Investing In Accessibility

From Deficit to Advantage: Angela Lean, Senior Accessibility Program Lead at Microsoft

• Kelvin Crosby & Chris Maher • Season 1 • Episode 24

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In this episode of Investing in Accessibility, co-hosts Kelvin Crosby and Chris Maher sit down with Angela Lean, Senior Accessibility Program Lead at Microsoft, for a powerful conversation about turning disability into a true competitive advantage. Angela shares her lived experience of having a stroke at age 12, how her perspective shifted from “succeeding despite disability” to “succeeding because of it,” and why she now sees disability as a core asset in her life and work.

Angela walks us through her unconventional career path—from answering phones in Senator Tom Harkin’s office just after the ADA passed, to shaping accessibility and AI initiatives inside one of the world’s largest tech companies. She explains how Microsoft is using AI to support employees with disabilities, improve tools like screen readers and captioning, and build services such as the Enterprise Disability Answer Desk. The conversation digs into why accessibility is not a cost center but a massive market opportunity touching 1.5 billion people, how entrepreneurs can plug into Microsoft’s ecosystem, and how AI can personalize work so that disabled and non-disabled people can use the same tools on an equal footing. If you care about inclusive innovation, the future of work, or investing in accessibility as good business—not just good intentions—this episode is for you.

Links & Resources:

Angela Lean: LinkedIn

Microsoft Accessibility Support for Customers: Website

Microsoft Marketplace: Website (trusted source for cloud solutions, AI app, and agents)

The Huddle for Families: Website

COMING SOON!

American Sign Language (ASL) and Captioning for each episode will be provided on our YouTube channel. Go to handle @SamaritanPartners.

Kelvin Crosby:

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners Podcast. We're not waiting for change. We're investing. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating more accessible world. Hey, hey, hey, it's another beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm so excited that you're here at investing in accessibility. I'm your host, Kelvin Crosby. And I got my co-host Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher:

Good, Kelvin. How are you, my friend? It's good to see you and good to be with you.

Kelvin Crosby:

Yeah, I'm I'm excited about today. I mean, what's interesting is your when your daughter was on the episode last time, you know, that was a lot of fun. I still am trying to recover from the restraint camp, you know? That is one thing I'm still trying to recover from.

Chris Maher:

I'm never gonna live that one down. I still I still have like nightmares and night sweats when I think about that. It was all out of our love for our daughter and trying to help her. It may have been a little misguided, but we tried. By the way, before we get into more of that, where you make fun of me, you had a birthday recently.

Kelvin Crosby:

I did.

Chris Maher:

You and I talked that day, but happy birthday, buddy.

Kelvin Crosby:

Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I'm trying to get younger, but it seems to not work. But hey, it's what it is. But uh yeah, I mean I'm really excited on today's topic. We're gonna begin the AI conversation.

Chris Maher:

Well, with that, Kelvin, I'm gonna introduce our guest today. It's a super treat. And our guest today is Angela Lean, who's the Senior Accessibility Program Lead at Microsoft. Welcome, Angela.

Angela Lean:

Thanks. Nice to see you guys or talk to you guys.

Chris Maher:

Yeah, good to have you with us. And and so just a quick kind of background on how Angela and I met. It was several months ago. It was back, maybe back early beginning the summer, right? Early, right? Early summer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Chris Maher:

And we were both at a dinner for a wonderful organization, a nonprofit called Teach Access. And I had the very good fortune of sitting next to Angela at dinner. We hit it off and started talking about our family. It was mostly about our families and our kids, and but I just had such a wonderful, delightful evening with Angela. And then we've just kind of stayed in touch since. And after a couple of conversations, I said, I think we need to have you on the podcast to tell your story and to talk about the work you're doing. So that's what we're gonna do today. So Angela, let's start with your lived experience and your relationship to disability. I think that's a really good place to start. So let's begin there and then we'll dig into things.

Angela Lean:

Yeah, no, sure. I actually, so I am a member of the community. I have a mobility challenge. I had a stroke when I was 12. I was jump roping on the playground and I collapsed in elementary school. So spent some time in the ICU in the Jewel Rehab Hospital for about five months, went back to school. Today I live with, I primarily operate with just full use of my right arm. And I also have an AFO on my left leg. So my left side has been affected pretty profoundly. A lot of it's come back. I'm ambulatory, I've had kids, I've been married, I work full-time. Like, so I'm very, I'm very engaged, has not been as much of a factor as some may think. For those who don't live with disabilities, may be a little bit surprised, but you know, it's great, it's part of who I am. And I do remember, one story I was gonna tell, is I remember having my son, my son's now 22. When he was a toddler, I was very concerned with, he's my firstborn, how he would think about his mother being disabled. And I remember being like, oh my God, how am I gonna tell him? I had his whole narrative going when basically what I just told you guys that you know, mommy got sick and she has this thing and she's just different from everybody else, blah blah blah. I remember he was just walking and he walked by me and I was sitting on the stairs and he saw my AFO, my splint, which is like basically a thing that keeps my ankle at a right angle. And he walked over, he goes, Mom, what's he was barely talking? He's like, What is that? And I remember telling him, like, I started this whole thing about oh, mommy has a disability, she has a stroke, blah, blah, blah. He goes, Oh, that's nice, and walked away. So obviously it's a non, for those who understand and like know me, it's not an issue, it's just part of who I am. And I think that story tells in a great way of how it works.

Chris Maher:

Yeah. And it speaks to just how kids are amazing. Right. Like how they're so much better about inclusion and not letting things be of concern to them. I have a quick question. You were 12 years old. So my daughter, so she was born with what's called polymicrogyria, which manifests itself as a form of spastic hemiplegia on her left side. She also wore an AFO from probably a year, year and a half old until seventh grade when she had surgery on her gastroc tendon to loosen that up. But she never knew any different. And she talks about this, she always knew that she was different because she wore the brace and the other kids didn't. But for you, as they say, were typical for your first 12 years. And what was that experience like when you went back to school after having the stroke and then having to go through that long rehabilitation process? I mean, I'm sure it was a it was a physical challenge, but I'm guessing it was probably a pretty emotional challenge as well.

Angela Lean:

Yeah, I mean, I think as a kid, you are more resilient to your point. I think it was, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I had pretty high expectations for my ability to compete or perform or, you know, live up to sort of standards. And I think that there was a lot of pressure sort of psychologically to like not miss a beat. I was sixth grade, so there wasn't that much that I was missing, to be honest. But I think, you know, I think it's part of my next sort of, you know, in part of the prep, I was thinking, you know, as I kind of went through high school and I kind of transitioned into college, I think that my disability was always a deficit that I was very proud of overcoming, right? So it's something that I was really like, hey, you know, I went to Yale despite the fact that I had disability. My narrative was all about sort of my personal experience and how that affected my ability. But I was still academically, you know, proficient or capable and above average. I was, you know, I was a champ. But you know, what's interesting is I've gotten older, I think the transition has now become my disability is truly an asset.

Chris Maher:

Yeah.

Angela Lean:

So I flipped the narrative in my head from being like, I am successful despite of it. Now I feel like I'm successful, and even more successful, because of it. And I'm not sure if that has to do with the fact that it was the onset was when it was later, but I do think it was a very interesting transition. So it may not answer your question per se, but I do think, I did have the perspective of what it meant to be sort of completely functional in a way that most people are.

Chris Maher:

Yeah.

Angela Lean:

And and it's being, I mean, there is a there is a grief, a grieving process, right? Because there's extreme frustration. And I just think that I've learned to cope with that frustration in different ways as I've aged.

Kelvin Crosby:

I mean, I think one of the interesting things you bring that up, like when I got diagnosed with my Usher syndrome, I was almost turning thirteen. And you just try to overcome it, you know. And then as I've gotten over it, like how you talked about it, it becomes who you are and it and it becomes an asset. And I mean, in so many different ways. I'm seeing how it transformed my life in a way that now I'm able to do things that I never would have done if I could see, you know. You make a really good point, and I mean I think it's really important to remember that individuals with disabilities, and really it's a challenge. But when you allow the challenge to be all encompassing, then it becomes, okay, I have to keep pushing through. When you allow the challenge to be, alright, I got this and this is it. Now, how how can I impact the world with it?

Angela Lean:

Yeah, no, Kelvin, I'm totally 100% with you. I talk about the tyranny of the should or the standard, I should say. And I think when you accept yourself for who you are and how you perform, or just how you operate is different. It actually sparks resilience and it sparks innovation. So I think we often talk about sort of how important lived experience at Microsoft is because we have folks using, you know, who are quasi-testers, right? So for example, we have one of our lead designers on PowerPoint, does a lot of work with our blind community. And they often look at features before they go out or after they go out. And what's so interesting is they're actually showing him how to look at PowerPoint from a consumption perspective and a blind consumption perspective. Where he creates PowerPoint from a designer perspective.

Chris Maher:

Right.

Angela Lean:

So the contrast is so telling in terms of sort of how things land and how things can be used differently, even for who he typically has them land with, right? So I just it's such a fascinating process, and that's why I love what I do. So I'm jumping a little bit forward.

Chris Maher:

No, no. I mean, Angela, I love what you just said, and a few things I'm just gonna kind of pull out and highlight because I think there are common themes with a lot of our guests and certainly things that I look for in entrepreneurs and companies that I invest in. And so to hear you talk about, as someone who is right now at one of the largest technology companies in the world, and that's part of you know, you talk about how it's important to you, but it's certainly something, and we're gonna get into this. It sounds like it's also become a part of the culture there at Microsoft. But, you know, the fact that you were like my mentality changed from I was succeeding or achieving despite my disability to now you feel like you're achieving because of it. And a good friend of mine, who you folks may may know, who's gonna be a future guest on the podcast, Diego Marascal, who runs 2Gether International, which is an accelerator that supports entrepreneurs with disabilities, he talks about disability as a competitive advantage all the time. And I think that he has that same mentality of like, hey, we are achieving and succeeding, not in spite of our disability, but because of it, right? Because it's teaching us things like being problem solvers, being resilient, being adaptive, right? Like that's all the stuff I saw in my daughter. It's all the stuff I see, Angela, in you, in Kelvin, in the entrepreneurs I speak to. And those are good traits, certainly if you're an entrepreneur and you're building businesses, but it's they're just good traits for the game of life as well.

Angela Lean:

Oh, yeah. No, I'm I mean, I will say I can Kelvin and I were just chatting before we started, right? About our ability to navigate a subway platform with a disability. Like, can we just talk about life, like life skills? Oh, yeah. That's something we, Kelvin, you and I should put on our resume. We can get through a crowd with a key or with like nobody's business, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do also think so. I mean, the way we look at it at Microsoft is, or one of the ways we looked at it, the the disability population, WHO said is 1.3 billion people. Okay, that is a market. Yeah, that is a bigger market than most countries. Okay, so let's just be really clear that we are consumers, we are users of technology, we are innovators, and we are contributors to the world. And everybody's gonna be affected by disability. So, not to get on my soapbox too early, but I do think it's really important to think of us as an opportunity, right? And as an asset, not just as an employee, like an employee base, but also as a consumer. So people need to design things to be more inclusive and to make the world different and better for that 1.3 billion people because we're gonna change the world. Yep, right?

Chris Maher:

We're with you. We're you're preaching to the choir, my friend.

Kelvin Crosby:

We're driving. You know, you don't want me to get all the oh oh churchy on. I'm like, hey, yeah, amen.

Angela Lean:

Okay, but you can tell me how fun Calvin was.

Chris Maher:

So that's I know. Well, I wanted it to surprise you.

Angela Lean:

Uh, very kind of you, although I did listen to some of the banter from the earlier podcast.

Chris Maher:

Yeah, I told you we were gonna have some fun.

Angela Lean:

I think I did. Yeah.

Chris Maher:

So so Angela, I think that's a good segue into the the arc of your professional career and how your lived experience, you know, informed, directed that. So you take it away and because it it is a fascinating arc of your of your work experience. And so I'd love for you to kind of take us through that. And then I'm sure that Calvin and I are gonna have some questions for you.

Angela Lean:

Yeah, so I don't think it's as much an arc or a straight line as a zigzag. So let's just be really clear that my career path is not traditional. But I do think so, but you know, college, I went to Yale as an undergrad study. History was not the most pragmatic route for for professions. Then I went to DC because I was pretty politically active and ended up working for Tom Harkin's office, subcommittee and disability policy in 1993, which is three years after the ADA was passed. Okay, and Tom Harkin, as everybody knows, was the author of the ADA. So worked with this really inspiring community, a guy named Bobby Silverstein, who was sadly passed, but he was a lawyer. I was literally the receptionist. And I sat there and I like answered phones from constituents and wrote letters about the ADA. And I think what was important was not so much what I was doing, but sort of what I learned in terms of being part of this community. It was a community that I never knew and a community that I never really under, you know, I never really felt a part of. And I think it was sort of like my my entree into sort of what this could be. Then I left because TC was not for me. Went to Asia, did some random things with my partner and then who became my husband, and then came back to get my MBA and then did some tours of duty in corporate America. So then I went to AMX, T Mobile, a bunch of places. Ended up back here at Microsoft 15 years ago. And I remember being like, I was being interviewed for my first job, which was for mice and keyboards, so marketing for mice and keyboards. We had a whole line of hardware around that. And the guy who was interviewing me was a gentleman by the name of Stuart Ashman, who's a general manager. So he was the as appropriate, which means he was a guy who's approving my candidacy or my sort of, you know, my interview loop. And he says to me, Why, why are you passionate about technology? And to be really honest with you, I wasn't. But then I told him, I said, because I am I'm a mom of two toddlers and I use one hand and I work full time. So the technology I use on my phone keeps me living. It's my assistive technology in a sense that kind of keeps me going because I can do both work, I can do personal things, I keep in touch with my family. It was actually a sidekick, which is really, really old fun that people and I was like, it keeps me going and it keeps me operating with one hand and on the fly. Like I'm always moving. And he's like, you know what, that's the best answer I've ever gotten. And I remember Stuart was like a GM for like 30 years. I think he's in and out of Microsoft in terms of consulting. And I was so proud of my answer. And I didn't realize it was took completely off the cuff. I didn't realize, like, in when I applied to business school, I talked about sort of wanting to work with technology and sort of disability and creating assistive technology. I didn't use that language, but that's what I was sort of conceptualizing. And I didn't pursue it, but then I realized that it just sat with me. And then after about 10 years in marketing and sales readiness roles, I had the opportunity to go work for the Office of Accessibility. And I realized that this is my passion, that I wanted to actually be part of this community and move the ball forward for Microsoft because it was one of the biggest platforms companies in the world that could really make a difference. And that's where I ended up in the last five years.

Chris Maher:

Love it. I love it. I love how all that lived experience kind of coalesced with the work you're doing today. So, can can you dig into your work? I guess there's a couple things about Microsoft, like the work you're doing now, because you're involved in some really cool projects there, but you're also involved in some work outside of Microsoft on boards. And so let's start there before we get into kind of how I believe Microsoft is is really kind of a shining light and a leader around accessibility. I personally think it has a lot to do with some of the, you know, starts with Satya Nadella because he has a little experience with disability. But let's start with you and your role first, and then we'll talk about the broader Microsoft.

Angela Lean:

Yeah. So I think for the first four years on this team, I was working on employee experience. One of the cooler things I got to work on was I did a survey of our employees with disabilities, and I said, What are your biggest challenges? Not in those words, but that was some of what we did. And we found out the discoverability of disability and accessibility resources at the company were very disparate and hard for people to find. So we were like, how do we address that? Well, guess what? AI is here. So let's create a tool, an agent. So I had I had the privilege, thank you. That's a word I wanted to use, of actually creating an agent for our employees that was based on the disability resources that we had at the company, whether it be how to navigate self-ID or how to get an accommodation or how to find manager readiness tools around neurodiversity. And it was actually pretty, it was we did this last last year, last fiscal. So, like sort of it it launched basically in March and really well received, not just by the disability community because it worked really well for folks, but by the engineering community. Because it was pretty progressive in terms of saying, hey, this is a solution for people who actually need the information quickly, and it needs to consolidate and sort of tell not just the background on the information we need for problem solving, but how to action it. So it was a very sort of great real-life example of copilot and how it can do that. And then we actually took it a step further and we started creating sort of our own sort of UIs and sort of tracking so that we could actually have a little bit more customization. Because copilot was great in terms of the screen readers, but not ideal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Angela Lean:

So we actually had folks in our team do some pressure testing and we created a different UI that we thought was better for the screen reader experience.

Speaker 2:

Very good.

Angela Lean:

Which I then I'm actually going to try to work with partners to kind of create sort of the templates that people can use because we want to get sort of ahead of that before Copilot might get there, right? Copilot agent I'm talking about are students. So again, like, you know, great work that's going on there, but you know, right now they're not quite as custom for the screen reader experience as we wanted to be. And the part of the reason we could do that was because I have blind devs on my team who could who could work on that. And I had users, testers on my team who could give me real-time feedback. So that's actually a really cool thing we did, a pretty innovative um internal.

Chris Maher:

Um quick question on that. The you said that it wasn't just the the employee population with disabilities, but also the engineering team was finding it very valuable. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Angela Lean:

Yeah, it was just a very a different application of AI that they hadn't seen. And I think it was so it was the one of my exec sponsors for the ERT is a leader in the in the engineering team. And he was just so excited to see employees kind of like rallying around sort of, you know, our tools and trying to make things work better for an internal population. You he actually, you know, was very committed to the to the community, but I think you know, he was like, this is not just good for the community, this is just good for AI. And it's great, it's a good demonstration of how we can use our own tools to forward the experience at Microsoft. I think that's why he was excited. And it was, you know, it was just it was a good project and it was something that we can we took initiative, and I think he was just like, hey, this is great. You guys are showing you we're the tip of the spear, right? And he's like, How often is I mean, it's sort of like to our conversation before about how we're innovators, it was a great showcasing of how the disability community could be an innovation engine, right? Yeah for for not just our employees, but for our tools, right? Because I've demo demoed that to like different advisory boards that I'm on and different, and they're all like this is really cool, right? And I think, and we also took it and we customized it a little bit further. So we took it beyond sort of what the out-of-the-box solution was. And I think you really like seeing that because that can ultimately inform the product, right? Right. Again, we're not quite there yet, but we could get there in the future because we're gonna tell the product team, sort of this is what you know what we're seeing from the disability community.

Chris Maher:

Yeah, it sounds like Angela, it was very much kind of an inclusive or universal design approach to that.

Angela Lean:

Did you folks actually like it sounds like you consciously brought the right people to the table, but like do you talk with language like that or is it just we're very much about shift left, or about sort of how you you should design inclusively first or from the get-go, and not necessarily you want to be you don't want to be in the business of remediation because it's so expensive. I mean, we all are, don't get me wrong, but like I think it's we're just at that sort of like we're at that shift until we get to sort of you know comprehensive or universal inclusive design, we're always gonna be remediating, right? And I think that's how we want to be, obviously, but it's it's just a reality of sort of where we are in the in the cycle. And I think another really cool service that we have that that my our chief accessibility officer, Jenny Le Fleury, and then my former manager Neil Barnett started with this service called EDAD, which is Enterprise Disability Answer Desk. It's literally a support desk that enterprise customers can call into with their issues around products, right? So it's very cool in terms of just sort of we get real-time feedback from our customers and their employees. Employees can also call into it for their own reasons, but it's enterprise, it's e-DAD. And they take the bugs or the reports, the issues, and they funnel it back to the product teams. So we do what I did, but at a systematic and at a stack level for for like whether it's Teams or whether it's Windows Narrator or whether it's so Xbox, that's more of a consumer play, whether it's M365, like so. We're having a constant conversation around sort of what are the issues affecting our broader customer set and their employees who are disabled that we can track and we can actually sort of hopefully get access to that's fantastic.

Chris Maher:

Did you did that did the eDAT evolve in parallel or after you were doing it internally for employees? And you're like, oh, wait, why wouldn't we do this something similar for our customers?

Angela Lean:

It was it was it was in conjunction. So we are still so we're in the office of accessibility, which actually happens to sit in our external affairs and legal organization. But like the team I'm now on, so I've moved on from employee experience into a commercial facing team, and I'm actually doing sort of a lot of work around new go-to-market strategies and monetization for our accessibility offerings and services, like EDAD. I mean so, which will bring up sort of your question about partners and innovation and all that kind of good. So we'll get there. But and also on just figuring out sort of how we bring our so our goal is how to actually how do we actually try greater assistive technology or accessible technology. Yeah. Bring it through our sales team, through our customers, through sort of diffusion of our technology. Because you know, Microsoft is a leader in the enterprise accessibility space. And we also are, you know, our tools are do have very, very good accessibility features and sort of like, you know, like just an approach to accessibility that that not all technology has. I mean, we're not perfect by any means, but we actually have a lot that I think really helped the world. And it it letters up to our mission, which is to empower every organization individual. That's kind of what's exciting about being part of this team.

Kelvin Crosby:

Well, I mean what's interesting is like I've I've been a Microsoft user for so many years and like and I I like as you were br bringing up some of the stuff, it's like it's always been one of my frustrations, like is being able to build and build and build things out using certain things and it's like alright, maybe I'll give this a second shot because because w because one of my biggest struggles as a as a visit and pay person is I'm I'm good at building things and creating things and I'm like I just want the opportunity, you know? And and so I'm always having to find other w workarounds and because something's not working or whatever. And like I remember early on when Office 365 was just kind of coming out, I was wanting to build my own database and be able to use like different apps and so forth and and be able to all make it all talk to each other, and I couldn't get the screen readers to do it for you know what, and I was just so livid. And so it's exciting to hear you talk about this, like all right, we're fixing these issues with AI, and we're able to really start making some massive headway as you are moving forward in accessibility, 'cause I think one of the things in the AI space that I think from accessibility standpoint, so obviously one of the biggest tag thing is screen readers. That's always one thing that most people are always working on, make sure it's accessible to screen readers. But I I I want to kind of get off of that for a second. It is how are we using AI and Microsoft that helps other disabilities, like colorblindness or some of the like captioning, and then also even just with physical disabilities, like if you don't have movement of your of your hands, like how is what you guys are doing now starting incorporating that? I know we talk a lot about screen readers, but I think this area kind of gets missed a lot, and you guys are doing a lot of work in this space.

Angela Lean:

Yeah, I mean, I think my answer to your question is how are we not? Right. So just examples on my team. I had one colleague who works in DC in the policy area, she's a director in policy, she's dyslexic. So she reads like you know, all those things that come out of like Congress and all these policies. She literally has said that she will never take another job without co-pilot or some sort of thing that consolidates and summarizes all the reading she has to do. It's made her so expeditious, like so efficient and so much more um time time. She's just so much better at her job because of it because she's not struggling as much and just the ease to which she does that as one example, right? I have another colleague who is can't use either of her arms. So she uses a lot of voice to text and she's a lot of AI. I don't know exactly how she uses it, but she basically has said things that have taken her hours in the past now take her minutes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Angela Lean:

So if you can imagine the degree to which this is impacting individuals in the day-to-day, right? I mean, I think I mean that's what I think is the most amazing part of it. It's for all these different use cases and all these different disabilities, it is all personalizing our abilities to work, right, on the computer and digitally. So it's gonna bring personalized assistance, brings it at scale, and also brings it in a way that we can all use it so it's a level playing field. Because Chris is not mobility challenged, not visually impaired.

Kelvin Crosby:

Can you wait? Are you sure about this? I I've been demanding. I mean, he he's ran me into a couple tables and walls. Apologize.

Angela Lean:

Well, but the my point is the three of us can use the same tools and be equally empowered. That's my point. So it's a very level, I mean, even with assistive technology, even with screen readers, all these different things, it's always been an added tool, a different tool. This is actually the same tool that allows us all to operate in our own ways, right? Right, right. Which is the coolest thing ever, which is what I love.

Chris Maher:

Like a great, a great example of that just in my own family. So, you know, I use speech to text a lot. A lot of times when I'm just sending text messages to people because it's easier than typing out, or maybe like I've only, you know, I don't have two hands free. So there's a convenience factor there, and it's so accurate now. But my youngest daughter, who has intellectual and developmental disabilities, spelling for her is super hard. And and typing out on like the little keyboard on the phone, but she texts and emails like a maniac, and it's because she uses speech to text. So, like, if she didn't have that, it'd be really hard for her to communicate in this world we're in. But that's a that's a that's a game changer for her and many and many of her friends who also is that's where she's starting, right?

Angela Lean:

So for me, I'm still stubborn and I don't do as much speech to text or speech to eat to typing as I should. I just can't get dragon to work for me in the way that I want it to. I'm just because again, we were talking about teaching old dogs new tricks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Angela Lean:

My new tricks learning curve is pretty high. So I just have to kind of like I gotta like sit down and like get more efficient, but I will get there. Like that's what's exciting. It gives me as much of an opportunity and it gives your daughter a starting place that's so much more like her potential is just gonna be through the roof as a result from from a get-go, right? Whereas for us older dogs, it's it's just a little bit more of a journey or a learning curve. That's painful, right? But uh, but I will get there. Like I've already become more efficient, right?

Chris Maher:

Yeah, it's really interesting that, and I think part of that is like the is like it's technology transition, which I never really thought about very much until a month or two ago, we had Chris Sukup, who's the CEO at CSD Communication Service for the Deaf. And he said a big part of what they do in serving the deaf community is helping people transition across the generations of technology. He goes, You can't just like roll out something new and shut down the old generation because people rely on it. So there has to be an overlap as as technology evolves. And it's it and it's it's really important. I don't think people, I don't think we think about it enough. But on the innovation side, Microsoft, and I touched on this earlier, I think a big reason why you folks have been out in front and ahead of the curve in accessibility, I think has a lot to do with. The leadership at the company has lived experience. And so there's yourself, you know, your boss, Jenny Leigh Fleury, her boss, Satya Nadella. Can you talk about how that's not only driving innovation internally, but we we need is we need more corporate leaders to buy into this like Microsoft? And so are you seeing through whether it's what you folks are doing as an example, or maybe more so starting to partner with other corporates to help them accelerate their innovation around accessibility. Did that make sense?

Angela Lean:

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I think so. My boss, so Jenny's my skip. My my I have just got refused between me and Jenny, I just have to clarify that.

Chris Maher:

Gotcha.

Angela Lean:

We also have folks in DC, that woman I was talking about who's dyslexic, is a policy advisor that works in DC. She works, she actively works on Congress and on local and state governments around issues like regulating travel for people who are wheelchair users, for things like making sure subminimum wage is not allowed or those kinds of laws are sort of phased out. And we actually have you're no longer allowed legally to like, you know, hire somebody who's disabled as sub-minimum wage. So like examples, so a couple of examples of that. I think in terms of just collaborating with other organizations, we have actually so we have an organ community that is a serious other, it's a seller community of people committed to accessibility. And we basically train them to become evangelists within the other seller, seller, the broader seller community at Microsoft and with customers. And what we end up doing is actually driving innovation through the lens of accessibility in many, in many cases. So an example is it wasn't so it was partially through the seller community, but also through some of our sports marketing or product management team. The Indiana Pacers actually created a closed captioning sort of a closed lib closed captioning service at their live games. So if you actually had hearing impaired, you could actually follow the game because you're seeing on closed captioning what's being told announced over the over the PA system. The PA system through the, you know, through the what are they called announcers? I'm not saying that.

Chris Maher:

The broadcast. The broadcast.

Angela Lean:

Thank you. So you could actually follow along real time because you actually had something that was designed through AI that generated it on the fly, right? So if you're hard of hearing, you could actually watch the game all along, almost the exact same beat as everybody else who was hearing. Or if you're, you know, language impaired or although have a different language, you know, that's not English is not your first language, you could actually watch it a different language. So very cool sort of foundry-based solution that we started with the Pacers during sort of their games. Now we can actually sort of take that and move it to other sort of basketball teams or other leagues. So that's the kind of innovation that we're trying to drive by using these use cases and these examples. I'm working with actually Hunter here in New York to try to create a personalized learning tool.

Chris Maher:

Hunter College.

Angela Lean:

Hunter College. Actually, Rob, who was at the dinner with us. He and I are working together. We we're kind of thought partners uh in crime. And so we're actually, I pulled in the account team and we're actually trying to create a solution where they can actually take curriculums and design them for students with disabilities. So meet the same learning objectives, but actually pull in different kinds of content or different kinds of sort of learning channels or approaches. So that if you're blind or you're deaf or you're, you know, whatever, dyslexic, you can actually participate with a different set of learning content. So that kind of stuff, again, we're always looking for use cases and ways to sort of show that. And we're doing it with big partners, little partners, you know, a whole bunch of different entrepreneurs, anybody who wants to kind of get in on a game, if they want to sort of have a cool solution that will help this community, we're always open to hearing about that.

Kelvin Crosby:

Yeah. I mean it it's always been my dream to build a workflow where if you launch a business, it's a hundred percent accessible from the ground up for the employees, for the customer, and it it's it's not easy to do. And I like like I thought about like I I think I've worked very hard to keep my company extremely accessible. And it it's it's almost it in in some ways it's like you you don't want to say impossible, but so many of the like of the different areas of like a back end of a company, especially in the software side, that it's just not accessible. And you're like, alright, how do we work with that? Alright, we gotta write some script here or do here or whatever, and then get an update, and then well that's you gotta start over. And so that's where I'm like, alright, how how do you see us be being able to really help companies using Microsoft products to really get us people with disabilities to a point where Lily we're just like another another able-bodied person going into a job. Like do you see that happening in the near future where if you if you're a Microsoft product company, you're gonna be able to have anybody with disability, there's not really any extra accommodations on the on the software side. You just come in, boom, there it is.

Angela Lean:

You know, it's not gonna be overnight, Calvin. I'm not gonna lie to you, we have a long way to go. I think that we have, but we have pathways forward, is what I would say. I think so. One of the other things I do is I chair an advisory council for the Center for Workplace Accessibility and Inclusion in New York City. And it's a consortium of business advisors for the city on how we actually drive workplace accessibility and inclusion. So it's like our I'm the chairperson, there's other folks from like all over the city agencies, from private corporations, from the Frick, from Lincoln Center, from New York's, you know, like from EY, from other other private organizations. And I think it's it's the notion of bringing together all these different workplaces and how we share best practices to start that process. Now, I will not say that this is gonna happen easily, but I'm gonna say that it I think people are really going in the right direction. I'm hopeful. I you know, I know that the idea is I worked with my contact at that center, and we rolled out accessibility one-on-one, basically, training across all of New York City employees. Wow. So we uploaded their LMS and 300,000 New York City employees have access to sort of how to use their software more accessibly. And the idea we did this last year, we and the idea is creating an accessibility standard. They're not all I'm I'm telling you, I'm not sure how many employees have taken it, but I'm just saying they have the opportunity to invoke. And we're trying to make it a required uh learning. So we have that at Microsoft for every employee we have trained them in our accessibility one-on-one, and any new employee they're required to take it. I think it's those kinds of things that if every organization did that, we'd get a lot further faster. I'm excited about doing stuff at Microsoft because I can do things at scale and faster, because it's gonna take everybody pitching in, and I'm not thinking that everybody's gonna do that naturally, right? Yeah, but through things like software understanding and software use, you can get a lot further, right? And I think or just tools, technology, right?

Chris Maher:

Well, the fact that you folks are so willing to share your best practices, because I think a big part of why corporate America hasn't leaned into accessibility and committed to it more is that it's a bit unknown. They're afraid, they're afraid to make mistakes, and they think it it's gonna be costly. And the fact that you folks are sharing your playbook and your best practices and examples of hey, first of all, it's not that hard, second of all, it's not that costly, third of all, it's the right thing to do, but in addition to that, it's actually good for business.

Angela Lean:

It's great for business, and it's actually it's a huge market, right? So your accessibility act, all these DOJ requirements, right? This stuff is coming, and if people are flat footed, they're not gonna be able, they're gonna get fined. Like, let's just be clear. If they don't serve this community, they're gonna be left behind. Everybody's gonna be affected by a disability. I think at one time or another, you know, Chris, you know, you're wearing glasses that's a disability. You know, you have a daughter with a disability.

Kelvin Crosby:

Wait, he wears glasses?

Angela Lean:

He does wear glasses.

Kelvin Crosby:

I didn't know this.

Angela Lean:

Yes, I know.

Chris Maher:

When I'm on when I'm on my computer and when I read, I've actually got three pairs of glasses, guys.

Angela Lean:

I'm just saying that all of us have our adaptations, right? And what's hard is like being able to address what Kelvin needs, what I need, and what you need is often very different. But in the age of AI and technology, that's where the excitement lies, is potentially we can take, we can unblock some of that more easily through personalization and doing it at scale. I mean, I'm being like I'm sort of a broken record here, but I do think that if you don't do it as a corporation or a business, you're gonna be left behind. It's more the urgency behind that than it is just, because I think if you position it as just the right thing to do, it becomes a tax. It's not a tax, right? It's an opportunity, and I think that's where you like I was saying at the beginning. In my mind, I've gone from me living with a disability is not a deficit, it's an asset. And it's something that I think propels you forward and gives you sort of it can give you energy in a very different way, right? An opportunity. Like my job now is the best job I've ever had. It's I get to meet people like you guys, I get to work within the community, I get to sort of feel like I'm not totally different, that I have needs that can be addressed and that there's hope and there's possibility, even as I age and I'm one armed, and like I spent the weekend with my my neck immobilized. It's terrifying as if you're disabled, right? It's like it's something that you don't want to deal with. But technology helps me come a long way. Now I just ordered a new monitor, I'm gonna like make myself better. I can still function, it's just gonna be differently. And again, it's that learning that's embracing that change that we all need to do.

Chris Maher:

Yeah, no, agreed. Hopefully we're we're in a world that is quickly moving from like the compliance checkbox because they don't want to get sued, to okay, let's do the right thing to oh, this is just good business, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Chris Maher:

Let's try to be as inclusive of as many employees and customers that are out there, because that's just good for business.

Angela Lean:

Right. And guess what, Chris? To your question about why would entrepreneurs care? That's why entrepreneurs care because it's a problem that we all want to solve.

Chris Maher:

Right.

Angela Lean:

It's an exciting intellectual and sort of business challenge that anybody with an entrepreneurial spirit and an interest in the space can kind of get on board. And how I kind of want to relate to that is so I'm actually working, we just launched a thing called Microsoft Marketplace, which is where it's actually a platform where we bring together like ISVs, industry providers, and Microsoft so that our partners and customers can know what services they can provide to the to the world, right? And the lens that I want to put on that is recruiting new accessibility partners into that marketplace.

Chris Maher:

Love that.

Angela Lean:

So that's something that I'm actually actively working on with my team as an area where we can actually try to create an ecosystem where our customers and partners can take advantage of small, even small player. So for a good example is Be My Eyes. We worked with them recently, amazing partners of ours. Our EDAD desk work with them, but we also work with them on a different level, which is we took their database of video content and we actually ingested into our LLMs so that our AI models or our models actually have the perspective of of the blind user or the blind consumer. So that, it's so that they have that perspective. So it's a little bit less ableist than it was before we ingested that data. So I mean, really cool opportunities through which we can partner and we can actually take smaller businesses or entrepreneurs and try to make them sort of more powerful and like create them, you know, inform the world at scale they have to offer. So I actually had a friend being like, why are you talking to Chris? And I'm like, you work at Microsoft. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, I'm actually relevant to Chris and the world, I promise. Like I just think what you're doing in terms of Samaritan partners and all that stuff, is just you're feeling that goodness from a different perspective. And then when you marry that with, you know, folks like my team, it's really where that sort of acceleration can happen, right?

Chris Maher:

Yeah, thank you. So first of all, folks, I did not pay Angela or ask her to talk about Be My Eyes. As our listeners know, Samaritan is an investor in Be My Eyes.

Angela Lean:

I'm sorry.

Chris Maher:

No, no, no. I'm just giving kind of the disclaimer.

Angela Lean:

Yes, yes, yes.

Chris Maher:

But it is a fantastic example about how early stage companies and large corporates can work together and there's value for everybody. That's value for Be My Eyes, it's value for Microsoft, and i t's ultimately valuable for your customers.

Angela Lean:

It's valuable to the world.

Chris Maher:

Exactly.

Angela Lean:

And I can tell you Jenny's team is very committed, myself and Jessica, about talking to smaller companies. I mean it's about the innovation, right? It's not about if you're big or small. Our team is about sort of how do we take that innovation broader and wider to the world and how do we actually tell good stories that encourage everybody, corporate, non-corporate, small business, public policymakers, whatever, whoever they may be, to sort of bring that innovation to more people. Like I think at the end of the day, we're all coming down to that. And as an entrepreneur, you're going to be creating that seed, and hopefully we can help foster it, right? That's the idea. Chris, you have a similar perspective in your investment strategies, right? How do I fuel that and accelerate that to move forward?

Chris Maher:

What's out there on the horizon that gets you the most excited about the world we're moving into around accessibility and creating a more inclusive world for everybody?

Angela Lean:

It's my broken record spiel that I've been talking about over and over again, which is how can AI sort of just accelerate the pace of this inclusion, right? And doing it in such large scope. And so part of the challenge, I think, is the disability community is so diverse, right? So the needs and the wants can almost be sort of segmented on an individual basis. Because even though, you know, Chris, your daughter and myself both have left-side hemiplegia, you know, I wear an AFO, she doesn't, right? She's younger. I'm not. Like there are other big differences? But I just think maybe technology can help both of us in different ways. I think that's the most exciting thing. And I also think just the amount of energy, I love my job right now because it's so innovative. In corporate America, I've worked in sales readiness, I've worked in marketing, I've worked with engineers. Often, like you're part of a larger system. I am not very high up in the organization, but I have such sort of agency and I have such sort of ownership of what I want to do. And I have like free license to do that, partially because of the technology, right? And for me, that's exciting. And I think your entrepreneurs and other people like myself in corporate America, it's this white space that we get to design and we get to make better. And I think there's an opportunity to really have impact and to really sort of make people's lives better day-to-day. That's honestly what I'm excited about. And I know that sounds really hokey, but that's what gets me up in the morning.

Chris Maher:

I love it. I think great note to end on. And so as we wrap up here, Angela, first of all, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a wonderful conversation. But how can people learn more about you and the work you're doing? And we'll put these links in the show notes.

Angela Lean:

I mean, just find me on LinkedIn, Angela Lean. You know, I think that we'll put some links on the website, and I would love to connect with folks. Probably that's the easiest way.

Chris Maher:

You got it. Well, thank you so much, Angela. Appreciate your time today.

Angela Lean:

Thank you.

Kelvin Crosby:

Well, and that wraps it up. Investing in accessibility, as I always say. Go live beyond your challenges, and we'll see you in two weeks. Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast, where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on YouTube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners.com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www.samaritanpartners.com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know so we can spread the word so that we can get access to all by Investing in Accessibility.