Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, D.C
Before the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20554 In the Matter of ) ) PN Comments – Accessibility of ) CG Docket No. 10-213 Communications Technologies ) To: Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau COMMENTS OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION Accessibility is a business imperative for Microsoft, as both a matter of compliance and an area ripe for innovation. We are investing in design principles and natural user interfaces that help individuals of all abilities,1 and innovating in touch, gesture, and speech recognition that can be used to improve communications services available to people with disabilities. Some of our innovations were not designed exclusively for accessibility, such as the work we’ve done on the Windows touch interface, or Bing’s voice-activated search for our Windows Phone digital personal assistant Cortana. Other innovation is focused on helping people with disabilities, such as Microsoft’s partnership with the UK non-profit “Guide Dogs for the Blind” to enable better independent mobility, which we discuss below. In implementing the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (“CVAA”), the Commission has left space for such innovation to occur by avoiding overly prescriptive regulations and setting reasonable compliance deadlines that provide industry time to research break-through solutions. For a company like Microsoft, that is already investing 1 Microsoft, Digital Inclusion and Natural User Interface Technology: A Policy Framework, http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/1/A/C1AA2411-C3AE-4D21-8C46- F33CE49BBFCF/Digital-Inclusion-Natural-User-Interface-Technology.pdf. in accessibility solutions and offers a multitude of devices, software and services to a wide range of customers around the world, that space is key for us to best use our technological know-how to deliver accessibility advancements that benefit people with disabilities.
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