Microsoft’s tools each day to bring this mission to life.

Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) leads the internal digital transformation of Microsoft. This starts with ensuring the services we build for our employees to use at work reflect the true diversity of all our employees, customers, and partners.

As Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer, described in her post, a vital component of this effort is holding ourselves accountable through accessibility assessments and evaluations, and having the courage to ask tough questions and seek diverse perspectives to understand where and how we can do better.

We’ve learned a lot over the years and as a result are investing heavily in transforming our tools, processes, and systems to help ensure inclusive design is incorporated early in the software development lifecycle. Accessibility flags that are built right into our engineering tools, for example, alert us to new projects and allow us to engage engineering teams early on in the process. We’ve also invested in building a design system that provides accessible UI design patterns, usage guidance and code components. Here we’ve found that teams are able to reduce accessibility bugs by 70-80 percent, which translates into efficiency gain for our engineering teams and a better, more coherent and accessible experience for our employees. Finally, we’ve empowered accessibility leads throughout MDEE to champion accessibility in their respective team’s culture and practices.

But it’s one thing to make our internal products and services accessible. We have an equal responsibility to share what we’ve learned with customers and to work with our partners to encourage them to build experiences that can be used by everyone. Collaborating with our partners in this space has been a rewarding experience. I am energized by their engagement and inspired by the positive impact we’ve created together for their own digital transformation journey in the way they build world-class, inclusive experiences.

Looking to the year ahead, it is clear that developing best-in-class, accessible engineering practices will continue to be at the center of MDEE’s charter to drive Microsoft’s digital transformation. This laser focus ensures we continue to build the tools and experiences people of any ability can use. Only then can we really empower everyone.

• Use Accessibility Insights to solve accessibility issues for Android, Web and Windows – Accessibility Insights
• Check out all kinds of great documentation and training that can help employees in your organization build skills and create accessible experiences on Microsoft Learn: Build skills that open doors in your career
• Consider how you could leverage employees within your organization who have disabilities to provide feedback on key employee experiences

• Check out our accessibility approach on Microsoft Accessibility.
• Explore creating the digital workplace at Microsoft.
• Discover when being ‘selfish’ about using Microsoft products gets personal.

The post Building inclusive, accessible experiences is a catalyst for digital transformation appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft has fully embraced being a flexible workplace, which means that hybrid meetings—where some people join remotely and others join from a Microsoft worksite—are increasingly common.

What does that mean?

From May to November 2022, the number of monthly hybrid meetings we’ve held at Microsoft increased nearly 92 percent. To put that in perspective, during those six months, we held nearly 2 million hybrid meetings here at Microsoft.

With that in mind, how are we making sure our hybrid meetings are inclusive and effective for everyone involved, no matter how they’re joining? In theory, it’s simple:

• Bring remote-meeting etiquette to the meeting room
• Agree on and adopt new best practices that support hybrid

You’ll notice these focus on behavior. We’re not asking people to use new technology; we’re asking them to change how they use existing technology. And as most of us know from personal experience, changing behavior is hard.

In Microsoft Digital (MSD), we power, protect, and transform the employee experience and provide the blueprint for customers and partners to follow. We wondered, how could we help people at Microsoft shift habits and change how they think about meetings to build a healthy meeting culture?

Changing behavior is hard. Gamification can help.

Eighty percent of US workers believe game-based learning is more engaging than other types of training. When Avanade (a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft) gamified sales training, the region with the highest program participation had 33 percent higher sales. There’s science behind the benefits of play-based learning, too. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has said, “Nothing lights up the brain like play. Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum, puts a lot of impulses into the frontal lobe—the executive portion—helps contextual memory be developed.”

So we teamed up with the Minecraft Education team to explore whether we might develop a Minecraft learning experience about hybrid meetings. Minecraft: Education Edition is a game-based learning platform used by millions of teachers and students. Learners can explore a wide range of subjects in immersive, blocky worlds including computer science, reading and history, and sustainability.

In the past, the Minecraft team has collaborated with partners including Microsoft’s Inclusive Hiring team, Sustainability, and Real Estate & Facilities on Minecraft worlds that illuminate key topics or support company initiatives. We pitched the concept of a hybrid learning map to the Minecraft Education team, and they were immediately supportive.

Having a deep background in gaming, I am very aware of the magic that can happen during gameplay. When Laura came to us with the idea for a game, we wanted to understand if it would resonate with our large and diverse internal audience. After a couple of conversations about the value of gameplay in learning, and the broad appeal of Minecraft, I was all in.

—Sara Bush, principal PM manager, Seamless Teamwork team

“Figuring out how to portray a business setting in Minecraft (with mobs!) sounded like a fun challenge,” says Bryan Bonham, senior business program manager for Minecraft Education.

It was a natural next step to partner with the team at Microsoft that is trying to help employees get more out of the many hybrid meetings that they now attend every day.

“Having a deep background in gaming, I am very aware of the magic that can happen during gameplay,” says Sara Bush, principal PM manager on MDEE’s Seamless Teamwork team. “When Laura came to us with the idea for a game, we wanted to understand if it would resonate with our large and diverse internal audience. After a couple of conversations about the value of gameplay in learning and the broad appeal of Minecraft, I was all in.”

Remote and hybrid work has led to some funny moments for all of us. I think adding some humor helps when learning something new. Best not to take yourself too seriously, we all make mistakes as we learn!

—Bryan Bonham, Senior Business Program Manager, Minecraft Education

This was a first-time collaboration between MSD and Minecraft and the first time Minecraft was used within Microsoft to support employee learning.

From idea to execution

The concept we landed on was “Hybrid Hero: The game where the fate of a meeting lies with you!” The player experiences different scenarios and must make the right choices to ensure their meeting is effective and inclusive. We based the game’s script and decision points on the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide, which is full of research-based guidance.

Early on, we decided that humor was key.

“Remote and hybrid work has led to some funny moments for all of us,” Bonham says. “I think adding some humor helps when learning something new. Best not to take yourself too seriously. We all make mistakes as we learn!”

We also wanted to make sure Hybrid Hero was accessible and fun for everyone at Microsoft even if they’ve never played Minecraft before. In every round of testing, we looked at the game from a newbie mindset.

“I’ve never played Minecraft before but figured that if preschoolers are playing it, I can surely play it, too,” says senior program manager Chanda Jensen, who supports meeting technology for Seamless Teamwork. “Most of the game was intuitive and really easy to get the hang of, and it was a fun way to teach hybrid-meeting best practices. As an added bonus, my kids now think my job is ‘cool.’”

In early testing, 93 percent of players responded positively to the game as did 88 percent of first-time players. Making sure the game was beginner-friendly paid off.

Let the games begin

Since it launched in September 2022, Hybrid Hero has been played by Microsoft employees in 40 countries, and we’ve heard from global teams who’ve used it as both a learning opportunity and team morale event. The game’s internal marketing campaign has garnered over 350,000 impressions on Yammer, helping to spread the word about hybrid-meeting best practices.

Hybrid Hero was truly a “One Microsoft” effort, requiring all team members to think outside the box and approach the project with a growth mindset. Employees are eager for innovative learning opportunities, and we’ll continue to do our best to innovate and create exceptional experiences for them.

For more information about teaching and learning with Minecraft: Education Edition, visit education.minecraft.net. Anyone can download a few demos of the game and try lessons like the Minecraft Hour of Code. Microsoft employees can sign in with their corporate email account to access the full game features and content.

• After years of remote-only meetings, employees need to shift habits and change how they think about meetings to create a healthy meeting culture.
• For hybrid meetings to be inclusive and effective, people need to be aware of and follow hybrid-meeting best practices.
• Gamification and play-based learning are often more engaging and effective for employees.
• Employees are eager for innovative learning experiences.

• Check out advancing your meetings with the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide.
• Learn more about education opportunities with Minecraft.
• Discover why employees are buzzing with meeting room excitement in The Hive.

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The post Teaching Microsoft employees healthy hybrid meeting habits with Minecraft appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft employees are the company’s first and best customers who often test features and enable product groups to refine experiences before going to market. These employees can provide their feedback through inclusive usability tests, which are used to understand how people with disabilities interact with technology.

There are also industry standards for accessibility when it comes to the text, contrast, or graphics. However, Hope Idaewor wanted to go beyond accessibility requirements and focus on offering an intuitive user experience for everyone.

“Focusing on usability ensures that those lived experiences are actually accounted for and that the people that you’re building for have actually used the application and have given you contextual feedback,” says Idaewor, who was a user researcher on the Microsoft Digital Studio team at Microsoft.

After conducting usability tests with employees with disabilities, some of the findings that surfaced were the need to clarify technical jargon and acronyms, add a user guide video that include American Sign Language (ASL), and ensure that the video has better contrast so it would show up properly for someone with low vision or is working in a bright environment.

The team was able to add a video with an ASL interpreter among other changes to make the tool more accessible and inclusive.

It’s important to think about accessibility from the beginning of the product-making process.

“Much like a house, you need to start with a strong foundation,” says Faris Mango, a principal software engineering manager in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. “Our team really put a lot of effort into this process, and there’s nothing better than knowing that we made someone’s day better because we took this time to do it.”

• Explore three practices to help you create inclusive experiences at your company.
• Discover how building inclusive, accessible experiences is a catalyst for digital transformation.
• Unpack how accessibility fosters inclusion: Five lessons learned.

The post Using insights from Microsoft employees with disabilities to build accessible employee experiences appeared first on Inside Track Blog.