ARBNEXT is is an extraordinary double extraordinary double of two people who I honestly so thrilled to have here and it's so incredibly important to bring them in. So we've got welcome you both. Hello Neil. Hello. Hey, you went the wrong way. Oh, god. You went the wrong way. The right way now. Well done. And I should I should actually be able to use a bit of technical magic to spread your outside. Whoop. The what's up with Neil? We've got Neil Milliken, global head of accessibility for ATOS. Neil's role is to make the world a better place. But I I did did you write? Atos being a very large 11,000,000,000 organization.

But delivering better technology for Atos' customer staff, embedding inclusive practice into the business as usual processes of organizations, delivering both strategy and services, working with a wide range of clients internally and externally to develop processes and policies and technology solutions, including the BBC, Department of Health, Ministry of Justice and NHS. It's a very, very exciting to have. And this was the order it was written in, so I don't I've like, I haven't like, I don't want people to feel like I've in any way prioritized anyone. Like, we are so excited to have you, Michael Vermeersch. So in Microsoft Accessibility Go to Market Manager, so bring digital transformation via diversity inclusion.

And his digital inclusion focus enables customers across industry sectors for for engagement productivity and innovations. Chairs the Microsoft UK's disability employee resource group and has been invited to turn down his reach to present views on being disabled talent work. I'm regularly invited to to speak at global events possibly ones with higher budgets. I'll ask that. I don't know. It's you guys are wonderful and what you both do and impacts individuals across the world and obviously in the in The UK, Microsoft within the products, ATOS within what you do and it's it's it's really wonderful. Wonderful. As you are, I've just seen Michael, all got Microsoft's highest platinum club award for his work in disability inclusion, is.

Quite something. Michael, sorry, Neil. Neil, do you want to tell me what you just messaged me?

Yeah. So so what I messaged you was that I I I double booked myself being ADHD and and and doing time booking. So if I may go first rather than Michael for the shared session, that would work for me. So Michael.

Are you are you happy for, like.

Yeah. That's fine. I I do appreciate that you're I think you're potentially overrunning. So if I need to do something about that, just tell me as well.

Well, we think it wouldn't be an ADHD Conference without it being running slightly off time. Okay. So we're we're pretty comfortable with it, if I'm honest. Although I am worried you've got both got so much to say. You've both got, like, I need to, like, there's someone whispering in my ear, but I've both got more slides than we have minutes. So, like, slightly So terrified so Apparently, I'm in charge of pressing next, next, next. Okay. So Okay. So I'm going to you to so Neil first, then Michael. Yeah. What just wonderful. Thank you. Okay. I'm flipping to the presentation, which I I hope I just set up. Yeah. I totally did. Totally did. There you go. And then I'm going so to the so so.

Michael, you don't have an awful time having to constantly think I'm on screen. I'm going to use some technology to eradicate you very gently. Okay. Over to you. I know you can't see If you if you would care to go next.

I would care to. Yeah. Thank you. So this is me. So, yes, I I I'm actually ashamed to say that I wrote that that description on LinkedIn a long time ago and haven't got around to updating it yet. But this is me. I'm VP in charge of accessibility at at us, and I'm doing a lot of stuff there. And I've got skin in the game because I'm dyslexic in ADHD, and I use assistive tech and have been for the last twenty years. I'm evangelistic about this stuff. I really care. I want to talk to people that win hearts and minds and so on. At the same time, slightly impatient, but patient enough to work in a really large organization and recognize that change doesn't happen overnight. So outside of work, I'm I'm involved in social media. I'm on.

Various different boards relating to, disability inclusion and neurodiversity, etcetera. Next slide, please. Next one. So a little bit of context around what we do at. Essentially, you know, we we brought together our raison d'etre, which is our sense of purpose. We are French, raison d'etre, and and that's the purpose around the golden ring that tied everything together. You know? And it's about people, planet. And and we're a limited company, floated on the the stock exchanges, so we're profits is part of that. At the same time, we have these three key programs, CSR, diversity, accessibility, and there is some overlap. So, you know, we we support the shared values for each of these parts of the organization.

And and my part is obviously accessibility. And and we do both internal stuff, so running our program to be more inclusive generally, but also doing that for our customers. And and oftentimes, those customers are using products from Microsoft and Michael's company. So we work quite closely with Microsoft on a number of accessibility issues and, you know, very much in in tune with what they're trying to do and the features that that they include in their product set. On top of that, we build other stuff as well with other companies. So next slide, please. So we have a mission statement around the the our ambition to be the recognized leader for.

Accessible and inclusive digital transformation. Every organization talks about digital transforming how companies work. Well, we want to do that, not leaving people behind. Next slide, please. As a result of that, we have some core principles, and that's really to design and deliver technologies that include people, that that make sure that people have the best experience and they can contribute fully. Next slide, please. We do this across the enterprise. So it's it's all very well to make one product or service or application accessible, but we don't work in one product or or one bit. You know, every day that we're working at a computer.

We're accessing lots of products and lots of services. So we really need to think about this strategically. And and so that's really important too. So thinking about it across the business and across that sort of complexity. And, of course, there are legal commitments, but it it's an ethical commitment for us as an organization to do this too. And next slide, please. And, of course, we have to do this in partnership. Right? Because we are not alone here. We're we're what might some people might remember as being called a systems integrator. Yeah. We do make our own products. We we make quantum computers and all sorts of high high performance computers, but we also integrate lots of other people's.

Stuff. So our systems integrate there. And so we need to work with our partners, and we need to cross social partners as well. Next slide, please. And I think that the really important part code. It's not all. Yeah. It's a is about transparency. Right? Because, actually, we can't do this well if we don't talk about this and actually share stuff openly. You know? Sometimes things fail, and, actually, it's good to learn from failure. And we want to be honest about the programs that we run. Next slide, please. So we we believe, that that inclusive technology is the art and custom and practice of reducing exclusion and and promoting inclusion. And it's a tool that we use as part of our cultural change within our organization.

To really sort of break down the barriers to to people feeling included and belonging in company life through providing them with the tools that they need to do their job. You can advance the two slides, please. So what we got here, you you had it right. So so Applicated slide advancement. That's like Oh my god. That's a trick question, wasn't it? But I I it was a kind of dead slide. So it was like, how do we implement this stuff? Well well, what I've got is an example here. Right? Well, so we we're really well known for decarbonization. We we did really well on the CSR indices and stuff like that, and we did a recent redesign and rebrand. And and this eco branding exercise, we also brought in accessibility.

And this is really important because we are talking about treating exclusion like pollution because when we design stuff that's inaccessible, that's a negative externality. Just like smog is when we are, you know, creating polluting factories. When we do inclusive design, we create positive externalities, the the curb cut effects. And and and, essentially, what we did here was we both made the design more eco friendly and more accessible. So we we followed the the color contrast requirements for for our dark mode, and we we changed our fonts, etcetera. And And you you can can take that one step further. If we go to the next slide, you can see example of the dark mode. But we talk about.

Driving our program in the same way that we talk about doing this for decarbonization. So looking at the direct impact of our own controlled resources. So we design and produce accessible products. We we aim to buy accessible. So we work with our suppliers. We put courses into our procurement agreements. And then with the wider community, which is why I'm here now, because I'm talking to the community about what we do and trying to engage. And and that's really important for us as an organization because part of what we do, part of our purpose is to improve and and make the information space that we live in more inclusive. We go to the next slide, please. So.

Where does this sit within our organization? Well, we talk about engaged employee experiences. So new name for how we deliver workplace. And many of the products that you'll be familiar with from Microsoft sit in this part of our organization. Next slide, please. And we call them DWP, not to be confused with the Department for Work and Pensions. And we we really focus on making sure that people really feel engaged at work. And engagement means wellness as well. You know? We need to be thinking about the flexibility of working, which is super important for a whole range of people with different disabilities, but it's really important and impactful for people like myself who are neurodivergent.

And looking at mental health and the impact of technology on mental health. So so there's a whole bunch of work going on to make sure that we're coherent on this. We may go to the next slide, please. So the point being that we we're really trying to think about holistic well-being. And so we're even thinking about how do we, you know, think about people's physical health and the impact on their mental health and and all of these other services that fit around the employee experience. So it's not just delivering, you know, better spreadsheet experience. It's really thinking about how we blend our work life balance.

Next slide, please. Yeah. Don't push the better spread like, spreadsheet experience. I'm pretty sure Microsoft will tell you here. The better spreadsheet experience is an important one, and and I back them on this. I like it. Like.

But I but I would I I would say that it's it's only a subset of the the entirety of our work experience. And and and and therefore, not not the most important part of our our working. Right? Excel's extremely important.

Most businesses run on Excel in the background. Okay. I'm not trying to cause a fight. Right? Back to presentation. So we can go to the next slide.

Okay. So so and a part of of what we are having to do is make sure we listen. Right? So whether that be through surveys through Medallia or Qualtrics or through things like our great place to work survey and different ways of detecting so on, we we really want to make sure that people are okay. And part of that also comes into making sure that we're when we're designing stuff, we're thinking about the impact of technology on people. If we go to the next slide, please. This means that we need to support people through change, and microlearning is really important about that. Giving people information at the point of which we're delivering new technology helps them.

To be able to use this new technology. Because what happens quite often is we're in an evergreen world now where technology gets updated all the time, and the user interfaces change really regularly. And that's a challenge for people like me that are interface blind. It's a challenge for neurodivergent people in general. So if we can go to the next slide. I've talked about how generally we deliver this stuff, but you can see that accessibility coaching well-being fits into our wider piece around employee experiences. Now we can go to the next one. I'm making you work hard. You know, this is how we deliver assistive tech in the workplace. So there's an element of sitting in really boring meetings. It's called governance.

And and and that bit really is about making sure that we are there when decisions are made so that we don't leave people behind. We work with the inbuilt features in the Microsoft and sometimes Google Suites. And then on top of that, we support third party assistive technologies. We support things like text help and Claro and and look at the various different mind mapping tools as well as screen readers and magnifiers and so on. And then there's, of course, the inbuilt tools as well, and we help people work out what's appropriate for them and then provide training and additional services on top of that to make sure that it's a really holistic approach. We can go to the next slide, please.

I think these benefits are fairly well understood within our community, but if you do this right, you attract and retain talent. We're all getting older. I dread to think, hell, I need these quite so badly now. We're improving our well-being. We know for a fact that when we do this right, we reduce absence. We ensure the compliance with the legislation for sure. And, actually, when I'm dictating, I'm far more efficient. So when we we enable people, through assistive tech, it's much more efficient. But we need to design it. So we can go to the next slide. And we need to be thinking about this right from the beginning. We need to think about it in the specifications because we don't we we spoil the interoperability.

We need to build it and build in accessibility, and then we need to consider people when we're rolling out this new technology because we need to inform people that this is coming and talk to them about the change, reassure them. How does this relate to neurodivergence? Good question. There are some challenges. So, rather than congratulating myself on asking a great question.

Can we move forward two slides? Because one of them just says dealing with the challenges and is really quite dull. Thank you. So how do we cope when we're drinking from the information fire hose? Because we're in an always on world now, and Michael has a lovely little out of office message on that says that you need to app message him to to have any hope of actually getting through and that they're gonna distract his flow. And I totally relate because, actually, it has a profound impact on the ability of someone like me or Michael to be able to concentrate and do our job. I'm ADHD.

I'm distracted by everything. I've got thousands of messages. Stuff is pinging all over the place, and and that impacts me. So there are some things that we can do to to to tune it down and and and make it, you know, slightly less distracting. So if can go to the next slide. So, firstly, calendaring is super important. Right? I'm always apologizing for being late. So chopping five minutes off your thirty minute meeting gives you a bit of buffer time. You may even find that you don't use all of your buffer time, and you can actually go to the loo and grab a cup.

Or you then start conceptualizing that you've got five minutes time and go down the rabbit hole and spend ten minutes and get later. But that's just me failing with my strategy. So next slide, please. Scheduling. I think this is super important. Consciously overestimate the time that you're gonna need because usually we underestimate. And and I'm full of ideas, and and I'm really optimistic about when I can get something done. I I say yes to everything, and that's a problem. So talk to people about your workload and your scheduling.

And color code time so you can block stuff off because then you can see at a glance what you're supposed to be doing, what mindset you're meant to be. And is it a, you know, meeting with colleagues, or is it a, you know, development staff? Is it quiet time? All of these things can help you, and you can also start moving stuff around so you have blocks so that you can organize your brain into certain sort of thought patterns, etcetera. Next slide, please. And this does drive me crazy. Everything wants to notify you all of the time, and but there are options. So you can go to the focus options, and you can turn them off. Turn everything off until someone shouts at you for having ignored them because.

Really, there are so many things that are vying for your attention. Well, why does Word need to give you banners and sounds and so on? Turn off autoplay. You know? Why does your printer need to talk to you unless you're actively trying to do something with the printer? You know? All of these things, you can turn off, and they will help you, keep better focus, which is super important. Next slide, please. Again, do not disturb and mute and chat in Teams. Really important because if you're in a really large organization like Michael or myself, you've got thousands and thousands of people, and they might have added you to all sorts of groups. And there's just noise everywhere and notifications going ping ping ping ping ping ping ping and.

Post the pop up messages, and you're in a conversation. I literally stopped talking halfway through because I've seen a post posted pop up message, and I've completely blanked on what it was I was talking to someone about. Because I've seen a post posted pop up message. So putting do not disturb on and muting stuff is a great way of grabbing back your attention and concentrating on the now and the meeting that you're meant to be in. Next slide, please. This is a challenge for me. Right? I'm I'm also dyslexic, and and I work in an international company, and I was relying on spell checking.

Until I started using spell checking in a document where I'm collaborating with lots of people and their computers all decide to take elements of it and spell check it in the language that their computer's in. So that really causes me a bit of a headache because I'm I'm sort of staring at this stuff going, well, I think it's spelled right, but I'm not sure when there's a red line there. So so so this is a a challenge for us yet to resolve. And I think that it's a it's an interesting one that won't hit you if you're just working with UK colleagues. Next slide, please. So.

In built assistive tech. Michael is going to tell you all about the amazing work that Microsoft is doing on this, and there has been a massive improvement in the quality and availability of in built assistive technology over the years. You know? I I use dictation. I've been shouting at computers for two decades. Only recently, they started answering me back. But now instead of using Dragon NaturallySpeaking all of the time, I tend to use the in built dictation in Word and and and Outlook for short messages and and only put the load on the computer that Dragon imposes when I want to do a complex document. I think that, you know so it's horses for courses on this.

Likewise, with the proofing tools and so on and so forth, there are specialist tools, but sometimes when you're just doing a quick piece, actually, inbuilt tech is much more convenient. Next slide, please. We have an employee resource group or network, which is called Adapt, and they've been doing neurodiversity survey. There are three main recommendations that come out of the data they came. Line managers need training. The communication and openness is really key to acceptance, and the availability of support services is really key to success. So we're ramping up the provision of support service to make sure that people get the the tutoring and the help that they need as well as the technology. Next slide, please.

Trying to keep this on time. So there we go. Hybrid work. Right? I've been working from home for years. I think Michael has too. It's been nice and peaceful. Now everyone wants to call us. And if we're in meetings where some people are in and some people are out, it requires facilitation. Right? Ideally, get someone to take minutes and curate and for that person not to be engaged in the actual meeting and make sure that there are breaks too so that people that are on screen aren't just really, it's quite hard to follow, so it's quite worrying, so you need to give them time. So next slide, please. As we return to the office, many people have forgotten, right, how.

How this works. Right? So we again, you know, we we need to make sure that people are comfortable and give them time to do that and also help people with their anxiety about traveling. You know, it's not uncommon for neurodivergent people to feel anxious about traveling. So make sure that they're they're prepared and they've got the support necessary. If we can go to the next slide, only a couple more. This is something we did. We created neurodiversity.

Immersive experience to help people understand what it's like to be distracted. You can put the the headset on, and you can experience a world of distraction whilst trying to listen to a lecture. And And then you get a quiz at the end, and we see how badly we've distracted you, and we can dial it up and down. Next slide, please. These are things where tech can help. Right? I think that noise canceling headphones, they're not a luxury. They're, you know, an essential aid to helping people block out distraction. Magnetic cables where you can connect stuff and disconnect them without ripping the the USB out is super important for people that are clumsy like me. Next slide, please. And it's the final one.

Alright. I don't know if you're like me, but I suspect many of you will be. Smart tags are super super, and, you know, the find my facilities, whether it be for your iPhone or other brands being available, are really important because, you know, the the magically disappearing stuff can also be magically reappeared when you start using the features that locate your device or your wallet or whatever else you choose to put down, which you know you had five minutes ago and no and can no longer find. So technology can really be helpful in situations like this for ADHD. So thank you very much for giving them the time and the platform, and I think I've brought those slides in more or less on Well, thank you.

And yes, thank you again for being part of this, and thrilled to have you here. We are running out of good time, so I will quickly jump over to your fabulous colleague well, not colleague, but colleague in this, to Michael. And just absolutely wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Really, really interesting. Over to you, Michael. So shall we bring in I'll bring in your slides. And I did want to say thank you so much and like and to both of you. And also to remind that you're obviously giving your time for free and sharing your knowledge for free, which is extraordinarily wonderful thing. And do but this is we are running this for charity. So for people watching, do please consider donating. You go to globaladhd.com and.

You can donate there. We also have Q and A there, although I think we're probably not going have time in this segment. But let's see. But do add your questions if you've got them. And that probably be wonderful. But we're hugely well, we're now going to pass over to Michael. And thank you very much, Neil, who's got this double booking issue.

And.

I need to bring up the presentation, which is my next big task. That actually works surprisingly well, look. I don't know, in terms of the formatting, you're reasonably in queue. I'm not quite yes, give me two seconds. And what's happening in the background is I'm currently rejigging the presentation screen. And I need to And say goodbye to that. So right, over to you.

Dokey. Thank you for repositioning that. Right. We're just going to go quickly or maybe straight in. I think I think we had already some conversations on who, but just in case because I don't know how they're going to yeah. I thought of going straight in, but just in case they I don't know how this is going to ultimately reuse. Thank you going back as well with completely I was trying to be a proactive side mover.

Like, for all of us in The UK, like, the whole next slide thing is very reminiscent of COVID, where we had those those daily or however often meetings and the chief medical officer were to have these simply like, next slide, please. And there'd be like more awful things. Every slide was a new awful thing for us to learn about. And this is not awful stuff. This is good stuff.

Good. Thank you. So, yeah, just to quickly so my name is Michael Vermeersch. I'm from Microsoft.

And we got a Microsoft enormous organization. I was just looking it up. Right? We have a very nice ATOS and, like, pretending that they're in the same league, like they've they're still huge multinational, but 11,000,000,000. And there's Microsoft touching every aspect of like almost every single individual apart from those poor fools who are too engaged with Apple. I didn't say that. Those people. So they have 11,000,000,000 revenue, which is an extraordinary amount. I mean It went down last year, just so I mean And your 198,000,000,000, just the the the quantum of difference is just something else.

Yeah. But must not must not forget this. We we would be nowhere without our partners. We wouldn't have the reach. We wouldn't have the scale. And it's so key that, you know, we need the village. We need the village to actually upon our mission, which is to empower every person and every organization on the planet so to achieve more. So we do need we need Atos. We need the other partners. We need that whole ecosystem. So definitely.

It is. It is. And and I've I've we are running this on a on a Windows 11 PC and Oh, it is. And so, yeah, so far so good. But and and if it does get out, I'm pretty sure it won't be you me tripping up on the plug.

No worries at all. So I'm the accessibility go to market manager at Microsoft and also the chair of the employee resource group, employees with disabilities at Microsoft UK. So we can just go to the next slide, please. So just to position this a bit, I like this slide. In this slide, at the end of the day, why are we having this conversation? Why are we having this this this event? Why are we having this celebration? And it is about to remove barriers right from the start. Here you see a picture of a conference center in The UK, and you can see that you have choice here. You can go from one place to the other one either by the stairs, if you feel sporty.

Or via ramp because, you know, today, you might want to use a ramp or you're having some luggage as well with you, with wheels and things like that, or you can use the elevator. And and this is not only great for people with disabilities, but that's for everybody because choice allows us to engage how we want and how we need to. And and I think this is what the essence is that the mess one of the message if you take one message away, this is one of the message that we're gonna bring. Provide choice so everybody can be their true best self. Remove those barriers, please. Next slide. And just a a little bit of level setting here. On the left hand side, we have the Equality Act, which is, an a UK Act, and that defines.

A person with a disability, a disabled person, as someone with a physical or mental impairment that has a long term substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out day to day activities. This is a great definition as it considers the day to day and what it mean, for example, let's say, let's say you have have to have a treatment. You have to have a treatment and that's in a hospital, and that hospital is 50 miles away, and you have to have that treatment once a week. Now going there, coming back will have an impact on your work life, will have an impact on your social life. And at that point, the equality act sees that that you are being disabled. So in that context.

We need to remove the barriers to make sure that you can be your true best self. On the right hand side, we have the definition of the World Health Organization, which is very similar to what in The UK is known as a social model disability. We like very much this this definition because it goes even more away from a condition. It focuses on the barriers that a person can face. And once you can do that, you only need to see what needs to be done to remove those barriers and then empower that person. These barriers can be physical, but also social, cultural. And that is very power. And just imagine on all the things you will be seeing today, just like, ah, if only this would be different. I would be be able to be my true best self, and people.

Would see me on what I can really bring into the equation rather than saying, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, let's not go too too too much on that. Next. Now what is the size of this exclusion? Well, there are over a billion people with disabilities on the planet. That's a lot of talent. That's a lot of market share. And, you know, okay. We're doing this ADHD Conference, and you will be amongst that seventeen percent. Seventy percent of people are born with a disability unless you die in full health means that eighty three percent of us will gain a disability during our working age, which then means that actually looking into this, removing virus consistently will help everybody.

So it's not just important for some of us. This is important for all of us. And if you think you're not hiring anybody with a disability, think again. Seventy percent of disabilities are invisible. You think, okay. Still, but not quite here. Well, in The UK, think again, that's thirteen million people. Again, that's a huge amount of talent. That's a huge amount of market share. The government in UK has calculated this for The UK. That is more than £250,000,000,000. It's now £274,000,000,000 per year that is locked away, that doesn't flow into the economy because of those barriers. And I think we can all agree that we would like to have some of that money now flow into the economy. Right? So they should remove the barriers. Next.

Now we're going to talk a bit about our journey, and, hopefully, that will give you a couple of examples of what you could do as well. Next. So it kind of started with that. Although that's not entirely true, this was something that happened in 2015. But as already was told, we've been there for a couple of years, actually, forty years in The UK. Pretty sure that we based on disability being invisible, that we've always hired we always had probably likely, had people with autism amongst us, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, visible because it's invisible. It wasn't necessarily a focus. And it was in April 2015.

That Mary Ellen Smith, a vice president of Microsoft UK, addressed the United Nations in New York announcing this new program, this new hiring program. Now a week later, what happens? We have, like, 700 CVs coming in. And the goal was to attract more more talent on your minority talent. And we had these roughly 700 CVs or more coming in just a little time later. We looked at those CVs and we saw that these CVs are far from typical. They all represent talent, but typically uninformed recruiters using typical screening methods would bin those CVs. There were gaps in the experience or there were too much detail. And this showed us that we completely needed to review on how we had to do a neurodiversity hiring.

And here I'm going to leave you with a question, which you obviously can't answer, but think about this. Would you rather hire someone who can do the job, or would you rather hire somebody who can write a great CV? I know what I would like, one who can do the job. Anyway, next. Now since 2015, we've learned a lot, and the program evolved from specifically the autism hiring program to the neurodiversity program. So what does that entail? Next. Now there's a lot on this slide. You can read at your leisure all about the stuff on the slide at the link which is underneath, but I can give you something that you could pop into your browser. It is a ka.ms/inclusivehiring. If you pop that into a browser.

You will get in detailed information around this. With the neurodiversity hiring program, we saw that we needed to do things differently. We needed to remove the barriers. Much of this information is shared here, but just zooming in on a couple here. We added workplace job coaching. That's an adjustment that helps employees to optimize executive function. The job coaching is catered to the needs of the employee, not telling the employee how things are supposed to be. It's just saying, okay. So what do you need to so we can remove the barriers. This can be around task initiation, prioritization, things like that. But also, you know, how what works to remove stress and and where our resources are around that. Also, to help gain confidence.

Or be an advocate in the workplace. To gain confidence in self advocacy or advocate for the employee. Also, manager and team training. Yes. You heard it well. There's nothing wrong with the individual. We train the manager and the team around the individual. This is not just for employees going through the program. This is any employee at Microsoft can request that training for their manager and their team as an adjustment to any point during their career. The content includes a social justice perspective that addresses communication and related barriers faced by neurominorities. What we've seen once people have gone through that training, they leave they leave with a better understanding of interactions with all colleagues.

Not just neurominorities. They get to be better colleagues. They get to be better managers. That's their general feedback. And let's face it again, you don't necessarily get this kind of training in school. Right? But it's so important in the workplace and even more now in a hybrid workplace. We've got community mentors. Community mentors are focused on assisting with onboarding for new employees. A disability LG group is a great resource for this kind of thing. Next. So ultimately, it is about making disability inclusion or accessibility mainstream. I'm repeating some links here, aka.ms/ disability inclusion or tenant driver. You will see what we're doing, aka.ms/accessibilityfeatures.

There you will see the continuing ongoing features that we have in our products to overcome those barriers. Aka.ms/microsoftaccessibility, that's a website that is continually showcasing what we're doing in this space. Ak.ms/inclusivehiring is all about the different programs we have around hiring. And, that will have resources for you as well as an employer, on what to use, what to reuse that you can implement yourself. Next. But what we saw as well in all of that change is that we needed to really look on how we do all kinds of things. And one of example here is that we based on this, also generated an inclusive workplace handbook. So it's not just about tools. It's not just about practices, but also about the working environment.

Next, just a couple of examples that we're going to talk about here. Ramps. Well, we kind of know ramps and we know that sometimes they're not there. Right? But here we see these ramps integrated into the surroundings. But what we're normalizing is we're normalizing accessibility. Again, look at that first picture we have at. We're just making that part of the surroundings. The surrounding is for you to be your true best selves. Next. Sound. Sounds can be so distracting. Right? Sounds can be awesome, but can be also so distracting. Well so we design around that as well. Well lit spaces to help lipreading, have a screen to provide captions, making sure that the technology doesn't interfere with Bluetooth hearing aids.

But then making sure that, you know, the acoustics are what they should be, not overwhelming. Next. Use of detectable and tactile surface to indicate boundaries. That's not just useful for somebody who's, for example, blind. It's also useful so where do I really cross the road? Oh, wow. Looks like here. And it can be it's not just signals with color. It's not just signals with tactile. It's all of that together. Now some of these examples can just help everybody. So it's really creating the inclusive environment. Where does this lead us? Next story. Next. Now when you look at all of this environment, practices, software, we saw that this is changing our culture. And as people in our organization.

Saw that they are more valued for being themselves and being listened to, they started exercising their voice more, those invisible disabilities. They started to actually, you know, call things in. This is how things should be. This is what makes products better. And we started producing better products and service because of this, because of that culture change. And this actually created a better future for how we do things. This becomes a cycle. And as we this happens more and more, and this is reinforced because people get listened to, employees driving a change, more partners and customers are asking for this change of work as well. And like this, This reinforces this cycle. And guess what? This is nothing necessarily to do with us.

You can do this too because at this point in time, I haven't specifically mentioned a Microsoft product. It's about changing your culture, listening more, including people more, happy to be their true best selves, and they will tell you what could be better in your organization, what could change for the better so you can get more out of your talent, but also get more of that market share. Next. Now I'm going to say this a little bit differently, the same thing. Don't just do this because it feels like a good thing to do. This will change you, and you will have to change. And that means you need to want that change and embrace it and embrace it intentionally. But the rewards are awesome.

Couple of examples. Next. Yes. Starting to read my mind here. So here are a couple of examples how I am considering neurodiversity is changing us. I think in the previous session, it might have been mentioned read aloud, using voice with dictate, getting captions within our products. That came from that very community. And that helps us make better products and that helps so much more people. Helps people, for example, being in a noisy environment, seeing captions on the screen that we now can have everything, thanks to Windows 11. Even when you see a video which doesn't have captions, Windows 11 will generate those captions for you. Next. Now I'm not sure you heard about learning tools.

Learning tools is built into our products, and a game came from that community. And it wouldn't have happened if we didn't give them that voice that we empower them. This was first produced during a competition. Now it's pretty much across all our products. This was originally to help dyslexic students with reading. But to be fair, you know what? I use it when I'm looking at those busy websites that you can have with loads of adverts and things like that. I just look at what the company's stuff, you know, getting your advertising. Did I say that? I shouldn't have said that. But that can help me focus, and that's how I like to work. Now today, Immersive Reader is available in over 30 languages and used by over 13,000,000 monthly active.

Users shows you that this is really welcomed and really useful. Next. You can integrate that, by the way, in your website. Don't go back. We're continuing. This is another example that I quickly added in this presentation. But for example, visual effects. We're actually baking this through all our products, but this is an example for Windows 11 where you you know, I don't want to generalize in these kind of things. It's generally about having choice. Whether you want to have a more simple interface, you can tune that in your operating system. Oh, let's say the animation. I want things to be like this. And this is what, again, gives that very first slide. It's about choice, making you be your true best selves by removing barriers. Next.

Now this also rubs off on our partner ecosystem. Here's a product from one of our partners, but we have many many partners. I already mentioned that. This you might have heard about this product called Teams. This is a platform where people can collaborate. It also supports bots. And this I'm just highlighting this phenomenal bot here, which can provide support for neurominorities. And one of the feedback we had from an employee was the bot is always there. It's always available. If I ask stupid questions how things work or I feel they're stupid or they might be stupid questions, the bot doesn't judge. It is resilient. I can ask loads of things contingency, and different ways. And it makes.

So how do you do this? I can ask the bot. Removing barriers. And the bot will say, oh, by the way, if you wanna do this, I'll tell you how to do this. And that's just so, again, removing barriers, but as artificial intelligence within the product itself. And we've seen that this helps neurominorities incredibly. Next. If you're a member of the business disability forum at the businessdisabilityforum.org.uk, check out their toolkits. You will find a neurodiversity toolkit here with loads of resources. We have specifically supported this toolkit and contributed, material to that toolkit. So definitely recommend it. Next. Another opportunity for you. If you want to attract neurodiverse talent, consider hooking into this.

This is called the neurodiversity career connector. So we together with a a number of other organizations, we set this up where you can have talent, neurominority talent, neurodiverse talent connecting to employers. If you're an employer and you're not on there yet, you know, get on there so you can get access to the talent. If you're part of and you're a minority, get on there to connect with organizations who wants your talent, who appreciate your talent. Next. Here's a slide with some extra resources. I think they're going to share the PDF which will give you access to all those links. Here, for example, you see how to actually do the hiring, do extra material, not just on neurodiversity. But guess what? You know? You Oh.

So it is a rich ecosystem out there. Why exclude why exclude people? Just harness that talent. All of these things will help you be more inclusive and get more access to more talent. And that's me done probably. Next. Yes. Absolutely wonderful.

Like, like, I can't I can't don't think I have quite words enough for Thank you. It's just the breadth and depth of what you're doing is is exceptional. And, yeah, sorry, hard to take it all.

If you have any questions, just go for it.

No, it's very kind. It's and if people do want to like if people go to globaladhd.com and go to Q and A, they can add some questions. They can upvote, downvote them. And do, whilst you're there, donate. And actually, I'm going to use let's see if this might work. I'm gonna use this opportunity to say like, so far we have raised £3,588 and £34 which is a big deal to us. We are a small charity. And so do but do do donate, right? Like, so it goes it gets it goes to all the charities that are participating in in organizing this. So it's ADHD UK, ADHD New Zealand, and in South Africa, the South African ADHD charity, Goldlocks and the Bears. They clearly diverted on the naming plan that ADHD New Zealand and ADHD UK came up with. The.

Yeah, no, it's like it's genuinely like Microsoft obviously touches so many lives. And actually, talking of the focus tools that Atos talked about, like it's there. What do you see like if we scroll like if you look at how fast some of the changes have happened, and I thought I know this is a long time in tech. But like if we scrolled forward ten years, what do you think? What would you think you'd hope to be there then?

Well, hope.

Which is not a strategy because my MBA professor hope.

Let's use the word hope. I mean, it would be it wouldn't be right to say, well, this is what I'm expecting. Bearing in mind my age, I've seen Star Trek. I lived at Star Trek, and for the moment, I'm still disappointed. It is disappointing. So I I see artificial intelligence remove more barriers and be part of the way we do work more and more, be it in our office productivity tools, but also in general in our applications and things like that where, you know, we we've seen this. So these these so if I just mentioned, for example, the captions things, what we see now, we can have now that experience where when you talk, the captions get generated, the transcripts get generated offline. We're now seeing that. So before.

It was in the clouds. With cloud servers, infinite compute, you can do lots of stuff. Right? Now machine learning has allowed that to bring that to a laptop. You know? The cloud is not your laptop. I see more and more of those things happening where artificial intelligence will help you to remove barriers. And I think that's really exciting. And I think that's an area where, you know, people need to look into. Organization need to look into. And and guess what? That's also sustainable when we don't have technology removing those barriers for so many reasons. But, also, the other thing as well, just when there is a barrier, it costs more as well. You know, you have to do more to get the same result.

Or you have to ask for help, which means that that person then can't be part of the economy because that person then has to help. So it's all more not having those barriers removed. What what that then means, like, we're gonna find that planet. Goodness sake. We need to re we need to use the resource. We need to treasure the resource. We need to treasure the talent that is out there, and we treasure the resources. Talking We've.

Had some questions in and some with upvotes. So I feel like you're two blokes, particularly I can't particularly don't want to filter this, but that's an important question, Volsdoc. It's not really a question, but I've noticed more so with Microsoft sites than that all the pictures or predominantly pictures are of men and not representing neurodiverse women. It makes me feel the women employed by Microsoft are underrepresented. It makes me feel excluded. And I thought you'd probably want to respond to that.

Well, you know, I think we I think what we're seeing now so I don't know the exact figure figures, but we definitely have more representation. You can see our representation on employment in our reports that we publish annually. You we also report on the on the gender pay gap. So, hopefully, that will give you a a different picture. Now based on that, we do know that there is an underdiagnosis with women with regards to neurodiversity. And I think that's definitely work that we need to look into of not obviously, not diagnosing, but by hiring by by looking more at inclusive processes on, for example, allowing hybrid work, online flexible work.

I think we will find it's a bit like that first picture. Right? It's about having all those choices on how you can be your very true best selves and how you can excel. And that's the thing that that is where we need to focus on and and get to that more that workforce with all that talent.

On on that question, though, because it's great. I think that reporting is great. Obviously, it's really very positive. And I think as a wider neurodiversity challenge, we do want to start to see that reporting more granular. So where we where there is disability reporting, one of the things we want to see is start to segment out neurodiversity, make sure that we're not seeing complete vacuums of neurodiversity in companies. But also then within that, at gender, at other diversities. Like because I think the question from that person was, is it like like, is it mostly male neurodiverse people? Like, are women neurodiverse people under, you know, underrepresented?

I think there is I I think we I think throughout the decades, we had challenges with diagnose diagnosis. And for example so I'm not going to tell you my age, but you you can guess, but I only got diagnosed a couple of years back. So, you know, and at school, my parents were just told, right, don't bother doing anything with this person. That person will never get anywhere. It was set in slightly more scientific language, but it was pretty much Wow. So quite sure which is not showing. Here I am. So I think throughout the decades, we're still evolving, and I don't wanna comment on the medical or psych psychological industry. I think we're still evolving. But, absolutely, I think we have the research where women.

Are more, cover more, mask more, are more expected to mask and cover more, which means that we probably have a lot more women in the workforce that are actually part of those neurominorities. And and what we need to do is is making sure that people can be their true best selves. And and and, you know, by having those programs, we are telling the public, we are telling talent that we welcome that talent, we welcome that market share. And and that's a that's a bit where we are. I mean, I can't we can't really say, you know, maybe this is something that, you know, the ADHD organization could look into and how can they accelerate the the process of getting to a more inclusive diagnosis processes. So yeah.

We're we're definitely I think I think we are definitely that's something that's important. I I do think it was I think it's an interesting that that measuring piece that does end up being quite interesting. And I thank you for giving like a full answer on it and talking through it and thinking about it like it was an interesting response. I think we do have to call it because I think we are like, although we are in ADHD Conference, and I was kind of reveling in in running just a tiny bit late. Okay. We're now, like, twenty minutes late. So now I do feel bad. And.

I know you you you're very kind minutes over a whole day. It's not bad.

We've still got, like, however many hours to go. But we've got some quite hard timelines we can sort of start to hit. I don't want to over you've been fantastic. And thank you so much. Mean, that's genuinely extraordinarily insightful. Thank you for answering the questions and even, like go on.

If you can follow me on LinkedIn, just going to close with that. If you can follow me on LinkedIn, the current campaign on dyslexia is generated by a leading female in our organization with dyslexia.

Oh, fantastic.

So boom. There you are. And it's only because she can be her true best self that she on top of her hard work, that she has has kicked off this campaign with all the backing that Microsoft can bring. So so, yeah, you know, it's sometimes you just don't know. Right? Yeah. Absolutely.

You've been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming and doing this. Like, it's a kind of a I honestly like, it's also it's a very big deal having, you, having Microsoft at this conference. It elevates it in a way which is very special. And so I really like we this is the first year of doing it and you've jumped in and supported without it having a, you know, a reputational backing. And it's a big deal that you've had that faith. And actually, it's a testament to your want to help make change that you've done this despite that. It's because you've had to, like.

You know, take a leap in in in into the dark, you thinking, right, this will I think this will do some help and help people, so I'm gonna do it. And that's a wonderful thing. And I genuinely like, it's made a big difference here. It's made a big difference to what we've been able to do. And the it's had a sort of cascading effect on other people coming. It's a very big deal. So I I kind of wanted to acknowledge that because I working and representing such an incredible company, like, it comes with a a gravitas that, you know, you you well, I I strongly believe you've used for good today. So and and used for good in many circumstances, but particularly today, and we value it. So thank you. But we can't.

Do we can't make this change alone. We need organizations like you to remove those barriers, be that voice.

So Well, thank you. Unless we do benefit from some Microsoft grants. I think we get the the Office and We got models. Which which we which we appreciate. But we're genuine because we actually do get to use some quite kick like, very high enterprise level software for for for very negligible money, which in in most cases, completely free. And it is there's a big package of support. If you're from another charity, like, you should definitely load that up. And I'm like, it's we've got to go. We're late. We are about to get a story told to us. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you so much. Thank you for overrunning.