how does she manage her everyday working life at Microsoft

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Reasons for this include differences in school education. According to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2019, 16 percent of 25- to 44-year-olds with disabilities had no school qualifications. For non-disabled people, the rate was only four percent.

Microsoft's ambitious efforts to create a barrier-free future are constantly increasing and the company offers a variety of ways to optimally include people with disabilities in our society. An extraordinary example of this is the "Seeing AI" app . Thanks to this app, people with visual disabilities have the opportunity to have their environment explained to them in the form of an audible experience. Feelings and activities of people standing around are recorded and communicated to the blind person via italy consumer email list voice output, banknotes are recognized during cash payment and verified verbally, and entire texts are reproduced via voice output. Product information can be "viewed" via explanatory voice output. This free service is available in German, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish and Turkish, also in the App Store.

The integration of AI into assistive technologies forms Microsoft's foundation for an accessible environment, which was underlined in 2018 with the creation of a $25 million program. The goal of this program is to advance the development of assistive technologies.

Supporting products and services are classified into six categories, with a supporting service recommendation and tips for every conceivable handicap:

1. Vision: accessible tools and functions for blind, colorblind or visually impaired people
2. Hearing: supporting functions for the hearing impaired, hard of hearing or deaf
3. Neurodiversity: Tools for people with dyslexia, seizures, autism or other cognitive disabilities
4. Learning: Applications for people with learning difficulties
5. Mobility: a whole range of products for people with arthritis, quadriplegia, spinal cord injuries and other mobility problems
6. Mental health: assistive technologies for people with bipolar disorder, anxiety, PTSD, depression or ADHD
“We must move towards understanding accessibility as a quality standard for a modern country.”
Jürgen Dusel, Federal Government Commissioner for People with Disabilities
For my research into everyday life, I was very lucky to be able to get Franziska Sgoff and Hans-Walter Untch from Microsoft as interview partners. Franzi has been blind since birth. She already used assistive technologies during her school days and was able to take advantage of the benefits of a mixed school environment. Today, she is a Customer Success Manager at Microsoft and is dedicated to the topics of diversity and inclusion, both technically and across industries.