>> Hello, there. I'm Seth Juarez,
Cloud Advocate at Microsoft.
We're here in South Africa,
over 10,000 miles away
from Redmond in the beautiful city of Johannesburg.
This episode of CodeStories is all about Microsoft Johannesburg.
We're going to tour the offices,
check out the Microsoft Technology Center,
and find out about this cool place called the AppFactory.
I'm excited to find out. Let's go.
[MUSIC]
>> Rory, my friend, how is it going buddy?
>> Welcome, Seth. Welcome.
>> I'm excited to be here in Johannesburg.
I see there's a lot of history of Microsoft being here.
>> Today, we're going to show you the Microsoft Technology Center.
>> Exciting.
>> The AppFactory, and we're going to introduce you
to the accessibility tooling that we promote here.
>> Well, let's do it. Why don't you lead the way?
[MUSIC]
>> Rory, thanks so much for having me here in the office.
I want people get to know you,
how did you become a developer,
how did you become an employee at Microsoft.
>> In 2001, I was
developing the open-source community started in Java,
and I eventually started doing
developer relations for a large software development company,
focusing on uplifting and engaging communities and
training African developers to start in software development.
Microsoft found me wandering around and said, "Rory,
we really see value in what you're trying to
do in the South African context and we would
like you to come here and help us
also engage with our developer communities."
>> This is amazing. When we first met,
you were doing some work with accessibility.
Can you show me what's been going on there?
>> Microsoft is actually one of
the biggest supporters of accessibility in software,
and we've recently open-sourced
our entire accessibility tool chain,
which means that you can actually go in now and utilize it.
One of the tool chains that we use is called Accessibility
Insights for web and for Windows.
>> Let's take a look.
>> Over here, I've got a nice log demo site.
This is the w3 org,
and this is a site.
You can see here, it's actually got the CityLights at demo.
You can see there, Welcome to CityLights.
It's a portal for visitors and residents.
This is a bad, inaccessible website.
Now, can you tell me the difference between you and I
looking at an accessible versus an inaccessible website?
>> I don't think I can other than this site is
really ugly, and that's it.
But it looks like a website.
>> It looks like a website. I'm going to
click on here and I'm going to change
this to an accessible website from inaccessible.
What you'll notice is that for you and I,
nothing really changes because we're looking with our abilities.
What about people who have limited sight,
who are hearing and visually impaired,
the elderly people who have
cognitive issues, what about them though?
We've got a toolset,
a Chrome and Edge toolset code inside Accessibly Insight for web.
You can actually just click on that and you'll get
an option of three settings: a FastPass,
assessment, and ad hoc tools.
We need to FastPass.
FastPass checks for 25 percent of WCAG accessibility issues.
We're going to FastPass.
You'll see a report will come up and we'll say,
wow, look at these issues.
You can see here the report actually gives
you everything that isn't accessible with this page,
but we went one step further.
We actually highlight the inaccessible aspects
of that to give you a visual representation.
You can see here, I'm going to click on
an image and it says the rule name,
image-alt, the success criteria,
and fix one of the problems.
You can inspect the HTML,
copy the failure detail,
even file directly to GitHub to
actually alert your development team around the accessible issue.
>> This is really cool. But for those that don't have
challenges with accessibility, how does this help?
For example, if I don't have a disability,
help us have more empathy for people,
why is this important?
>> We believe that there are
three different types of accessibility issues.
There's situational, temporary, and there's also people
who have hereditary disabilities.
You might not necessarily be born with a disability,
but if you have an arm issue and you run into a mobility issues,
for example, a new parent.
Now any of you who have been new parents
know that you have to hold
your child there and you might not be able to access that,
so that's a temporary disability.
We believe that there's more than one billion people
with these accessibility issues.
If you think about the revenue stream
with that and the opportunity,
it means that you're not
actually designing your systems for your customers.
One thing that we have seen is the silver generation, the elderly.
When you cater for
a blind person who's visually impaired, guess what?
The elderly also benefit from that because they
also have a situational disability.
>> I see. My challenge has been it's not a black and white thing.
I, for example, as I get older,
might have an eyesight problem where an alt tag on
the image or an alt tag is going to help
me when I can't see things up close,
or far away, or whatever.
>> We have a great toolset that we've actually incorporated into
Office OneNote and a lot of them called Immersive Reader.
Immersive Reader allows you to bring that up in a higher font.
I have a child with a learning disability,
and we found that it's also very beneficial for
people who have cognitive issues, ADHD,
autism, all of those spectrum of issues because
it helps the child actually learn better using our toolsets.
>> Well, this is really cool. Where can people get this and
start using it on their websites?
>> It's in the Chrome and also the Edge store at now,
free of charge, and it's also available on GitHub.
We realized that there was such a dire need for this
that we open-sourced our entire DevOps toolsets also.
Right now, you can create your Azure DevOps to
pipeline and also incorporate this toolsets.
It means that in the background,
in the engine that is DevOps,
we can actually highlight those issues and bring
that to your GitHub issues automatically.
>> So that way when you file an issue,
it's going to your actual property.
>> Definitely.
>> This is amazing. Well, thank
you so much for showing this, my friend.
>> It's my pleasure.
>> Where are we going to next?
>> We're going to the MTC to actually
see the Microsoft Technology Center.
>> All right. Well, let's go, my friend.
[MUSIC]
>> That they do all of these things.
>> Hello, my friends. I'm Seth.
>> Hi, Seth, I'm Elizabeth.
>> And?
>> Jonathan.
>> This place is amazing.
Can you tell me a little about it?
>> Well, you are at the Microsoft Technology Center,
the only one in Africa.
It is definitely the most exciting space
in the Johannesburg office.
What we do here is we bring customers through,
we show them the art of the possible how
we can digitally transform their businesses,
and we take them to the whole journey so
we make it a reality for them.
As you'll see, we've got lots of
cool gadgets and things around here.
A lot of this is partner-built demos and IP.
>> I love the phrase,
the art of the possible.
I'm seeing a lot of demos here. Any of your favorite ones here?
>> We have a really cool AI one.
Come follow me, I'm going to show you.
>> All right. Let's do it.
[MUSIC]
So what does this all about?
>> This is a solution by one of our local partners.
They've built a workplace safety solution.
>> I see.
>> It's using AI Custom Vision to understand
if employee is wearing the right safety gear to be at a site.
So for instance, if you're on a mining plant or
manufacturing plant and you're supposed to be wearing hard hats,
for instance, it will give notices to
the security personnel if someone is
not adhering to their policies.
>> That's cool. How does it know I'm
not wearing a hard hat right now?
>> Well, it has been trained to know when
someone's wearing a hard hat
and when someone's not wearing a hard hat.
>> I see.
>> You want to try it out?
>> Let's try it out. Right now,
it's saying red, I'm not wearing a hard hat.
>> Yeah, that's it. All right. Let's try it out.
>> Yeah. Here's our Microsoft Azure hard hat.
>> Here we go.
>> Voila, there you go.
>> Now I'm not in violation, which is really cool.
>> Yes, exactly.
>> It's an awesome place. What else do you have over here?
>> Well, we've got one more remnant we want to take and show you,
but we'd rather show you then tell you what it's all about.
>> All right. Let's go. Should I wear the hard hat?
>> No, you can take your hard hat off.
[MUSIC]
>> Inside there, we've got various rooms where we
hold our sessions with our customers.
>> I see. So this is just for
customer type engagements and meetings.
>> Hundred percent. Yeah.
>> All right. This is cool.
>> This is our envisioning center.
The way we've designed this room is we've
broken it up into four separate vignettes.
We've got our home office,
local office, international office, and coffee shop.
There are days to be able to showcase our solutions to
our customers in the context of their business inside this room.
>> That's pretty amazing. What kind of
customers come here and what do they get to see?
>> Well, it's really any customer who's
looking to have a partnership with Microsoft.
We want to have them here.
We want to help them with their strategies.
So if there are
customers out there keen to come join us in the MTC,
have a look on Microsoft.com or
talk to your account reps from Microsoft,
they'll make sure you get in here and spend some time with us.
>> Well, this is amazing Jonathan, thank you so much.
>> Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
>> I'm glad I didn't break anything,
Elizabeth, we'll see you next time.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, I'm going to go see what Rory
has for me next, so take care.
>> Enjoy.
[MUSIC]
>> Well, we've had a really good time.
You've shown me a lot of cool stuff.
You even had a really fantastic demo.
We looked at the MTC, the Microsoft Technology Center.
The last thing you said was AppFactory, right?
>> Yes. We're here right now and I
would like you to be introduced to Leslie,
who is our head of our AppFactory.
>> Fantastic. Leslie, tell me about AppFactory.
>> Well, AppFactory is apprenticeship program,
get it with blown AppFactory.
>> I thought it was like making apps,
a factory for apprentice and apps.
>> It is, but we also build apps.
What we do is we take on such posts,
the learner shops, university, whatever,
and then we give them opportunities to gain
valuable experience paired together with a mentor.
>> That's amazing. How long has this been going on?
>> For the last six years.
>> Is it everywhere?
>> We're actually currently busy
rolling out AppFactories across South Africa,
so we want to host AppFactories with
deaf shops inside of their own environment.
>> Well, that's really cool.
I know you're telling me about the program,
but I'd love to go talk to some of the people on the program.
>> Please progress there.
>> All right. Let me go see.
>> Okay.
>> All right, my friends, I thought I would interrupt
your work. Are you okay with that?
>> Not a problem.
>> You're okay with it this time?
>> Yes.
>> Leslie just told me about what AppFactory was.
I wanted to get the real deal from you-all.
What is AppFactory to you?
But let me get your names,
I didn't ask you. Tell me your name.
>> My name is Phuti.
>> Okay.
>> My name is Ndivhuwo.
>> Ndivhuwo?
>> Ndivhuwo.
>> Okay, I'm going to get this. It's going to be good, and you?
>> My name is Frans.
>> All right. So why don't you tell me what
AppFactory is? We'll start with you.
>> AppFactory is a place where like they
give students from the university
the experience to be
a software developer, especially junior developer.
They give us project where we work on then deliver it.
>> That's pretty cool. What are you working on right now?
>> Basically now, I'm getting myself ready on Vue,
Vuetify, and Vuex on a project that is coming.
>> That's pretty cool.
>> We're going to start it on Tuesday.
>> What's the project?
>> LGBTI+ proposal.
Basically, we are going to introduce
a business forum for them so that they can market each other,
find each other business so that they can cooperate.
>> That's really cool. You've learned all of
this Vue stuff here
at AppFactory or you brought something with you?
>> No. All of it, I learned it from here.
Basically, at university, what I've got was HTML, CSS, and C#.
When I came here, they introduced me to Vue.
>> That's really cool. I know some Vue,
but then you went into Vuex and Vuetify.
You're already better than I am, I'm pretty sure.
All right. What about for you, Frans.
Tell us about what you're doing here.
>> Okay. I was working on this project.
We call it MS web chain.
What it does is we're generating a website.
It's more of a website that generates one,
so you can quickly have your components that you want.
I need a chorus,
I need to include an image,
I need a paragraph for
my website so you can quickly just keep that in your form,
then generate a website just like that.
>> Holy cow, that's pretty cool.
Has AppFactory been helpful to you and your education and career?
>> Yes, it has been a perfect breach from varsity,
preparing new forward place.
>> That's amazing. What about for you?
>> Yeah. Actually, we're working on that project
for a web generator,
where we can create a website for you.
You can just put the information.
Let's say maybe you want to create the event website,
you can simply just create the website within five minutes.
You have your own website.
>> That's awesome. So if you could summarize
what AppFactory has done for you and your career,
what would that look like?
>> I'm going to say that it does give me a post to my career.
>> That's so cool.
>> Basically, I'm ready to get here.
>> Awesome. When you have your own company
and you need someone to do AI,
you can call me because I'm the AI guy
and I could do whatever you need. You just hook me up.
>> You should just give me your card and then I will call you.
>> I'm going to leave a card.
Well, I'm going to let you get back to work.
Thank you so much for your time, my friends.
>> Okay, I'll see you.
>> See you soon. Take care, my friend, good luck.
>> Bye. Good luck. Wait, there was more.
You, sir, we'll see you around. Take care.
>> Thank you.
[MUSIC]
>> Well, that was just amazing.
Again, I got to be here in the Microsoft office in Johannesburg.
I met Rory, I learned about accessibility,
I went to the Microsoft Technology Center,
as well as met some of the developers in the AppFactory program.
Thank you so much for watching.
Don't forget to like and subscribe to
CodeStories to see what else we're up
to here in Johannesburg and where we go to next. See you then.
[MUSIC]