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Disability Divide

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The tech giant Microsoft’s is actually promising very gigantic steps, especially in the coming years, to make sure all of its products and workspaces are even more accessible and inclusive to all kinds of people, even people with certain disabilities. This is actually a very huge initiative taken by the company, so that more and more people can feel included in that work and their physical offices. There is a huge complaint, especially in the community that is filled with disabled people, because not a lot of buildings have been very facilitating toward people who are disabled. They only provide disability parking. That is not enough.

The company has actually said that in the next five years, they will roll out a huge host of accessibility improvements to all of their products, and they will also boost the disability hiring efforts. They said that they will also invest in programmes so that they can help increase the graduation rates among college students with certain disabilities in technology, science, engineering and mathematics as well. Basically, if we look at companies like Apple, we see a lot of accessibility settings included. But, Microsoft’s has also said that they will start including the settings, so that people with disabilities can make use of their products to the fullest.

Disability Divide

This particular initiative will actually bring together almost every single corner of Microsoft’s business with a huge focus to 3 priorities:

  • Spurring of the development of more accessible technology across the industry and also the economy
  • Use of the technology to create a lot of opportunities for individuals with disabilities to properly enter the workforce
  • Building a proper workplace that is properly inclusive for people with all kinds of disabilities

These priorities are obviously taken very seriously by the company, and the president of Microsoft’s is very serious about it indeed. Microsoft has already been making headlines when it comes to employing a chief accessibility officer, which actually offers an adaptive Xbox controller and other accessible technology. The company has also been hiring people with autism.

This particular initiative will be the focus of Microsoft’s annual ability summit this particular week, and it will even be a little stronger when it comes to committing to an inclusion. He described the accessibility improvements to Microsoft’s 365 will be fantastic.

They have also said that they have learned a lot in the past 25 years of work on accessibility in the company, and they have understood that people with disability is actually represent one of the worlds largest untapped talent pools. That is because even disabled people can be quite talented indeed. All they need is a little help.