Microsoft has announced a series of improvements to its own ‘Voice Access’ voice recognition and Narrator screen reader features as part of the next preview release of Windows 11, versions 23H2 and 22H2.
Revealed in a new company blog postThe ‘Voice Access’ feature, invaluable for people with disabilities, now supports additional languages, custom voice shortcuts and additional displays – making switching easier than ever.
Narrator now makes it possible to preview voices, while Microsoft claims that the detection of text and handwriting in images has been improved.
Microsoft Copilot and the rest as a force for inclusive good
In a more comprehensive overview of Yusuf Mehdi’s updateMicrosoft’s Executive Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, support quickly launching these accessibility tools through Copilot. IT teams looking to enable the new features for their organization are advised to enable optional updates via policy.
Being able to quickly launch live captions, Narrator, Voice Access, and a whole host of other accessibility tools that have been baked into Windows since the dawn of recording via Copilot sounds pretty handy and, dare I say, inclusive.
Custom speech shortcuts benefit anyone who wants to get things done because they can condense precise tasks like copying and pasting text into a sentence, but that’s also a lifeline for many who struggle with speech.
Navigating multiple displays has always been a minefield for visually impaired users, and moving files, apps, and windows has forever been a nightmare for users with limited dexterity, to the extent that I find it baffling that enabling voice commands on displays was not possible previously implemented. However, it is here now and it will help.
That’s not all Microsoft revealed today – it also revealed that Windows Autopatch will become the ‘unifying’ update management solution for businesses, and that users will now also be able to use their Android phone’s camera as a webcam, a feature that has been long overdue. have to wait that everyone who suddenly bought a webcam for remote work when Covid-19 just bought one.
So it’s these improvements in quality of life that caught my attention. Automatically clicking windows in Windows to get personalized presets per app isn’t exciting on paper either, but as one of the few nimble users they have now who finds this built-in feature the bane of their existence, I think that that is good.