Inclusion for Cognitive Diversity IMAGINE

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hi everybody my name is andrew bagel   i am a white male with brown hair and i'm wearing  a blue sweater i identify as he and him pronouns   and i have adhd i'm a principal researcher at  microsoft research and i focus a lot of my work   on helping people with invisible disabilities make  use of and become more comfortable with technology hi i'm nancy doyle i am a  white woman with brown hair   i use the pronoun she and her i'm wearing a  navy suit and with my new glasses i'm styling   a professor mcgonagall look i am an industrial  organizational psychologist and i specialize in   the management science of disability inclusion  i am adhd and i'm ceo of genius within and the   co-director of the center for neurodiversity  research work at the university of london hi i'm marisol antanera i'm a latino  woman i have long brown hair i'm wearing   a great t-shirt that says know your customers i  identify with anxiety and also how the pronoun   she and her i'm a senior accessibility  program manager working in microsoft cloud nai   and i'm working at the moment with folks who  identify as neurodivergent and i work with andy   and michael versmich i at a weekly basis at least  and collaborating here with nancy super super glad   to do that hiya i'm michael vermesh i'm autistic  and dyspraxic a white male with gray hair from   belgium my bronze are he hiss i'm wearing glasses  and a purple shirt i'm the digital inclusion   lead at microsoft uk i'm also the chair of the  disability employee resource group at microsoft uk great okay let's go to the first slide and what  we're talking about is uh first of all what is   neurodiversity um then andy and i is are going to  go through neurodiversity research at microsoft   um then nancy is going to talk about how to bring  neurodiversity into universal design and finally   michael is going to talk about what are the  benefits to customers so nancy give it away   thank you marisol so let's talk about  neurodiversity and the neurodiversity   movement which has fundamentally reshaped the way  we think about autism in particular in 1998 judy   singer the australian sociologist completed her  bachelor's thesis concerning her lived experience   in the middle of three generations of autism  that she of women that she considers somewhere   on the autistic spectrum judy's thesis was that  autism was a natural variation in human cognition   an unusual neurotype but one that  deserved consideration as being valuable   judy argued that neurodiversity was an essential  biological feature a form of biodiversity   the result of human evolution towards community  living where there are natural specialisms and   generalisms in skill capability character and  strength and when we think about autism as part of   this wider biological diversity the picture that  you can see on the screen which is of a series of   animals a graph a bear a goldfish a baboon a zebra  an elephant and a penguin and they're standing in   front of a tree and they're being asked for a fair  selection that they all have to take the same exam   and that is to please climb that tree and when  we think about um the picture and the the kind   of metaphor of those animals all been trying to  do the same thing the disablement the idea of the   social model of disability that we are disabled  by what we're being asked to do rather than who we   inherently are starts to make sense in our modern  world we've set up systems that require rigid   performance of a limited skill range we're at a  weird point of history and it's all about just   about to change soon spelling will become an  obsolete skill a lot of workplace performance   will be achievable remotely by robot hologram  or multimedia submission we're not going to   need the same skills we do now different people  might be disabled instead of dyslexia we might   have a literary literacy dependency syndrome  where people need to write in order to think   adhd might be replaced with sedentary limited  concentration disorder for those who have to   sit still to think instead of autism we might  have sensory underwhelming condition where   sensory perception is considered to lack acuity  leading to deta mistakes in detailed perception   there's a lot of recognition that the talents  that we need for the future may well be the   neurodivergent ones the future of work is shifting  away from standardization into personalization   from institutions and homogeneity into flexible  hubs and diversity throughout history developments   in technology have parallels developments in  our thinking for example impressionism in the   arts and social science occurred at the same time  that the camera was invented behaviorist thinking   accompanied mechanical engineering the idea  of the brain as a cognitive processor and our   understanding of memory accompanied digitization  and now in the 21st century we're starting to move   away from inflexible singular communication to  networked social hubs where specialists can be   connected into a larger system without needing to  change or be blacks of all trades we're allowing   people to be masters of the things they do well  this is where the autistic employee and equally   the adhd employee the dyspraxic employee the uh  dyslexic employee or entrepreneur might find that   they can spend less of their cognitive energy  trying to fit in and more time trying to solve   problems what i'm describing to you is the social  model of disability where disablement happens   because the world doesn't accommodate not because  the individual is broken this is distinct from   the medical model of disability wherein we've  looked solely at what an individual can't do   on this next slide that i'm showing you we have a  venn diagram of the conditions that are associated   with neuro minority types or neurotypes  that are in a minority previously we've   caused called these conditions neurodevelopment  disorders or specific learning disabilities we've   talked about discalcula dyslexia attention deficit  hyperactivity disorder we've talked about autistic   spectrum disorder we focused on all the things  that people with these labels find difficult and   mainly those things are to do with literacy or  sitting still or having to process whilst being   very distracted because their senses our senses  are um are highly um tuned to the world around us   and the idea of the neural neurodiversity  movement is that we actually focus on what   people with these labels can do and that we sought  for positives not negatives the majority of the   human population is neurotypical which means that  they have a balance of strengths and struggles   and most things that they do are about even so  their visual perception might be about the same uh   ability as their memory their verbal skills will  be about the same level as their processing speed   neurodivergent thinkers like people with these  conditions tend to have a spiky profile where   some things are absolute standout skills  or some things are very strong competent   abilities and other things are struggling a  minority of people fall into this category   and there are lots of words around this at the  moment neurodiverse neurodivergent neural minority   and one of the things i want to introduce to  you in in introducing this movement is that if   it feels confusing that's because it is and so  as someone with lived experience and somebody   who's doing professional research in this field  i want to reassure you you haven't missed a memo   there's not a right answer out there at the moment  exactly what neurodiversity is exactly what newer   minorities are and what that means it's an  emerging concept choosing the right words is   part of the progress in in understanding the ideas  and developing our concepts around what we mean   and just as the world of workers in flux this is  our way of communicating as a human species is in   flux so is the language around how we talk about  neurodiversity and what that means similar to   other social inclusion movements is it's important  for us to ask how people like to identify   and to use the language that people have chosen  for themselves and that would be my advice to you   in in working out how to talk the neurodiverse or  divergent people and now i'm going to hand over to   marisol and andrew to talk about the work  that microsoft are doing in this space hi again um so now me and andy  are going to be talking about   a super passionate project that we're  working on uh for to design for developers   who are neurodivergent um so if i go to the next  slide i'm going to tell you what we are up to   so in talking to uh people with neurodiversity  who use usher um we've been conducted a series   conducting a series of activities um one has been  focus groups um with users that are internal to   microsoft and we have been conducting also  interviews uh one-on-one interviews with   neurodiverse i.t pros and developers who use asher  and we've been learning a lot of things we've been   learning about their pain points we we have been  learning about how they work around issues that   microsoft poses through their technology and  they have been talking to us about what their   wants are what do they want in an ideal world  what are their suggestions so the um just to   say what the project of our of uh project goal is  is to create a neurodiversity inclusive ux design   principles and improve products such as usher and  other microsoft products such as visual studio   so we'll talk to you a little bit about what  the process has been and what we've heard   so take it away andy sure so in our interviews  with uh developers and i2 pros we asked them   questions about uh the challenges that they were  having using microsoft azure and we have some   interesting quotes here we want to present to you  because they illustrate some of the issues that   were coming up so we have a quote from stefania  who's a developer with adhd stefanie says i have   a low working memory versus my overall iq plus  i have adhd i get distracted and i forget what   i was doing we also talked to david who's an  i.t professional who identifies as having adhd   he says i only do one thing at a time when  add kicks in i forget what i was doing if that   happens i wait to see if something's not working  i try to keep the windows where i'm working open and what we see is that the people we spoke with  many of them talked about avoiding multitasking   and what we see in azure is there's quite a few  tasks that require completing a lot of complicated   subtasks where you have in order to fill out one  screen you have to go off and do a few different   tasks to find out the data you need to put  into the forms and to enter there and what   we found is that as people completed their  subcast they said that they had difficulty   remembering where they left off and what in fact  they were even trying to do in the first place   so we organized this into a design principle  that some azure designs expect their users to do   several tasks at a time while they wait for each  to finish and we think that designers could try to   scaffold the user flow for complex tasks in order  to help users accomplish them more effectively now we also talked to michelle michelle is  a developer and data analyst who identifies   as having asperger's syndrome and ptsd  with the azure portal there's so much   going on that i usually don't know  what to do github is a bit cleaner   there's less going on it's easier to tell  where you have to go for certain things paula who's an analyst identifies as  having dyslexia adhd and dysgraphia   and paula said sometimes it's hard for me to  focus on something when reading it through   there are too many tools and buttons i go  dear eyed and i can't process everything what we find here is there's what  we call extraneous cognitive load   basically the amount the amount of brain  power it takes to process an interface   is very difficult when the interface screen  offers too many things to look at and to read   and the design principle here is ui clutter and  which is their words not ours makes it difficult   to prioritize the importance of on-screen elements  and there are many screens that are dependent on   written explanations which create indecipherable  walls of text for users with dyslexia   we think that designers could reduce the amount  of text and visual clutter on their screens   to help direct the user's attention in order to  find out what's most important for their task marcel once you take on the next few quotes  thank you andy um so yeah we also talked to yuko   she's a data analyst and identifies with adhd and  what yuco told us is i'll keep timers i'll take   a step back and if something takes me too long it  makes more sense that it should be done relatively   easy in an hour we also talked to jason who's a  developer and identifies with adhd and anxiety   and jason said there are definitely places  where i start wanting to figure something out   but then i see something that catches my attention  unless i'm really driven to finish there will be   times when that's a challenge so here we see that  maintaining attention and focus is a struggle   when users cannot focus they cannot complete  tasks so completing one single task at a time   in extended periods of time can be can be  difficult so completing tasks in smaller chunks   is going to be more useful for neurodiverse users  so as a design principle here we say that some   designs require users to complete multiple complex  tasks in a single view which extends the time it   takes to complete them but designers can actually  ensure that the important tasks on the user flow   can be accomplished in short blocks of time then  we talked to teresa she's a developer with adhd   and anxiety and what teresa says is having  consistency no double meaning to one thing   meaning don't use new or unique names on elements  that look exactly like objects i see in other apps   and then we talked to michelle again the  data analyst and developer as andy said   and he identified with asperger's and ptsd and  what michelle says is i want to set up a new vm   a new virtual machine but if i choose a  wrong kind of machine i'll get charged   a lot more than i want we don't want that so  that leads to unpredictability causing anxiety   and so nor diverse users tend to feel anxious  when they are unable to predict whether their   actions will cause negative results so users don't  react well to unpredictability example charges   to customers that they actually are incurring on  or data deletion so if customers data is getting   deleted that's probably not a good thing um if  they do something wrong they this can cause those   effects we don't want that unpredictability can  be easily caused by the application's task flow   and the lack of consistency across its uis  or users and user interfaces so as a design   principle here ambiguity is an application's  task flow or a lack of consistency across its uis   can result in unpredictability designing for  predictable and reciprocal patterns of ui behavior   helps users learn and become more comfortable  with all of our software let's try to follow that and for our next step sandy do you  want to talk to folks what we're doing   yeah so uh once since we've finished now the sort  of qualitative portion of our study understanding   the diversity of types of issues that people  are facing with azure our next step is really   to expand this out into survey and look at a large  population of neurodiverse i.t pros and developers  

and in this way identify the most impactful  problems that we can work on first and once we   have identified those particular issues  that we think are important to tackle   we're connecting with designers and  researchers to come up with solutions and then   developing a timeline with azure product teams  to both implement and evaluate those solutions so next up is nancy who's going to talk a  little bit about universal design principles i am thank you andrew and and i just  think it's really important to note that   those detailed products um projects  that you guys are working on   are the how we dismantle the social  barriers that are creating disablement   you know it's really exciting to to be part of  this time where you're applying universal design   to make it easier for a wider range of people to  contribute in education and the workplace um it's   very exciting so universal design principles um  these are often applied in in technology and to   how we kind of arrange buildings so that we can  allow for disabled people to have greater access   um i've got a design on the slide which is  is just some icons with the second principles   which are um simple and intuitive design  perceptible information flexibility low physical   effort tolerance for error considering the size  and shape for approach and use and equitable use   and um what i've been working on in my research  is how do we apply these to social infrastructure   because we you guys have made huge advances in how  you apply it to technology we understand now that   with buildings we have to have ramped access we  have to have wide gangways there are things we've   been able to do i'm using these principles but  with neural minorities disability is often hidden   and a lot of it is in the communication and the  way we organize ourselves in relation to human   resources so applying universal design principles  to human resources is the focus of my research   and practical work so if we take each one if we  think about equitable use the aim of equitable   use is to avoid segregation and the need for  disabled people to have a different service or   a different experience and the question you need  to ask if you want to apply this principle is   are any of the accommodations that you might be  providing for individuals simply best practice   and could they be applied for everybody as a  standard and we've seen this start to play out   in autism hiring programs where we've done an  amazing job of figuring out that actually if we   take away recruitment barriers we can invite  autistic people into teams and they can perform   at a very very high level and so now the question  we're starting to ask in autism hiring is well   what was wrong with our recruitment processes  in the first place that made it not possible for   people to come in uh when we were doing things  in a standard way and should we be updating our   standard hiring so that people can come in  without having to be segregated and without   having to have a special program if we think  about flexibility and use we need to build in   preferences outside the norm for example  being able to adjust the pace of information   when i'm doing video lectures at the university  i can slow down or speed up the pace of which   i'm watching them and you know i can record  them and people can slow down or speed up   and then you can adjust the uh the information  to be right i like to speak quite quickly   i always have to try and slow myself down but with  with these kind of technologies we can build those   into training and development as standard and  then we have flexibility of use in training and   development with simple and intuitive use um  we take care to avoid unnecessary complexity   and a really good example of this is is when  we're creating human resource um documents   such as policies procedures induction manuals um  that we use things like the flesh kinkade scale   which is a grading system using average word  length sentence length and paragraph length   to estimate the reading level um the fish  pincade scale is built into the advanced   grammar checks of microsoft word and therefore  most human resource teams would be able to use   it before releasing company documents the federal  plain language guide advises in the usa advises   that recruitment and hr materials be pitched at  the level that matches the job role for example   when we're thinking about perceptible information  we're thinking about the sensory modality of   communication that we're thinking about  in embedded descriptions of visual images   um and the kind of you know use of of of uh auto  captioning and while we've thought about this   in terms of sensory impairments in the past we can  also think about these in terms of social context   so people who are wanting to um understand  a picture or metaphor having the alt text   uh in in in training and development documents be  really useful inter intolerance for error we're   allowing for mistakes and and edits so for example  in hiring processes do the online forms allow you   to go back and correct things are you able to edit  in the text are you able to review your answers   um you need to build these things into the  processes so that people have that equal access   in the principle of low physical effort um it's  worth pointing out that many neural minorities   experience a great deal of physical discomfort so  this might be uh the tension created by staying   still when we need to move it might be about  managing sensory overwhelm if the information   if the environment is busy um and that this can  actually be experienced as pain for some people   so it's really worth paying attention to with  dyspraxia um the additional physical effort   for use of some tools can cause pain and cause  additional uh fatigue and so in terms of human   resources we need to think about these things when  we're designing jobs and apply um accommodations   such as flexible hours and remote working so that  everyone has the opportunity to avoid a busy noisy   distracting commute for example um which will  make a world i mean the last year has made so   much difference for people who have had trouble  with um commuting overwhelm it's just released   and unleashed so much productivity for neuro  minorities and building on that size and space   for approach of use is where you know when we're  when we're designing our workplaces and when we're   thinking about where people work we need to bear  this in mind a lot of my clients who are employed   come um you know they're having difficulties in  their workplace they're in need of accommodations   because they've had a an office change and  and as the office change was planned and the   redesign was was thought through neuro minorities  weren't considered and so building those things in   is a way we can um move forward on on that kind  of um inclusion so just kind of thinking about   the employee life cycle um the employee life  cycle and someone could move the slide on for me   yeah there we go so the employee life cycle is  the way management scientists think about the   employee experience within an organization we  think about it from the very start of kind of   job design through hiring through contracting  um learning and development and and talent as   you as you press within the organization the way  that you review performance and the way that we   manage well-being um in an organization and if we  just pick one example which is tolerance for error   in in the design of jobs we can ensure that risk  and and safety and client-facing deliverables   have second checks and automation built into  the design to reduce the need for 100 accuracy   in hiring we can we can allow candidates to review  and edit information and we can make sure that the   hiring principles that we're using actually  match the job performance so we're not um   specifically asking for things like team building  or influencing skills when actually what we need   is someone who can do data analytics to a high  degree of accuracy or we're not checking for   spelling and grammar when on the job you would be  able to use assistive technology and so therefore   the skill isn't really necessary when we're doing  contracting and onboarding we can apply tolerance   for error by allowing reviews of that process  making opportunity for people to ask questions   and make sure they've understood we can create  little quizzes to make sure that the information   it has been um absorbed and to show that we've  predicted that it might be difficult to take   it all on board um when we're in training  we might do something like setting a tone   for the permission of silly questions and  creating an environment of positive regard   uh so that people know that they're allowed  to get things wrong and that that's okay and   welcomed we might permit multiple attempts at  knowledge tests and allow practice tests um in   performance review we might build intolerance  for error by allowing for appeal or negotiation   where performance ratings have resulted from  misunderstanding and in well-being we might   create feedback loops for employees to submit  their experiences both negative and positive to   ensure employee voice is captured and acted upon  so i think you know when we start thinking about   the universal divide design principles that  microsoft are building as a product but also   start thinking about universal design principles  um within the social infrastructure we really   starting to use the social model of disability in  what it was intended to do which is to understand   where those barriers are being created  inadvertently and where we can break them down   and i think this is really exciting for students  employees and entrepreneurs but it also has a   direct link the customers of of your services  so just if you'd like to know more about genius   within's work or the research that i'm doing at  the center at london then please do find us on   social media and please feel free to reach out  and ask questions and to engage with us about   studies and impact data that you might want to  know more about thank you and so now i'm going to   hand over to michael and he's going to talk more  about how this is useful for customers as well thank you that was awesome we have seen some  great solutions here on how to bridge gaps   so many guests both on a social  uh both on a technical level   and these are very real for for people  with disabilities um as nancy says we've   seen some great solutions to not only harness  more talent but also engage with more talent   out there to create the products of the future but  still you could be asking yourself why would you   well let's look at some statistics  one in five people have a disability   and that that's a big number to say no to in the  us alone the purchasing power of the disabled   community is 490 billion dollars why would you  not want a slice of that market uh i think i   think you would the discretionary spend that's  the luxury or non-essential purchasing power   in the u.s for people with cognitive differences  is estimated at 1.1 billion dollars that that's   a market share that counts you want that market  share 73 of disabled people found accessibility   barriers and e-commerce so what do they do well  many of them go spend their money elsewhere in   the uk in 2016 a survey found that more than four  million people abandoned a retail website because   of the barriers they found taking with them an  estimated spend of 11.75 billion pounds in 2019   it didn't get any better three years later that  lost business what we call the click away pound   had grown to 17.1 billion pounds so the situation  is not getting any better the uk estimated lost  

revenue in banking due to inaccessibility  amounts to 935 million pounds so what you do   well apart from adopting what you learned today  let's hope so let's check out some other facts   well microsoft commissioned forrester  consulting to conduct an independent   study to identify and quantify economic and  socio-economic outcomes resulting from an   investment in accessible technologies to enable  easier access for both employees and customers   to better understand the economic  and socio-economic benefits for   leveraging accessible technologies for us to  discuss with interviewees the role they can play   in facilitating access both internally supporting  employees and externally in customer-facing   applications what we have seen is that accessible  technologies deliver tangible value for employers   through the interviews it was found that  accessible technologies can deliver significant   and tangible value to organizations  through increased productivity   and higher employee retention the discussion also  reveals some intangible benefits for employers   including risk mitigation higher employee morale  satisfaction trust and access to the best talent   available because of their accessibility strategy  we also have seen that revenue associated with   winding the pool of potential customers  can be huge also explored was the impact of   accessible technologies on customer engagement  it was found that private sector organizations   have the potential to see higher revenue  through more accessible websites and reduce   costs by being able to digitally serve people  with disabilities something that we've actually   learned to do over covert 19 right as one  interviewee said customers are aware of the   needs of people with disabilities and make  purchasing decisions based on this kind of factor it is evident that accessibility is  an opportunity here we see research from   accenture also recommending to be more inclusive  accessibility is an opportunity we've learned   that companies that embrace best practices for  employing and supporting persons with disabilities   in the workplace outperform their peers in a 2018  study done in partnership with accenture they   found that 45 companies identified as standing  out for their leadership in areas specific to   disability employment and inclusion had on average  over the four-year period 28 percent higher   revenue double the net income and 30 percent  higher economic profit margins than their peers   they also attract and keep top talent as inclusion  is especially important to millennials when asked   in millennials who will be 75 percent  of the global workforce by 2025 say they   want to work at places that reflect their values  diversity and inclusion are on top of their lists   so so think again think future  which brings us to the conclusion inclusion is a moral social and  economic imperative we all win   when everyone reaches their potential thank you

2021-05-14

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