2 November 2022
Announced at the most recent Microsoft Ignite 2022 event in Seattle, a set of new accessibility features is set to make the Edge browser more inclusive. These features include:
- Live Captions – Useful for users who are deaf or hard of hearing, and also those who have a cognitive disability, live captions are a new audio transcription feature. Analysing the audio played in Microsoft Edge, speech is transcribed into text and displayed in a window for users to read. Text style, font style and colours are also able to be customized in Windows Settings.
- Instant Answers – Rather than searching through pages of results, this new feature enables users to see the instant answer in search suggestions after asking questions in the address bar, making navigation easier for people who are blind, or vision impaired who use screen readers.
- Page Colours – For users who have difficulty differentiating different colours or who have light sensitivity, this feature, currently in preview mode (that will be available later in the year), allows web page customisation of colours.
- Enhanced Narrator – This new feature enables users to more easily type information into form fields, providing contextual information about said form fields, and buttons.
For more information, please read the OnMSFT article about the newly announced Microsoft Edge features.