Microsoft Accessibility Boss Jenny Lay-Flurrie Talks Ability Summit, Chatbots, More In New Interview

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Microsoft Accessibility Boss Jenny Lay-Flurrie Talks Ability Summit, Chatbots, More In New Interview

Steven Aquino
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Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Steven covers accessibility and assistive technologies.

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Mar 8, 2023,01:00pm EST

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Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s Ability Summit conference has a rather humble origin story to tell.

The Redmond-based tech titan is holding the thirteenth-annual affair this week, which is a big milestone. The event began in 2010 as an internal initiative spearheaded by chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie. It was originally conceived as a means of bringing members of the disability community together to discuss best practices for properly supporting disabled employees.

“[Ability Summit] started off with when I was chair of the disability group, and I wanted to bring people with disabilities together to start sharing best practice in the company,” Flurrie said to me about how the event got off the ground in an interview conducted last week via videoconference. “It was an internal thing. We had 20 people in the room. You know, way back when, I thought that was magical because the level of conversations that people having [...]