Microsoft Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie prepping for the company’s 2023 Accessibility Summit. (Microsoft Photo)

Microsoft’s Ability Summit has come a long way since its inaugural event 13 years ago. What began as a meeting of about 20 employees has grown to more than 20,000 participants from within and outside the company, located in 110 countries.

The free online event Wednesday will feature sessions with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Microsoft Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie.

“The level of interest and passion around this is a good indicator of the need [for the event],” said Lay-Flurrie, who organized the first summit and is deaf. Participants are interested in technology, policy, partnerships and networking, she said, “and how to build their own programs.”

Microsoft will be sharing news of its accessibility work in hardware and software. That includes a new indoor navigation feature with Seeing AI, a free app that audibly describes objects for people with visual disabilities; additional African languages for speech-to-text tools for the hearing impaired; updates to hardware including pens used with Surface devices; and tools and guides for creating more inclusive products.

Daman Wandke, an entrepreneur from Bellingham, Wash., and CEO of Wandke Consulting, is attending the summit. He was eager to hear about new tools for disabled developers, best practices for corporate disability policies, and advancements in AI.

“AI is set to change how we work with ChatGPT. Microsoft has been offering AI for Accessibility grants for three years and continues investing in AI, improving the lives of people with disabilities,” said Wandke, who has Cerebral Palsy.

GeekWire caught up with Lay-Flurrie to talk about the summit, accessibility and technology. The conversation was edited for clarity and length.

GeekWire: Are you seeing progress in public perception and support for people with disabilities?

Lay-Flurrie: Has the disability divide closed? No. There’s been some very good, positive traction. Has accessibility use increased? Yes. Is it enough? No. And are the number of people in accessibility [roles] going in the right way? LinkedIn did a great report showing a 78% increase in the number of accessibility roles [in 2020 to 2021], but that’s only 12,000 in the U.S. And you search for the number of chief accessibility officers and it’s probably less than 10.

What will Buttigieg be talking about?

Microsoft has, as of last year, 7.8% of our population are people with disabilities and we’re a very interested party. We commute to work. We travel for work. Just that alone was a great reason for us to reach out. And it’s been a very hot topic in the disabled community.

Whether it’s electric vehicle access or airline transportation, [travel] has been very hard. If you’re a power wheelchair user, the rates of damaged or lost wheelchairs through air transport are around 1,000 per month. That’s removing someone’s independence. And it’s hard to plan accessible transport. You’ve really got to know what you’re doing. Those are blockers that should just not be part of our society.

There have been so many headlines about the rollout and challenges with the Bing AI chatbot. What are your thoughts on the way AI serves accessibility issues?

I have a personal relationship with Bing because one of my first jobs at Microsoft was working on what became Bing. And I worked in the area for seven years. I’ve always used Bing — it’s actually always been my search.

With anything new coming up, there is a responsibility and an opportunity and we’ve been very transparent about what we’re all learning. The core principles as we go through this are that we need to be responsible. And we have to be accessible in how it’s implemented and embedded.

For AI, we’ve also got to think about data, and about adding more disability data so that we can prevent the negative scenarios and we teach it with the right content. Then we need to open up the innovation doors and see how it can help productivity.

I’m genuinely excited about it. I was sitting with my kiddo over the weekend, who is a high schooler, writing a paper. She’s lobbying for sign language to be taught in high school, which I’m fully on board with. But she needed to do some research.

And I was like, “Well, here you go. Check your questions and have a conversation [with the chatbot].” Five minutes later, she’s not just got all of these amazing sources — Gallaudet [University], National Association [of the Deaf] — she’d also written a poem about it. And then written another poem in the style of Dr. Seuss, and was cracking up.

My kiddo is autistic, she’s neurodiverse, and that would have taken her hours and hours, and she did it in five minutes and had fun while doing it. I think that’s the potential for empowering our communities.

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