● Mi­crosoft has put ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty at the heart of the de­sign of its prod­ucts and ser­vices and has worked to gen­er­ate so­lu­tions so that all peo­ple can achieve more ●

MI­CROSOFT — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) es­ti­mates that over 1 bil­lion peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence dis­abil­i­ty. This cor­re­sponds to about 15% of the world's pop­u­la­tion, with up to 190 mil­lion (3.8%) peo­ple aged 15 years and old­er hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties in func­tion­ing.  Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties are more like­ly to suf­fer ad­verse so­cio-eco­nom­ic out­comes—such as less ed­u­ca­tion, and low­er lev­els of em­ploy­ment—and are fac­ing ma­jor chal­lenges in an in­creas­ing­ly tech­no­log­i­cal world.

Con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenges faced by peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, Mi­crosoft takes a step for­ward to­wards friend­lier sys­tems so that there are no bar­ri­ers for these users. Among the tools they of­fer is Win­dows 11, an op­er­at­ing sys­tem that al­lows users to have ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty with a pri­or­i­ty through util­i­ties such as:

Accessibility options for persons with disabilities in Windows 11. [Image courtesy Microsoft]

●     Nar­ra­tor: read aloud the text on the screen and nar­rate even­tu­al­i­ties such as no­ti­fi­ca­tions or cal­en­dars. It al­so de­scribes the con­tent of pho­tographs and im­ages so that you can use your com­put­er with­out look­ing at the screen.

●     Eye con­trol: al­lows you to type with an on-screen key­board and con­trol the cur­sor on­ly with the move­ment of the eyes.

●     Mag­ni­fi­er: makes part or all the screen big­ger so you can see words and pic­tures bet­ter.

●     Im­mer­sive read­er: helps stu­dents with dyslex­ia and oth­er learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties have bet­ter read­ing com­pre­hen­sion. Re­duce vi­su­al clut­ter, elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions, ad­just screen con­trasts, as­sist with pro­nun­ci­a­tion, and high­light in­di­vid­ual words.

●     Sub­ti­tling: for those with hear­ing im­pair­ments, al­lows you to cap­tion Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions or tran­scribe Teams tele­con­fer­ences.

●     Fo­cus: helps peo­ple with At­ten­tion Deficit Hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty Dis­or­der (AD­HD). The "do not dis­turb" op­tion re­moves dis­tract­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tions.

A visually-impaired man uses accessibility software from Microsoft on his mobile phone. [Image courtesy Microsoft]

●     Voice Dic­ta­tion: al­lows you to write doc­u­ments, write emails or cre­ate texts through voice.

●     Ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty Check­er: re­view doc­u­ments, rate their lev­el of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, and give sug­ges­tions for mak­ing them more in­clu­sive.

●     Pre­sen­ta­tion Trans­la­tor: al­lows users to de­liv­er live pre­sen­ta­tions with sub­ti­tles in re­al-time, di­rect­ly from Pow­er­Point so that peo­ple with hear­ing dis­abil­i­ties can fol­low pre­sen­ta­tions with­out los­ing de­tail.  It is avail­able in sev­er­al lan­guages and di­alects.

●     Colour fil­ters: this is an ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty fea­ture that helps to im­prove the vis­i­bil­i­ty of el­e­ments on the screen for users with vi­sion prob­lems. For in­stance, for users with colour blind­ness, the fea­ture can help dis­tin­guish the dif­fer­ent colours on the screen and im­proves con­tent vis­i­bil­i­ty for users with light sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Accessibility options for persons with disabilities in Windows 11. [Image courtesy Microsoft]

Mi­crosoft be­lieves that ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty is es­sen­tial for the re­gion and the progress of peo­ple, which is why they de­vel­op projects that pro­mote in­clu­sion in ar­eas such as ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment, com­mu­ni­ties and at home.

In this way, they sup­port solv­ing the chal­lenges of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, con­sid­er­ing vi­sion, lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, mo­bil­i­ty, neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty and/or men­tal health.

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About Mi­crosoft

Mi­crosoft (Nas­daq "MS­FT" @mi­crosoft) en­ables dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for the era of in­tel­li­gent cloud and in­tel­li­gent en­vi­ron­ment. Their mis­sion is to em­pow­er every per­son and or­ga­ni­za­tion on the plan­et so they can achieve more.