Microsoft education boss: Accessibility is a great driver for different conversations with customers

Chris Rothwell explains how partners can leverage the vendor's assistive tech to open new conversations with education clients

The topic of accessibility and assistive technology is a good starting point between partners and prospective education customers, according to Chris Rothwell, director of education at Microsoft UK.

Speaking at an event about assistive technology in education at City of Westminster College, Rothwell told CRN that being able to understand how these tech tools aid both the teachers and students is a key differentiator for channel partners.

"I think that customers universally want to work with partners who they feel understand their operation," he explained.

"If you go to a school and talk about accessibility and inclusion, you get such an incredible response from people because they know it's an issue. They know it has an impact on a specific individual.

"If you show them the way to make progress on that, it demonstrates great understanding of the education sector and it helps schools and educators solve a problem that they know they need to solve.

"So as a way to differentiate yourself - and then work with that customer a little bit more hand in hand on some of the things that they definitely see as a priority - I think is really important for the channel."

Hector Minto, accessibility evangelist at Microsoft, added that the vendor's UK outfit has an accessibility team that is concentrating on working with partners who want to invest in assistive tech and who are seeing it as a commercial differentiator.

"These partners are not going in talking about assistive technology, they're going in and talking about routine inclusion of people," Minto stated. "And that would not just be the students, it would also be the parents and the employees of an educational establishment.

"There's a European standard for accessible technology that the public sector has to use by law, but nobody does, because it's not as high up on the agenda as security and privacy are.

"The European Parliament created that standard to make sure that the public sector was recognising the importance of accessibility in spending public money, and I think there's a great role for Microsoft and its partner network to lead on that conversation."

Microsoft includes assistive technology in its products, including Ofice 365 and Teams and Rothwell announced at the event that the vendor is committing to training 30,000 staff in the UK in accessibility and inclusion in the classroom.

"This is not about training people to use our technology," he stated.

"This is about training people to understand and realise some of the benefits that are possible when you think about more inclusion in the classroom using technology, and how you identify people who may need additional support and the role technology - and other interventions - can help in those people realising their full potential."

The execs were also keen to press the idea that making workplace environments more accessible to those with learning difficulties or particular requirements is beneficial not just to the employee, but the company too.

"When you recognise the people with disabilities you already have in your own organisation, it changes your viewpoint about driving accessibility," Minto said.

He explained how one partner signed up to the government's Disability Confidence scheme and its managing director asked employees to let him know if they had a disability and it would provide tools to help them with their job. Three employees came forward to take him up on the offer.

"He started his journey by recognising that his employees weren't as productive as they could have been, but as soon as they had these system technology tools, they were," Minto said.

"As soon as the MD had that story inside his own organisation, he was having conversations with county councils and education authorities.

"Recognising the difference you already have in your own organisation is a lesson that we can help our partners with. Because when disability and inclusion are part of your culture, everybody becomes more productive."

Getting the conversation right about accessibility is often the hardest step for partners as it means making the conscious decision to make assistive technology a key talking point, the exec added.

"The starting conversation with clients is 'what problem are you trying to solve? How are you helping people learn?' For you to do that you have to come with us on that journey," he explained.

"And that's where our channel secret opportunity is and they're really good at helping customers on that pathway. Once they're in, they start changing the conversation at the beginning."