Windows 10 Anniversary Update brings accessibility improvements

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As most of you already know, Microsoft is planning to release the Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2, 2016. According to the developing company, this major update will bring some improvements to the Accessibility feature in Windows 10 OS. According to reports, Microsoft’s team is currently working on software and applications which will be able to help different types of people.

Here are some of the features that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will come with:

Improved Narrator and Screen Reading

  • New voices have been added to Narrator that will offer a fast top rate of speech. You should know that currently the Narrator is able to say about 400 words per minutes, but thanks to the new voices it will be able to say around 800 words per minute
  • New languages have been added to the Narrator such as: Danish, Finnish, Catalan, Arabic, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Turkish, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian
  • A scan mode has been added and you will be able to enable it by pressing SPACE or CAPS LOCK button; By using this feature, you will be able to activate an item of interest, such as following a link on a web page or pressing a button in the application
  • Punctuation Modes have finally been added to Narrator and you can change the settings by using the CAPS LOCK+ALT+PLUS and CAPS LOCK+ALT+MINUS buttons
  • Narrator is now able to support up to six levels of verbosity so that the users can understand better about the characteristics of the text. You can cycle through these modes by using the CAPS LOCK+CTRL+PLUS buttons.

Microsoft has also worked on making the experiences and applications more accessible. Once the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will be released you will notice the following changes:

  • You can now navigate in Cortana by just using the arrow keys and tab order from your keyboard
  • Microsoft Edge also become more accessible in reading and browsing and this will help developers to easily build websites
  • Mail application has received many accessibility improvements.

Besides the accessibility updates that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will come with, you will also notice other significant updates such Groove that has received some new tools such as XAML improvements and developer tools.

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