Accessibility tools in Windows 10
Vision
- Customise your screen’s colour palette if you have colourblindess, light sensitivity or a visual preference using colour filters.
- If you find the ribbon in Office products difficult to distinguish or can’t remember how to do something, use the Tell Me function. You could type ‘pic’ in Word and it would run the Insert Picture command for you.
- Keyboard shortcuts and screen readers make Office apps accessible to users with low or no vision. Microsoft have produced guides so you can set up your device to work with accessibility in Office 365.
- Make your Windows 10 desktop easier to see by resizing font and icons. You can also change the colour of your pointer to make it easier to find. Find out how to do this on support.microsoft.com.
- Hear text read aloud with Narrator, you won’t even need a monitor.
- Use Magnifier to enlarge words and images on all or part of the screen.
- Know your keyboard shortcuts to complete your task faster.
- Currently only availble for iOS, Microsoft have developed a talking camera app called Seeing AI.
Hearing
- If you’re presenting using PowerPoint, turn on auto-generated subtitled so that all audience members can follow. If you’re presenting to a multilingual audience, you can also use Microsoft Translator to change the language that your subtitles appear in.
- Autogenerate captions for videos in Stream.
- Create captions in Sway to keep your presentation accessible.
- Make sure you turn on visual notifications so you never miss a message or interaction.
Neurodiversity
- Focus assist blocks alerts and notifications, so you can get things done without distractions. Don’t worry, if there are some people you don’t want to ignore, you can add them to a special list. And when you finish focusing, you’ll get a summary of what you missed.
- Use Reading view to clear distracting content from web pages, so you can stay focused on what you want to read. And with Learning Tools in Microsoft Edge, you can have documents read aloud to you.
- Turn on text suggestions if you’re in the process of learning english or would like a bit of help with writing.
- Office Lens helps you transform text on a printed page into searchable and editable digital content. You could take a photo of a poster and let Immersive Reader read it aloud to you.
- Tidy up your taskbar and reduce animations to make it easier for you to focus on tasks. Read more examples on support.microsoft.com.
Mobility
- Use Dictate to type with your voice in Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.
- Work with keyboard-only and learn the various shortcuts you can use in each app.
- Click with your eyes – built-in support for eye control. You’ll need to buy the eye tracking hardware separately.
- Type and navigate with your voice using speech recognition commands.
Using Office 365 to promote an inclusive workplace
96% of illnesses are invisible so you won’t know about them unless you’re told. Many of the accessibility checks are done in the background whilst you work, just like spell check. However, there are still best practices to remember in the workplace so that everyone can collaborate regardless of their disabilities.
- Let a sender know that you prefer to receive accessible content by requesting an accessible email.
- In shared OneNote notebooks, check that you’ve added alternative text to images.
- If you’re collaborating on a PowerPoint add alt text to shapes, SmartArt graphics and charts.
- Use Accessibility Checker for real-time alerts of issues that make your content difficult for people with disabilities to access. For example, it will alert you of low-contrast text that is difficult to read because the font color is too similar to the background color. You’ll find it in the Review section in the Outlook, Word and PowerPoint ribbon.
- Use 11pt font or larger with high contrast colours.
- Avoid split cells, merged cells, or nested tables in tables.
- Add meaningful hyperlink text and ScreenTips.