Building accessible experiences with AI

Henk Boelman - Cloud Advocate @ Microsoft

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Henk Boelman

Cloud Advocate at Microsoft

@hboelman

github.com/hnky

henkboelman.com

AI building blocks to make your applications more accessible

In this session:

Why?

Disability is a mismatch between someone's abilities

and the way an environment is set up. 

It's a human-made problem. 

Wheelchairs don’t make the building inaccessible…the stairs do

…the design of products, services, and environments ​
so that everyone, including people with disabilities, can fully experience them. 

Accessibility is…​

If you design for Disability…

…It’s a better experience for EVERYONE

• Immersive reader – Dyslexia
• Blurred background – Deaf/ADHD
• Captions and Transcription – Deaf/Other Language
• Video recordings - Absent
• Hands up and emoji - all

Making sense of the world with computer vision and through speech recognition

Microsoft Cognitive Services

Vision

Speech

Language

Knowledge

Start the demos...

Services

Azure Media Services

Video Analyzer

That apply the AI building blocks

More demos...

www.microsoft.com/ai/seeing-ai

Seeing AI

Questions you should be start asking..

Who Am I Building This For and With?

(Bring them in at the design phase not test phase. Requirements not Solutions)

Who Can Experience this? Blind, Deaf, Limited-mobility, Cognitive considerations

(Alt-text, captions, transcripts, recordings, SEO, AccChecker)

Who Am I Unintentionally excluding? Do No Harm.

Make sure everyone has a way to participate

Are Accessibility features/
accommodations available to everyone?

(Not just to those you ask. On by default. Don’t hide them!)

Ask & Learn from feedback and iterate.

 feedback -> iterate loop?

“The more inclusive you are, the more innovative you can be.

Together we can create a better and more accessible world for everyone.”

Thank you!

Resources on:

aka.ms/henk/accessible-ai

Feedback:

aka.ms/acc-fb

@hboelman

github.com/hnky

henkboelman.com