Subj : Microsofts drive for accessibility has ushered in a nifty trick f
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Tue Apr 18 2023 11:15:03

Microsofts drive for accessibility has ushered in a nifty trick for PC gamers 
in Windows 11

Date:
Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:59:56 +0000

Description:
Annoyed that a PC game doesnt have subtitles? Windows 11 can lend a hand...

FULL STORY
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 Windows 11 has a cool accessibility feature, namely live captions, that you 
may well be aware of  but what you might not realize is that it can help not 
just with videos in your browser, but for providing captions on PC games that 
lack subtitles (and more besides). 

Live captions were brought in with Windows 22H2 , but Microsoft is busy 
building out the functionality, improving it in recent preview builds, and 
the fact that it works on PC games was pointed out by a Redditor (as flagged 
by Jen Gentleman, a software engineer and Senior Program Manager at 
Microsoft). Tip if you're on Windows 11 22H2 - Windows now has a live 
captions feature  pic.twitter.com/eQG90diFkC April 17, 2023 See more 

As the Reddit post notes , Microsofts live captions feature has some caveats 
with PC games, but overall it works pretty well, having been given a test run 
in an Assassins Creed title. 

So, those caveats are notably that the game must be run in a window (live 
captions dont work with full-screen), and theres a slight delay with the 
captions popping up  remember Windows 11 is doing this transcription 
on-the-fly, so thats to be expected. 

The system also needs to be able to hear the speech clearly, meaning if the 
audio is muffled or otherwise impaired, mistakes can be made. If theres 
overlapping with other speech, background noise or the likes of a sound track 
playing, youll encounter problems (so turn off in-game music for example, and 
perhaps turn down sound effects, plus jack up the speech volume if thats an 
available audio option). Analysis: Further support is in the works 

While the feature has its limitations, then, its still a great additional 
capability for gamers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Do also note that 
another restriction is that language support is US English-only at the 
moment, but Microsoft is busy working on changing that. 

Indeed, in a Windows 11 preview build last month , Microsoft expanded the 
languages covered to include other English dialects and also the following: 
Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, 
Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish. This will be inbound to release versions of 
Windows 11 soon enough, hopefully. 

As well as in your browser and with games, you can also use live captions 
across a lot of other apps. For example, it can be turned on with Spotify to 
provide lyrics (for songs that dont already have them), or captions can be 
used with videoconferencing apps (if they dont have a built-in facility 
already, that could be extremely useful). 

To turn on live captions in Windows 11, just hit Windows + Ctrl + L and away 
you go. Or you can find the toggle for the feature under Settings > 
Accessibility > Captions. 

Now all we need to make live captions more broadly accessible is for it to be 
introduced to Windows 10. Of course, not everyone can upgrade to Windows 11, 
what with the hardware requirements ruling out older CPUs and PCs lacking TPM 
functionality. So lets not leave those users out in the cold...



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/news/microsofts-drive-for-accessibility-has-ushered-
in-a-nifty-trick-for-pc-gamers-in-windows-11


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