Free add-ins boost accessibility for Office 2010 users

Microsoft wants to make sure customers of all abilities can use Microsoft Office to get their work done. 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.

Today, we're happy to announce that STAMP and Save as DAISY Word 2010 are out of beta and ready for everyone to use!    

• Subtitling Add-In for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP) lets 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 builds upon our partnership with the DAISY Consortium. This add-in lets Microsoft Word users convert Word Open XML files to the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) format. Don't worry if you can't remember what the acronyms stand for. What matters is that Save as Daisy powers digital talking books and compatible software, and braille readers for those with print disabilities.  

This version supports Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, and works in all the languages Office currently supports around the world.

Learn More and Download

• Head over to the PowerPoint blog to learn more about STAMP,  and to the Word blog to learn more about Save as Daisy for Office 2010. 
• Information on how to download and get started with these add-ins are available on the STAMP and Save As DAISY pages.
• Information about other great accessibility resources for Office 2010 are on the Microsoft Accessibility site.
• Or you can go to the DAISY Consortium website to download Save as DAISY for Office 2010.     

Other Accessibility Features in Microsoft Office 2010

STAMP and Save as Daisy are just a few of the Office 2010 accessibility features in Office 2010. Microsoft has been investing in accessibility for more than 20 years; for Office, accessibility means better, broader access to knowledge.

Here are a few of the Office 2010 features that help people create and consume all kinds of accessible content:

• An accessibility checker (like a spelling checker, but for accessibility) as a feature of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that provides step-by-step instructions for how to correct accessibility errors.
• An on-the-fly translation feature called Mini Translator, which allows you to translate single words or many paragraphs simply by hovering over the text that you want to translate. Mini Translator also includes the ability to speak that text using Microsoft's Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine.
• A Full Screen Reading view that is optimized for reading a document on the computer screen. In Full Screen Reading view, you also have the option of seeing the document as it would appear on a printed page.