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Microsoft’s neural voice tool for people with speech disabilities arrives later this year

Microsoft highlighted some new and upcoming accessibility features at its Ability summit, which kicked off today.

Ahead of the summit, the company’s chief accessibility officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie spoke with Engadget to share greater insight around the news as well as her thoughts on generative AI’s role in building assistive products. She highlighted a survey the company did with the neurodiverse community around Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the response of the few hundred people who responded was “this is reducing time for me to create content and it’s shortening that gap between thought and action,” Lay-Flurrie said. Elsewhere at the summit, Microsoft is featuring guest speakers like actor Michelle Williams and its own employee Katy Jo Wright, discussing mental health and their experience living with chronic Lyme disease respectively.

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