SPEAKER 1: Next up,
Chris Yoon and Daria Vasylieva
join Anne Taylor for a conversation on
accessibility and a demonstration of
new accessibility functionality for
mobile apps. Check this out.
ANNE TAYLOR: Hello.
My name is Anne Taylor.
I'm from the accessibility team at Microsoft.
I'm delighted to be joined
today by two of my colleagues from
the Microsoft search assistant and intelligence team,
Daria Vasylieva and Chris Yoon.
We will be talking to you about
the latest accessibility improvement
of the Play My Email features,
and we will also be sharing with you lessons
learned on how to develop in an accessible manner.
But first, let's learn about Play My Email.
Over to you, Daria.
DARIA VASYLIEVA: Thank you, Anne.
It's great to be here,
and thank you so much for your partnership.
Play My Emails is e-mail productivity tool
powered by Cortana on Outlook Mobile on iOS and Android.
You can listen to your e-mails like a podcast,
whether you're on the go, multitasking,
or need a little break from a big screen.
You can use your voice to quickly
create your e-mails as well as perform
powerful search like read
my e-mails from my manager from last week.
The history of experience starts from
incubational project in our M365 design studio.
It was solely focused on helping users with
disabilities, getting the most from Outlook Mobile.
At the project development,
we saw a value in bringing it
in for people with all abilities.
So we brought in this scenario to be
useful in many day to day used cases.
Now, we have returned to our roots to make
sure people with disabilities are still
empowered to be more productive daily.
After meeting fundamental requirements,
such as compatibility with
native screen readers and meeting
international accessibility standards,
we went further and worked closely with people with
disabilities from user research and design,
to usability testing and studies.
We are excited to share some of
the innovations we are introducing this month.
CHRIS YOON: Thanks, Daria. As a visually
impaired user myself,
I'm really excited to see
these changes come to Play My Emails.
First, I want to thank Anne,
the Select Accessibility Team
and everyone who has worked on Play My Emails for
their support and partnership to bring
accessibility into the forefront of our user experience.
With that, I love to share
our enhanced Play My Email's
accessibility experience in action.
Let's start by launching Play My Emails.
Select the "Menu" button and navigate to
find "Play My Emails" in the sidebar menu.
SPEAKER 2: Menu. Nicole Wagner at 6CJ.
Selected a new e-mail account,
Play My Emails button.
CHRIS YOON: Here, we found an
opportunity to improve
the launch experience by creating a Siri shortcut
that users can set up with a single tap of the button in
Outlook settings and combining it
with iOS as backed up accessibility feature.
Now, users can simply tap on
the back of the iPhone to listen
to their e-mails anytime.
SPEAKER 2: App to snap 3D image.
Outlook more options button.
SPEAKER 3: I've got a few e-mails
for you right now.
CHRIS YOON: As you can hear,
SPEAKER 3: we had a unique challenge
CHRIS YOON: to balance two competing audio sources,
one from Cortana and one from voice over,
to ensure a seamless experience
without overloading the users.
To accomplish this, we've added
universal voice over gesture support as well as
powerful hands-free voice commands for users to
be able to quickly listen to and triage their e-mails.
You can double tap with two fingers
to play and pause Cortana.
SPEAKER 3: Get all the latest news by
subscribing to our weekly newsletter.
CHRIS YOON: You can swipe left and right
to move between e-mails.
SPEAKER 2: Pause button.
SPEAKER 3: Yesterday morning.
CHRIS YOON: You can also use three finger
up to archive and three
finger down to flag e-mail.
SPEAKER 2: Pause button
SPEAKER 3: I'll archive for you.
Yesterday morning.
I'll flag that one.
CHRIS YOON: You can also use your voice
to take other quick actions,
such as sending a quick reply.
Hey, Cortana, send a quick reply.
SPEAKER 3: Tell me your short reply
to Devin Torres.
CHRIS YOON: Welcome to the team, Grace.
SPEAKER 3: Ready to send it?
CHRIS YOON: Yes.
SPEAKER 3: I've sent it.
CHRIS YOON: Likewise, you can swipe up
with three fingers and down
with three fingers to accept
and decline calendar invites,
and lastly, you can use your voice
to speed up or slow down Cortana's read out speed.
Hey Cortana, speed up.
SPEAKER 3: I'll speed up.
CHRIS YOON: By combining familiar
voice-over gestures with
powerful hands-free
voice commands,
it is easier than ever to audibly go through your inbox,
and that was a quick demo of
our new Play My Email Accessibility Experience.
DARIA VASYLIEVA: Our recent user research
shows that people with
disabilities need end to end
experiences across all their workflow.
We know there's more work to do,
and we're excited to get into
the other products and areas. Back to you, Anne.
ANNE TAYLOR: Thank you very much, Daria.
Three things I'm going to leave with
you, my developer friends.
Number 1, co-create with people with
disability from every stage of development.
Number 2, leveraging platform accessibility.
Avoid using custom controls.
Number 3, test with people
with disability using assistive technology.
Now go forth and do great things,
and thanks very much for all that you do to
make your technologies accessible to everyone,
including people with disability.
Looking forward to see you next year.