Microsoft has developed several improvements to the new “voice access»” feature that recently began testing with Windows 11 Insiders.
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Voice Access is one of Microsoft's latest additions to Accessibility settings in Windows 11, offering users a broad set of voice commands that replace keyboard, touch, and mouse usage, such as the ability to use voice to type and format documents, control devices, enter numbers and text, and so on.
Microsoft started testing it with the Dev Channel Insiders in build 22518 of Windows 11 in December, and now has released improvements to Voice Access in the new build 22538 of Windows 11.
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Voice access is located in Settings > Accessibility > Speech. Currently the feature is available only in English. Users need to download a speech model for speech recognition on the device, and then activate it by saying “Voice access wake up” or “Unmute”.
Microsoft says you can say “Switch to Edge” to move from another active app, but there are also useful voice keyboard commands for clicking a button or link, right-clicking and double-clicking things, and doing key combinations like “press tab 3 times.” The technology can also perform dictation and text editing.
The latest updates improve voice access using the touch keyboard. Windows 11 Dev Channel users can now: try voice access on a touch keyboard to spell words, such as names and email addresses, enter numbers such as phone numbers and addresses, enter punctuation marks and symbols, or even emojis.
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To open or hide the touch keyboard, users can say “show keyboard” or “hide keyboard”. To click a key, a user must say “click” followed by the number.
Information source: zdnet.com
