The latest Microsoft 365 updates will make some customers very happy

Microsoft 365 is a particularly useful subscription for both personal and enterprise use-cases, offering customers cloud storage, the Office suite of applications, and much more. That said, it is important to keep in mind that software that is used by millions of people should also cater to the various needs of its users, such as those related to accessibility. Now, Microsoft has announced some updates in this regard.

For starters, Accessibility Assistant will no longer treat valid row and column headers as violations and will instead let you hear header information if you're using a screen reader. Previously, screen readers could parse these headers correctly, but Accessibility Assistant would still flag them as violations, causing confusion. This should not happen anymore in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Next, Accessibility Assistant will handle merged cells in a smarter way. The utility would previously flag any merged cells as violations, but Microsoft has now modified the parsing logic so that violation alerts are not generated in PowerPoint and Word.

Yet another area where Accessibility Assistant would create disruption through faulty violations was that small tables with merged or split cells. Since screen readers can handle such small tables with relative ease, regardless of the layout of the cells, Microsoft has suppressed the warnings related to it in the Accessibility Assistant.

Finally, Microsoft understands that sometimes, documents contain blank cells, shapes, or text boxes for design purposes. Accessibility Assistant used to flag these as violations too, causing frustration for document creators. The utility will now recognize that such elements are harmless, and it will not generate alerts about them.

The changes to table violations are available to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users running:

• Windows: Version 2411 (Build 19412.20000) or later
• Mac: Version 16.103 (Build 25101121) or later

The change to handling empty shapes is available to Word and Excel users running:

• Windows: Version 2411 (Build 19329.20000) or later
• Mac: Version 16.103 (Build 25100813) or later

You can provide feedback about these changes directly to Microsoft through the built-in mechanism of any Microsoft 365 app that you are using.