Microsoft announced a new accessibility assistant coming to its Microsoft 365 Office software in an effort to make its products more accessible to more people.
Published every year Capability Summit (opens in a new tab)Microsoft also unveiled a range of accessible hardware, improvements to existing products and services, and developments in other areas of its business, including LinkedIn.
All of this comes at a time when the company is diving headfirst into the field of artificial intelligence, which has been busy implementing OpenAI and in-house AI support for almost all of its online services to help improve improve worker efficiency.
Microsoft Accessibility Assistant
Microsoft claims that their new accessibility assistant is as easy as a spell checker and is designed to help make content more accessible. It provides better defaults, real-time remediation, and guidance to prevent and fix any accessibility issues. The Accessibility Assistant was also included in the Visual Studio development environment earlier this year.
The company also announced the rollout of 3D-printed attachments and clips for the Surface Pen later this year. Already available to enterprise customers using Microsoft Business Pen and Microsoft Classroom Pen 2, this expansion will significantly benefit more users who have access to supported Surface devices. .
The Translator engine also got a useful upgrade, with 13 additional languages added, bringing the total number of supported speech-to-text languages to 125.
Other improvements across the board include automatic alt text for images posted to LinkedIn using Azure Cognitive Services, improvements to Seeing AI (opens in a new tab) app designed to help blind and low vision people navigate their surroundings and a new app A comprehensive design guide to awareness (opens in a new tab).
The company’s final changes come to their latest operating system – Windows 11 – with improvements to the built-in screen reader, narrator, and support for more braille displays.
