Microsoft adds Excel and PowerPoint's Accessibility ribbon to Outlook for Windows

Accessibility has been a theme of Windows 11 since right after it was first announced. That has extended to many of the company's Office apps. This week, Microsoft announced that Outlook for Windows will be getting an Accessibility ribbon.

The new feature is similar to the one that was added in Excel and PowePoint editions of Windows. Microsoft's blog post states:

The Accessibility ribbon brings together all the tools you need to make your message accessible in one place. It is contextual and appears at the same time as the Accessibility Checker pane.

Users can bring up the new ribbon when they start writing an email by clicking on the Message option on top, and then clicking on the Check Accessibility icon. An alternative way is to search for "accessibility" in Outlook's Search bar. You can then pick Accessibility Checkerunder the Best Action selection. Finally, if you are writing an email that's labeled as "high importance" and there's a colour contrast issue in the email body, it will bring up the Review accessibility issues link in the MailTip.

Right now the Outlook accessibility ribbon is available to members of the Office Insider program in the Beta channel with version 2304 (Build 16321.20000) or above. There's no word yet on the general availability date for this feature in Outlook.

Microsoft adds Excel and PowerPoint's Accessibility ribbon to Outlook for Windows