Microsoft Accessibility Exec Jessica Rafuse Talks Ability Summit 2025, More In Interview

March has been a big month for Microsoft in the accessibility arena.

Besides launching the Xbox Adaptive Joystick, the Redmond-based tech titan last week held its 15th annual Ability Summit. The event, which I’ve covered with regularity for the last several years for my old Forbes column, was hyped up in a blog post written by Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer in Jenny Lay-Flurrie. She noted this year’s edition of the Ability Summit featured a whopping 20,000 attendees hailing from 164 countries to gather together to discuss what she described as “the future of AI and accessibility.”

Microsoft, Flurrie wrote in the lede, is “innovating faster than ever before.” Disabled people, she added, are standing right there at the forefront, helping to lead the charge.

While I’ve sat down virtually with Flurrie numerous times for candid, on the record conversations about Ability Summit and much more, I spoke with Jessica Rafuse about this year’s event. Rafuse, who’s been with the company almost 9 years, is Microsoft’s director of accessibility strategic partnerships and policy and, like Flurrie, a disabled person herself. Rafuse copes with muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, and is a mother of children with disabilities. She characterized her role as helping lead the company’s work with entities outside of the organization in its efforts to “accelerate accessibility.” The work, she added, is important because it gives Microsoft an opportunity to “gain feedback and insights” on how best to support its customers with disabilities. The company does this in three ways, Rafuse said: through building trust, spurring adoption, and leveraging AI. A lot of the so-called NGOs, or non-governmental organizations, are unaware Microsoft ships products—cf. the Xbox Adaptive Joystick—which are designed to help disabled people. In terms of AI, Rafuse said much of the work in building awareness is educating how AI can be a profound assistive technology.

As to Ability Summit, Rafuse called it an “all day event” for Microsoft, streamed online but also featuring an in-person component at the company’s headquarters. Company executives and community leaders, she added, came together to bask in the excitement of “[sharing] the latest greatest in accessibility and AI.” According to Rafuse, Ability Summit is “one of the few moments we all get together physically here in Redmond,” adding “we just celebrate a little of the work that our accessibility professionals are doing.” Put another way, Ability Summit is one forum in which Microsoft can deservedly put accessibility (and disabled people) in the spotlight.

“[Ability Summit] is a time for us to celebrate the work that is sometimes hard but always really rewarding,” Rafuse said of Microsoft’s chance to amplify accessibility.

When asked about the current state of accessibility in the industry and in society writ large, Rafuse said Ability Summit exists in large part to answer that very question. More pointedly, the sheer fact tens of thousands of people attended this year’s event—“more folks than we’ve ever had,” Rafuse told me—is a reflection of two bigger trends. First, she said, is the sociopolitical climate in the United States at the moment. There’s a lot that’s unknown right now; many people are looking to captains of industry like Microsoft to guide them through what Rafuse called the “regulatory unknown.” To that end, Rafuse said this year’s Summit saw an increase of European attendees, which she said was unsurprising given the looming European Accessibility Act scheduled to take effect come June. On its website, the European Commission describes the legislation as “a directive that aims to improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services by removing barriers created by divergent rules in Member States.” There’s “an appetite” from Europeans, Rafuse explained, to glean Microsoft’s feelings on the coming bill. Beyond the European Accessibility Act, Rafuse said people are keenly interested in how artificial intelligence can influence and impact accessibility; attendees, she went on to say, are interested in how Microsoft is leveraging artificial intelligence in this realm, most particularly in responsible manners.

“There’s a lot of hope [around accessibility] right now,” Rafuse said.

Rafuse reemphasized the cruciality of community in furthering Microsoft’s accessibility efforts, telling me the company has a strong contingent of disabled employees internally. Again, she noted soliciting feedback is critical for the company, so a big part of the strategy is to partner with third parties externally. Microsoft engineers, Rafuse said, talk endlessly about building accessibility into design so as to be part and parcel of the developmental process. That necessitates “co-creation” with members of the disability community, she added, and Microsoft actively seeks out, and summarily cherishes, the feedback loop with the broader community. To wit, working on accessibility is decidedly not a solo endeavor—as the saying goes, it takes a village.

Overall, Rafuse said Microsoft loves Ability Summit because they love accessibility. It gives the company a platform atop of which to raise awareness—to educate and evangelize. Accessibility, whether in product or events, is “an ongoing process” for the company. Ability Summit is one thing, but then the proverbial page turns to the next big date on the accessibility calendar: Global Accessibility Awareness Day in mid-May. Put simply, accessibility is always on the minds of Rafuse, Flurrie, and scores of other folks who work on accessibility within Redmond’s walls. Rafuse told me this year’s Ability Summit was special because it was the first one to be held in person post-pandemic, as the last time was 6 years ago, in 2019 at Microsoft’s on-campus conference center.

“It was nice to see and meet with customers at Ability Summit in person,” Rafuse said.

Beyond introducing this year’s Ability Summit, Flurrie’s blog post included highlights of Microsoft’s work in accessibility of late. Amongst her callouts include Microsoft’s hardware shipping in accessible packaging, Copilot helping those in the neurodivergent community, speech recognition seeing a 60% improvement, and more.