Microsoft today posted about two new accessibility-oriented add-ins for its Office 2010 productivity suite. They providing video subtitling for PowerPoint and Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) compatibility for Word, respectively.
"Microsoft wants to make sure customers of all abilities can use Microsoft Office to get their work done," a post to Microsoft's official Office Blogs reads. "Last spring we released beta versions of two Office add-ins that make working with Office docs easier for people with hearing and print disabilities. We received lots of helpful feedback from people in the accessibility community, and made significant changes and improvements to them."
These add-ins are:
Subtitling Add-In for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP). This add-inlets you add closed captions to the video and audio files in PowerPoint presentations, which means people with hearing disabilities can more fully experience and understand them.
Save as DAISY for Office 2010. This add-in builds on Microsoft's partnership with the DAISY Consortium and lets Microsoft Word users convert Word Open XML files to the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) format. Save as Daisy powers digital talking books and compatible software, and braille readers for those with print disabilities.
According to Microsoft, these add-ins actually support Office 2003 and 2007 in addition to Office 2010, and they work in all the languages Office currently supports around the world.
