29 The influence of AI on accessibility “We’ve been around for long enough to see lots of new eras of technology and this one [AI] is very exciting for the world of disability and accessibility,” said Jenny Lay-Flurrie, vice president and chief accessibility officer at Microsoft. Several Microsoft partners are striving to improve the work experience for disabled employees, including Vodafone, which has an ‘Inclusion for All’ strategy to ensure all workers have access to the connectivity and digital skills they need to perform well in the workplace. As part of the strategy, Vodafone deployed Microsoft Copilot for all its employees and saw a “noticeable impact” on performance. For example, workers with dyslexia were using the technology to review and summarise meetings more easily. Lay-Flurrie joined fellow Microsoft executives including Tara Roth, corporate vice president of customer success engineering, and Angela Byers, senior director of product marketing, to discuss how to empower neurodivergent employees with Copilot, such as using it to break down complex tasks into simpler, manageable steps. They also demonstrated how Copilot can summarise a Teams meeting with positive reinforcement, notes for improvement, suggested next steps and explanations of any uncomfortable interactions. Another breakout session with Anna Cook, senior designer at Microsoft, and Hiren Shukla, global neurodiversity and inclusive value leader at EY, showed how AI is enabling accessibility in various industries. “Accessibility is key to workplace productivity,” said Cook. “Companies that prioritise accessibility find that up to 70 per cent of employee productivity increases by offering experiences that let people work in their own way. Furthermore, companies that support accessibility through workplace accommodations tend to find that their turnover is lowered by up to 30 per cent.” Shukla then discussed EY’s work with Microsoft in improving Copilot adoption for neurodivergent people and the Azure AI Foundry, including a six-week workshop hosted in 2023 that allowed neurodivergent technologists to use Copilot. The workshop helped EY and Microsoft discover how the technology was meeting their employee requirements and also where there needed to be improvements for accessibility. “Without [our partners], our products are just products,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft. “They don’t become solutions until we partner together.” Althoff led a session on ‘Driving Growth Together’ with Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global partner solutions at Microsoft, where they revealed new updates for the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Cloud Partner Program. They included the Partner Center AI assistant – which provides users with tailored insights to help them initiate support tickets if they need assistance – and new resources to help partners drive adoption of Microsoft Copilot. Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president of global industry marketing at Microsoft, also sat down with Satish Thomas, corporate vice president of Microsoft industry clouds and solutions, and Julie Sanford, vice president of goto-market programmes and operations and global partner solutions, to discuss the role partners play in the Microsoft ecosystem and the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. “I like to say we have one Microsoft partner programme, and we have worked hard to make sure we’re simplifying it for partners to engage with us,” said Mitford. “Think of it as one umbrella where we bring all our investments and assets together across the whole lifecycle of the partner ecosystem, whether it’s onboarding, skilling, getting access to marketing resources or co-selling with our massive sales organisation.” Mayank Kapur, director of modern work partner marketing, revealed the key partner investments for the 2025 financial year. One key investment area will be in partner enablement, with a focus on practice development guidance, developing the modern work partner community and improving modern work readiness and training. Empowering partners Various sessions at Ignite celebrated the success of, and new opportunities for, the Microsoft partner ecosystem Microsoft Ignite explored the importance of accessibility in technology and the opportunities that AI provides for disabled and neurodivergent people in the workplace Discover more news from the event at: bit.ly/3ATH2qj
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