Think about if Clippy didn’t suck and as an alternative made genuinely useful recommendations to make sure the content material you create is accessible to as large an viewers as attainable. That’s the thought behind a brand new software Microsoft introduced at the moment at its annual Microsoft Capability Summit. The brand new “Accessibility Assistant” for Microsoft 365 workplace software program is sort of a spelling or grammar checking software that may instruct customers on the right way to stop and proper accessibility points in actual time when creating content material.
A brand new person-shaped icon might be used to flag the situation of accessibility points throughout your work, similar to low distinction between textual content and background — essentially the most frequent accessibility problem that happens in Phrase paperwork, in keeping with Microsoft. The Accessibility Assistant will start rolling out “within the coming weeks” and can ultimately substitute Microsoft 365’s present Accessibility Checker, the same software that checks to see if content material is legible for individuals with disabilities — however solely after you ask it to.
Microsoft additionally introduced that customizable 3D-printed attachments and grips might be accessible for the Floor Pen later this yr. These adaptive equipment make it simpler for customers with mobility points to carry and management a pen stylus and are already accessible for the Microsoft Enterprise Pen and Microsoft Classroom Pen 2.
Help for 13 new African languages, together with Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo, has been added to Microsoft’s Translate software, which allows customers to speak round each language and accessibility obstacles with text-to-speech and verbal translations. And at last, LinkedIn is including routinely generated alt textual content descriptions and captioning using Azure Cognitive Providers, Microsoft’s assortment of cloud-based AI options for builders. Microsoft notes that 40 % of LinkedIn posts comprise not less than one picture, and whereas auto-generated captions and picture descriptions are inclined to have some points, it’s actually higher than nothing.
Microsoft’s Accessibility Assistant doesn’t have a lot going for it but, initially providing comparable options to the Accessibility Checker it’s destined to supersede. However seeing how comparable it’s to correctional instruments like Grammarly (not less than visually talking) is neat, and with extra updates, who is aware of what sort of points it’s going to put naked for me. I fearfully stay up for being humbled by my probably inaccessible writing habits.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24016883/STK093_Google_06.jpg&description=Microsoft%20365%E2%80%99s%20new%20assistant%20will%20flag%20accessibility%20issues%20in%20your%20work){kind=link}