welcome everyone. good afternoon. my name is malavika andi work for office marketing. and with me, i have david whoworks for office engineering. >> hi there.
How to make good software, >> we wanted to startoff by saying thank you. thank you for coming to learn aboutaccessibility, for advocating for it in your organizations, and for doing your part to makethe environment more inclusive.
while preparing forthis talk, people told me, you have such an important topic,make sure you tell a personal story that makes people realize whythis topic is so important. why they should advocate for it. so i said sure, personal story. there's a lot of you idon't personally know, but i can probably think of a storythat you can relate to. think about the timewhen you were born. they're probably particularthings about that time,
that happened that you didn't pick. perhaps you were bornin a certain country, perhaps you were bornwith a certain gender. perhaps you were born with somethingtrivial like a certain skin color. now think about allthe times in your life where you've been in environments. where you felt not welcome oryou felt not set up for success. because of somethingyou were born with or something you didn't quite choose.
i can think of a time,and i'm sure you can too. i think back to the time wheni did theater growing up. i've been doing theater for a lot of years, andi really like being on stage. i started when i was five and i'veplayed a wide range of characters all the way from god to a dog. directors tell me i have emotion,i have range. directors really likecasting me in lead roles. everything is going great in mytheater career and then i turned15,
and i move countries. suddenly i'm the only person ofmy skin color, and my accent, and my new theater group. the new directors don'tknow what to do with me. none of the scripts are written formy skin color. the make up team doesn'tknow what to do with me. the makeup doesn't quitematch my skin color. the audience doesn't relate to mebecause the scripts are not written for diversity, they're written fora very minority type of audience.
so the point i'm making is itdoesn't matter how talented or experienced i might be, there are environments that are justnot designed for diversity. i don't feel welcomein those environments. i don't feel set up for success, and those environmentslose out on my talent. now, theater was a hobby forme, but think about this. if every organization you worked foris not designed for you. we live in an information world,we live in a digital age.
it's really important foryou to be able to check your email, visit a website,read a presentation. now, imagine because ofsomething you cannot control, you cannot see oryou cannot hear or you cannot move. can you do your job without beingable to see, hear, or move? are we designing digitalenvironments in today's workplace, setting up people for success withtheir full range of talent and abilities and experiences. at microsoft,
the accessibility team wants to dotheir part to solve this challenge. we wanna make sure we makedigital experiences inclusive. but we need organizationsto do their part as well. we need everyone to make surethat we're setting up people for success and not discriminatingagainst them or not giving them equal opportunity because ofsomething they cannot control. so that's whataccessibility is about. and you might think, "okay,this impacts a small minority. like, how many people in the worldface these challenges?" well,
first of all, it doesn't matterhow many people it impacts. even if it impacts one personit's about equal opportunity. so that's the first thing. it matters to a few people a lot andthat's enough reason to do it. but actually it mattersto a lot of people. a long life, you might get injured,you might have an accident, you might just be ina situation that puts you at a disability temporarily, oryou might want to work on the goal. you might want to drive andread an email or join a meeting.
so the work we do to makedigital environments accessible to people who cannot see, hear, read, touch, it absolutelybenefits a wider audience. and that's anothergood reason to do it. so we can do a lot of work tomake our technology experiences accessible. david can make outlook accessible. but if you send an email, and you use an infographic inthat email solution, and
you don't describe that infographic,technology can't help you. someone who is blind will getthat email and they will have no idea what's in it, because youdid not describe the image. so does action that needs to betaken from everyone whether it's an author writing a presentation,whether it's a producer creating a video, whether it’sa designer creating slides and that's another area where i thinktechnology can release the burden. we can make it easy for you. we can suggest the right thing.
but there's absolutely thingswe need employees in all organizations doing. and that's creatingaccessible content. it starts with diagnose andthen it requires action. so today's session is the firststep along that journey. and definitely we needaction off the biz. the time foryou to take action is now. why? because i think you're goingto get a lot of support.
if you start advocating foraccessibility in your organizations now, it's highly likely that it'salready on your cio's radar because he's getting probably legalpressure to create a compliant and inclusive workplace. probably more people are joining theworkforce who have disabilities and they're asking to be set up forsuccess. so i think in the past few yearswe've seen this transition and accessibility, from it beingpart of [inaudible] and something we'll deal withon an accommodation basis,
to something that's a musthave from the get go. it has to be mainstream, it hasto be integrated from day one. so i do think timingwise it's a good time for you to start thinking aboutaccessibility and acting on it. and action wise, i can assure you,you are not alone. you have microsoft working to createmore accessible solutions as you have all the windows and you havea lot of experts on accessibility who are creating really goodmaterial policies to help you. so if you embark on this journeyof creating a more accessible
workplace, there's a few benefits that you can think of tojustify the investment. the first is that you'd likelyboost everyone's efficiency. you'll make it possible foremployees to do things independently, efficiently, withouthaving to call someone for help. something as simple asscheduling a meeting, or something as simple asdialing into a meeting. you might even make it easier foremployees, of all abilities, to interact with each other.
so you'll fosterinclusive interactions. whether it's by making it easierto have meetings with captions, technology might be ableto help you with that. or whether it's by just havingpresentations flowing around meetings to be more accessible. so the work we do in accessibilityand the work you do will have the impact of boosting employeemorale and connection. it might help you evensimplify your it environment. we're doing work to build andaccessibility, not bolted on.
so as a result, it's possible youralliance on third party add-ons, hacks you might have in place tomake an environment accessible the reliance on thirdparties might go down. we're also offering support servicesfor microsoft for accessibility so it might be possible thatour team in documentation support services can help yousimplify your it environment. the last is on a lot of people'sminds is certain laws that apply to them, whether it's laws andstandards because in the us you have section 508, in europeyou have procurement stands.
so, from the get-go thinking aboutprocuring accessible technology, deploying accessible technologycould reduce your legal risk, and reduce your expenditure in thelongterm dealing with [inaudible] and responding to complains. so that's definitely good reasonto think about accessibility and i want you now to think a littlebit about how office approaches accessibility so i'm gonna playa video from the folks in dreadmont who work on this area and can't be here today but they wantyou to know, how they approach it.
and after that we'll hand over todavid who is going to tell you real life story from his viewas working in accessibility. so let's hear from redmond first. [music] >> one of the things that reallyinspires me working in accessibility is that it's a really tough,complicated space, but it's a space where we're just, we're doingthe right thing for our customers. >> there's a long historyof technology designed for people with disabilities thathave moved into mainstream and
impact all of our lives. >> if we connect with the broadestpossible audience we not only make products that more people can use,we also just make better products. we call that inclusive design. >> so inclusive design isn't reallyjust some abstract idea about how to develop software. it really takes everyoneworking together and thinking clearly through whatwe're going to build and having people on your team who can usethese tools and need these tools,
give us first-hand experience andwhat we can go and do. so having muscular dystrophy,i'm always looking for ways to make me more efficient. i really like the powerpointdesigner because it kind of feels like it was designed just forme. >> so one of the benefits,a surprising benefit, is it makes everybody a littlebit better at design. but interestingly enough,from accessibility standpoint, it makes it possible for people whodo highly crafted presentations with
very little interactionwith the tools. >> working in microsoft, i need to be able to consumeinformation from a chart. >> data labels, chart elements. point theory value, 600.5>> and now i can do that withour own technology. >> right the selected, right brownselected, right fox selected. q, tell me what you want. >> with tell me feature,
i can highlight my text ina certain color of my choice. any blind person can do this now. >> i had an interesting personalexperience when i first saw the new learning features. i have a little bit of trouble withlanguage, i'm a little bit dyslexic. and when i saw the way they brokeup the paragraph and they broke up the page, i could read better andi had better comprehension. >> i'm inspired by working on atechnically challenging problem that ends up just helping people.
>> i've been working onaccessibility for several years now. when i first started,it was a business problem. our customers were asking formore accessible solutions. we had some challenges, butthen i started meeting people, and i started realizing itsimpact on employment and their ability to communicatewith loved ones. but i've come to realize that ithas to be part of our culture. it has to be our lens to innovation. it's how we helpeveryone achieve more.
>> awesome. now, folks, feel [laugh]>> [applause] >> feel free to move closer too. i might treat thislike a classroom and start picking on peoplewho are too far away. >> [laugh]>> [laugh] i'm david groelic, i'm a program manager inoffice on the outlook team. so i'll tell my story,as melodica did. when i started in accessibility,
i actually didn't knowmuch about the space. and so how i went about learningmore is just by talking to people. and so one example washaving dinner with a person who happened to be blind,and i don't know, raise your hands,how many people have done that? a few. >> i've done that. [laugh] >>[laugh] >> and it was a very new experience. >> and so how does thatperson find the restaurant?
well, he was holding onto my hand so i would guide himinto the restaurant. how do you picksomething on the menu? so the menu wasn't in braille,and so i ended up describing the menu andwhat was on it, the specials. how do you sign the checkafter when we split the check? and so i ended up actuallysigning the name for the person cuz it'sa piece of paper. and how do you do that?
and sotalking back to melodica's story. the environment is just notdesigned for the person. i'm not in the restaurant business,and so i can't really do much about that outside of being frustrated andfeeling like people should have an independent experiencein their world. but i do happen to work in office. and sogoing back to what i do day to day, i ended up talking tocustomers about, take outlook. what are the things that bother you?
and i went to a conference andthere was a roundtable, and eight people sat at a time fortwo days and just gave it to me. what are the things youdon't like about outlook? and the one that was numberone was the scheduling system. scheduling system doesn't work. and how many people here schedulea meeting using the scheduling assistant? so, almost everyone. so, imagine you manger says, hey,schedule some time with me this
friday were i’m free, andthen you actually need help, you need someone elseto help you do that. how frustrating is that? so we went about fixing that and100 other things and it's just one example of tryingto help people be independent, trying to help people beemployed and productive. so me talk a little bitmore about that journey. this is an office 365 discussion buti just want to broaden it. this is a microsoft conversation.
this is us partneringclosely with windows. our entire organization ismoving in this direction. and there are four pointsi just want to make here. so you can read the quote yourself. but one is driving culture change. one of it is top-downthrough satya and the great support that he provides. and a lot of it is bottom-up and just people becoming more awareabout the space and thinking
about it as they're designingfeatures and talking to customers. second is making sustainedhigher investment. so investing more,and not as a push, not as a six-month stopgap,but investing more forever, investing more to createa good experience. third, and this seems reallyobvious after the fact, but bringing accessibility intoour overall processes. so we know how tomake good software, we know how to talk to customers, weknow how to make great experiences.
and so taking that andapplying it to accessibility, making sure accessibility is,as melodica was talking about, built in, not a bolt on,something to do at the end. and then fourth is buildingrelationships across the ecosystem. so again, talking to customers, talking to organizations, talkingto suppliers in this space, and just understanding what the spaceis and what the needs are. so, as a company,we had an epiphany. accessibility is about people,it's not about compliance.
and i'll say it again. it's a small change, butreally it changes everything. the way to get there. so accessibility requiresa sustained investment, not sporadic surges. i can tell you this is the biggestinvestment that we've made in accessibility at leastin the last 20 years. it's huge but it's not going tohave a lasting impact if we think about it as a surge of something topay off the debt and then be done.
it is a permanent investment,a permanent focus, it is part of understanding how tomake software that is accessible and useable from the start. so i'll talk about our secret sauce,and i'm happy to share it, because the more people thatfollow this path, the better. and so, the way that wethink about accessibility, it's part of our design. when we started this work,when i started this work, the biggest focus was onthe most widely used features.
and that's, again,putting the customer in the center. and so, what are the thingsthat people do in our products, what are the things thatthey care about the most? and focusing on those first. working with focus groups. so imagine you build a feature andyou think you did a good job but then did you really? and so we have a number of toolsat microsoft to figure that out. and so some of those are testingapproaches, and for accessibility,
we actually plugged intothe trusted tester program. and working with vendors, workingwith internal folks to test and make sure that ourproducts are accessible. but then we took it another step andincluded usability studies. and so talking to peoplewith various disabilities, having them try our products andthen give us feedback and iterating on those to make surethat in the end they're good and they're usable andit's something we can be proud of. the third one, again,pretty simple but
actually has made a tremendousdifference is a promise that our office products andnew features that come out and new products that come outare accessible from day one. and part of that is also, again,engaging the communities and bringing them intowhat we call dog food. our internal products into firstrelease and to insider programs. and again, getting feedbackreally early so that we are again confident that when products ship,they ship accessible. and then the fourth anchor isthe sustainable piece of getting and
acting on customer feedback andhaving that loop ongoing and nonstop. and we'll never be done, we'renever done for any other group. we take our products, we ship them,we get feedback, and we get better. and we are living in a new worldwhere we're not shipping a box every three years. we're shipping monthly,some of our products ship weekly. so, we have an opportunityto hear from customers and fix it the next week,the next month, or soon after.
and we're talking a lotabout useability, and that's where i have a passion,and i love the customer centricity part i know folks in the room alsowanna hear about, compliance. [laugh] our favorite topic. as we make our products usable, we're also making sure of coursethat they are compliant, and we are following the processesthat we need to. on that front i would say, we're trying to be a bitmore usable as well, and so
we, for all the organizations,we wanna enable organizations to make the right decisions in their,for human processes. and part of that is making surethat, so for one thing is, office 365 is compliant withthe standards of section 508 eu,all of the various standards. but then the actual documentsthat we publish, there are three things that we wanna do tomake sure that, that they're usable. one is comprehensive, and so picka product within office 365, and if you guys have been here forthree days,
there are a lot of product,there are a lot of end points. it's big, office 365 is big. and so we wanna be comprehensive,so pick a product, we can tell you about itsstate of accessibility. two is transparent. and so, some of our productsare in better shape than others. it's a continuing, evolving process. and so, where we have gaps,we will share them out. and we'll be honest about those.
and again, every month as we ship,we will get better. and then the third one is,making them accurate and up to date. and so, as we ship,as we get better, then those documents will continueto evolve along with the products. again, to help you makethe right decisions. and you can confidently say inalmost circumstances, office 365 will be that answer versusolder versions like 2013 or 2010. office 365 is the mostaccessible version of office. >> they would give you a flavor ofhow we're approaching accessibility.
and now we wanna give you a flavorof what exactly we're doing that you can use today. and what's coming down the pipe inthe next one to six months that you can leverage. so, before we getinto the specifics, i wanna get a feel for the room. who has office 365 alreadyin their organizations? okay, it's about halfof the audience. and of those who have it,
how many are required to procureaccessible technology or how many? okay, a smaller group. and how many of you inthe gendered room have people with disabilitiesin your organization? okay. i'm surprised not to see everyone's hands go up because it'spossible that people have invisible disabilities thatyou're not aware of. a great example is dyslexia. i think about 20% of the humanpopulation exhibits sign of
dyslexia, and that’s a pretty commondisability that perhaps it doesn’t come to your mind when youthink of usability for people with disabilities. so when we think of investingin office every month and improving it every month,this is what we're doing. a, we're making sure that it'susable for people with various abilities within range of vision,your insight reading. and then b, making it really easyfor authors to create accessible content, websites,emails, the whole gang.
so in the a bucket, i'm going towalk you through specific things that have happened in our technologyto help people with dyslexia, read and write more easily. to help users whocannot use a mouse, perhaps they don't have the mobilityor the dexterity to use a mouse, and they only use a keyboard or an onscreen keyboard, to be fullyproductive with just a keyboard. i'll also tell you a little bitabout work we've done to make it easy for someone who uses speechto interact with their computer.
so they don't have the mobilityto use a keyboard or a mouse, but they use speech. also, if people choose topersonalize their machines using ease of access settings. a common one is highcontrast mode on a pc. because people might have visionimpairments that affect how they can see color. that's another one where office isdone work to make sure we honor those settings, and
we have a seamless experiencewhen those things are turned on. the last piece we'll show youis how someone who's blind and uses a screen reader tointeract with their computer or their mobile devices. how they can be productive ontheir computers and on the go. for the other bucket, we'llshow you how someone can create accessible content even if theydon't know how to get started. so if they don't know how to getstarted, the simplest thing they can do is, check before they sharetheir document, is it accessible?
and for that, we have somethingcalled an accessibility checker that we're bringing to even moreapplications and platforms. when someone checksthe accessibility of their document, they should fix anyerrors that show up. so we'll show you the work we're doing tomake it possible to fix errors. or common error that shows up is, you used image to conveyan important meaning information. so you should describethat image using text so
that someone who usesa screen reader and is blind, can understandthe meaning of your image. or if you used audio like i'm doingright now to communicate content, we should have captions so that everyone who cannot hearcan still follow my content. lastly, if you create accessiblecontent but then you export it and you want to share it with others. in the export process, we shouldmake sure that the accessibility information that you createdgoes along when you export,
whether it's stopedia fortwo, two other formats. so we have a lot to coverin a really short time, and we know some of you are experts andwant to get into the details. office 365 is truly big and every application on everyplatform is under different level. so the way we've structured thispresentation, is to give you resources that you can take home,and analyze in great detail. these resources looklike the slide up here. basically, we've told you exactlywhat we've already delivered in
office 365, and what's comingin the next one to six months. we've also highlighted this poolapplication and pool platforms. so, if some users are on pc, youknow exactly what they're getting. it's some are on mobile devices,you know that as well. so, to take the example of enhancingproductivity with dyslexia. there's an add-on that someof you might have heard of that's become pretty popularwith special education teachers. it's called learning tools, andit's an add-on for onenote for pcs. anyone can install it for free.
and we're going to demoit in a little bit. so that add-on has actually madeit easier for students to read. i'm gonna show youhow it's done that. but with the success of that add-on, we've thought about integratingit into more of our products. so we're announcing today thatgoing forward in the near future, we're going to offer learningtools capabilities and word for pcs and word online. as well as in the further future,
we'll offer it on more web apps andmobile apps. we want people to not only readeffectively with dyslexia, we also want you towrite effectively. and for writing, one of the things that you might bedoing is making spelling errors. you might be spelling phonetically. so an exciting changehas happened in word. already, this is available to youif you're in office 365, word for pcs or outlook for pcs.
if you type phonetically, previously maybe the spelling enginedidn't give you suggestions because it couldn't understandthe word you were typing. and now,it will be able to understand, because the engineis getting better. and it's capturing morediversity of errors. and i'm going to show you, how it's actually going to helpyou choose the right suggestion. because, even if itgives you suggestion and
you don't know whichsuggestions to pick. it's gonna help you,understand the suggestions and make the right choice. so you can create contentwith perfect spelling. going forward, we'll again extendthis to more applications and more purposes, andwe'll make it better. so slides like this,we have a quite a few, we'll explain how were making iteasy to use office with a keyboard. how we're making it easy touse office with speech input.
how we're making it easy to useoffice if you have use of access settings, as well aswith screen readers. and for screen readers,we've broken it down by pc, mac, web, and mobile apps. so, through this presentation,we're gonna show you demos of the highlights, and then thiswill be there as a resource for you to refer to later,as well as during q&a. the other bucket that we're gonnatalk about is how we're making it easy foryou to create accessible content.
in that example i gave you, if youare the one sending the email, it doesn't matter if outlookis accessible if you send an image in the email, andyou didn't describe your image. so what are we doing to makeit possible, first, for you to describe images from everyapplication on every platform? and secondly, what are we doingto make it really easy for you to get startedif you don't know? one of the things we're announcingtoday is that we're exploring making it easier for
you to describe images automaticallyby giving you suggestions. so in the future,in some of our applications, you're going to see suggestionscome up when you insert an image. you will be prompted, andyou will be told, look, you inserted an image, i think youshould describe it, and then here's what i think the image is, why don'tyou go ahead and edit that image. so we wanna make it easy for you. we want to remind youto do the right thing. and we wanna give youa head start in doing it.
another thing that's prettyimportant, is to run an inclusive meeting, you wanna make sure thatyou're able to have captions. if you're sharingcontent through videos, you want to be ableto have captions. so one of the things you mighthave heard announced earlier this week was skype meeting broadcast. in the future, we'll offer capabilities to givenear-real time captions to audio. this is very useful for us in audio,
where you think ofa large organization and the leader of an organization,making an announcement. maybe you have hundreds ofthousands of employees. every employee has the right to hearthat announcement at the same time. maybe everyone doesn't have aninterpreter with them at the time. so if the meeting hasnear real-time captions, you're making it easier for everyoneto get information at the same time. this technology is already beingused in our consumer application for skype as well.
some of you might haveheard of skype translator. it's being integratedinto skype consumer. so at home today if you have skypeconsumer you might actually be able to turn on skype translator andtry it. have a call with someonewho can not hear and try the new real time captions. another topic we spoke briefly aboutis if someone doesn't know how to even start authoring accessiblecontent, they might want to just like a button, like a spellchecker,have an accessibility checker.
so we're gonna show you what we havetoday, and i'll show you that we're bringing it to more platforms, moreapplications in the near future. so let's get started with demos. the first one we said we'd show youwas the free add-on for onenote, which some of you might have heardof, it's called learning tools. how many people have tried this? okay, no one has tried it,so that's exciting. so my demo is a surprise. >> [laugh]>> here we have onenote open and
we have a lot of text to read. so learning tools getsintegrated into the ribbon. and what i can do is getinto immersive reader. and the first thing you see isall of the crowding goes away. all of the distractions go away. i'm focused andi'm going to read this thing. [crosstalk]>> office 365. office 365 is a subscription servicethat gives you access to the most up-to-date versions of office.
>> so it's able to read out thingsto me and simultaneously highlight the word that's being read out aswell as the line being read out. so i focus on that andi pay more attention. the other things it can do isactually change the font spacing and the text size. some studies have shown that, people with dyslexia find iteasy to read six words per line. that's what you'reseeing in this view. we have some fonts that we usethat are proven to be better for
people with dyslexia. in windows, we offer these fonts forfree for you to use as well. we also let youcustomize the background. some people find it easy to readlight text on dark background but some people find it easyto read pastel colors. so those are the thingsthat are available for free to anyone toinstall as an add on. and specifically fori think english language learners, there are additional capabilitiesthat people are finding helpful when
learning a new language. you can break big words intosyllables, you can actually highlight parts of a sentence,so you focus on the sentence. so there's a lot in here and the good news is that it'sgetting good feedback and they are rapidly creating tobring it to more applications. let me show you an example of anapplication that we're announcing, we're bringing this to. did i mention briefly that word for
pcs will get some learning toolscapabilities in the near future? i'm giving you a first lookat what those look like. so word already has a read mode,you get into read mode and you're supposed to focuson what you're reading. you can now switch that toa narrow column view, so that's six words per sentence,that's what happens. you can switch the colors similar towhat i showed you in learning tool. you can break words into syllables. and best of all, you can read aloud.
so the feature i showedyou where you play and the document is read out to you. all of that will be coming toword for pcs in the near future. as well as word online. and then over time, we'll alsobring it to onenote online and other applications. we just don't want youto read effectively, we also want you towrite effectively, so i mentioned that the spellingteam has done work.
let's see what that looks like. so in this particular email, this is a word where it's difficultto pick between suggestions. this is another word whereit's useful to have the word read out to you soyou can understand what the word is. and there's another word there that,in the past, you would've not gottena suggestion for. cuz the engine hadno idea what it was. and now you're ableto get a suggestion.
so erea, or contigenous,entrepernoursse. things like adding synonyms. things like adding the ability tohear a word read aloud really help with making the right choice. collecting spelling errors andeven learning new words and increasing your vocabulary. the other piece of work imentioned we are doing was for someone who cannot use the mouse. if you use a keyboard oronscreen keyboard,
what are we doing tomake you more productive. well, the first thing we're doingis making sure every part of our application can beused with just a keyboard. now, that's a lot of work. and how you use somethingwith just a keyboard, it could mean you tapthrough a lot of controls. it could mean you use the arrow key. we also want to make you efficient,right? so, we've had keyboard shortcutsin awhile for some of our apps and
maybe a lot of power usersout there know some of these keyboard shortcuts. we want to give you visualcues as you can see so you find it easy tofind the shortcuts. so if you press alt,you can see some of the shortcuts. we're bringing that capabilityto office online as well. we also want you to be able tobypass all of the stabbing and just say what you want to do andit gets done. so some of you might be familiarwith the tell me control.
has anyone used that in office? awesome. just very few people. so what it does is, you press alt +q and you just type what you want to do and it does it for you andit remembers the command you type. so, next time youcan find it easily. it's pretty intuitive, so even if you don't rememberthe name of the exact command, you can kind of type what youwant to do and it figures it out.
and over time, they're expandingto give it more capabilities like you can say something likehighlight this line in yellow. so it's able to actuallydo complicated commands that deal with color. and if you're blind and you have difficulty pickingout yellow from our controls, you can just say highlight inyellow and it will do it for you. so that's pretty neat. it also helps you find help, so
the help capabilities of officeare integrated within this, and the help capabilitiesinclude keyboard shortcuts. so if you are a power user whojust uses the keyboard and wants to get quick accessto the keyboard shortcuts, you can try searching forthose through tell me. >> let's see.all right, we'll keep going. speech input. how many people have used dragon ormicrosoft speech recognition? when we think about speech input,
the place where ithink it's guessing. how many people have used siri orcortana or things like that? yeah, so there is work that'sbeing done to improve speech recognition or speech to text forpeople who use it all day, everyday. but we're also trying to make itmore common and more frequent and help people out. and we will try something. i hope it works. in the same learning tool,there's a dictate button.
i can press dictate andsay, hi there i'm so happy everyone made it today. yeah, it's pretty cool. we also wanted to try,what if i'm watching a video. >> you can play the second one,that's fine. >> okay, we'll play it. >> what did we start talkingabout yesterday, guys? >> saint patrick's day!>> i am a resource special education teacher.
i target groups of students who needintervention for either reading, language arts, or math. these are kids thatstruggle everyday. and to watch them grow andlearn and have those ah-ha moments. >> now i get it. >> so rewarding to me. >> [crosstalk]>> it actually started late so sometimes i've seen someteachers use this for actually transcribing videos.
>> so they turn it on first andthen they turn on the video and as the sentence goes on reallyquickly the input is able to get context andcorrect the sentence over time. pretty interesting. >> you see it get betterat with it hears a word but then when it hears more words andsentences it gets smarter. but outside of big rooms,it's a cool trick to try, and it's basically a live transcriptionof video, which is amazing. i wish it worked better today.
let's see, we'll keep going. so, another. so then the next areais high contrast. are folks familiarwith high contrast? did people? yeah? okay. so the high in the high contrastmeans that, so let me show you, if someone has cataracts ora number of other eye issues, this is what the ribbonwould look like.
so it's really faded,really hard to see. there's essentially not enoughcontrast in the menus and the controls to figureout what to do. and so high contrast mode takesthose elements and says, well, whichever colors you prefer. so let's say, commandsare better for you in green, we'll put those in green. and the background will be black andit's simplified. and so what we've done is createda consistent approach to,
if you're in office. and then you're using various menus,you can go to high contrast mode, and see much better. it may still look fuzzy to you,when i look at the image at the bottom in high contrast mode,it still looks fuzzy to me. but it is somuch better than the one at the top. and we're not just doingthis in office desktop apps, we're also doing this online. and so, here's just a quickexample from excel online.
and again, to get to highcontrast mode, just when you're using cortana just type in highcontrast, it'll get you there. and then, so here,the background is now in black. you can see the rows thatare selected the demo will circle around. you see the rows that are selected, you see the selection area,you see the chart update. you see the entire screen go intoa consistent framework and so now someone who can see betterbecause now there's a bright green
color and the background is black. now you can work. now you can use excel online. and for a lot of people beforethey wouldn't be able to. screen readers. how many people haveused a screen reader? that's not bad, okay. it can be a little bit intimidatingfor folks who haven't tried it. windows enter is the shortcut fornarrator.
i recommend everyone try it out. it's really the only way to geta sense of what that experience is like. and also i'll give you a tip,windows enter also turns it off. but in terms of the way, that we. one sec. in terms of the waythat we approach it. we work with all of the variousscreen reader companies. so we're partnering closelywith windows obviously to
create a great experiencewith narrator. but we're also working with thirdparty companies like jaws to create a great experience for, basically,what our customers are using. we can talk aboutthe scheduling assistant. i'll just try it out andgive you a quick sense. and let's see howwell this works live. >> [inaudible] ignite debrief,meeting window, ignite debrief message editing. 0% vertically scrolled.
>> i'm in outlook, i'm in calendar,milavik and i tomorrow should have a conversation anddebrief how ignite went. in this meeting, i can press. and so i'll talk about keyboardinga little bit as well, but when you're using a screen readerit's really very much a combination of quick efficient keyboard commandsalong with the speech output. and so to get to the schedulingassist all you have to do is press ctrl-tab. >> tab.
tab. look tab. >> there we go.>> meeting start date editing friday september 30th 2016. >> and so if you had used thisproduct about a year ago, in the middle there's a largesurface area with various colors. and blue is busy and white is free,and it's complicated, it's hard. and so i think how do youmake this accessible? and soone way is if you go to a time.
>> the day picker button, meetingstart time, editing 10:00 am. >> so let's go to 10:30. >> [inaudible] 10:30 am selected. 10:30 am selected,[inaudible], september 30th, 2016 10:30 am to 11 am. one conflict, [inaudible] busy10:30 am to 10:45 am [inaudible]. >> and so you get a sense. is there a conflict atthat period of time? who is free.
who is busy. and to me this is whatan accessible experience is like. we replicate at the surface andnow you can peck around at 10:30 we can listen to whatdoes 11:00 o'clock look like? what about 11:30 or12:00 and keep going. but we also wanted to introducesome things that make this quick. because you don't want to spend twohours scheduling a meeting going from time to time and we knowhow busy people's calendars are. so there's also an option forauto pick,
which basically why don't you giveme the next time that's free. so you can tab. >> [inaudible]. >> so, i'll go to options. >> menu, menu, menu,shift, down arrow. >> go to auto click. >> down arrow, auto click, collapse,menu item, menu [inaudible] space. >> space.>> [inaudible] resources, enter, id brief,meeting window, option,
[inaudible] debrief, meeting window,all attendee status. september 30, 2016,3 pm to 330 pm, zero conflicts. data [inaudible] free [inaudible]free laura harrington. [inaudible]>> there we go and the next time the meeting is at andwe can schedule it. so there's an accessibilityexperience of just replicating the experience and they're trying to find ways of howdo we get people to be efficient? how do we get people tobe able to work quickly
in their day to day lives? >> okay, so hopefully that gives you a flavorfor the variety of what's happening in a variety of apps to make ituseable for using those ideas. now let's just switch gears a littlebit and talk about the work i mentioned to make it easier forus to create accessible content. so i mentioned, how many of you haveused the accessibility checker? very few people know it even exists,so the first thing is to makeit more discoverable.
and now if you can see the screenyou can see next to the review tab, next to spelling. where you expect things to be whenyou're on the review process, you see this thing calledcheck assessability. so that's the firstthing we're doing, making it more discoverable andoffering it more applications. it used to be only in word,excel, powerpoint for pcs, now we also have it in word,excel, powerpoint format. and going forward, we're gonnahave it in office online and
in more applicationslike outlook and onenote. so that's the first place to startif someone in your organization knows nothing about accessibility orabout creating accessible content. have them get started from here. go to review tab,just click a button see, is your content even accessible? so what this button does is it scansyour documents and gives you errors. that people with disabilitiesare likely to face issues with their documents ifyou don't fix these errors.
so i mentioned a commonerror that comes up is look, you're using images orcharts or something visual to convey meaning but you haven'tdescribed that visual thing. so the simple way to describea visual thing is to add alternative texts. so in this work flow okay you runthe checker you get the error you forgot how to add alternativetext takes a little time. we thought maybe we canimprove the stresses for you. so i wanna show you what someof the newer apps have done.
this is sway andyou're creating a newsletter. you're runningthe accessibility checker and in flow it's telling youto review the all text. it's taking you right there andletting you edit it. so it's not justtelling you the editor, but it's also giving you the abilityto fix the editor in flow. it's also doing one more thing. when you create a sway and youpull in images from other places. if the image is on your desktop ithas a file name it's pulling in
the image file name. if it's from an online sourceit's pulling in pre-populated information aboutthe image that it has. so, that gives you a littlebit of head start. but, we thought that wecould do even better. what if computer vision canhelp you recognize an image? wouldn't it be helpful ifwe gave you a suggestion? so that's exactly whatwe are trying to do, and a few applicationsare trying this right now.
it's not available publicly, andyou are one of the first people to actually see one ofthe plans that we have. so in powerpoint, here i'm buildinga presentation about wall street, and i start off with a nice image. to just introduce my presentation,i pull in the wall street sign. so what powerpoint does is itactually gives me a tiny icon that has automatic image description. a description of thisimage has been created for you, click it to review it.
so in my flow of creatingmy presentation and adding an image i'm gettingalerted about all text. not only alerted butalso give a suggestion. so my computer algorithm read and can identify imageswith high confidence. it gives me a suggestion, so it says a close up of a streetsign in front of the building. it does okay buti think i can do better. so i can go ahead and edit this.
and then to make algorithmbetter for everyone, if i'm open to donating my pictureand alt text back for science. i also have the optionto donate it and make the algorithm better foreveryone. so this is one of the things we'replaying around with to make it easy and reduce the burden on authorsto create accessible content. so in a rapid amount of timei think we've gone over some examples of demos. and you're probably wondering, okaythere's so many applications, so
much going on, how do i keep up? so one of the things i wannacall out is that we've started this new blog cds. so on blogstaroffice.com andi have created a link for you so you can find it easily. but every quarter we like totell you what's happening with accessibility in office 365. what are we doingto make it easy for people with disabilitiesto use office?
and what are we doingto make it easy for authors to createaccessible content? our documentation team is doing aton of work to make it real easy for people to get started with officeif they use a specific technology. if they need keyboard shortcuts,if they need to get a step-by-step process of how to createan accessible document, and they've created a hub for you. so if you just give this link toan employee in your organization who wants to learn more.
right from that hub, they can get the articles theyneed about the product they want. we know decision makers like tosee the product and it performing with assistive technology tobelieve that this actually works. so we've created a short demoseries where you can see videos of office 365 and some of the recentwork we've done with keyboards and screen readers andhigh contrast mode. lastly, we also know that toprocure an accessible technology, you need conformance documentation.
some of you are required toget conformance statements and know how we conform tothe standards of wcag 2.0 or en 301 549 or us section 508. so, we prepareconformance document and we've created new sites that youcan find these documents easily at. office 365, does update monthly,so we're gonna put in an effort to update these documents asmaterials changes happen. we're also going to go a littledeeper later in the week. so those of you whoare interested in this topic and
want to get your hands to moreinformation, there's a sharepoint session happening on fridaywhere melissa's going to walk you through how they approachedmaking sharepoint online accessible. and maybe some of the best practicesthat they learned can be useful for you if you develop websites and your organization has challengesmaking accessible websites. we also have some customers who'veworked in the accessibility space for a while who are going toshare best practices from their organization's perspective.
in implementing section 508 or creating a moreaccessible workplace. these customers are formix of organizations, university, government, schools. so, they're dealing with adults,they're dealing with children, they're dealing with employees,with customers. and you're going to hearsome of their strategies. that's happening tomorrowin the afternoon. we've created a new website, so
all these links i'm givingyou can get from one place. so if you remember nothing else, you can remembermicrosoft.com/accessibility. we also have a very activetwitter presence, so if you want to learnmore about the space, you'll get news by followingthis handle @msftenable. and lastly, i don't know howmany people know this but microsoft offers free support forpeople with disability. you have hotlines that you can call,
you have esl video chatthat you can get if an employee with disability in yourorganization wants technical help. that’s calleddisability answer desk. for enterprises, maybe complianceofficers, decision makers, if you're lookingto get information, you can email the service callenterprise disability answer desk. and they'll look at your request and try to give enterprise'sinformation. so we've spoken a lot about howwe're approaching accessibility,
and what we're doing maketechnology more accessible. but i wanted to make it real foryou. what's the impact of all this? so i wanna play a short video,and show you from an end user's point of view how accessibilitycan change a life. so let's play it and i'll talka little bit more about it. >> saint patrick's day. >> i am a resource specialeducation teacher. language arts or math.
these are kids that struggle everyday, and to watch them grow and learn and have those aha moments. >> is so rewarding to me andit just makes my heart soar. we have adhd, dyslexia, dysgraphia,have a student who reads on 3rd grade level but then have a studentwho reads on a kindergarten level. and i have to find a wayto bridge the gap. we've been using onenote sincethe beginning of the school year. even in the short amountof time that we've had it, it's been completelytransformational.
when we first started using onenote,i thought, okay, this is gonna take us a while to get going and we'regonna have to learn how to use it. three days, it took themthree days to master onenote. i have a dyslexic studentwho's also dysgraphic. he still reads ona kindergarten level. he's ten years old,he's still learning sight words. and he would tell me allthe time that he was stupid. when we started this school year,he read four words per minute. for the longest time,i struggled with how to help him,
and when we got the learningtools with the immersive reader, he went to 22 words per minute. i never thought in one calendarschool year that we would even get into double digits.and he's at 22 words per minute and he's stayed there. for my students, especially, it's really transformed theireducational experience. i don't know what nextyear will look like. i don't know what our possibilitiesare because, in my wildest dreams,
i never thought thiswould be what it is. the sky's the limit. >> i really like the story becauseit encapsulated what someone feels when they're in an environmentthat's not designed for them. you have a student withdyslexia feeling stupid, and no one should feel stupid, and yougive them the right technology and then suddenly they're ableto do their life's work. they're able to read,they're able to express themselves. so technology really hasthe power to unlock talent,
to give equal opportunity, andthat's what accessibility is about. if you find videoslike this helpful, we have a few more that we've putin the resource guide for you. some people really want to knowabout windows 10 and accessibility in windows 10, so there's a nicesummary, a ten minute video that you can watch to learn everythingabout the anneversary update. some people just want to know,what are these regulations, what do they mean? so en 301 549 is one of the newestregulations that's gaining
popularity in europe, australia. and that's a short video you canwatch to just wrap your head around what it means. many people ask, what exactly goes into creatingan accessible document? now each agency in the governmentmight have different rules, so this video cd is fromthe prospective government employee. what are they required to makesure they're being compliant with government regulationswhen creating documents?
and then we have other stories. for example, newer productslike skype translator, which gives near real time caption. the impact it's having on a studentwho is deaf or hard of hearing, they're being pulled intomainstream classrooms, they're being part of mainstreamexperiences, hallway conversations. so, i wouldn't underestimate thepower of technology when it comes to really helping people. and compliance as well,but mostly helping people.
so, with that, that's allthe content we have for you, but we have a lot of resources. and if you ask us questions, we'regonna pull up the resource file. so you'd like to[inaudible] you any. any brave first takers forquestions? >> i have a question.>> do you mind using the mic? so captions and->> [crosstalk] so my question is, i work at landmark collegein vermont. we're a speciality college forstudents with learning differences.
our entire populationfeels out of place. so, what would youencourage us to do? we're using office 365, but we have a hard time bringingour faculty into the. what tools? you should be using these tools andwe can say that, we're in it. but there's always like, it's always trying to cramsomething down our throats. so what do you suggest?
we have tools, we're using curswell,we're using dragon. we were using inspiration, we used x mine, we used someof the built in features. now they think ipadsare the way to go. i feel like we're shiftingall over the place and i feel like there's a lot here. i'm just not sure how to get peoplereally excited about it which is why we're here. >> right, so actually, i didn'tmention this but the video i just
showed you [inaudible] in thisspecial education video and she's gonna be here tomorrowas part of the customer panel. >> awesome.>> so i think she's a great resource. she actually advocated forher classroom to get surfaces, as an example. >> great.>> and then she's been able to have some luck getting onenote. so part of it i think the customerswill be able to speak to
resourcefulness andgetting executive buy in. from the technology side of it, ithink one thing from the office team will say everyone needs to dois be on office first release. because any innovation i show you,if you're on office first release, you're the first to get it. so if you have a studentwith dyslexia and they want the benefit of learningtools or they want the benefit of the spelling checker enhancement,if you're able to get them on first release,they're gonna get it really quickly.
so that's something that i think youcan control as an it administrator and do you want toadd to that answer? >> no, i think that's good. the other part of it is i thinkthe truth is in the experience. and so if teachers try this out,if students like it, which we think they will,then you don't have to push as it. i think it'll be moreof a pull model. >> it's an interestingenvironment up there. and we've reallystruggled with this.
everybody has their own idea, everybody has an education canprobably speak to faculty and, this is what i do andthis is what i'm gonna use. and so, sometimes it's moredifficult than you might think to get them really jazzed up aboutsomething that we think is awesome. like we're using, we're like,my god, it's great. i mean, i can read, i can write,i can do all those things, but i'm still using the tools. i love them.
and so it's getting them to thatpoint of driving their students there is just something that. >> yes. >> yeah. >> [inaudible] >> that’s what i was thinking. the more we build it in, the moreit's free, so it’s not like an add in or something you need to purchasefrom a third party or from us. i think that should help.
>> [inaudible] have to learncuz you're saying, here, this is what you need to do. i'm doing it for you. if you don't like what i said,click here and change it. >> [laugh]>> and i love that. >> right, right, great, thank you. >> and you'll hear more examples ofsharepoint thinking the same way. and you'll see examples comeup in different applications. onenote definitely being one ofthem, sway being one of them.
>> yeah, i'll make sure i getthe session tomorrow, thank you. >> thank you. >> do you know what time it is? >> i think we're at one hour,so we can hang around here and if people want to come up here andask questions. please do give us feedback. this is the first time we're talkingabout office 365 accessibility to this audience. so, if there's more you want tohear or less you want to hear,
let us know and we'll iterate. thank you so much. [applause]
