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Come inside the tech lab making accessibility fun
It all started with gaming, modifications for joysticks, and controllers that allow disabled veterans to once again play their favorite video games. Now, Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab is a haven of innovation and creativity, featuring toys and tools created by and for the disability community. Come along as Program Manager Solomon Romney takes GZERO on an exclusive tour of the lab making accessibility awesome.
Watch more interviews from Global Stage.
Accessibility is critical for the world's disability community
An estimated 1.6 billion people, roughly 18% of the world’s population, are part of the disability community, and that number grows each year. Yet Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie says only 2% of websites globally are accessible. As Disability Pride Month comes to an end, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke to her about confronting challenges at work and home while embracing the diversity of different abilities.
Graphic Truth: Diversity in US and Canada legislatures
Legislatures in both the US and Canada are increasingly more diverse.
The 118th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in US history, with 133 lawmakers – about 25% – who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, Alaska Native, or multiracial.
In Canada, the House of Commons is also at its most diverse, and it elected its first Black speaker, Greg Fergus, in 2023.
Both chambers, however, still have a way to go to fully reflect the diversity of their respective populations. In the US, 75% of voting members in Congress are white, compared to their 59% share of the population. In Canada, where 20% of the population are immigrants, the number of immigrants elected to the House has slightly decreased since 2015, from 46 to 44 legislators.
No second-class citizens: the challenge of diversity in democracy
In his new book The Great Experiment, political scientist Yascha Mounk digs into how tough it is for very diverse democracies to treat all their citizens equally. The price to pay if it goes wrong is high: society falls apart.
The US faces many ongoing challenges, especially on race relations, but has done much better in some areas than was predicted decades ago – for example, the increasing frequency of interracial marriages, Mounk tells Ian Bremmer.
Where America has made much less progress, Mounk admits, is on racial disparities in wealth — which he says is the deepest problem we have in the US today. Still, "it's important to see the nuances": accumulating wealth takes long, and the income gap between Black and white Americans has been reduced in recent decades.
"There is a real pocket of poverty because of [the] long-term structural impacts of all the injustice in American history ... but the modal experience of African Americans today is hopeful," Mounk says. "And actually, when you ask African Americans how they feel about the American Dream, how they feel about the future of America, they are more optimistic than white Americans."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Authoritarians gone wild
Investing in diversity: How public companies can promote inclusivity
Betty Liu, Executive Vice Chairman for NYSE Group, provides her perspective:
What role does diversity play in investing?
So, diversity has played an increasingly important role in investing. In an earlier episode, I talked about ESG - that's environmental, social and governance - and ESG factoring more into investment decisions. Diversity is a key component of ESG. It's seen as crucial in looking at good governance and good decision making. So, a growing number of investors are looking at diversity as a metric to show whether or not this company is worthy to invest in.
What are public companies doing to advance diversity today?
As you all have seen in the last several weeks, there has been an increasing focus on diversity and companies have come out and reaffirmed their commitment to diversity and also pledging to do better. So, some of those commitments include looking at pay equity as well as opportunities for advancement, real opportunities for advancement. One of the things we're doing at the New York Stock Exchange and I'm very proud of, is reform the NYSE Board Advisory Council, whose mission is to improve diversity on public and private company boards. We help our listed companies find and place diverse board candidates.