July 2016
KEY POINTS
■For people with disabilities—including visual, dexterity, cognitive, hearing and speech impairments—access to computing and cloud-based services is crucial to being an active
part of the workplace andsociety.
■The cloud provides unique accessibility benefits by powering services such as auto captioning and speech recognition. It also enables connected devices to adapt to users’ needs, preferences, and immediate surroundings to provide an individually optimizedexperience.
■When procuring and providing cloud services, governments should refer to existing international standards to ensure the services they provide are accessible to all citizens. This creates global market incentives for businesses to build accessible and innovativeproducts.
■Public-private partnerships can create innovative solutions through cloud-basedtechnologies.
BACKGROUND
Technology is playing an increasingly vital role in people’s lives at work, at school, and at home.
For people who live with disabilities — more than 1.2 billion people worldwide, according to a World Health Organization report—the ability to use computers and the internet can be crucial to being an active part of the workforce and of society as a whole.
Increasingly, software and services are moving from physical computers and local servers to the cloud. Information can be stored and accessed over the internet making applications and services useable from virtually anywhere and on any device. Large amounts of data can be accessed and analyzed to solve complex challenges and determine the best way to deliver services to people. This global
digital transformation is positively impacting the way people and organizations work and interact. At thesame time, many people with disabilities are excluded from accessing technology and are unnecessarily being left behind.
The cloud has the unique ability to power solutions that benefit people of all ages and abilities, including people with disabilities. For example, existing technologies such as audio captioning, speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning can be leveraged by the cloud to
enable people who are blind or visually impaired to receive input about surroundings and independently navigate a city. Devices that are connected to the cloud can adapt to users’ needs and provide information in a format that best matches their preferences whether that’s large text and speech output for people with visual impairments or visual and tactile alerts for people who are deaf.
As cloud-based services become ubiquitous, governments can enact strong policies to ensure that cloud-based services are accessible and foster innovation in the market for accessible technology.
MICROSOFT APPROACH
Accessibility is at the core of Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. We make frequent accessibility enhancements to our cloud applications and services so our customers have the benefit of our most recent accessibility innovations. Microsoft is committed to making it easier for people with disabilities to communicate, consume and create content on any device, through features such as those that read text aloud, allow hands-free entry of information using speech or mouse-free navigation of applications using keyboards. For example, Microsoft introduced “Tell Me what you want to do …” in Office Online and Office 365 for PCs to help people get things done quickly or get help by typing intuitive commands. Features in Edge such as Quiet Hours and Reading Mode enable distraction-free web-browsing from any Windows device.
Microsoft is also committed to making it easier for everyone to create content that is accessible to others and thereby foster inclusion at work, school, and in government services. Features such as the “Accessibility Checker” and accessible themes and templates in Office 365 make it easier to author
accessible documents. SharePoint Online provides site administrators with the building blocks to deploy accessible intranet sites. Features in Visual Studio such as the Live Property Explorer and a number of first and third-party extensions help developers create accessible applications and websites.
Microsoft collaborates with governments, NGOs, academics and industry partners around the world to research and build innovative solutions for people with disabilities and the individuals and organizations they interact with. The Cities Unlocked initiative, a partnership between Future Cities Catapult,Guide Dogs and Microsoft, leverages the cloud to develop a new soundscape technology for people who are blind and highlights further opportunities for innovation that could unlock cities for everyone. In addition, Microsoft hackathons bring employees together from a variety of disciplines to leverage emerging technologies and build solutions like Learning Tools for OneNote, which help everyone improve their reading and writing skills, including gifted learners and students with learning differences.
POLICY CONSIDERATIONS
Microsoft believes that a healthy, market-driven ecosystem of many products, business models, and development approaches is the best environment for encouraging greater accessibility for all users.
Policymakers can help in this effort by supporting existing accessibility standards—such as ETSI EN 301 549 and ISO/IEC 40500 (W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) in procurement and inclusion policies.
Specifically, policymakers should focus on the following priorities:
■Adopt Public Procurement Policies. By adhering to accessibility criteria when procuring cloud- based technologies, governments can help ensure that all of the people they serve have equal access to information and services, the political process and jobs. By demanding only accessible technology from their suppliers, governments also create economic incentives forbusinesses to build accessible and innovative products. These market incentives are most effective when governments leverage international standards to create a unified digital market.
■Deliver E-Government Services in Accordance with International Accessibility Standards. As governments at the national, regional, and local levels commit to making their websites and e-government services accessible, they should harmonize their policies withinternational standards to avoid technical risks and a globally fragmented market for accessible technologies.
■Embrace Innovation. When governments try to solve complex challenges with older technology, citizens with disabilities often are left behind. Governments should adopt policies that incent their agencies to proactively partner with industry to create new solutions through cloud-basedtechnologies.
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