Microsoft & Office 365 Updates (December 2016)

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microsoft-office-365-icon-3.pngMicrosoft's December updates focused on making it easier to and more intiuitive to work - and making it easier for you to help others work. Major changes inlcuded a redesigned Office 365 Homepage and improvements to the Accessibility Checker. 

Office 365 Homepage Redesign

The home page for Office 365 first rolled out in April of 2016, now Microsoft is increasing the ease of navigation while simultaneously improving access to frequent and recently opened documents.  The changes began in December but you can expect to see them through early 2017.  “Recent documents” is also receiving a facelift, allowing for users to filter the document type sorting them between; Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote.  The user can also pin it for even easier access and navigation.  The office.com site also allows you to view your tasks and see what is coming down the pipeline. Read More...

 

Accessibility Checker

The feature is now easier to find, it’s under the Review tab in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Visio.  Making the content digestible without barriers by people with varying levels of vision, hearing, cognition or mobility.  The Accessibility Checker analyzes the material and makes recommendations on a side pane helping the user understand how to create more accessible content.

PowerPoint currently optimizes professional designs offered to you by Designer which includes facial detection, color extraction and much more.  This feature is soon moving to Word as well, and it will assist you in your creation of media-rich presentations and increase the understanding by people with visual impairments.  It is driven by Microsoft Computer Vision Cognitive Service and it will get smarter as more people use it, this is machine learning at its best and will reach out to more platforms with time.

Accessible content in Outlook is now available through a MailTip.  The prompt would remind them to run the Accessibility Checker before they hit the send button, ensuring the content they send can be consumed by people with disabilitities. Read More...

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