Windows Speech Recognition: Listening to users is the key at Microsoft

Recently the Accessibility team approached me and asked if I'd be interested in providing an essay for their Accessibility Perspectives web site portal. In their own words:

"Accessibility Perspectives are a series of essay articles that profile some of the key Microsoft employees, partners and associates who make it easier for people to see, hear, and use computers."

So I said, "Sure, why not!?" The result is finally online here. In the essay I tried to capture why we're doing what we're doing, and how I view working with customers. This one quote from the essay, really epitomizes my feelings about the whole Windows Speech Recognition project:

"There are a lot of things that contributed to what we achieved with Windows Vista, but one of the key things was that we started by asking users what they needed."

And ... If that wasn't exciting enough... you can even see my professional head shot.