Microsoft will add an Accessibility Assistant to Microsoft 365, a boon for individuals who have bother seeing, but in addition a characteristic you might even see crop up whilst you’re writing in Word or designing PowerPoint displays.

Keep an eye fixed out for a small “person” icon subsequent to paragraphs or bullet factors—should you do, that’s a sign that you need to revise your content material to make it extra legible.

Five years in the past, Microsoft launched the Accessibility Checker, a small instrument that helped creators guarantee content material was legible. The Accessibility Assistant will enhance upon that, stealing design components from Microsoft Editor. In truth, you’ll finally see the Accessibility Assistant pane in Word and different Microsoft 365 apps, which appears to be like like Editor’s suggestions sidebar for figuring out and remediating points. It’s due later this yr, Microsoft stated. Given that accessibility is changing into more and more necessary in companies, you’ll seemingly see the characteristic as a part of your online business setting.

Accessibility Assistant will start with the options that Accessibility Checker already covers, ensuring your copy is coloured appropriately to supply excessive distinction and visibility. A associated colour picker will seem in Word, PowerPoint, and different apps, highlighting which colours can be extremely seen in your present format. You can also be prompted to evaluation the alt-text in any photographs you present. Those captions/alt-text snippets are supplied through AI, however reviewing them will assist guarantee an correct description.

Microsoft

Eventually, the Assistant will incorporate different options as nicely, which Microsoft will add on to. Microsoft Editor already examines your content material for inclusiveness and language; the Accessibility Assistant will do the identical. Each “issue” it highlights can be linked to the suitable textual content block, so you can also make fast adjustments in your copy.

At Microsoft’s Accessibility Summit, the corporate introduced the Accessibility Assistant in addition to another enhancements: extra languages for its Translator app, porting the equipment for its Microsoft Business Pen to the Surface Pen, and automated picture captioning on LinkedIn. Microsoft’s Seeing AI app for cell, which makes use of your cellphone’s digicam to establish objects round you for the advantage of those that have bother seeing, additionally added 1,500 new objects, Microsoft stated.