Redmond-based Microsoft marked the beginning of this year’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month this week—colloquially known as NDEAM for short—by publishing two blog posts, one each written by accessibility-oriented executives Jenny Lay-Flurrie and Dave Dame.
Flurrie is Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer, while Dame serves as the company’s senior director of product accessibility.
Flurrie, a recurring character in this column’s storyline whom I most recently interviewed in March, wrote about “creating a more disability-inclusive workplace.” In her post’s lede, Flurrie cites NDEAM’s theme of access and equity as a conduit through which to extol the virtues of disabled talent and to confront what she called the “reality of the ‘disability divide’ and how it impacts opportunity in society.”
Among her myriad points, Flurrie notes the foremost issue is to understand the gravity of the data. She writes the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is double that of abled people; abled people see a 3.8% versus 7.9% for the disability community. “Factors such as sub-minimum wage practices and policies such as the Supplemental Security Income, which restricts how much people can make without losing benefits, creates higher unemployment for disabled people,” Flurrie said.
On the plus side, however, Flurrie notes the gap is steadily narrowing. The good news is, according to Flurrie, “people with disabilities are joining the workforce at a much greater rate” despite the aforementioned disparity in unemployment numbers. Newly-released data from Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, she added, shows “53.9% of job applications from LinkedIn members who [self-identified] with a disability were remote, compared to 45.6% of members without disabilities.”
Other salient points made by Flurrie include emphasizing the ideas that “disability is a talent pool that drives innovation” while fostering an inclusive-minded culture and paying disabled workers fair wages.
“There’s much more to do. According to the World Health Organization, there’s been an increase in people with disabilities to 1.3+ billion people around the world,” Flurrie wrote of the need for continued advocacy for disability employment. “As we continue our work with nonprofits, policymakers, universities, and accessibility developers to help narrow the disability divide, we know that making workplaces more accessible, investing in accessibility, listening to employees, and promoting inclusive practices, collectively, can reduce the disability unemployment gap and create more opportunities for those with disabilities.”
As to Dame’s own post, he focused on Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility vis-a-vis “creating products and services for people with disabilities.” As with its titanic peers in the industry in Amazon, Apple, and Google, Dame emphasized accessibility resides at the core of everything the company does. He cites the work on products such as the critically-acclaimed Xbox Adaptive Controller, launched in 2018, and the Surface Adaptive Kit, which debuted in 2021, as well as more recent innovations such as the forthcoming 3D-printed grips for Surface Pen and the adaptive trackpad for the new Surface Laptop Studio 2.
With regards to software, Dame highlighted the accessibility features built into Windows, such as Narrator, Magnifier, Live Captions, Voice Access, high-contrast themes, and the bespoke Seeing AI app.
“At Microsoft, we are passionate about creating products and services that are accessible for people with disabilities,” Dame said of the company’s steadfast commitment to furthering accessibility and inclusivity. “To enable transformative change, we’re working to weave accessibility into the fabric of what we design and build for every team, organization, classroom and home. When we design with disability in mind, our products become better for everyone.”
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