Microsoft 3 Ways Accesibility Strategy Can Help To Boost Business Performance

3 Ways an Accessibility
Strategy Can Help Boost

Business Performance
Table of Contents
1. Why accessibility?
2. How to start (or continue)

your accessibility journey
3. Empowering employees
4. Engaging customers
5. Transforming products
6. Getting started
"We’re working every day
to empower everyone,
including people with
disabilities, to achieve
more. When everyone
plays, we all win.”
–Chris Capossela,
Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft
3 Ways an Accessibility Strategy Can Help Boost Business Performance 4
1 Why
accessibility?
More than a billion people worldwide have a disability,
approximately 70% of whom have an invisible disability. There are
no limits to what people can achieve when technology reflects the
diversity of everyone who uses it.
Building accessibility into everything we do helps us empower

all people to achieve more, including people with disabilities.
We have an opportunity and a responsibility to create inclusive
technology that works for all of us. For organizations to commit
to accessibility, leaders must think beyond brand reputation and
compliance. Accessibility presents an opportunity to create a
more personalized customer experience, improve productivity in
workplace, and spark innovation.
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility Empowering Engaging Transforming Getting
accessibility? Journey Employees Customers Products Start
Accessibility is a business imperative

Companies that embrace best practices for employing and
supporting persons with disabilities in the workplace outperform
their peers.*
30% Better performance on

economic profit margin
28% Higher
revenue
2X Higher net
income
*Source: 2018 Accenture study: The Disability Inclusion Advantage
Where to start
What is accessibility?
Accessibility occurs when environments, products, and services
are designed in a way that people with disabilities can fully
use them. Individuals are more empowered and productive
in the workplace. Examples of accessibility range from a
wheelchair ramp in a physical environment to closed captioning
of presentations in a work environment. Our journey is far
from complete, but we have learned that when everyone can
participate, we all benefit. We hope you’ll join us in building more
accessible organizations.
Where to start
2
How to start (or
continue) your
accessibility journey
Accessibility has strengthened our ability to empower employees,
engage customers, and transform products. Any of these
opportunities—or even better, all of them—offer a great place to
start in your accessibility journey.
• Empowering employees through a disability-inclusive

culture: Attract the right talent; support all employees to create,
communicate, and consume with accessible technology.
• Engaging customers through inclusive marketing: Use tools

and materials that speak to all your customers.
• Transforming products through inclusive design: Build for all

to open up your products and services to everyone.
2. How to start
Accessibility? journey Employees Customers Products Start
Review the following checklist to

determine where your organization
currently stands in its approach to
accessibility. Highlight areas you’d
like to prioritize.
On empowering employees:
Do you have employee resource groups for

people with disabilities?
Do you have an accessible workplace in terms

of physical environment (for example handrails,
ramps, tactile navigation)?
Do you have hiring programs dedicated to people

with disabilities?
2. How to start
On engaging customers:
Do you run accessibility checks on your
marketing materials?
Do you train your marketers to create

accessible assets?
Do your videos include captioning?
On innovating:
Do you consider accessibility when you
build or buy technology?
Do you train your designers on

inclusive design?
2. How to start
3 Empowering
employees
Hiring is a key contributor to creating a culture of empowerment
and inclusion. In our accessibility journey, we learned that
accommodating people with disabilities in our hiring practices
yielded many benefits, including workplace diversity, retention,
and morale. Here are some of the practices we developed along
the way:
• Examining hiring processes for unconscious bias. Are you

screening in or screening out talent? We observed that
people on the autistic spectrum were not able to show
their strengths during initial phone screenings. In 2015,
we launched an autism hiring program that, among other
accommodations, allows candidates to skip the phone
screening and respond through email instead. Now we are
screening in these talents.
• Helping recruiters understand the opportunities to drive a

great experience for talent with disabilities. At Microsoft, we
developed best practices to interview inclusively. View this
video on our MSFT Enable channel.
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility 3. Empowering Engaging Transforming Getting
Accessibility? Journey employees Customers Products Start
We’re working with other companies such as Ernst & Young,

JPMorgan Chase & Co., and SAP to support employers to bring
talent on the autistic spectrum into the workplace. One product of
this partnership, the Autism @ Work Employer Roundtable, is an
Autism at Work playbook, which provides programmatic guidance
for organizations looking to become more inclusive in hiring. You
can find additional details on Microsoft's Inclusive Hiring site.
Where to start
Changes to physical environments
There are many adaptions that can make physical environments

more accessible. Here’s a small sample of physical
accommodations and workplace practices that have helped us
make some of our environments more accessible and inclusive.
• Adding quiet space or meeting rooms adjacent to open floor

plans. This helps people on the autistic spectrum avoid sensory
overload and those who have attention-deficit disorders (ADD)
avoid distractions.
• Removing physical barriers from hallways and offices and

putting items at appropriate heights and distances for those in
wheelchairs.
• Creating tactile, detectable surfaces that warn of a boundary

between foot traffic and car traffic or parking areas.
• Using braille on room signs for areas like kitchens and

outdoor locations.
• Offering sight-related artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities

for people with visual impairments.
• Providing scheduling accommodations for those with post-

traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses
where symptoms appear unpredictably.
Where to start
Millennials will represent
75% of the global
workforce by 2025* and
want to work at places
that reflect their values.
Diversity, disability, and

inclusion are on top of
their list.
*Source: EY study: Work-Life Challenges Across Generations
Review the checklist below to see what

physical accessibility advancements you
can make in your workplace.
Do you have a hiring program focused on talent

with disabilities?
Do you make all job interview candidates aware

of the option to request accommodations for
the interview?
Does your building provide braille signs?
Do you have step-free routes?
Where to start
4 Engaging
customers
Developing inclusive marketing materials has become easier than
ever through the many tools and guidelines available.
TD Bank, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is committed to

creating inclusive customer products. In an industry defined
by customer service, TD Bank sees supporting accessibility and
disability inclusion as both strategic and aligned with their values.
One of their practices is to deploy Microsoft Office 365 on

corporate workstations. Features such as the Accessibility Checker
in Outlook, which flags accessibility issues before sending an email,
have fueled an empathetic work environment that reaffirms a
culture of diversity.
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility Empowering 4. Engaging Transforming Getting
Accessibility? Journey Employees customers Products Start
“[Not addressing
accessibility is] like
saying to every fifth
person who walks in
your door… ‘I don’t really
want your business.’”
–Bert Floyd, Team Lead of Assistive

Technologies, TD Bank, Canada
Are your marketing campaigns

accessible to everyone? Consider the
following checklist.
Are you considering accessibility in the creation

of your marketing materials?
Do you know your existing tools’ accessibility

features, to ensure your customers’
interactions are disability inclusive?
Do you engage in habits and practices of using

accessibility features such as using captions
when you speak, adding alt text to every
image, or providing accessibility-checked
copies of your presentation beforehand?
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility Empowering 4. Engaging Transforming Getting
Accessibility? Journey Employees customers Products Start
5 Transforming
products
Just as NASA’s need to develop solutions for astronauts led to the
invention of cochlear implants, memory foam, and water filters,
our focus on accessibility has led to the creation of audio and
video transcription, auto-complete capabilities, voice controls, and
work/life balance analytics.
Focusing on accessibility for some can create transformative

products for everyone.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every

organization on the planet to achieve more. To create truly
accessible products, people with disabilities must be involved
from the start. Including points of view from people with
disabilities not only ensures a more inclusive design, it adds
diversity of perspective that can lead to truly innovative products.
To ensure that every product team uses inclusive design principles,

we’ve developed an inclusive design toolkit that is available to
everyone online. Doing so has helped us to ensure that designing
with accessibility in mind is part of our organizational DNA.
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility Empowering Engaging 5. Transforming Getting
Accessibility? Journey Employees Customers products Start
AI: The future of accessibility
One exciting development in accessibility innovation is the

application of artificial intelligence (AI). The term AI refers to a
brand range of technologies that can:
• Perceive images and sounds, and understand them.
• Learn from these inputs and interactions and get better

over time.
• Reason over large amounts of data to identify patterns.

AI can unlock solutions to some of the biggest challenges
facing people with disabilities; it is a powerful resource for
transforming your products, services, and workforce in terms
of accessibility.
Microsoft is currently working on a five-year, $25 million program

called AI for Accessibility, focused on accelerating solutions to
amplify human capability for people with disabilities. A couple
examples of AI supporting accessibility include PowerPoint’s sub-
titling in multiple languages capabilities, so everyone can join in
conversations, and the Seeing AI app, which helps turn the visual
world into an auditory experience.
Where to start
Review the following checklist

to identify where you can make
accessibility improvements to your
design and innovation process.
Do you include people with disabilities in the

design process?
Have you educated your designers to

account for people with disabilities when
creating new products?
Have you updated your processes and

systems so that accessibility is embedded
into products from the beginning?
Have you considered how AI can help your

accessibility efforts?
Where to start
6 Getting
started
Accessibility is a massive opportunity. We are at the start of
our accessibility journey, still learning, building awareness, and
deepening our expertise. But we are hopeful to see the next 25
years as an era in which technology empowers and truly changes
demographics (such as unemployment) that haven’t materially
changed in 30 years. If you’d like to join us on the journey or learn
more about accessibility solutions in your workplace, visit the
Microsoft Accessibility website.
If you’d like to fully assess your organization’s readiness for

accessibility, visit DisabilityIN.
Where to start
1. Why your accessibility Empowering Engaging Transforming 6. Getting
Accessibility? Journey Employees Customers Products Started
“We are on a journey and
continue to learn and grow as
we move forward. We hope by
sharing what we’ve learned,
other organizations can build
out and accelerate their
disability inclusion programs,
hire great talent, and reduce the
unemployment rate for people
with disabilities. Game on!”
–Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility

Officer at Microsoft
If you’d like to join us on the journey

or learn more about accessibility
solutions in your workplace, visit the
Microsoft Accessibility website.
©2020 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is provided “as-is.” Information and views expressed in this
document, including URL and other Internet website references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. This
document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use
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3 Ways an Accessibility

Strategy Can Help Boost

2. How to start (or continue)

Building accessibility into everything we do helps us empower

Accessibility is a business imperative

30% Better performance on

*Source: 2018 Accenture study: The Disability Inclusion Advantage

• Empowering employees through a disability-inclusive

• Engaging customers through inclusive marketing: Use tools

• Transforming products through inclusive design: Build for all

Review the following checklist to

Do you have employee resource groups for

Do you have an accessible workplace in terms

Do you have hiring programs dedicated to people

Do you train your marketers to create

Do your videos include captioning?

Do you train your designers on

• Examining hiring processes for unconscious bias. Are you

• Helping recruiters understand the opportunities to drive a

We’re working with other companies such as Ernst & Young,

Changes to physical environments

There are many adaptions that can make physical environments

• Adding quiet space or meeting rooms adjacent to open floor

• Removing physical barriers from hallways and offices and

• Creating tactile, detectable surfaces that warn of a boundary

• Using braille on room signs for areas like kitchens and

• Offering sight-related artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities

• Providing scheduling accommodations for those with post-

Diversity, disability, and

Review the checklist below to see what

Do you have a hiring program focused on talent

Do you make all job interview candidates aware

Does your building provide braille signs?

Do you have step-free routes?

TD Bank, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is committed to

One of their practices is to deploy Microsoft Office 365 on

–Bert Floyd, Team Lead of Assistive

Are your marketing campaigns

Are you considering accessibility in the creation

Do you know your existing tools’ accessibility

Do you engage in habits and practices of using

Focusing on accessibility for some can create transformative

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every

To ensure that every product team uses inclusive design principles,

AI: The future of accessibility

One exciting development in accessibility innovation is the

• Perceive images and sounds, and understand them.

• Learn from these inputs and interactions and get better

• Reason over large amounts of data to identify patterns.

Microsoft is currently working on a five-year, $25 million program

Review the following checklist

Do you include people with disabilities in the

Have you educated your designers to

Have you updated your processes and

Have you considered how AI can help your

If you’d like to fully assess your organization’s readiness for

–Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility

If you’d like to join us on the journey

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