Today we kick off the 14th Microsoft Capabilities Summitan annual event bringing together thought leaders to discuss how we accelerate accessibility to help bridge the gap Disability Fracture.
This year’s summit will have three key themes: Build, Imagine, And Include. “Build” invites us to explore how to build in an accessible and inclusive way drawing on the ideas of disabled talent. “Imagine” delves into best practices in designing accessible buildings, events, content and products. And “Include” highlights the problems and opportunities that AI presents for creators, developers, and engineers.
Katy Jo Wright And Dave McCarthy discuss Katy Jo’s journey living with the complex disability of chronic Lyme disease. Get insight from a Deaf creator and performer Leila Hanaumi; international leaders in accessibility Sarah Minkara, U.S. Special Advisor for International Disability Rights, U.S. Department of State; And Stephanie Cadieux, Chief Accessibility Officer, Government of Canada. And we’ll dig deeper into mental health with singer, actor and mental health advocate, Michelle Williams.
We’ll also throw in a few things along the way.
Advancing accessible technology
Accessible technology is essential to empowering the world’s more than 1.3 billion people with disabilities. With this new chapter in AI, the possibilities increase, and so does the responsibility to get it right. We’re learning where AI can make an impact, from bridging the gap between thoughts and action to making coding and creating easier. But there is still much to do, and we will continue to leverage every tool in the technology toolbox to advance accessibility.
Today, we’ll highlight the latest technologies and tools from Microsoft to help you achieve this goal, including:
- Copilot for Windows, facilitating accessibility. Since the end of March 2024, new accessibility skills have been activated in Windows. Have Copilot for Windows launch Live Captions, Narrator, and other accessibility features. More: Windows Blog
- M365 allows creators to create accessible content. Including Accessibility assistant, a set of tools to help creators produce accessible content available today in Insider preview for Word and Outlook and PowerPoint sharing coming soon! Ales Holecek will also share some examples and early research on neurodiversity and M365 Copilot which reduces content creation time and shortens the gap between thoughts and action.
- Azure AI for Accessibility, Today sharing six new examples including:
- See AI is now available in 14 additional languages (33 total) and will deploy the latest generative AI models, including richer image descriptions and chat functionality for photos and documents.
- Azure AI Audio Solution Accelerator Description, new upcoming solutions accelerator that uses Azure GPT-4 Turbo with Vision to describe videos for people who are blind or visually impaired. WPP will demonstrate how it works, and the solutions accelerator is now open for registration.
Technology can also help address long-standing challenges, such as finding a cure for ALS (motor neurone disease). With Azure, we are proud to support ALS Therapy Development Institute (TDI) And Responding to ALS almost doubling the clinical and genomic data available for research. In 2021, Answer ALS provided open access to its research through an Azure data portal, Neuromine. This data has since enabled more than 300 independent research projects around the world. The addition of ALS TDI data from the ongoing ALS Research Collaborative (ARC) study will allow researchers to accelerate the search for a cure.
We will also preview some of our ongoing work to use personalized neural voice to give people with ALS and other speech disorders their voice. We worked with the community, including Team Gleason for some time and we are committed to ensuring this technology is put to good use and plan to launch it later this year.
Accessibility as a fundamental right
To build inclusively in an increasingly digital world, we must protect fundamental rights and will share partnerships to advance this goal within the community throughout the day.
This includes:
- A discussion with Ilene Arenberg and Tanya Harris on access to competitive integrated employment and economic equity, talking about the workplace and fair remuneration.
- The British Association for Supported Employment (BASE) will share their work to help disabled, neurodivergent and disadvantaged people in the UK find and maintain careers. They developed their digital skills using Microsoft Teams and community training to modernize the supported employment sector.
- The Hunger Project will talk about the importance of connectivity as a foundation for accessibility. She works with community partners in Malawi and around the world to provide access to connectivity and support for accessible spaces, training materials and digital accessibility.
- Rijksmuseum will discuss its partnership with the blind and visually impaired community to bring detailed text descriptions to over a million works of art using Azure AI Computer Vision and Azure OpenAI. This video brings the experience to life.
Next steps, accelerating your accessibility journey
Throughout the Ability Summit, industry leaders will share their learnings and best practices. Today we publish four new Microsoft playbooks, sharing our lessons while working on our physical, event and digital environment. This includes a new Mental Health Toolkitwith guidance for product makers to create experiences that support mental health issues, created in partnership with Mental Health America. And “Handbook on an Accessible and Inclusive Workplace” with best practices for building an accessible campus from our Global Workplace Services team, responsible for the global footprint of our buildings, including the new Redmond headquarters campus.
Join us to watch on-demand content via www.aka.ms/AbilitySummit. Technical support is always available through Microsoft Disability Response Office. Thank you for your partnership and commitment to building a more accessible future for people with disabilities around the world.
