Microsoft is working to improve representational data on disabled people.
In a blog post published this week, Microsoft, along with the World Bank Group, announced a joint venture aimed at improving the amount of accurate, current data on the disability community worldwide. The post was co-written by Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft, and Charlotte Vuyiswa McClain-Nhlapo, who’s Global Disability Advisor at the World Bank Group.
The post’s lede cuts right to the chase in identifying the problem. “Across the world, persons with disabilities remain invisible in the global development agenda,” it reads. “One key reason is because of variances in the availability and use of disability-disaggregated data across organizations and borders.”
Both organizations are collaborating with Fordham University’s Disability Data Initiative on the data collection project. According to the announcement, the partnership’s objective is to “expand both access to and the use of demographics and statistics data to ensure representation of disability, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.” The ultimate goal is to “develop a public facing, online ‘disability data hub’ to offer information on persons with disabilities across populations, geographies, and development indicators.”
“The World Bank’s partnership with Microsoft aims to bring higher visibility to the development outcomes and living conditions of persons with disabilities,” Nhlapo said in a statement. “This effort will ensure that more policymakers, development practitioners, civil society, and academia use a disability lens and evidence to inform new financial investments, policy reforms and service delivery.”
In a new interview with me, Microsoft’s Flurrie explained one of main reasons for spearheading this project is the current state of disability representation data is rather fragmented, particularly globally. Thus, the Redmond-based tech titan’s work with World Bank and Fordham is a concerted effort to leverage technology in order to rectify the disparity. “[We’ll] start to present disability data from around the world in a more hopefully, credible, reliable way,” Flurrie said. “Because I think you've got to [understand the importance of] representation if you're really going to help to solve [the problem]. So it's really an effort to partner together to help to put that data in one place, sustainably and durably over time.”
Work on this project has been ongoing for “several months,” Flurrie told me. She emphasized, however, as with every effort to further disability awareness societally, the work is never fully finished. It’s evergreen. Both parties are going to start holding community meetings during which people can offer feedback and suggestions for making the data coalescing better. It’s early days yet, and Flurrie is fully cognizant of the fact there is much more to be done in the months and years ahead. The work, Flurrie said, fits Microsoft’s ethos because they are a technology company after all that craves information. “We’re constantly looking at [available] data—whether that's employment data or representational data,” she said. “We’re hungry... you know, we're nerds, right? We're hungry for information and data.”
In a broad scope, Flurrie explained this is merely another step on the journey in her 7 years leading accessibility at Microsoft, saying this latest initiative is “one of several chapters in the history of accessibility at Microsoft.” Of the many strategic decisions she’s driven at the company, Flurrie opined this one may be the most important one due to what it means to the disability community writ large. She just returned from a trip to Africa, where she said disability is as prevalent there (if not moreso) as it is here in the United States. “I think it's really important for us to have a global lens on disability that's consistent so that we understand the scale of the problem [and] the scale of the opportunity,” she said. “And we get after it in a really cohesive way. I see this as fundamental to the strategy on [narrowing] the disability divide. [It’s] really important that we get this right, which is why having that community insight is really our first and top priority right now. [We need] to make sure it's grounded to make sure it's really directed in the right way.”
In the end, Flurrie told me the bottom line is disability is part and parcel of the human experience. As such, it deserves to be more represented in all ways.
“[The disability community] is no minority,” she said. “It’s a part of the human experience. It's far bigger than the 15%, which is the global number [of disabled people] reported, but to what extent remains to be seen. I think that the journey starts with getting a consistent level of data in and housed in a credible way.”
