PCWorld reports that Microsoft 365 subscribers with Copilot+ PCs can now access automatic alt text generation for images in Word and PowerPoint. This accessibility feature requires Microsoft 365 version 2512 and a Copilot+ PC with at least 40 TOPS NPU to function properly. Users can approve or edit AI-generated captions for both new and existing images, enhancing document accessibility and productivity. Microsoft has announced that Microsoft 365 subscribers with certain Copilot Plus computers will now have access to a new feature: automatic captions, or alt texts, in Word and PowerPoint.

At the company's big Surface event earlier this year, Microsoft made a point of highlighting many of the accessibility features baked into its hardware and software. This month, Redmond continued that work, announcing new Windows 10 accessibility features like support for braille and updates to its Narrator text-to-speech program. Today, Microsoft is going one step further and introducing a few new Office updates designed to help users more easily create content that can be accessed and read by anyone. First up, Microsoft's Office VP Kirk Koenigsbauer notes that his team has moved the new Accessibility Checker front and center in every major Office app from Word, Excel and PowerPoint to OneNote, Outlook and Visio. The feature, which is found under the Review tab, analyzes your document and will recommend changes or fixes that will "ensure your content can be consumed without barriers by people with varying levels of vision, hearing, cognition and mobility."

Microsoft today said that starting in early 2017, its Word and PowerPoint applications will be able to automatically come up with descriptions of photos that users can add into documents. Office 365 subscribers will see this first in Word and PowerPoint for PCs. Ordinarily, if you drop a photo into PowerPoint, you can type out an "Alt Text" title and description for the photo. But not everyone does that when they're making slide decks. Then, when a blind person opens the slide deck, they aren't able to understand what's going on in the picture, which could make the slide or the entire deck more difficult to fully grasp.

Artificial intelligence may be making small and steady advances in general-purpose situations like digital assistants. But it's the more subtle AI accessibility features that have a more substantial impact today, especially for users with disabilities. For instance, an upcoming feature for Office apps like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will automatically suggest image and slide deck captions, called alt-text, using AI algorithms. That way, when those files are presented to blind users, computer tools designed to translate the information onscreen into audio have text descriptions to work with. Microsoft is accomplishing this feat with its Computer Vision Cognitive Service, which uses neural networks trained with deep learning techniques to better understand and describe the contents of images.