Microsoft Edge is getting a handy accessibility feature for Copilot – and another nifty tweak

The option to read out Copilot responses is now in testing

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Microsoft Edgehas a useful new feature on the accessibility front for those using itsBingAI in the browser.

As Leopeva64 on X (formerly Twitter) noticed, in the earlier test versions of Edge – namely Canary and Dev – Edge Copilot (which might be able to help you snag a Black Friday bargain) has a new option to read the chat aloud.

Edge Copilot now has an option to “read aloud” chats (available in Dev and Canary, controlled rollout): pic.twitter.com/KlFyrAe1fSNovember 19, 2023

After you’ve run a query, there’s a speaker button you can press to have the text response read out to you, and it turns into a pause button during playback – allowing you to stop the read-through temporarily if needed.

Note that this option is part of a phased rollout, the leaker tells us, meaning that even if you are running a test version of Edge, you may not see it just yet – only selected testers will. This is common practice for features in the early preview stages, of course.

Elsewhere in Edge, the New Tab menu (top-right, next to the window minimize control) has a newaddition– a list of ‘Recently visited’ websites at the foot of the panel. As you might guess, this is a convenient way to quickly get back to any web page you’ve just been to but have since closed.

Again, that feature is in testing, though just for the Canary version of Edge in this case.

Analysis: Accessibility drive

Microsofthas been doing plenty of work toimprove accessibility within Windows 11and its Edge browser, and this is another piece of that overall puzzle. It’s a small change but one that’ll doubtless be very welcome for those who have been hankering after a reader tool for replies from Edge Copilot.

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Granted, this is still in the early stages of development, so it may be some time before it reaches the release version of Edge. Naturally, any feature in testing won’t necessarily be implemented in the finished version of the browser, but in this case, we’d be surprised if it didn’t – givenMicrosoft’s extensive drive towards better accessibility, as mentioned.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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