New at Summit - Accessibility Side Sessions

Want to dive deep into how Microsoft is innovating in design empathy and accessibility?  Perhaps you want to learn how we are transforming the accessibility experience in Office. At the 2014 MVP Global Summit, accessibility will make its first appearance with session presenter and Microsoft Accessibility GM Rob Sinclair.

Rob and his team are dedicated to empowering people of all ages and abilities to see, hear, and use their devices, software, and content. He is working on a new generation of technologies that automatically adapt to a person’s individual needs, preferences, and immediate surroundings. Today, people are asked to adapt to technology. People-centric design greatly expands the ways people can interact with technology, including voice commands, touch, and gestures.

Each of the Accessibility sessions is poised to contain a high level of insight, knowledge and engagement. People-Centric design is about making technology accessible for everyone - users with disabilities or temporary impairments as common as reading a smart-phone screen on a sunny day.

"It is an approach that creates personalized technology, devices and experiences that anticipate our needs, understand our intentions and adapt to our immediate surroundings," said Sinclair. " It is also fueling innovations that range from Kinect to safer operating rooms. Simply put, when you design technologies that adapt to individuals you broaden access for everyone.

MVPs can customize their Accessibility experience at the 2014 MVP Summit via ScheduleBuilder

Date	Time	Title	Speaker	Abstract
11/6/2014	9:00-9:30	People-Centric Design	Rob Sinclair	People-Centric design is about making technology accessible for everyone – users with disabilities or temporary impairments as common as reading a smart-phone screen on a sunny day. It is an approach that creates personalized technology, devices and experiences that anticipate our needs, understand our intentions and adapt to our immediate surroundings. It is also fueling innovations that range from Kinect to safer operating rooms. Simply put, when you design technologies that adapt to individuals you broaden access for everyone.
	9:40-10:30	Visual Studio and Visual Studio Online (VSO) Accessibility: Open Forum	Cathy Sullivan	We’re interested in meeting and chatting with MVPs that can help us improve the accessibility experience in Visual Studio and in VSO. We want to know more about how you use Visual Studio as a user or as a developer who creates accessible applications. So come share your experiences, ideas, and even pain points with us!
	10:30-11:00	Break
	11:00-12:30	A Decade of Making Accessible Apps to Help People and What I've Learned	Guy Barker	Guy Barker’s built free assistive technology (AT) tools leveraging powerful Microsoft technologies for more than ten years. Keen to enable all developers to build their own AT solutions, Guy’s created educational sample apps and posts. To his surprise, he’s now a customer of an app built from one of his own AT samples. At this session, Guy will discuss a collection of his AT apps and samples, show videos of students using an app, debug his recent Windows 8.1 Store apps, (State your Name Please and 8 Way Speaker,) and spotlight where things went well – and not so well – along this journey.
	12:30-13:30	Lunch
	13:30-15:00	Two for One: Office Help and How To Plus Web Accessibility	Becky Montgomery; Cynthia Shelly	Representatives from the Office team will talk about what they are doing to make help and how to experiences more accessible in Office and also hear what's working and not for you with Office 365 in the first half of this session. Cynthia Shelly, who has several years of working on web accessibility for Microsoft, will talk about our latest efforts in this area and learn from what you are experiencing.
	15:00-15:30	Break
	15:30-17:00	Designing for All and What We’ve Learned	Kelly Ford; Mary Bellard; Wendy Chisholm	Microsoft has been involved in some innovative projects over the last year around accessibility. The projects have ranged in size but started with the idea of asking how can we make not only the results but also the process as accessible as possible. Come hear what we’ve learned and share your experiences and thoughts. The first project in conjunction with several partners in the UK is looking at how you can increase availability of information about the physical environment and navigation for people who are blind as a starting point. The second was a hackathan effort to enhance some eye gaze technology used by Steve Gleason and others who use such technology. We’ve also tried this approach on various development of web pages and site designs.