Microsoft, Xbox Mark GAAD with Updates
In celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day last week, Redmond-based Microsoft shared a bunch of updates on the continued work it’s doing to amplify awareness of the disability community. The company’s vice president and chief accessibility officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, wrote about this in a blog post. The thrust of her piece is the technology du jour in artificial intelligence and how it impacts accessibility.
“Today we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and work across the industry to make technology easier for everyone. At Microsoft, our journey with accessibility started in the 90’s, and is a cornerstone to our mission. We are committed to engraining accessibility into our culture, to build for all, and innovate to empower people around the world,” Flurrie said in the post’s introduction. “AI has been a game changer for accessibility. It is accelerating the accessibility journey in exciting ways. Making it easier to do everyday tasks and tackling some of the toughest problems of our times. Launching some new technologies and partnerships today. Let’s dig in!”
Flurrie’s first point highlights how disability-centric data “unlocks new opportunities for AI,” adding “high-quality and representative data can lead to more reliable outcomes from trustworthy AI systems.” She goes on to say Microsoft is “proud” to support two projects that are using disability-focused data to “drive change.” One is the Disability Data Hub run by World Bank Group, which Flurrie describes as “the first open data initiative to provide disability-disaggregated development data across 63 global economies [which] addresses the need for a single, comprehensive global dashboard to close data gaps that have historically excluded disabled individuals from development agendas.” Another is Answer ALS and ALS Therapy Development Institute, who’s working on finding a cure and therapies for ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Elsewhere, Flurrie writes about the importance of authentic disability representation in AI systems. “One of the most pressing challenges is that generated content, such as images, can misrepresent or stereotype disability, leading to harmful inaccuracies or even the exclusion of certain identities,” she said. “These gaps in representation data can reinforce bias and erode trust.” Flurries notes Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator now is capable of generating “more accurate depictions of disabilities” such as autism and Down syndrome. Microsoft, Flurrie went on to say, “collaborated with individuals with lived experience, trusted external partners, and AI researchers to better understand how disability is portrayed—both accurately and not—within AI models.”
Lastly, Flurrie mentions a few software enhancements that make products like Microsoft 365 more accessible to disabled people. For instance, the Accessibility Assistant is available in the Microsoft 365 web apps, as well as in Visio and OneNote.
In other news, Microsoft-owned Xbox last week announced updates which “[welcome] more players by increasing accessibility in games.” There are “new and exciting accessibility features” in titles such as DOOM: The Dark Ages, Candy Crush Soda Saga, and World of Warcraft. The company also shared news of its work in building the Accessible Games Initiative (AGI), as well as an accessibility-minded peripheral, the Xbox Adaptive Joystick, being available to buy. As to the AGI, I covered it back in early April with an interview with Entertainment Software Association SVP Aubrey Quinn.
