Takeaways from Accessibility in Office 365, Microsoft Ignite 2016

At last week’s Microsoft Ignite technology conference, Office Marketing Product Manager Malavika Rewari shared the latest accessibility improvements in Office 365 and what features are currently being developed.

Rewari explained that Microsoft is working toward building accessibility in from the beginning, not bolting it on at the end. Their plan is for future features and products to have accessibility built in from day one.

Microsoft is committed to:

1. Providing conformance statements for every app and experience inside Office 365
2. Transparency, describing current limitations
3. Accuracy, keeping conformance statements current as products evolve

Improvements in Office 365 includes usability enhancements for people with disabilities as well as enhancements for accessible authoring.

Here are more details about Office 365 accessibility features and what you can expect in the near future.

Learning Tools

The free Learning Tools add-in improves reading and writing skills for students who are gifted learners and students with learning differences.

Released in late July 2016, the Learning Tools in OneNote for PCs includes:

1. Dictation mode to author text, in multiple languages
2. Focus mode to sustain attention and improve reading speed
3. Immersive reading (available in multiple languages) to improve comprehension and sustain attention
4. Font spacing and short lines to improve reading speed
5. Ability to change color themes, and localize the user interface

In the next one to six months, both Word for PCs and Word Online will get some Learning Tools capability built-in, including:

1. Read Aloud that reads text aloud while simultaneously highlighting the text. Improves decoding, fluency, and comprehension
2. Text Spacing optimizes font spacing in a narrow column view to improve reading fluency
3. Syllabification improves word recognition and decoding
   

Enhancements for Writing Effectively

The Office spelling checkers in PCs and Android released earlier in 2016 improved the occurrence of “no suggestions” by 56 percent.

Word and Outlook for PCs received an enhanced proofing context menu that offers spelling suggestions with synonyms and grammar explanations, both which can be read aloud.

In the future:

1. Office spelling checkers will be further improved to lower the occurrence of “no suggestions”
2. Word on PC will get an updated proofing task pane experience

Keyboard Usability in Office 365 for PCs

Earlier this year, enhancements were released for:

1. Outlook users to easily move through panes such as the Folder List, Message List, Reading Pane or the Ribbon using F6 or Ctrl-Tab.
2. Word, Excel and PowerPoint users can navigate through columns with tabbing and arrows
3. Skype for Business users to start conversations with the keyboard from contacts and search

In the future:

1. Visio will provide better navigation of diagrams for keyboard users.
2. The Tell Me option (ALT+Q) in Office for PCs will make it easy to find and execute commands

Speech Input

Use Dictate in the Learning Tools to enable speech to text (great tool for live transcription of video).

Describing Visual Content and Hyperlinks

Earlier this year, enhancements were released for:

1. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Online, Android and Windows 10 apps, Sway Online, and Windows 10 apps support adding/editing alternative text
2. Visio for PC supports adding and editing alternative text for illustrations

Enhancements for the future include:

1. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for iOS support adding alternative text
2. Easier to discover and use alternative text in Office PC apps
3. Automated suggestions for alternative text in Office PC apps
4. Easier to insert hyperlinks with meaningful link text in Office PC apps

Closed Captions (Audio) and Audio Descriptions (Video)

Earlier this year, enhancements were released for:

1. Office 365 Video support for uploading closed captions files in Web Video Text Track (.vtt) format
2. PowerPoint for Mac and iOS supports playback of closed captions (in CEA608 and CEA708 formats) and audio description files in embedded videos

In the future:

1. Skype Meeting  Broadcast will offer automated near-real-time captions for audio (already included in the Skype consumer product)
2. PowerPoint for PCs will support playback fo closed captions and audio descriptions in embedded videos

Accessibility Checking and Exporting to Accessible Formats

If you’re authoring content in Office 365 , check it for accessibility with the Accessibility Checker.

The feature will highlight content that needs additional information to make the content accessible to everyone, for example, adding alternative text to an image.

Earlier this year, the following enhancements were released:

1. Accessibility Checker is available in the Review Tab for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for PC apps. Also available in the Review Tab for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Mac.
2. The “More Options” pane in Sway for web and Windows 10 includes the Accessibility Checker
3. In Visio for PCs, the Accessibility Checker is available in File > Check for Issues

In the near future, you can expect:

1. Accessibility Checker will be available in many Office 365 products, including:
   1. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Online
   2. Outlook for PC, Mac, and web
   3. OneNote for PC, Mac, and web
2. Export from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (for Mac, Android, Windows store apps) will be in tagged PDF
3. Describing images automatically in PowerPoint for PCs (when it can identify the image with high confidence, you can always override)
4. Support for exporting Visio diagrams to an accessible format

Resources

I was impressed to learn about the existing and future accessibility features in Office 365, especially the enhancements for writing effectively.

Stay current with Office 365 accessibility with these resources:

1. Microsoft Accessibility: the Microsoft site all about accessibility
2. Office 365 Accessibility Plans and Progress Blog posts: not sure how these are ordered. The search results are labeled “top” results; I couldn’t find a way to order the posts chronologically
3. Video demos of Office 365 Accessibility: Playlist of YouTube videos highlighting accessible enhancements to Office 365 apps
4. Microsoft Enable Twitter account: I’ve been following this account for a while, great up-to-date info on what’s happening with accessibility at Microsoft. You’ll also find helpful accessibility news about other products, sites, and services.

And if you want to, watch the Explore Accessibility in Office 365: Plans and Progress video on YouTube (captioned with transcript). Enjoy!