Microsoft rolls out new, improved Windows 10 Accessibility features

Microsoft has announced some new improvements to its Accessibility features on Windows 10. These new features were rolled out on the basis of feedback shared by users part of the Windows Insider programme. 

Microsoft already allows users to personalize text and pointers. The company is now making it easier for users to locate these text cursors. Accessibility users can personalize the cursors by making them wider and add a text indicator. Microsoft has also added the option include custom colors for easier locating these features. The company has also updated the magnifier which can now follow the text cursor in the center of the screen.

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“We added a new feature that makes it easy to have text read aloud to reduce the strain of reading. Magnifier now includes Play, Pause, Next sentence, Previous sentence and Read from here controls to make it easy to read text in popular browsers including Edge, Chrome and Firefox and other Windows applications like Microsoft Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. Magnifier will highlight each word that is spoken and will scroll content into view if it is not currently displayed,” said Microsoft in a post.

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Another major improvement is the Narrator for browsing. Microsoft says Narrator will now start reading web pages by default from the top of a web page. A new page summary support has been added for Accessibility users.

Outlook has been updated to work with the Narrator to make it easier for Accessibility users to triage an email. Message reading experience has also been made better.

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“We also automatically enable scan mode and recognize and ignore layout tables to make it easier to navigate and read message content. We improved Outlook responsiveness, e.g., reducing lags when arrowing through messages in the inbox or through text in a message,” Microsoft added.