Innovation and inclusion: How can AI support neurodiverse users in the workplace?

This week is Neurodiversity Celebration Week. Around 1 in 7 (or roughly 15%) people in the UK are neurodiverse. Recently we've been exploring how AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot can promote meaningful inclusion in our work environment, events, and client services, including for neurodiverse individuals.

We’ve been receiving support on our wider ways of working from the fantastic Rachel Morgan-Trimmer , who is also joining this year’s Camp Digital with a talk on attracting and getting the most out of autistic staff. Rachel delivered a talk on neurodiversity and individual experiences last year, which has informed lots of the work of our Access at Nexer Employee Resource Group (ERG), who we’re working alongside to explore the many applications of AI for users with access needs. This work is culminating in a series of communication workshops from Rachel to encourage understanding in individual communication differences.

She's also supported our Camp Digital planning this year, offering some excellent feedback on how we might make the experience more accessible for our attendees. We've documented our accessibility principles for the event here.

This week we’ve met with colleagues to explore how we can collaborate with our Worklife Group to make Copilot meaningful, sustainable, and inclusive, creating access to work and supported productivity for more people. This includes work we’ve already started and shared in our recent blog post on how Copilot can help to create an improved workplace user experience, which shows how the tools available can support users with different access needs.

Examples of how AI like Copilot can benefit neurodiverse users include:

• Easily sourcing and presentation of information found within Outlook and Teams e.g. HR policies
• Automating the process of taking notes and extracting the main points, actions and follow-ups from meetings
• Signposting other access tools available in M365
• Offering feedback on things like tone, grammar and the style of text
• Textual presentation of data from spreadsheets, and extracting the main points
• Supporting the creation of presentations, documents and images
• Taking complex text and sharing the information however the user prefers (this can include language translation)
• Follow a meeting that the user is unable to attend live, either via Teams or Outlook

These features play a role in reducing the cognitive load of everyday workplace tasks. And importantly, they empower individuals to make choices about their own preferred ways of working and professional development, offering a huge number of options for customisation. As part of an ongoing pilot scheme within Nexer, we're seeking feedback on how people are making use of these tools, and this will include colleagues with neurodiversity.

It's also about creating the right environment for users to get the most benefit from these tools. If you're currently struggling under the weight of AI hype, yet you have the licenses and feel there is potential to make comms and collaboration more efficient, reduce digital waste, support productivity in a human-centered way and make work more inclusive, we'd love to chat about our "pilot" discovery work. As we approach Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we will be sharing the experience of some of our own team at work under our #AccessMeans campaign, so we'd love you to share your own on the day.

Microsoft is a valuable partner in these ongoing efforts. We'll continue to share our learnings and plan to offer more of an update at Camp Digital on May 8th. For now, it's really encouraging to see how AI is already helping users with access needs to craft their own personalised and meaningfully productive work environments.