Microsoft is introducing a number of improvements in Windows 10 this year to improve accessibility. The company recently outlined some of the new accessibility-related features and improvements in Windows 10 that are already available to Insiders today, as well as some that will be coming to users later this year.
Microsoft is giving much love to accessibility this year as the company continues to push ahead with making the OS more accessible to all users. The next update to Windows 10, shipping sometime in April, will include a range of different improvements to the Settings app in Windows 10 that makes it easier to navigate and control the settings. Microsoft has also made it easier for users to find accessibility-related settings within the app with the new categorized Ease of Access settings area.
There are a number of improvements coming to Narrator this year, which is now faster and more accurate in some of the core Windows apps. Narrator also now works better with Windows 10’s default Microsoft Edge browser, and Microsoft is bringing support for Windows 10’s Safe Mode to Narrator with the upcoming release of the OS.
Microsoft is also making it easier to navigate Windows with Eye Control and introducing improvements to make using some of the important controls like accessing the Start Menu a lot faster with your eyes.
Microsoft says the company is also working to bring text suggestions to hardware keyboards in Windows 10, which will show automatic word suggestions for those with a hardware keyboard. Support for text suggestions with hardware keyboards will first arrive for English (United States), and the company hopes to bring support for more languages in the future.
The upcoming updates to Windows 10 will ship these new accessibility improvements, as well as a number of other minor improvements throughout the OS. Microsoft has taken the lead in recent years over competitors with innovating ideas across multiple platforms with accessibility improvements in their products, and the company isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
