Boosting accessibility at Microsoft with help from neurodivergent employees

As new technologies reshape how people work, accessibility must move beyond compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and other inclusive legislation around the world to become supportive of how different people process information. Traditional approaches can fall short when it comes to the needs of neurodiverse people, leaving gaps in usability and inclusion.

At Microsoft, this shift is grounded in years of investment in our neurodiverse employees. From launching our Microsoft Neurodiversity Hiring Program to building a company-wide focus on neuro-inclusive employee experiences, we bring our lived experience to how we design and build our products.

We set out to better understand where our products could do more for all our users and challenge established accessibility norms.

“When we create space for neurodivergent voices to shape our products, we don’t just improve accessibility, we build better technology for everyone. Accessibility is strongest when it is informed by lived experience, and initiatives like our product feedback sessions make sure those voices directly influence how our products evolve.”

Neil Barnett, chief accessibility officer, Microsoft Accessibility

Neurodiversity Celebration Week became the launch point for a new approach to product feedback and co-design at Microsoft. We used the event to create an ongoing program that brings the perspectives of neurodivergent employees directly into the product development process, especially individuals who experience challenges with executive functioning tasks such as focus, learning, memory, organization, and task completion.

For our first feedback round, 150 neurodivergent employees evaluated 10 products across multiple divisions using real-world scenarios. Rather than focusing only on traditional accessibility checks, they shared insights on how products support everyday thinking, learning, and productivity.

The feedback provided product teams with a deeper understanding of where experiences can be simplified or made more intuitive and easier to navigate. More importantly, it established a repeatable process for gathering perspectives from people across the cognitive spectrum, helping teams build products that work better for more people.

“When we create space for neurodivergent voices to shape our products, we don’t just improve accessibility, we build better technology for everyone,” says Neil Barnett, chief accessibility officer in Microsoft Accessibility. “Accessibility is strongest when it is informed by lived experience, and initiatives like our product feedback sessions make sure those voices directly influence how our products evolve.”

How neurodiversity can help a broader audience

Neurodiversity refers to the idea that neurological differences—including autism, ADHD, and dyslexia—are a natural part of human diversity. It recognizes that there’s no single “right” way for the brain to work.

“Neurodivergent employees bring an innovative way of thinking and have ideas that help make our products better.”

Tarena Shanaberger, senior PM, Microsoft Accessibility

Product groups at Microsoft value feedback from our neurodiverse employees. However, without a consistent way to get it, product groups had to reach out with ad hoc requests through the different inclusion networks at the company.

We saw an opportunity to create both lasting change and more efficiency in this process.

“Neurodivergent employees bring an innovative way of thinking and have ideas that help make our products better,” says Tarena Shanaberger, a senior PM on the Microsoft Accessibility team.

Designing with lived experience

Neurodivergent inclusion is most valuable when it’s built in early in the product lifecycle, preferably before assumptions take hold and shape the product in ways that are harder to change later.

“Lived experience is a genuine form of expertise. You can have telemetry, design reviews, usability metrics, and KPIs that mean things to people who review data, but there are aspects of cognitive load and human behavior that become much more visible when you involve people who experience systems differently.”

Karl Niblock, architect, Engineering and Architecture Group Security

Karl Niblock, an architect in our Engineering and Architecture Group Security team, believes that early intent can result in experiences that delight users by making products “shockingly” easy and a joy to use, even for something as routine as logging into a tool.

Designing systems that help reduce unnecessary cognitive friction means more people can do their best work consistently and with more confidence. Those are the types of human-centered insights that aren’t possible to derive from data alone.

“Lived experience is a genuine form of expertise,” Niblock says. “You can have telemetry, design reviews, usability metrics, and KPIs that mean things to people who review data, but there are aspects of cognitive load and human behavior that become much more visible when you involve people who experience systems differently.”

When people share their experiences, everyone can learn and benefit.

“One of the patterns I often see is dead-end workflows, where a user follows the process exactly as instructed but ends up stuck, with no obvious next step,” Niblock says. “For someone with dyslexia or autism, the challenge is often not the task itself but the repeated effort of decoding similar-looking instructions and trying to determine what went wrong. By designing clear recovery paths, plain-language guidance, and visible next actions, we can dramatically reduce cognitive friction. Those improvements help neurodivergent users, but they also make products easier and less stressful for everyone.”

Building a better path for product feedback

Software engineer Jordan Cowe surfaced an idea to host an annual neurodiversity bug bash to uncover where products pose challenges for neurodivergent users. He explains that neurodivergent employees are often some of the first people to identify points of friction before release and says that the bug bash helped shine attention on these issues and encourage product group action on the feedback.

“If something affects a neurodivergent employee, it likely also affects many people who don’t identify as neurodiverse. Fixing these issues improves the products for everyone, making them easier to use and better at keeping users engaged.”

Jordan Cowe, software engineer II, Copilot Engineering team

This bug bash led to a structured way to bring in testers, distribute feedback results to product groups, and infuse key learnings into our products. Our testers asynchronously went through the instructions, followed the scenarios, recorded their screens, talked through their pain points, and completed a product survey. We used the results to rate product usability, which helped us identify issues and ideas for improving our products.

“If something affects a neurodivergent employee, it likely also affects many people who don’t identify as neurodiverse,” Cowe says. “Fixing these issues improves the products for everyone, making them easier to use and better at keeping users engaged.”

What feedback looks like from the product side

Microsoft AI UX researcher Audrey Aday used feedback from the co-design sessions to explore what makes an AI response feel inclusive, useful, and manageable. Tester feedback showed that the issue wasn’t capability, it was control.

“Instead of treating accessibility as a check-the-box exercise, we’re building relationships with neurodivergent employees and embedding their feedback into the full product development lifecycle. We’re moving away from ‘test this for us once’ to ‘build this with us, continuously.’”

Audrey Aday, UX researcher II, Microsoft AI Design

Testers consistently said Copilot can feel overwhelming when it returns too much information at once. They want more control (not less capability) over how much detail they see. In response, product teams are exploring custom instruction menus, smarter defaults, and adaptive personalization that learns individual preferences without creating extra work.

Product teams across Microsoft see lived experiences as a quality driver, not an edge case. Neurodivergent employees help teams spot usability opportunities that benefit everyone, especially around information overload, pacing, and clarity.

“Instead of treating accessibility as a check-the-box exercise, we’re building relationships with neurodivergent employees and embedding their feedback into the full product development lifecycle,” Aday says. “We’re moving away from ‘test this for us once” to ‘build this with us, continuously’.”

How the Inclusive Tech Lab supports co-design

Support also comes from the Inclusive Tech Lab, where Microsoft design teams work directly with users with disabilities to uncover exclusionary designs and identify new product opportunities.

“The best time to engage with us is when employees are starting something new or revising old designs. The Inclusive Tech Lab helps teams partner with disabled advisors early in the design process.”

Sarah Heinzen, senior designer, Microsoft Design and Research

The lab connects teams with people who bring their lived experience across different scenarios, such as limited mobility, photosensitivity, low vision, and neurodivergence. This co-design approach brings in users early and keeps them involved so their lived experience can shape product decisions from the start.

“The best time to engage with us is when employees are starting something new or revising old designs,” says Sarah Heinzen, a senior designer on the Microsoft Design and Research team. “The Inclusive Tech Lab helps teams partner with disabled advisors early in the design process.”

Building feedback into how we work

While the product teams work on incorporating feedback, we’re hard at work solidifying this continuous feedback loop and adding it to everyday product development at Microsoft.

Partnering with the Inclusive Tech Lab, we’re setting the foundation for making that a reality using:

• One consistent path to feedback. Product teams have a unified way to engage with employees from the disability and neurodiversity communities.
• A participant pool of testers. We’re building a diverse network of volunteers to make sure diverse lived experiences consistently inform product decisions.
• Inclusive ways of working. We’re establishing guidelines to make sure testing scenarios match real user needs.

The expectation is start early, stay engaged, and build with the people you’re designing for.

“Even as a software engineer and someone who’s neurodivergent, accessibility used to feel like something you thought about later,” Cowe says. “Now I pause early and ask: Does this make sense for real users? Is it clear? Is it usable? It’s changed how I build. I’m looking for the small friction points, the things people struggle with, and I’m catching them sooner. It’s made me a better engineer.”