March 10, 2023
During its annual Microsoft Ability Summit, Microsoft announced Accessibility Assistant, a new Accessibility Assistant for Microsoft 365 Office.
When creating content, the latest accessibility assistant will instruct users on how to prevent and correct accessibility issues in real-time. Users will notice a new person-shaped icon that will indicate the location of accessibility issues throughout your work. Users can expect the new Accessibility Assistant, which will replace the current Accessibility Checker, to begin rolling out in the coming weeks.
Microsoft said it is bringing the same philosophy it follows in developing its products to the art of content creation with Accessibility Assistant: the best way to solve an issue is to prevent it from happening in the first place. It is also introducing a new color picker in Microsoft 365 Apps that takes into account both creative license and the requirement for adequate contrast between text and its background.
According to Microsoft, a new person-shaped icon will be used to flag the location of accessibility issues across a user’s work, such as low contrast between text and background, which is the most common accessibility issue that occurs in Word documents. According to Microsoft, the Accessibility Assistant will be available “in the coming weeks” and will eventually replace Microsoft 365’s current Accessibility Checker, a similar tool that checks to see if content is legible for people with disabilities but only when asked to.
“Our goal is to make checking and fixing accessibility issues natural and simple, while keeping you in the flow of work. Expanding on the existing Accessibility Checker, Accessibility Assistant introduces three key innovations: better defaults to prevent issues before they occur, real-time and in-context remediation to correct issues as they arise, and clear, simple guidance that appears in the flow of work,” Microsoft said.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheVerge.
