Partner Spotlight: Improving Accessibility through App Innovation

As part of the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 Initiative, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we are committed to showcasing solutions that drive meaningful societal impact and spotlighting our partners' growth stories on the marketplace. Throughout the series, we will be telling the unique stories of partners who are leading the way with AI in app development, who are building using multiple Microsoft products, and who are publishing transactable applications on the marketplace. In this article, Microsoft's Andrea Katsivelis sat down with Nexer Digital's Hilary Stephenson to learn more about their story and partner journey.

About Hilary: Hilary Stephenson is the Founder and Managing Director at Nexer Digital (founded in 2007 under the name Sigma). With a background in content design, and having started out in technical documentation and early web publishing, Hilary has been involved in user-centered design throughout her career. She is passionate about accessibility and inclusion and helping clients to embrace them.

About Andrea: Andrea Katsivelis, a global GTM director at Microsoft, specializes in AI, cloud, industry, and accessible solutions. Andrea leads integration strategies and fosters collaboration for corporate acquisitions and partner co-sell, accelerating market impact and revenue growth. Her commitment to marketing and communications excellence, accessibility, and DEI, along with her results-driven approach, embody Microsoft's vision for inclusive innovation. Andrea is DEI Workplace certified and mentors in women’s leadership programs.

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[AK]: Tell us about Nexer and your mission. What inspired the founding?

[HS]: I have a background in user centered content design and accessibility. When asked to set up a new consulting company in the UK for our parent company, Nexer AB in 2007, I was keen to shape our hiring, services and sector focus around digital inclusion and social impact. I'm happy to say that we have grown to 100+ people across the UK, offering user research, product and service design to help make products and services more accessible and inclusive. We do this primarily in the health, government, charity and education sectors, meaning we are lucky to work on projects affecting a huge audience on behalf of our clients.

[AK]: Can you tell us a bit about the offer(s) you have available on the marketplace?

[HS]: We offer a range of services, from role-based training to accessibility audits, including an informative awareness session on Accessibility and Inclusion designed to raise awareness across teams, help organisations establish where they are on their accessibility journey, and where they’d like to be. This townhall-style session is perfect businesses of all shapes and sizes and includes senior stakeholder participation to establish buy-in, which is a crucial step in promoting accessibility as a core value.

Our Nexer Digital accessibility team, some of whom have personal lived experience lead the session. They share valuable insights on inclusive design and the challenges faced by users with disabilities when interacting with non-inclusive products, including those built with Microsoft products. The session also explores how Microsoft 365 and Teams can empower businesses to better support employees, customers, and citizens for more accessible and equitable digital experiences.

[AK]: How is Nexer helping customers make the most of Microsoft Teams and M365 Copilot, from an accessibility and disability inclusion perspective?

[HS]: We’ve been exploring how Copilot and M365 can make the workplace more accessible for users with disabilities. Through sharing their lived experience, our "Access at Nexer" Employee Resource group has been investigating the barriers that exist for individuals with different access needs, and how we can leverage built-in features including captioning and screen readers to address them.

We’ve also been interested in features like Copilot’s ability to summarise information from Teams and Outlook, generate transcripts, and convert data into accessible formats, all of which can reduce reliance on manual notetaking, reduce the cognitive load of such tasks, and allow for easier collaboration. This has particular benefits for neurodivergent colleagues.

This translates directly into the kind of support we can offer our clients too. By helping them prepare for Copilot, testing with real users, and supporting them to mature their approach to accessibility through training and awareness-raising, we’re ensuring they’re optimised and ready to make the most of all the benefits that Copilot and the M365 suite can offer.

[AK]: Nexer has been a part of driving the Accessibility agenda forward, leveraging the Microsoft Accessibility Horizons framework. We’re excited to feature your work as part of Horizons 1- Adopt: Enhance colleague experiences. What has been your experience engaging customers on the topic?

[HS]: We have worked with Microsoft to make our approach to accessibility onto the Horizon levels. For us, this means categorising our awareness raising, audits and training under the headings of Engage, Equip and Embed, taking clients from building knowledge, skills and capacity through to active advocacy and communities of practice. Microsoft have been hugely supportive in helping us develop this model. Clients are now opening their minds to the concept of colleague experience, where we are sharing guidance, use cases and experiments from our work with M265 and Copilot. We feel positive that we can use this framework to bring inclusion to the workplace and enhanced usability to corporate tools, as well as help shape policy around access to work, procurement and support for employees.

[AK]: How does your work align and support the UN SDGs? Can you share how work with customers has created business value and supported positive inclusion outcomes?

[HS]: Our work promotes the prioritisation of accessibility in the workplace, aligning with several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By making corporate tools and digital workplaces more inclusive through the accessibility features found in Microsoft 365, we help our clients foster more equitable work environments (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth). Our approach also contributes to SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions by promoting a more inclusive society, and we aim to create and promote fairer, accessible workplaces, both physical and digital, where everyone can participate and feel welcome.

Our work with Bupa, a major health insurance company with 45 million customers really demonstrates how accessibility efforts can create both business value and positive inclusion outcomes (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Through accessibility audits, inclusive usability testing, and training programs, we helped Bupa identify and address accessibility barriers across their digital platforms including mobile and web. This programme of work led to a more inclusive user experience for their diverse customer base.

This project also fostered a cultural shift within Bupa. Through role-based training we empowered staff from across the organisation, including the C-suite with the knowledge and tools to prioritise accessibility, creating a more inclusive work environment and aligning with SDG 8's focus on promoting decent work for all. This commitment from Bupa's leadership also secured ongoing resources for continued progress within the organisation.

[AK]: How do you suggest other Microsoft partners and all organizations start or grow their accessibility journey?

[HS]: Organizations can often be nervous about sharing their progress with accessibility, in fear of being told what they haven’t yet fixed. Litigation and a ack of understanding on where to start can be a real blocker to organisations talking about the subject. It is a journey though, so at Nexer, we always encourage our customers to share every step taken. Even better if they can do this in the context of a tools audit, product roadmap or accessibility statement, where they acknowledge what they’ve achieved and are transparent about the work still to be done. Making a commitment is vital and the Horizon model works perfectly in this context, as it’s about raising awareness, building confidence and creating mature communities of practice. The more people who share their progress, the greater the encouragement for others to follow.

[AK]: What are you most proud of in your journey building/leading Nexer? What’s next?

[HS]: We’ve built a real sense of community around accessibility over the last 20 years, which extends far beyond our own people and our immediate client work. This includes the relationship we have with Microsoft but also the partners we share in common, such as Purify Technology or Anywhere365. We help them understand the practical applicability of accessibility in their own work, from making meetings and Teams rooms more inclusive to creating contact centre scripts that seek to engage rather than alienate. It’s collaboration over competition. We speak at conferences, host meet-ups, work with freelancers and give accessibility a stage at our Camp Digital conference each year, and this network powers us forward. The next step will be to harness the true potential Copilot has for organizational inclusion, from access to work and on-boarding through to making corporate platforms usable and supportive.

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