Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft chief accessibility officer
I’ve had deafness since I was little. My sister was born with congenital deafness, and my dad has some too. You’re not really in the cool gang in my family if you don’t have some hearing loss.
When I joined Microsoft, in 2005, I led European operations that provided customer service for Hotmail and other products. I also became a leader in the company’s disability community. At one point, I wrote a white paper on accessibility and later launched a support department for customers with disabilities called the Disability Answer Desk. It now takes around 200,000 calls per year. The people who staff it know the etiquette, the language, the technologies to use—for example, using video to chat with deaf customers so they can use sign language.
I believe we’re getting better at designing services and technologies to be inclusive. You can move a mouse with your eyes. I can click a button to get captioning on a PowerPoint presentation. We have an app that allows the blind to navigate using 3-D audio cues. Technology has so much potential to revolutionize the world for people with disabilities. —As told to Lauren Goode
How to Design an Inclusive Office
“I have team members in power wheelchairs, who are blind, who are deaf, who have autism, the whole gambit,” Lay-Flurrie says. Here are her tips on how to help them all thrive.
Doors should be powered and the areas around them uncrowded, so that a wheelchair can easily turn around. Lay-Flurrie recommends adding tactile strips on the ground to guide blind people.
Seat placement makes a difference. If you are hearing impaired, backlighting from bright windows can obscure others’ faces and make lipreading challenging.
Avoid thick rugs, which can snag wheelchairs. Furniture and carpeting should not be too close in color—a tripping hazard for those with low vision. Glass walls are also a risk; adding visual markers helps.
Some people may benefit from desk lamps that soften fluorescent lighting or noise-cancelling headphones that dampen ambient sound. Consult with employees individually to learn how they work best.
This article appears in the October issue. Subscribe now.
MORE FROM WIRED@25: 2013-2018
- Editor's Letter: Tech has turned the world upside down. Who will shake up the next 25 years?
- Opening essay by Virginia Heffernan: Things break and decay on the internet—that's a good thing
- Edward Snowden and Malkia Cyril: Turnkey tyranny
- Susan Wojcicki and Geetha Murali: Getting girls into tech
- Jennifer Doudna and Jiwoo Lee: Taming Crispr
- Sundar Pichai and R. Kim: Every eye tells a story
Join us for a four-day celebration of our anniversary in San Francisco, October 12–15. From a robot petting zoo to provocative onstage conversations, you won't want to miss it. More information at www.Wired.com/25.
